Chocolate Sourdough Cake + Ganache Frosting

Chocolate Sourdough Cake

1 cup of recently fed sourdough starter
1 cup of raw milk, coconut milk tonic, or water (I actually used water, which won’t make as rich of a cake, but it still turned out great!)
2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
1 to 1 1/2 cups of whole cane sugar (such as rapadura), maple sugar, or palm/ coconut sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup of melted coconut oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 cup of cocoa powder (not Dutch processed)
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
2 large eggs

1) 3-18 hours before you are ready to finish the cake, make the sourdough mixture. Mix the sourdough starter, the raw milk, coconut milk tonic or water and the flour in a large bowl. Let sit at room temperature for desired length of time.

2) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9 by 13 pan.

3) In a separate bowl, beat together the sugar, oil, vanilla, salt, baking soda, cocoa. and optional espresso powder. The mixture will be grainy. Beat in one egg at at time. Then gently combine this mixture with the sourdough mixture, beating until smooth. It will be gloppy at first, but will smooth out into a delightful batter.

4) Pour and scrape into the prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick comes up clean when poked in the middle of the cake. Let cool before frosting.

And the frosting--

Chocolate Ganache Frosting
Because this frosting is based off of coconut oil, it may start to melt in warm weather. Keep that in mind if bringing it on a picnic on a hot day. Since the frosting is more like the texture of a ganache, it makes a rustic frosting. Many use ganache for the filling between two layer cakes, and a fluffier frosting on the outside.You could definitely play around with the ratio of sweetener to make it less sweet for a more bittersweet chocolate ganache.

1 cup of cocoa powder
3/4 cup of virgin coconut oil
1/2 cup of honey
dash or two of sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

1-Gently melt the coconut oil in a saucepan (you don’t want to heat it, just melt it)

2-In a food processor, combine all of the ingredients and pulse until well combined.

3-Scrape into a small bowl and place in the freezer or refrigerator until it has hardened to desired consistency. It took about 15 minutes in my freezer.

4-You can use a hand mixer to fluff the frosting up (you may need to do this if the frosting has become too stiff as well).

Spread on desired baked good and enjoy!

Chocolate Orange Ganache Variation: Add 1 tablespoon orange zest with the rest of the ingredients. Continue on with the rest of the directions.

Both of these recipes are from here!