Chocolate vinegar cake

National Chocolate week, how come I managed to nearly miss this ? obviously as someone who loves chocolate I would have thought that it would have been on my radar for weeks but some how it almost passed me by. (Hence the lateness of this post)
In celebration I have reworked a vinegar cake using a stunning Ellseys fruit vinegar and cocoa powder. Vinegar cakes are fairly allergy friendly as they don't feature eggs and use alternative measures to raise and set the cake.

After a busy day at blog camp on Saturday, where I learned loads, my baking needed to be the fairly fast and dirty kind, as the cake only takes about 40 minutes to cook it fitted the bill perfectly.Apologies to anyone who doesn't like recipes in cups but I love them and my original vinegar recipe is an american one, so cups it is.

Ingredients

• 3 cups of plain flour
• 2 cups of granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cup warm water
• 1tbsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp vinegar ( any type but malt, I used a fruit vinegar)

Method

• Prepare a baking tin of approx 13 by 9 inches - grease and line
• Pre heat oven to 180c / 350F
• Mix all ingredients together tin a bowl, sieve all the dry ingredients in first, then add the wet ingredients last
• Ensure mixed throughly and then pour into your prepared tin
• Bake for approx 40 minutes until tested cooked with a skewer
• Allow to cool in tin

If you fancy ringing the changes why not add spices too ! this is a lovely easy bake , nicely squidgy after only 24 hours and well flavoured and no hint of vinegar at all. You could ice it if you so wished.