Our wedding was unconventional. We didn't want to have the cookie cutter wedding that so many people seem to have these days. Instead, my husband suggested, why don't we do a picnic? That seemed like an interesting idea, and one that eventually caught on.

Our wedding was in Central Park near the Bow Bridge. We had everyone sit in a circle on blankets, and after we got settled we had everyone share advice and stories for us. Eventually we expressed how we felt about each other (a.k.a. vows), and then had everyone eat snacks and desserts out of our picnic baskets (really galvanized buckets, but they still looked really nice). Aside from occasional bits of rain, it was nice and it was nice to do something that was more simple and less stressful than a full blown wedding.

As is the case with all weddings there are things that don't exactly go right. When we look back on our wedding there are a few things that we would change, but one of the major things we would have done differently was our cake. We had purchased a variety of desserts for people to eat because we wanted to make sure everyone had something that they would enjoy. Then we decided to have a small cake custom made for us.

The idea was that this cake would look like a present like so many gorgeous cakes we had seen online. Something got lost in translation with the baker and we got this:

I know - it doesn't look bad, but I'll be honest with you - it's just not what we imagined. And the taste wasn't as good as what we had hoped for (the cake, among other things, was very last minute).

This last Thursday was our third wedding anniversary, and as with past anniversaries we tried to make up for that weird cake by making at least a better tasting dessert. And let me tell you - this tasted a-maz-ing, but it didn't look a-maz-ing (maybe next year I'll try for that).

Chocolate Cake
Known as Excellent Vegan Wacky Cake on VegWeb.com [1]

• 2 Tbsp. cocoa
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. vinegar
• 5 Tbsp. cooking oil or vegan butter
• 1 cup water

Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix the dry ingredients into one bowl.

First the cocoa.

Then the flour.

Next the salt.

Very quickly - Real Salt [2] is the salt that I use. My mom introduced it to me. It tastes better than regular salt you get, but it is a little more expensive. Here's a picture:

Add the baking soda.

Then add the sugar. I used a combination of turbinado and white sugar because I ran out of the first.

I like to mix my dry ingredients with a whisk. I've found that the ingredients incorporate better this way than if I were to just use a spoon.

This is how it should look mixed.

Now combine and mix your wet ingredients into a separate, larger bowl.

Vanilla - you'll learn more about this one in a future post. Also, since this is dry, I should have mixed this with my dry ingredients. I added a little liquid vanilla extract to compensate.

White vinegar. I'm thinking apple cider vinegar might work too.

Add your vegan butter.

Here's a picture of the tub of Earth Balance. When we were first considering going vegan a few years ago we discovered this vegan butter. It's a fantastic replacement for real butter or margarine, although a little expensive. Notice it says it's trans fat free, lactose free, and gluten free.

Then add water.

Mix it all together.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet slowly and mix.

Once it is completely mixed it should look something like this:

The granular bits are the turbinado sugar.

I decided that I'd add some of these Trader Joe's chocolate chips to the batter. Not a good idea.

It looks like a good idea, but I'm telling you - it's not.

Pour into a cake pan of your choice. This is not a lot of batter, so I'm not sure that a bundt cake pan is a good idea. it might be better to go with a cupcake pan or a square baking pan/dish.

Bake for 25-30 minutes.

When you take it out it may not feel like it is completely done, but don't worry - it will firm up after a few minutes.

Now this is where I will embarrass myself. Trader Joe's sells some pretty delicious chocolate, but these chips sank to the bottom of the pan and managed to basically burn to the bottom of the pan. This resulted in a very sad cosmetic tragedy:

This is where we'll make some chocolate icing and try to cover the cake's flaws.

Chocolate Frosting
Based on a recipe from VegWeb.com [3]

• 1/2 cup vegan butter (I used Earth Balance again)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 2 Tbsp. vegan milk (I used almond milk)
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• dash of salt

Melt butter or bring it to room temperature.

Add vegan powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, chocolate and soymilk.

Stir ingredients together well.

It's up to you, but you can stick the frosting in the refrigerator first to get it to firm up a little bit, but it will spread faster and easier if you go ahead and just put it on immediately. It probably won't be pretty, though.

Let me say that although this had cosmetic flaws, this cake was TO DIE FOR. This was amazingly good. Let me tell you, I made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting last year or the year before and we kept saying, yeah this is good, but it's weird. THIS WAS A-MAZ-ING.

But let me warn you, this is calorie dense (I didn't measure, but come on - look at the ingredients). I had a small slice this morning and I bet you it was at least a couple hundred calories.

Happy Anniversary dear. May we have many more to come.

If not because I love you, then because I love this AWESOME cake and I want it next year. But prettier.