I love this chocolate cake recipe (you can also use it to make cupcakes) because it’s allergy friendly, vegan friendly, and toddler friendly (everything gets mixed and cooked in one dish!). There’s no eggs, dairy, soy, or nuts, and it can be made using gluten-free flour.

I found the recipe thanks to Happy Mum Happy Child and apparently it’s based on a Depression-era recipe when dairy was hard to get hold of.

INGREDIENTS :

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (or gluten free plain flour)
• 3 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar
• 5 tablespoons oil (I use rice-bran oil)
• 1 cup cold coffee (or use water)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Combine all dry ingredients in a greased 20 x 20cm baking pan (that’s right, in the dish you’re baking it in).
Make 3 depressions (holes) in the dry ingredients. You want there to be two small ones, and one large one.
Pour the vinegar into one of the small holes, and the vanilla into the other small hole.
Add the vegetable oil to the large one.
Pour the cold coffee (or water) over the entire thing and mix until smooth and combined (I used a wooden spoon).
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
Once cooled, ice or lather in caramel syrup and enjoy with whipped cream.

Allergens: soy free, dairy free, nut free, egg free, can be made gluten free (replace the flour with gf flour).