Vegan Chocolate Christmas Cake

This vegan chocolate Christmas Cake is the perfect dessert for your Christmas dinner, or a great cake to go with coffee in the afternoon on Christmas day. This vegan cake is a real show stopper and it also proves that every dessert can be turned into a vegan dessert.

This vegan Christmas cake has a chocolate-cookie base, chocolate-orange ganache filling and a vegan whipped cream topping. If you’re not a big fan of the orange-chocolate combination, you can also leave out the orange zest.
The cake is enough for 10-12 people, as the chocolate ganache is quite filling.
Also very convenient: you can prepare most of this cake the day before. So if you serve it on Christmas day, you only have to make the vegan whipped cream on top.

Recipe vegan chocolate Christmas cake

Ingredients (serves 10-12)
Crust:
150 grams flour
90 grams powdered sugar
40 grams cacao powder
95 grams margarine (or other vegan butter), cut in cubes
40 grams vegan milk (cold)

Filling
450 grams dark chocolate, finely chopped
60 grams margarine (or other vegan butter), cut in cubes
360 grams Oatly Oat Cuisine
Peel of 1-2 oranges

Topping
75 grams vegan whipped cream
20 grams powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Dark chocolate shavings and orange peel for decoration

Preparation
Crust

In a big bowl, mix the flour, powdered sugar and cacao powder. Add the vegan butter and mix with the dry ingredients until you get a mixture that looks like breadcrumbs.
Add the vegan milk and mix until the dough comes together. Kneed until you’ve got a smooth ball.
Roll out the dough until it’s about 3-2 millimeters thin and use it to cover a 23cm pie plate. Cut the excess dough.
Put the pie plate with the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.
In the meantime heat the oven to 180ºC.
Lightly pierce the crust with a fork, cover with parchment paper, fill it with pie weights (baking beans, rice or dried beans also work) and bake for 15 minutes.
Remove the pie weights and the parchment paper and bake for 8-10 more minutes until the crust is crispy.

Filling
Put the chocolate and the margarine in a big heat-proof bowl.
Bring the Oatly Oat Cuisine to a bowl in a saucepan. Poor over the chocolate. Let it rest for 3-4 minutes and stir until you’ve got a smooth ganache. Add the orange peel and stir until combined.
Poor on the pie crust. Smoothen and put in the fridge for at least 8 hours (preferably overnight)

Topping
Whisk the vegan whipped cream, powdered sugar and vanilla until you’ve got soft peaks.
Spoon over the cooled of vegan chocolate cake, decorate with chocolate shavings and orange peels.