Vegan Bavarian Chocolate Sheet Cake
Until a few weeks ago, I've never heard of "chocolate bread" before – and you probably neither. The German "Schokoladenbrot" sounds a bit like banana bread, just with chocolate instead of bananas. But I have to disappoint you if that was what you're looking for – it's a Bavarian sheet cake that is very sweet and usually enjoyed around Christmas.
The recipe is one that you will know by heart pretty quickly as it follows a quite strict list of ingredients: 250 g butter, 250 g sugar, 6 eggs, 250 g ground almonds, 250 g dark chocolate, and 100 g flour. I found this exact ingredient list on almost any website.
When I tried the first vegan version of this cake, I replaced the eggs with apple sauce, added some chickpea flour for binding, plus baking powder to the batter. Traditionally, the eggs are beaten, which helps the cake to become extra fluffy, but this will not work with apple sauce. So the baking powder ensures that the batter will rise in the oven and that the cake will be soft in the end. When I took the first bite, I thought: OMG, this cake is SO sweet, which is no wonder when you consider that there are 250 g sugar and 250 g dark chocolate in the batter, plus additional dark chocolate as a glaze.
So for the final recipe, I reduced the amount of sugar and dark chocolate in the batter, even if it falsifies the traditional list of ingredients. No worries, our version is still quite sweet – if you want to reduce the sweetness even further, make sure to get dark chocolate with higher cocoa content. The chocolate sheet cake is a different kind of a Christmas cookie, but it fits the season perfectly thanks to its cinnamon and vanilla flavor. I can only recommend to try it out – it's actually incredibly delicious!
Vegan Bavarian Chocolate Sheet Cake
Ingredients
For the batter:
- 250 g (2.25 sticks) vegan butter
- 180 g (1 cup) sugar
- 250 g (9 oz) ground almonds (or hazelnuts)
- 100 g (0.75 cup) flour
- 200 g (7 oz) apple sauce
- 15 g (1 tbsp) soy flour or chickpea flour
- 8 g (1 tsp) baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 200 g (7 oz) dark chocolate
For the glaze and decoration:
- 200 g (7 oz) dark chocolate
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 100 g (3.5 oz) chopped almonds (or hazelnuts)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180°C/355°F (circulating air) and line a baking dish (22x28 cm / 8x11 inches) with parchment paper.
- For the batter, add vegan butter and sugar to a bowl and beat until fluffy – you can do this with a hand mixer or a kitchen machine.
- Add ground nuts, flour, apple sauce, soy flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla extract, and cinnamon. Stir to combine. Finely chop the dark chocolate and fold it into the batter.
- Transfer the dough to the prepared baking dish and smooth it out. Bake at 180°C/355°F for approx. 30 minutes. In case the chocolate sheet cake will turn dark, cover it with tinfoil. Once it's baked, remove from the oven and let cool down completely inside the baking pan. Then carefully transfer it to a wire rack.
- As soon as the chocolate sheet cake is cooled down, roughly chop dark chocolate for the topping. Add it to a heatproof bowl along with coconut oil and set the bowl over a pot of simmering water. Melt the chocolate.
- Drizzle molten chocolate glaze over the sheet cake, then let it dry a bit. After approx. 20 minutes the glaze should be soft but not liquidy anymore (this can take less or more time depending on your room temperature). Slice the cake into smaller pieces and sprinkle with chopped nuts.
