If I said this was easy to make I’d be lying.
If I said this was not epically delicious I’d be lying again.
It requires multiple steps, multiple bowls, lots of stacking, and lots of finger licking. But it is worth it. SO worth it.
Before we even get to the sweet stuff sandwiched in between, let’s talk about this cake. Other than for color, the cake really doesn’t even need the frosting. There are already a few chocolate cake recipes on FF…
– The adorable Everything-Free Chocolate Cupcakes
– The strawberry-concealing Chocolate Lava Loaf Cake
– The elegant 5-Ingredient Flourless Dark Chocolate Cake
But this one is different. It is richer and lighter. It is so close to the classic. Even my mom, the toughest cake critic around, said it reminded her of boxed Devil’s Food cake (the gold standard of course ?).
What’s different? This recipe is sweetened with a combo of dates and coconut sugar. I think that is the secret. I love my fruit-sweetened cupcakes, always will, but they will never be as light as a sugar-sweetened recipe. But a sugar-sweetened recipe will never be as moist as a date-sweetened one. So apparently, just like life, cake-sweetening is all about balance too.
Oh, and it has a lot more cacao powder than the Everything-Free Cupcakes, so extra chocolatey! It’s still oil-free, gluten-free, and vegan, of course.
The frosting is just fruity fun! Made vibrant with freeze-dried fruit. Made creamy with So Delicious Unsweetened Cultured Coconut Milk. Made sweet with blender-blitzed or store-bought vegan powdered sugar.
It may have a little more non-fruit sweetening than most of FF recipes, but when you are trying to create a stunning something for the So Delicious and Go Dairy Free Snackable Recipe Contest, you pull out all the sweet stops!
Creating those colors…
– Blueberries = purple
– Strawberries or raspberries = pink
– Peaches or mangoes or pineapples = yellow
– Spirulina DOES NOT = green! It = a monstrous color in between green and cement…don’t go there.
As I said, there are many steps, so here’s a video:
Fruit-Frosted Chocolate Layer Cake
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 70 minutes
- Yield: 6 1x
Ingredients
- CAKE
- 1 1/2 cup oat flour
- 1 1/2 cup So Delicious Unsweetened Almond Milk
- 1/2 cup coconut sugar
- 1/2 cup cacao powder (or cocoa powder)
- 1 1/2 tbsp baking powder
- 12 pitted medjool dates
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- FROSTING
- 6 cups powdered sugar (store-bought or homemade)
- 1/2 cup So Delicious Unsweetened Vanilla Cultured Coconut Milk
- 1/2 cup freeze dried strawberries
- 1/2 cup freeze dried blueberries
- 1/2 cup freeze dried peaches/mangos/pineapple
Instructions
- FOR THE CAKE: Preheat the oven to 325F.
- Blend the dates, cacao powder, coconut sugar, almond milk, and vanilla extract on high until smooth.
- In a large mixing bowl, lightly whisk together the oat flour and baking powder.
- Add the wet to the dry, and mix to combine.
- Divide the batter between two 6 inch round cake pans that are lined or lightly oiled.
- Bake for 25-27 minutes at 325F. The center should bounce back if lightly pressed when the cakes are done.
- Let the cakes cool completely. Slice each cake horizontally into two thin layers. Set aside.
- FOR THE FROSTING:
- With a hand mixer, whip together the Cultured Coconut Milk and powdered sugar until smoothand lump-free. Adjust the amount of sugar and/or yogurt as necessary to achieve a stiff but spreadable consistency.
- Using 3 bowls, divide the frosting into 1/4, 1/4, and 1/2 (the 1/2 color will be the repeating color).
- Blend each of the freeze dried fruits separately in a VERY dry blender or coffee grinder until they become powder. Start with the yellow, then the red, then the purple (lightest to darkest), wiping out the blender with a dry paper towel in between each color.
- Add the fruit powders to the divided frostings, whisking each with the hand mixer to thoroughly blend the color in. You may not need all the powder, so adjust the colors to your liking.
