Vegan Gluten Free Chocolate Cake
This vegan gluten free chocolate cake is rich, made in one bowl, moist and loved by all types of eaters! This is my go-to recipe to impress a crowd or for any special occasion.
Why you’ll love this recipe
Like many other gluten free and vegan recipes on the blog (hi vegan brownies), this vegan chocolate cake was a true labor of love! It took quite a few trials, with many, many different flour combinations before landing on the perfect recipe.
And when I say perfect, I mean it! This recipe is incredibly easy to make, vegan, gluten free, perfectly chocolatey and a favorite among all types of eaters.
With chocolate cake, you want to strike a balance between light, fluffy, rich and dense. Unlike a vanilla cake, a chocolate cake should have some degree of density to it. But not so much that it overwhelms your palate.
That’s a hard balance to strike, especially with a vegan gluten free cake, but we did it! This recipe is perfect for any celebration, or just a delicious dessert that’ll impress your friends! If you love this recipe, try my vegan chocolate donuts, vegan gluten free cinnamon rolls or mini chocolate cake next!
How to make vegan gluten free cake
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two round 8 inch cake pans with parchment paper and set aside. See notes about using 9 inch pans.
Combine the room temperature milk with the vinegar and mix together in a glass. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl (mixing is easier if the bowl is extra large!), sift together the almond flour, all purpose flour and cocoa powder.
Whisk in the remaining dry ingredients. The espresso powder is optional, but it really enhances the chocolate flavor. I promise it won’t taste like coffee at all!
Add in all remaining wet ingredients aside from the boiling water and whisk together. Whisk in the boiling water. This will help “activate” the cocoa powder.
Add the batter to the prepared cake pans, trying to keep them as even as possible to ensure even baking. Let sit for 5 minutes.
Add to the oven and bake for 35-45 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out with a few crumbs. You don’t want to underbake since the cake will sink in the middle or end up dense, but over-baking will lead to a dry cake, so start your timer at 35 minutes, and add just a couple of minutes at a time until the toothpick has a few crumbs but isn’t wet.
Remove from the oven and let cool in the cake pans for about 20 minutes. Carefully flip onto a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting. I usually stick them in the fridge to cool, which takes about 90 minutes.
Prepare the buttercream, (just be sure to use vegan butter and milk) then frost the top of one layer, add on the second layer, then frost the top and sides of the cake. Try my raspberry chocolate cake next!
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Enhancing the chocolate flavor
A lot of chocolate cake recipes call for coffee. I prefer using boiling hot water as I find it helps “activate” the cocoa a bit more and give the cake a really rich flavor.
However, with water you miss out on the richness that coffee gives to a cake. To make up for that, I always suggest using espresso powder!
Just 1-2 teaspoons in the batter will bring out the rich chocolate flavor but won’t give off any coffee flavor. It’s optional, but I recommend it if you can!
Pan sizes
I baked this cake in two 8 inch round cake pans, but you are welcome to use two 9 inch pans OR one 9×13 pan. If using two 9 inch pans, the layers will be thinner than what’s pictured and the bake time will be about 10 minutes shorter.
If making a sheet cake, the bake time will be about 10 minutes longer. Sally’s Baking Addiction has a great all about cake pan conversions!
A note about flour
For this recipe, you’ll need gluten free all purpose baking flour and blanched almond flour.
Whenever I bake cakes/cupcakes that are gluten free and vegan (like my vegan gluten free vanilla cupcakes), I often include almond flour because it adds a lot of moisture and airiness that you miss out on when you don’t include eggs. I don’t recommend any swaps for the almond flour here, it’s key for the texture!
For the all purpose flour, I used Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Baking Flour, which I recommend. You can use other GF blends, just make sure it has xanthan gum. If you aren’t gluten free, regular all purpose will work too!
How should I store cake?
This vegan gluten free chocolate cake is very moist and will stay that way with proper storage! You can easily make this ahead of time and wrap the (cooled) layers in plastic wrap before frosting for 24 hours.
However, once frosted, the cake will keep for 3 days at room temperature. I usually keep it covered on a cake stand, but you can also wrap it tightly in aluminum foil with good results.
Can I make it refined sugar free?
Yes! This recipe calls for both maple syrup and white granulated sugar to sweeten. You can sub the white sugar for coconut sugar if you prefer. The flavor and texture may be slightly different, but still delicious!
Try these vegan desserts next!
- Chocolate Mug Cake
- Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
- Almond Flour Chocolate Cake
- Vegan Brownies
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vegan Chocolate Mousse
Lastly, if you want more recipes straight to your inbox, be sure to subscribe to my email list. As always, if you make this recipe, leave a comment below so I can see your creation!
Vegan Gluten Free Chocolate Cake
by: claire cary
Equipment
Ingredients
Wet:
- 1 cup room temperature non-dairy milk
- ¾ cup oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon apple cider or white vinegar
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 1 ½ cups white sugar
- 1 cup boiling hot water
Dry:
- 2 ½ cups gluten free all purpose baking flour
- 2 cups fine blanched almond flour
- 1 cup cocoa powder
- 1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1-2 teaspoon espresso powder optional
Buttercream:
- 1 batch chocolate buttercream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Line two round 8 inch cake pans with parchment paper and set aside. See notes about using 9 inch pans.
