Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Truffle Cake

Sinfully decadent yet unbelievably healthy, this Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Truffle Cake is guaranteed to be your new favourite dessert!

With Easter just round the corner, I thought it was the perfect time to post a recipe for an indulgent chocolate cake based on my latest obsession: truffles.

Just like my chocolate truffles, this cake is beautifully rich and creamy, has that crucial melt-in-your-mouth quality, and is perfectly sweet.

The base for this Chocolate Truffle Cake is my Chocolate Torte, which is my go-to chocolate cake recipe because it's super fudgy, perfectly moist, and most importantly really easy to make!

It also happens to be completely undetectably vegan, gluten-free and refined sugar free. AND it's oil-free optional (consult recipe notes below if you want to do this).

I had the idea to create a chocolate truffle cake when I made my Gâteau au Chocolat for my work colleagues, and one of my co-workers said it tasted like a truffle.

This got me thinking, maybe I could turn it into a layer cake with a luxuriously smooth chocolate buttercream frosting, call it a Chocolate Truffle Cake, then post it in time for Easter?

And so this was actually how my Sweet Potato Chocolate Buttercream recipe was born! As mentioned in that post, I wanted to make a rich and creamy cake frosting that wasn't coconut-based, nut-based, or god forbid, avocado-based, and so turned to sweet potatoes instead.

And I'm so happy that I did! Using vegetables to make buttercream may sound crazy, but the creamy texture and sweetness of sweet potatoes works absolutely perfectly.

And you know what, I've made this cake for several people now, and I've asked them all to guess what the buttercream is made from and nobody can tell, not even when I gave them the clue that it was a vegetable!

I decorated this cake with chopped pistachios and freeze-dried raspberries, but you know what...a few homemade chocolate truffles wouldn't be too out-of-place on top of this chocolate truffle cake either!

I hope you'll love this Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Truffle Cake! For more cakes, check out my:

• Red Velvet Cake
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake
• Tropical Carrot Cake
• Lemon Blueberry Cake
• Black Forest Cake

If you try out this recipe or anything else from my blog, I'd really love to hear any feedback! Please give it a rating, leave a comment, or tag a photo #rhiansrecipes on Instagram! Thank you.

Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Truffle Cake

Sinfully decadent yet unbelievably healthy, this Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Truffle Cake is guaranteed to be your new favourite dessert!

4.36 from 17 votes

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Course: Dessert

Cuisine: European

Keyword: gluten-free chocolate cake, paleo chocolate cake, vegan birthday cake, vegan chocolate cake

Prep Time: 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes minutes

Total Time: 1 hour hour

Servings: 8

Calories: 267kcal

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Ingredients

For the cake:

• ▢ 130 g (¾ cup) pitted dates soaked overnight in cold water or for 10 minutes in boiling water
• ▢ 200 g (1 ¾ cups) ground almonds (almond meal)
• ▢ 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
• ▢ 4 tablespoons coconut oil* (or sub olive or vegetable oil)
• ▢ ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• ▢ 60 ml (¼ cup) unsweetened almond milk (or sub any plant-based milk)
• ▢ Optional: Salt, to taste

For the buttercream:

• ▢ 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes (about 400g/14oz in total)
• ▢ 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ▢ Salt, to taste
• ▢ 3 tablespoons maple syrup (or any other sweetener)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon coconut oil*

Instructions

For the cake:

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit)
• Drain away most of the water from soaking the dates, leaving a little bit
• Use a food processor or blender (or a hand-held stick blender) to blend the dates into a smooth purée (leaving a little water will make it much easier)
• Add the puréed dates into a bowl along with all the other ingredients and mix well
• Divide the mixture between two greased and lined round baking tins (I used 18cm/7inch tins)
• Bake in oven for around 15 minutes
• Once out of the oven, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely

For the buttercream:

• Cook sweet potatoes by boiling, steaming or roasting them until very soft and tender
• Discard any skins, and add to a food processor or blender (or hand-held blender) along with all other ingredients
• Whizz until completely smooth. Taste and adjust ingredients as necessary - add more maple syrup for sweetness, more salt for saltiness, more cocoa powder for chocolate flavour etc
• Leave to cool before using to frost the cake

To frost and decorate the cake:

• Place one half of the cake onto a plate and spread just less than half of the buttercream onto it
• Place the other half of the cake on top of that and use rest of buttercream to spread on top and around sides of cake
• Decorate with chopped pistachios and freeze-dried raspberries or whatever else you fancy!
• Keeps covered in the fridge for up to a few days

Notes

*Several readers have told me they made this cake oil-free by substituting the oil with applesauce, which seems to have worked well. So please do this if you're looking for an oil-free cake! 

The coconut oil in the buttercream can be omitted, but the taste won't be quite as delicious!

Nutrition Facts

Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Truffle Cake

Amount Per Serving

Calories 267

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

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