Recipe Chocolate cake was dry and flaky

[Amateur1]

Any suggestions as to how best to moisten the cake. I took it out the oven and left for about 15 minutes. Then I apportioned it into freezer bags. It fell apart as I was apportioning.

Quinoa and Buckwheat flour Chocolate Cake


Buckwheat Chocolate Cake (Gluten-Free + Egg-Free + Dairy-Free) | Nourishing Meals®


Dry Ingredients

75g raw buckwheat flour
250g quinoa flour
180g sugar
30g truvia
70g cacao powder
25g macaroot powder
12g paprika
12g smoked paprika
6g sumac
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
0.5 tsp lo salt


Wet Ingredients


80g unsweetened applesauce
240g warm water
110g extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract (optional)


Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan with oil.
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside.
Then add the wet ingredients and blend again to combine.
Pour batter into the cake pan and bake for about 30 to 35 minutes.
Cool completely before adding any glaze or frosting.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I'd suggest leaving it to cook completely before cutting to see if that helps preventing it from crumbling badly.

Dryness- i had a similar issue with a parkin I made recently that was over baked despite following the person's recipe to the letter. People's ovens vary, so drop the temperature 20°C and knock some time off the cooking time, and check it repeatedly until you know the settings needed for your oven.

Otherwise the most obvious route to making it more moist would be to consider a drizzle topping added after it has cooked. The obvious would be more applesauce diluted slightly and heated. Repeatedly prick the top of the cake with a toothpick and then add the drizzle and allow to cool.

 

[Amateur1]

Thanks very much. You've got me thinking. The water was lukewarm and I used applesauce from the fridge. Would it have made a difference if the water had been hotter?

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Thanks very much. You've got me thinking. The water was lukewarm and I used applesauce from the fridge. Would it have made a difference if the water had been hotter?

I think the temperature of the water is simply to better dissolve/thin the applesauce and be more quickly absorbed by the ground chia seeds. Warmer water dissolves things better than cold and warmer water is absorbed better than cold water. The temperature of the water may have had an effect, but I suspect omitting the ground chia seeds will have had much more of an impact on the moisture levels in the cake.

I'm also uncertain on the affect of switching out the main flour of the cake will have had. The original is buckwheat flour, but you've changed that out to primarily quinoa flour. Unless they respond in an identical way, this will also have an affect. You may find that quinoa flour needs less water than buckwheat flour does for the same consistencyto be achieved. The only way to test that would be to conduct an experiment with a set weight of each, e.g. 100g and add exactly the same weight of water (10g) to each stirring slowly, and exactly the same time span for each and keep watching as you add 10g of water at a time to see which naturally absorbs more water than the other. It will have to be judged by eye.

Hydration levels of flour will affect the outcome, as will your oven. You'll need to experiment to see if your's runs hotter or cooler than the temperature dial and more importantly hotter or cooler than the author's oven. In the case of my parkin, I knocked 10°C and 15 minutes cooking time off for my oven, yet that wasn't enough to stop my parkin being dry and crumbly.

 

[Amateur1]

Once again, thank you very much.