Vegan Chocolate Cake

This cake in the pictures are not exactly Vegan as i've used Hersheys semi-sweet cooking chocolate (contains milk) to make the ganache for the topping. The cake itself is vegan - no eggs and no dairy products used. So, this recipe is for the cake only. I've made this about 4 times and each time its a hit! I made a cupcake version of it for my son's 4th birthday and i didn't get to taste even one :-(

Ingredients

Dry
- 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

Wet
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Coffee
- 1 cup hot water
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee


Directions

1. Mix the instant coffee into the hot water and set aside to cool.
2. Sift the ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well (by hand) to combine well.
3. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients and stir/mix well (using a mixer would be good).
4. Add the wet to dry gradually mixing gently until lump free (don't over mix).
5. Grease a 7 or 8 inch diameter baking pan.
6. Pour the mixture/batter into the baking pan.
8. Drop the tin lightly to get rid of the bubbles in the mixture.
9. Bake in an oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 30 minutes or until top of cake is springy to touch and a toothpick/cake tester inserted comes out clean.
10. Cool the cake by leaving it aside for 1 minute or so. Then invert onto a rack.