- TO ASSEMBLE: On a plate or cake round, start with your first layer of cake. Gently spread on your repeating frosting color (I used yellow) with a spatula or dull knife. Be careful not to get crumbs in your frosting. Don’t spread the frosting all the way to the edge as the weight of the next layer will push it out further.
- Repeat with the remaining layers. Finish with a sprinkling of chocolate chips, sprinkles, or chocolate shavings.
- Serve immediately or refrigerate to prevent the frosting from smushing (very technical word) out the sides.
So basically…um….I really want this cake. First of all, the colorful fruity frostings….amazing!
Second, if I’m going to eat cake, it better be chocolate or carrot cake so…yea this is good 😉
And a little effort in cooking never hurt anyone 😉
This will be you Christmas gift, much more celebratory. Those mango skins…those are going to show up when you least expect them 😉 bwahahahaha! I just kiddin’…I can’t ship cake. But yeah, not everything can be one bowl, 5 minutes and no bake! Cooking takes some effort sometimes!
This is EPIC. I don’t know how you do it but every week you come up with more unique and innovative healthy desserts! As always I LOVE that it’s sweetened with dates! YUM-O.
Thank you Kaila, you are the sweetest <3 My mom helped me dream up this one, sometimes brainstorming is better with a buddy 🙂 And I'm with ya' on the dates!
Such a gorgeous creation!! I always get excited when I see one of your videos pop up in my youtube feed!
Thanks Leah! I’m always excited to see your newest sweet creations and your sweet comments too 🙂 I wish those videos popped up more often, but you know…editing laziness 😉 haha
Wow, this cake is stunning! I love that the frosting is naturally colored. The artificially colored stuff is so gross ?
Thank you Melissa! Freeze dried fruit is so versatile I am realizing 🙂 And yeah food coloring is freaky! If it can stain my fingers and my sink I definitely don’t want it in my body :p
Wow, now this is a cake Natalie!! Look at all those beautiful, colorful layers!! So gorgeous and while I”m wayyy too lazy to make all this, it would totally be worth it like you said, for a special occasion!! A showstopper! For my daughter’s birthday last year, I made a homemade from scratch butterfly cake and decorated it and it was sooo much work, lol. I had never before done a cake theme like that and it didn’t really turn out the way I wanted, but it tasted delicious and everybody loved the cake and that is most important and my daughter loved it! As long as she was happy.
Gorgeous girl, just gorgeous!
Thank you Brandi, your sweet comments always mean a lot to me 🙂 If I weren’t doing it for the blog I would never put in this much effort unless it was a b-day either haha! Your butterfly cake sounds gorgeous, is there a picture on you site or social media anywhere I’d love to see it!? My mom would always go all out of cakes when we were little and even if they weren’t “perfect” they always were perfect. Your daughter is a lucky little girl 🙂
Oh my gosh Natalie! Just when I thought your recipes couldn’t get any more awesome than they already are, you create this! I am so mesmerised by this stunning cake! I love all of the different frosting colours, and chocolate cake is the BEST! I definitely need to try this. WOW! Pinned! <3
★★★★★
Aww you are too sweet girl! I wanted to do all the colors just to look pretty, but really all you need is the cake! Because like you said, chocolate cake is the BEST!!! <3
This looks soooooo pretty! 🙂
I just stocked up on freeze dried fruit {inspired to play around with some ever since your peeps!} and can’t wait to make something pretty and colorful. I lol’d on the spirulina green. Been there. There is a way to get the color, but it requires quite a bit of experimenting — which is something I always hesitate to do with a cake in the making because I don’t want to spoil ingredients… I remember also trying to use chlorophyll once with the same results…
I’ll have to somehow show you a cake I made yesterday — the toppings and colors of your cake here really remind me of it so much! Breakfast twins first, cake twins next… 😀
I can’t wait to see your freeze dried fruit baking fun!!! This is my first time playing around with spirulina, and I definitely haven’t found the sweet spot yet. I made some pretty green nice cream with it, but in frosting form it looked more like a goo monster! haha And I agree, it’s tricky because a little too much and the whole cake tastes like seaweed :p Aww I really REALLY want to see your cake twin!!!
