Hazelnut Chocolate Cake {Raw/Vegan}

Saturday night we had a special dinner with family friends. For one weekend all 8 of us were around before starting vacations and school again; one of is even spending a year studying at Oxford(no, it’s not me; yes, I’m jealous). That called for cake. I had been wanting to make this recipe for a while and wanted to wait until just the right celebration. Everyone loved it, although when I told them the frosting involved avocado you would have thought I told them my own hair was in it. They started eating it again 2 seconds later when they remembered how good it was and decided you couldn’t taste the avocado.

I actually made this cake for Father’s Day last year and featured it as a guest post on Gena’s blog. Since then I’d completely forgotten about it and had to go look it up to remember how to make it. Now that I remembered, I kind of wish I could forget again. The ones that we didn’t give away didn’t last long in this house. It’s hard to say no to a piece of cake, and even harder when you can tell yourself it’s “healthy” because it has fruits and nuts in it.

Hazelnut Chocolate Cake {Raw/Vegan}

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 0 minutes

Ingredients(makes 5 2×3-inch frosted cakes):

• 2 cups hazelnuts
• 1 cup pitted dates
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder, divided
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons maple syrup, divided
• 1 medium avocado
• Crushed hazelnuts for garnish

Method:

1. Pulse the hazelnuts in a food processor until finely ground into a flour
2. Add in the dates, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, and 1/4 cup maple syrup and process until it forms into a thick dough that sticks together.
3. Lay the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper and roll to about 3/4-inch thickness.
4. With a sharp knife, cut the dough into either 8 or 10 equal sized rectangles. If there’s excess dough you can form it into a ball, roll it out, and cut again.
5. Make the frosting by blending together the remaining maple syrup, cocoa powder, and the meat from the avocado until it’s uniform in color and texture. Taste it and adjust the sweetness if need be.
6. Spread about 2 tablespoons of frosting over half of the cakes. Layer with another slice and spread an equal amount of frosting on top of that piece.
7. Garnish with crushed hazelnuts.

These took from start to finish about 20 minutes to make, maybe a little more than that because I was distracted. Even so these are much quicker to make than traditional cake and certainly have all the show-stopping qualities.