- Combine the room temperature milk with the vinegar and mix together in a glass. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl (mixing is easier if the bowl is extra large!), sift together the almond flour, all purpose flour and cocoa powder.
- Whisk in the remaining dry ingredients. The espresso powder is optional, but it really enhances the chocolate flavor. I promise it won’t taste like coffee at all!
- Add in all remaining wet ingredients aside from the boiling water and whisk together.
- Whisk in the boiling water. This will help “activate” the cocoa powder.
- Add the batter to the prepared cake pans, trying to keep them as even as possible to ensure even baking.
- Let sit for 5 minutes.
- Add to the oven and bake for 35-45 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out with a few crumbs. You don’t want to underbake since the cake will sink in the middle or end up dense, but over-baking will lead to a dry cake, so start your timer at 35 minutes, and add just a couple of minutes at a time until the toothpick has a few crumbs but isn’t wet.
- Remove from the oven and let cool in the cake pans for about 20 minutes.
- Carefully flip onto a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting. I usually stick them in the fridge to cool, which takes about 90 minutes.
- Prepare the buttercream, (just be sure to use vegan butter and milk) then frost the top of one layer, add on the second layer, then frost the top and sides of the cake.
Notes
Comments
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Would I be able to make this oil-free by subbing applesauce? I didn’t know if it would impact the texture too much.
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I do not recommend that! The oil is key in this recipe.
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Hello!
Can you freeze the layers? I wanted to make in advance.
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Yes! Just let them cool completely, then wrap tightly in plastic wrap and freeze until you’re ready to frost.
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This was my first attempt baking vegan gluten free and it was absolutely delicious even though I made the mistake of not sifting the cocoa powder. It even passed the test of my 3 year old grandson!! Thank you for doing all the hard work and sharing your recipe!!
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Amazing! Thank you Tracey!
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Made this cake for my husbands birthday. Love that I had all the store cupboard ingredients to hand and how nicely the cake turned out. We’ve tried many GF and vegan recipes and this one is just lovely!! You can’t tell it’s GF or gluten-free which is perfect. Beautiful sponge thank you
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Amazing! So happy you all enjoyed it. Thanks Heather!
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So easy to follow and so yummy! No too rich but just enough. I’ll use this recipe often. Thanks!
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Thanks Amy! So glad you enjoyed it.
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Have you ever used coconut flour instead of almond flour? I can’t have almonds
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No, unfortunately that won’t work here!
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Can you just make a cup of coffee instead of the instant powder and boiling water?
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Yes, the boiling water can be subbed for brewed coffee.
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Hi – this recipe looks perfect for our wedding cake! I would really like to use it. The only problem is I think our Australian cup measurements are different to American and I’m just wondering if you had the weights for your ingredients by any chance? Or know a good way to convert them?
Many thanks.-
Hi! You should be able to click on metric in the recipe card and it should convert it all for you.
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You mentioned in the ingredients list using 1cup boiling water, however, in reading the instructions, I didn’t see when you add the boiling water. I’m afraid of ruining the cake. If I don’t dilute the espresso powder in the boiling water, then what liquid replaces the boiling water? And if I do use the boiling water, when do I add it? Thanks!
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You add in the espresso powder with the dry ingredients, and the boiling water when it says to add the wet ingredients!
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I am in the middle of making this recipe and when I added the vinegar it immediately separated the milk! This can’t be right just wondering if you have run into the same problem.. not sure what I did wrong 🤔
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What kind of milk did you use? When you mix it back up how does it look?
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Could I use this recipe as cupcakes?
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I would suggest using my vegan and gluten free chocolate cupcake recipe instead!
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Hi there, your website is becoming my go to place for recipes, so thank you very much for sharing. I have been baking vegan for a while but increasingly now need gluten free vegan and it’s so hard to find reliable recipes. I have binned many attempts and wasted ingredients and money. Also, some of the ingredients are nearly impossible to source 😕
Just wanted to say a big thank you to you for keeping it simple, reliable and delicious! 😊-
Thank you Mandy! That really makes me so happy to hear 🙂
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I baked this cake with no substitutions, just half the recipe in one 8-inch pan, and it was done in 32 minutes. I am really impressed with the texture! As others have said, you’d have no idea it was vegan and gluten free. The flavor isn’t to me very strongly tasting of chocolate, but I think I will try it with the buttercream next time and buy Valrhona cocoa powder.
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Perfect! Definitely recommend including the buttercream, it really enhances the flavor of the whole cake.
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I made this cake for a birthday (without testing it first) and I was OVERWHELMINGLY impressed! You would have NO IDEA that it was vegan or gluten free!
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LOVE hearing that!! Thanks for trusting me without the test run 🙂
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Recipe looks delicious! If I’m trying to make this recipe nut free also, will substituting the almond mill with gf flour work?
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You wouldn’t want to sub 1:1 because almond flour behaves very differently than other kinds of flour, but you can try subbing the 2 cups of almond flour with 3/4 cup of GF all purpose flour. I’d also suggest baking in two 9 inch pans rather than the 8 inch. I haven’t tested it with this substitution, so I cannot guarantee the result, but let me know if you try it!
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This is delicious in every respect!! Love the flavor and texture but yours looked so much prettier than mine did!! Maybe I cut into it and started eating it too soon😄
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Yay!! Hahah I don’t blame you, but it definitely needs to cool before slicing into it to look good 🙂 SO glad you enjoyed it though!
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