WOW! You have that contest in the bag! This cake is GORGEOUS! Love all the beautiful fruity layers. Incredible!
I don’t know about that, but I appreciate your confidence Jenn 🙂
That’s it, Natalie. I won’t stop by your blog any longer, you make me soooo hungry every time I look at your pictures! 😀 No, just kidding! This looks absolutely AMAZING!!!!! 🙂 Can’t wait to try your recipe!
Alright then, I’ll just start posting pics of plain lettuce and dry oats then will you come back? 😉 haha Thank you Sina, you are so sweet!
Looks amazing and is SO PRETTY!!
Thank you Lori <3
Hi Natalie,
Your desserts sound yummy!
Could you please clarify what you mean by ‘a cup’ (I guess I’m more used to a different measurement system:)
In the frosting ingredients you say ‘6 cups of powdered sugar’. 6 cups (meaning drinking cups or some other type (those measuring spoons/cups, etc.).
Thank you for the clarification- I just want the cake to come up as perfect as yours:)
A cup is a standard unit of volume used here in the US. I’m assuming you use weight measurements, so I just looked it up and 1 cup of powdered sugar is approximately 4 oz or 113g. So 6 cups would be approximately 675g if my math is correct. Hope that helps!
Thank you! I’m in Europe, where kg/dkg are used hence wasn’t sure what you meant by a ‘cup’. All clear now!:)
Sure Aga! Happy to help 🙂
So after days of drooling over the photos on pinterest etc. I finally got to check out the recipe. The cake looks so amazing, I even had to show it to my boyfriend..and he said it was looking great as well! I love all the different colored frostings between the chocolate layers. What a masterpiece 😀
Thank you so, so much Bianca for your sweet comment <3 I love the colors too, it feels so festive! I actually made it like 3 days before my Dad's birthday, and although it would've been perfect for the occasion is was all gone by then! haha So I remade a little two layer version just for his b-day 🙂 Ah timing.
Oh I love how you relate the balance of cake sweetening to life <3 I have to remember that! This cake is so beautifully colorful, I think I would just admire it instead of eating it 😀 It's great how much color freeze dried fruit can impart!
Gotta sneak in those deep thought provoking metaphors sometimes 😉 haha
I suppose that is one of the benefits of taking pics of all our food, we can admire it WHILE we eat it! And the freeze dried fruit is pretty amazing for color. Not sure how or why, because normal dried fruit is usually dark and not very colorful, but the freeze dried stuff is a whole different vibrant thing 🙂
LOVE your video such a great breakdown and made me feel comfortable trying this out! Thanks for sharing xo C
Thanks Courtney! That is exactly what I was trying to do 🙂
This is pure awesomeness!!! So worth the effort! Gosh, I’m so craving it right now 😀 and thank you so much for linking to my healthy powdered sugar substitute <3
★★★★★
You are so sweet Lucie! This probably won’t be the last time I link to it either 🙂
GAGA is an understatement of what I am going right now! HA! YUMMMM!
Lol you leave the best comments 😀 Thanks girl!
I love the light and fluffy texture. Can I substitute the coconut sugar for brown sugar? It is not sold in the area that I stay. If so would the quantity be the same?
Sure, brown sugar will be fine. And yes, you will use the exact same amount 🙂
Could i also use fresh or frozen fruit?by the way-beautiful cake?
Hi Nana! For the frosting you mean? No frozen or fresh will have too much moisture and make the frosting too thin and runny. The freeze dried fruit has no moisture at all, that’s why it is perfect here. Sorry!
I have been looking for a healthier chocolate cake that is oil-free, gluten-free and vegan, which can be hard to find all in one recipe! So many of your recipes fit that category — it is wonderful! I am excited to try this chocolate cake. I don’t have any 6″ round cake pans, though. Would it work if I used a larger pan and made only one cake? Or should I make more than a single recipe and make two larger cakes? Thank you so much!
Hi Hannah! Yep, you can put all the batter into one 8-9″ (regular sized) cake pan and it will work as just a single layer cake. Perhaps bake it a little longer, around 30 minutes should be good. It is tricky to find all those things in one cake, but this is one of my favorites and I hope you love it too😊