This chocolate cake is perfect for anyone reducing sugar in their diet or looking to spend less time in the kitchen. It’s a fluffy, moderately sweet cake that’s easy to make and can even be transformed into brownies if desired. Currently, I’m exploring the world of sweets without sugar or syrups, aiming for a whole-food, plant-based diet. This means minimizing refined ingredients and experimenting with fruit-based sweeteners in my dessert recipes. Dried fruits like raisins work particularly well for baking.
How to make Easy Chocolate Cake with Raisins
This cake requires only 15 minutes of active time: mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, pour the mixture into a baking tray, and let the oven work its magic. I’m using chocolate soy milk for this recipe, and here’s why:
Once, we bought cocoa nibs on sale without knowing how to use them. Eventually, my husband made homemade chocolate with them—extremely bitter, with minimal cocoa butter and no sugar. I had never tasted chocolate so intense!
We decided to melt this chocolate and try it as a hot drink, using homemade soy milk. We’re still trying to figure out why store-bought soy milk tastes better than ours, but I hope to share a perfect recipe with you someday! We thought adding chocolate would enhance the flavor of the soy milk.
The experiment yielded thick, hearty hot chocolate—just a small amount was enough for us to feel satisfied. We decided to use the rest in baking, which turned out to be a great decision. Inspired by a recipe from The Loopy Whisk, I baked this cake while reducing the amount of oil and sweetener by half. However, you don’t need to use homemade soy milk and chocolate; any store-bought chocolate plant-based milk will work, along with any other plant-based milk mixed with melted dark chocolate.
How to make Chocolate Cake even sweeter?
If not everyone in your family is on board with cutting out sugar, there’s a compromise! You can easily sweeten this cake by adding a topping. One delicious option is a sugar-free date caramel. For this, soak 8-10 pitted dates in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain them, then blend with a pinch of salt and about 50-100 ml of plant-based milk or water. Alternatively, you can soak the cake with a sweet syrup.
Vegan Chocolate cake with Raisins
Ingredients
- 270 g flour (whole wheat)
- 30 g oil (peanut oil*)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 100 g sweetener (erythritol*)
- 1.5 cups chocolate soy milk
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 40 g walnuts
- 1 cup raisins
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, sweetener, and oil. You can use coconut oil instead of peanut butter. Both are heat-resistant oils, which are suitable for baking. Feel free to use any syrup, sugar, or sweetener in place of erythritol.
- Gently stir in the plant-based chocolate milk. I used soy milk with melted dark chocolate.
- Chop the nuts and add them to the dough along with the raisins.
- Stir well and pour the resulting mixture into a baking tray.
- Preheat the oven to 180'C. Bake the cake for 60 minutes.
- Enjoy!
Video
Nutrition facts
Notes
*Sweetener Many people are trying to avoid sugar these days, and I think that’s a smart choice. If you’re looking for alternatives, check out this short video on alternative sweeteners—it might help you make a decision! My husband and I have been using Erythritol , and we like it so far, but we’re also planning to try xylit, which has promising qualities as well. *Oil In this recipe I use peanut oil, but coconut oil works even better, providing nice coconut flavour. Both oils are heat-resistant, so these are better alternatives for baking (comparing to olive oil).Recommendations
While many sugar substitutes have been around for ages, some can be just as bad as sugar—or even harmful. For example, I recently learned that stevia may have toxic effects and can potentially cause DNA mutations. If you’re looking for better alternatives, check out this informative video on sugar substitutes; it might help you make a more informed choice!
Currently, I use erythritol, which is about 20-40% less sweet than regular sugar and has a slight cooling effect but no aftertaste (unlike stevia). Surprisingly, 100g of erythritol contains 0 calories! I’ve also tried xylitol and liked it even better; it’s cheaper and tastes great, especially in drinks.
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