The best bakes are those that your friends trust you with – to bake for their friends 🙂

This is the cake that brought me a lot of joy because of the kind of love with which a friend requested for this Vegan Wholewheat Chocolate and Cake sweetened with jaggery for her friend.

I love the effort that goes into a special bake – it isn’t a process of measuring and mixing only. Making the applesauce from scratch, slowly sifting the flour, sauteing the walnuts with liquid jaggery, folding the ingredients slowly, even prepping the tin.

I am intentionally trying to slow down and cakes like this help me do that. Because it’s not an automatic process for me even after so many years. I still bake every single bake with the same level of ‘slowness’ .

The fact that the cake was loved by everyone is actually the proverbial ‘icing’ 

So here is there recipe for you to try out.

Ingredients –

• 2 cups wholewheat flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup organic jaggery powder
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 1/2 cup water

Method –

Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and sift well. Whisk the jaggery, oil and applesauce nicely. Add the water to this liquid mix.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones. Whisk well to ensure that all ingredients are mixed well.

Pour into a prepared baking tin, top with the walnuts dipped in liquid jaggery and bake in a preheated oven for 25-30 minutes at 170 degrees C or until it bakes through.

Applesauce recipe – I simply use 2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped. Add them into a pressure cooker with 1/2 or 3/4 cup water, a pinch of cinnamon and stew them. Then I finely puree it to make a thick applesauce.