Egg-free. Dairy Free. Date cake!

Valentine’s Day Chocolate Cake.

I wanted to have my cake and eat it and to do so it has to be eggless. I’ve more or less given up eating cake since eggs have been off my menu (man I miss eggy soldiers, croque madames and eggs florentine, oops I’m digressing down an egg memory lane). I made this for Valentine’s day. The ingredient measures are American as my scales got used to weigh a dinosaur and never fully recovered. Cup measures are easy to come by these days and cheap as chips or you can use an English teacup. I happened to have one of those long trays of real dates left over from Christmas, so this was a good way to use them up. This is a rich dense fudgesome cake and having a slither with an espresso feels salaciously decadent and is almost guilt free! 

Ingredients
1 punnet Raspberries
1 cup chopped dates
1 cup boiling water
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 x 250g bars good quality dark chocolate (check for ingredients for milk)
1/2 cup plain soya yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Icing sugar for dusting
Cocoa powder for dusting tin

1. Stone and chop the dates and add the boiling water, leave to soak for about 10 minutes.
2. Oil your tin (dust with cocoa powder just before adding the cake mixture).
3. Break up the chocolate into bits keep use 1 1/2 bars keep aside 1/2 bar for decorating.
4. Melt the chocolate pieces in a bowl over (not touching) a pan of boiling water.
5. Add the yoghurt to the melted chocolate along with the vanilla.
6. Mix the dry ingredients together
7. Add the dates in water to the chocolate mix and add all the other ingredients.
8. Mix well and pour/gallumph into cake tin.
9. Pop into a pre-heated moderate over (180C / Gas Mk 4 / 350F) for 30 minutes.
10. Leave to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto cooling rack.
11. When cool, melt the remaining chocolate, pour over cake and decorate with raspberries.