Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?
This is a subject that is discussed every year and there is a lot of disagreement in social media between our everyday talks with our friends. Where do you stand on this issue? Do you think that this day is appropriate to express our love to our partner or is it just another commercialized celebration to lead people to overconsumption? The truth is that every year on this day, florists, patisseries, jewelry stores, and many more shops are filled with people in love who want to express their feelings for their partner in this way. But, do we need all these items? Personally, I believe that love, support, and respect are values and feelings, which we must express in our daily lives and not once a year. This, after all, is what sincere love means to me. In other words, I feel like the most important thing is that your partner will there through thick and thin every day of the year. Anyway, I won’t say no to a homemade dessert for Valentine’s Day, since I love to cook, especially for the people I love!
How about a Chocolate Cake with a berries mix?
This cake is ideal -apart from Valentine’s Day- even for weekdays, when you may crave something sweet or when you want to make a cake for the children’s breakfast or their brunch at school. The ingredients of the recipe are easy to find in the nearest supermarket, while at the same time you don’t need a lot time to prepare it. Also, apart from the chocolate, the berries give a unique taste that will make your cake special and won’t remind you of anything else you may have already tried. So, as for the red fruits that I mentioned earlier, I have chosen a mix of frozen fruits, which I always have in my freezer, because in addition to recipes like this, I usually use them for my breakfast smoothies or various bowls with oats, cereal or yogurt. This mix contains red and black currants, rasberries, blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries. You can find many such mixes in the supermarkets’ freezers and I honestly think they are going to be very useful for you too!
Chocolate Cake with Berries
Equipment
- 1 heart shaped cake pan 33cm
Ingredients
- 250 g all-purpose flour
- 220 g berries mix (the mix I used contains: red and black currants, red and black berries, strawberries and blueberries)
- 155 ml coconut milk (sugar-free)
- 110 g vegan butter
- 80 g brown sugar
- 80 g granulated sugar
- 100 g couverture
- 100 g couverture drops
- 30 g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla Bourbon
- 1 pinch of salt
- powdered sugar (for decoration)
Instructions
- We preheat the oven at 180°C.
- We melt the butter in a saucepan and set it aside to cool.
- We heat the coconut milk in a saucepan and add the couverture to melt it. Make sure the kitchen eye is at a low temperature so the milk won't get burnt and we leave it aside waiting for it to cool.
- We add the flour, the cocoa, the baking powder and the salt to a bowl and mix them.
- We add the brown sugar, the granulated sugar, the butter, the milk with the couverture that we have melted and the vanilla in another bowl and mix well.
- We pour the contents from the second bowl into the first and mix until our ingredients are homogenized.
- Then, we add the berries mix and the couverture drops and continue mixing.
- We lightly flour our form and pour the contents of the bowl inside it.
- We use a spoon to spread the mixture evenly over the whole form and bake for about 30-35 minutes.
- We serve by adding powdered sugar.
- Enjoy!
