Hello All,

I am TOTALLY FRUSTRATED!!!!

I have a wedding cake and a groom's cake coming up in December and January. Both are to be chocolate. I do not want to use a mix for various reasons. I need to do these cakes non-dairy--no milk and no butter. I can use eggs and soy or rice milk) Over the last three days I have made 6 chocolate cakes. I used cocoa and water because various experts said that is better than using chocolate. I tried alkalized and regular cocoa. None of these are bad, but none of them are wonderful either. Does anyone have a scratch chocolate cake recipe that you love that you would share?

In the past I've used Rose Levy Beranbaum's basic chocolate cake recipe. The flavor is good and I get many compliments, but it always turns into crumbs when it is cut, which is embarrasing to me, even if no-one else cares. It crumbles even though I've soaked it with flavored simple syrup. When I had friends over to taste my 6 cakes this weekend, hers is considered dry. (The others all had problems too--)

I would be very grateful for any suggestions not involving mixes, and I thank you in advance for your help!

Curiosity got the best of me. I had to search to see how to make a chocolate cake with out milk or butter. Some recipes just sounded plain icky. The following links are the same type of recipe and it sounds ok.

http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/12145/wowie-chocolate-cake.html

http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,176,144185-240203,00.html

Hi, again! (Still love your avatar! )
Substituting soy or rice milk for regular milk might work in this recipe from Taste of Home magazine:

MOIST CHOCOLATE CAKE
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup hot coffee
1 cup milk--substitute soy/rice milk OR some combination of 1 cup liquid???
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Stir together dry ingredients in bowl. Add oil, coffee & milk; mix at medium speed 2 min. Add eggs & vanilla; beat 2 min. more. (Batter will be thin.) Pour into 2 greased & floured 9 x 1-1/2 in. cake pans OR two 8 in. pans & 6 muffin cups). Bake @ 325 degrees for 25-30 min. Cool cakes 15 min. before removing from pans. Cool on wire racks.

This cake is really good & I don't think it's crumbly at all--that I can remember . I just thought that because it has oil instead of butter & coffee for part of the liquid; you wouldn't lose "flavor" if you substituted soy/rice milk for regular milk. You might could use water or some other liquid in place of the milk altogether. Maybe more coffee--just keeping your overall liquid-to-dry ratio??? Hope this helps. GOOD LUCK!!!

For the life of me I can't remember where I got this, maybe a Cake Lady recipe from SQC, not sure. I've made it vegan before, using Fleischmann's unsalted margarine, egg replacer, and soy milk with lemon juice instead of buttermilk. Turned out great, but all the scratch chocolate cakes I've made have been a bit crumbly. This one is unfortunately no exception, but it's really yummy, and not dry by any means.

The recipe says it makes 2 10" or one 14" layer, but I've only gotten a 10" & an 8" out of it, not 2 10's.

2 1/4 c cake flour
3/4 c DP cocoa powder
2 1/4 c sugar
1 t salt
2 1/2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 1/2 sticks butter, very soft
1 3/4 c buttermilk
4 lg eggs

Set oven rack at the middle level of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees.
Butter bottom and sides of pan, line bottom with parchment.
Sift the dry ingredients into a mixer bowl (flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, bkg powder & soda) and add the butter. Mix for 2 minutes on low speed. Add half the buttermilk and continue mixing 5 minutes longer. Scrape bowl and beaters, mix remaining buttermilk with eggs, and add a third of the mixture at a time to the batter, stopping and scraping between each addition.
Divide batter between pans (this is super thin batter, so don't worry about it.) Bake for 30 min.
Let cake sit for a day before icing.

Thank you bakersofcakes and alimonkey. I really appreciate that you took the time to post these recipes.

I was very discouraged when I posted this pleas last week. Since then, a friend of mine actually did find a recipe in a book published by a lady who ownes a kosher bakery in New York I tested it and decided to use it. It was the seventh chocolate cake I made. I will try your recipes too, and let you know how they work, but probably not right away. I'm a little tired of testing chocolate cakes

Alimonkey, I didn't know I could use soy milk with lemon juice to substittue for soy milk. That opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Thanks again to both of you!

Sorry I didn't see your post last week - you and I have a lot of overlap - you with your kosher requirements and me with vegan. I'm sure you were quite discouraged. I generally give for a while up after just 2 failed recipes. Out of 4 chocolate cake recipes, this one has worked the best by far for me, including one by Toba Garrett that bombed for me. Luckily this one was the 2nd I tried so it wasn't too bad, I still had a good recipe to fall back on.

When I did this cake vegan I wasn't sure the buttermilk substitution would work, I bought some soy yogurt to try out too but never had to.

To anybody else reading this that may use the vegan version of this with egg replacer - you will get a chewy crust on the edges. For some reason, anything chocolate with the egg replacer (brownies & chocolate cake) turns out that way.