Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

Everyone loves chocolate cake, but have you ever tried a slice with a salad dressing as it's key ingredient? I hadn't, or even thought olive oil would create the perfect chocolate cake. I was watching a bit of Nigellissima the other day and tuned in at the right time to see Nigella Lawson's chocolate cake with a twist. It's dairy free (if you don't add any chocolate, unless that's dairy free too) and wheat free if you follow her recipe using ground almonds. As I was about to go away for the weekend, I decided to bake my own Chocolate Olive Oil Cake to take with me. I was definitely curious to see how it would turn out! I used plain flour and decorated my cake with chocolate as luckily my family, boyfriend and I have no intolerances. 

You will need: 

150ml regular olive oil

50g cocoa powder

125ml boiling water

2 tsp vanilla extract

125g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 pinch of salt

200g caster sugar

3 eggs
Icing sugar and chocolate to decorate

Pre-heat the oven to 170C/325F/gas 3 and grease a 20-23cm tin (you may need to line the base of the tin). Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl or jug, add the boiling water and whisk until you have a smooth and runny mixture. Then whisk in the vanilla extract.

Combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a separate bowl. Whisk the olive oil, sugar and eggs together in another bowl.

Slowly beat in the cocoa mixture before tipping in the flour mixture. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes, you want the very centre of your cake to still look slightly damp. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Once your cake has cooled, decorate it however your heart desires. I dusted mine with icing sugar and grated dark chocolate on top as this was enough as it was lovely and moist. As your cake will hopefully be lovely and moist too, you might want to do the same or serve it with ice cream.

 And there you have it, chocolate cake with a health-boosting ingredient!