This Vegan Hot Fudge Sundae Cake will be a hit. Chocolate Cake, filled with a vanilla ice cream, frosted with coconut whipped cream, topped with fudge sauce, and cherries. Also paleo, and gluten-free.
Course Dessert
Cuisine American, Paleo, vegan
Keyword cake, paleo, vegan
Prep Time 50 minutesminutes
Cook Time 30 minutesminutes
Total Time 1 hourhour20 minutesminutes
Servings 12people
Calories 500kcal
Ingredients
Vegan Chocolate Cake
2 tablespoons flax seeds
5 tablespoons warm water
2 cups almond flour
1/3 cup arrowroot flour
1 1/2 cup coconut sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup almond milk or any other nut milk
1/3 cup avocado oil
1/4 cup apple sauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Ice Cream Filling
2cupsraw cashews
1/4cupmaple syrup
1/3cupcoconut oil
1teaspoonvanilla extract
1/4cupcoconut cream
1/4cupcashew butter
Coconut Whipped Cream
2 14 oz can coconut cream chilled in the fridge overnight
2-4 tablespoons maple syrup* note about sweeteners
1 teaspoon vanilla
Vegan Chocolate Fudge Sauce
1/2 cup coconut cream
2teaspoons cocoa powder
1/3 cup chopped chocolate or chocolate chips
4 tablespoons maple syrup
Instructions
Vegan Chocolate Cake
Pre-heat oven to 350F.
Line 3 6-inch cake pans with parchment paper and grease them by brushing the pans with avocado oil. Set aside.
Mix flax seeds with warm water. Let stand for 10 minutes to get thick, while you prepare the other ingredients.
Sift together the almond flour, coconut sugar, arrowroot flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder in a bowl. Set aside.
Mix milk, avocado oil, apple sauce, vanilla, and flax egg in a bowl. Add dry ingredients. Mix with a spatula until combined.
Divide batter into the 3 pans.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating the pans in the oven to ensure even baking.
Touch the cake with your finger, if it springs back it’s done. If it forms a dimple, means your cake needs to be baked longer. Keep checking so you don’t let it overbake.
Remove cakes from the oven and let them cool for 15 minutes in the pan. Turn cakes onto a cooling rack. Let them cool completely, wrap and refrigerate them. It will make a difference to frost them while they are cold, because they will be sturdier, since this is a very moist and scrumptious cake.
Ice Cream Filling
Soak cashews in the water overnight, or simply soak them in hot water for a few hours if you are in a rush.
Line 2 6” pans each with two strips of parchment paper on the bottom, the papers should be coming up the sides, crossing in the middle of the pan, which will help with the removal of the ice cream from the pan later. And then, place another round parchment paper on top of the strips, on the bottom of the pan. Set aside. (refer to images on the post above)
After soaking the cashews, drain them and squeeze them slightly in order to extract most of the water from them. Be gentle, because the cashews should be very soft after soaking.
Add cashews, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, vanilla, coconut cream, and cashew butter to a food processor.
Process at a high speed for a few minutes, stopping to scrape the bowl of the food processor down, in order to mix everything evenly.
Once your mixture is super creamy and thick, divide between the two pans, place it in the freezer to let it get hard.
Coconut Whipped Cream
Make this right before you start to frost the cake. Your coconut cream cans should be in the fridge overnight, so the water and cream can separate.
Open your coconut cream cans and drain the water.
Place cream in the bowl of a mixer together with sweetener of choice. Cream on high speed for a couple of minutes, until mixture is very thick and smooth.
Add vanilla.
If frosting seems runny, feel free to add one tablespoon of arrowroot powder. If you have no problems with powdered sugar, I’d use that instead of the maple syrup, for sake of the consistency of the frosting.
Vegan Chocolate Fudge Sauce
Place coconut cream in a small saucepan. Place over medium heat.
Keep stirring until coconut cream starts to heat up.
Sift cocoa powder into warm coconut cream, whisk until cocoa powder incorporates with coconut cream and mixture almost comes to a boil.
Remove from the heat, add chocolate chips to the mixture. Stir with a spatula until chocolate has melted.
Add maple syrup and whisk until combined.
If there are still chocolate lumps, simply bring it back to the burner, with the heat on the lowest setting. And gently stir mixture until everything is melted.
Don’t ever let the mixture come to an actual boil or raise bubbles.
Pour smooth chocolate frosting in a bowl. Let it sit on top of the counter until it has cooled down.
To assemble
Place one cake layer on top of your cake stand, or cake plate.
Remove ice cream pans from the freezer. Use a knife to go around the edges of the ice cream, to let it loose, then pull the strips of parchment paper so the ice cream will easily come off.
Place one ice cream layer on top of the first cake layer.
Place another cake layer on top. Repeat with the ice cream layer.
Finish with another cake layer.
Frost the cake with the Whipped Coconut Frosting. You may do a crumb coating, to seal the crumbs of the cake in. Let the cake rest in the fridge for 20 minutes. Remove from the fridge and then frost it again with a thick layer of coconut frosting. While the cake is in the fridge, also place the coconut frosting in the fridge. Give it a little whisk once you remove it from the fridge, to make it creamy again. Also, keep the coconut frosting covered at all times.
After frosting the cake with the whipped Coconut cream, you can let it sit in the fridge or freezer, so the frosting will harden up.
By now the Fudge sauce should be at room temperature
Pour over cake. If you want the drip effect, you may have to use the fudge sauce while it is still slightly warm, but not too warm that it will melt the coconut cream frosting.
Also, if the fudge sauce got too hard, you can always heat it up for like 3 seconds at a time on the microwave, until you achieve a better consistency.
After spreading the fudge sauce on top of the cake, let that set, and then pipe some coconut whipped cream on top, and top with cherries, if desired.
Storage
Keep cake in the fridge, covered for up to 5 days.
In the freezer might store for longer. Make sure the cake is well covered, though.
Notes
You can use powdered sugar, or another type of sweetener, being mindful the recipe might not be paleo, or refined sugar free any longer depending on what you sub with Also, be mindful that the maple syrup might affect the final texture of the frosting. The more maple syrup you add, the more liquid the mixture will be. If you add any powdered sugar, and I’ve seen people online having great results with Swerve, your frosting will have a better consistency. I haven’t experimented with Swerve yet, so I can’t speak for the taste.