This recipe is the our easy, go-to, never-fail birthday cake base. We have been making it for years and everyone always loves it.
Making a birthday cake can sometimes feel daunting but trust me, this is so, so easy! My kids make it all the time themselves without any worries.
Birthday cakes are so expensive these days and the weird additives in them makes a homemade one much more appealing! You don’t have to get fancy with toppings (unless you want to!)
Just some thick cream (so you don’t have to whip it) and some strawberries is all you need.
Quick, easy and so good! Best of all, it’s made with love.
What more could you want for your birthday?
Healthy Chocolate Birthday Cake
Vital Stats: nut-free, vegetarian, dairy-free and gluten-free options
Okay, so this is what you need:
3/4 cup self-raising flour (for gluten free, I use the self-raising Orgran brand)
1/2 teaspoon bi-carb soda
1/2 cup cacao powder
1/2 cup rapadura or coconut sugar
1 cup or 200g organic natural yoghurt (for dairy-free, use coconut yoghurt)
2 organic eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons coconut oil
Okay, so this is how you do it:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius and line a round cake tin with toxin-free baking paper.
Sift together the flour, cacao and bicarb. In a separate bowl, whisk the remaining ingredients together.
Gently combine the wet and dry ingredients. Pour batter into the cake tin.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.
Hot tips:
This recipe is easy to double and bake in a lamington tin if you need to feed a crowd. It also freezes really well, so make it in advance if you are pressed for time.
This cake is not very sweet because that’s how we like our cakes! If you want it to be a bit sweeter, add 1/4 cup more sugar or don’t even worry if you are going to add a sweet icing.
We just usually top it with double cream (choose one without additives) and fresh fruit but if you need a healthy icing, check out these ideas.
Let me know if you make my Healthy Chocolate Birthday Cake! I love hearing from you. 🙂
Do you think this would work substituting stevia drops for the sugar?
Hi Lisa, I am not sure as I haven’t cooked with the drops! It could be tricky because the sugar does give texture too.
Many thanks for this delicious recipe! It was a real hit after my trial run. I’d like to freeze the ones for birthday proper, so could you please give more details on freezing and thawing please? I’m new to all this baking thing! 🙂
Hi Daniel, freeze tightly wrapped for up to six months. Thaw in the fridge.
Many thanks!!
Hi there, how big a cake tin do you need and roughly many people does this cake feed?
HI Katrina
Just a regular round 20cm cake tin. It will feed 6-8 depending on how big of a piece you want! I easily double and triple this recipe and cook in a large lamington tin.
Hi I’m just bit concerned about big lamington tin, while I like the idea as I can write HBirthday more room , but the sides are so shallow like 1” maybe 1”+1/2 is that like yours or is yours deeper
Hi Kay, mine is a bit deeper than that!
Absolutely love this cake! It’s a massive hit with kids n grown ups! It’s our ‘go-to’ family choc cake. I sometimes add some chia seeds or ‘whizzed’ rolled oats for a bit of e xtra- Thank you from sunny Greece ….
Hey Renes, thank you so much for the lovely message!! 🙂