Hear me out: Vinaigrette cake

to celebrate one year of Pale Blue Tart!

Baking buds, hi! I sorta can’t believe this, but this newsletter that’s obsessed with climate-friendly dessert turns a year old this month. What’s more, there are now over 1,000 of us all baking to save the world, one silly lil treat at a time. (Somebody’s gotta do it!) To celebrate, I developed a chocolate cake with a vinaigrette spin that’s Hozier-approved (read: not too sweet) and that gives a glimpse of how recipe writing itself could get more sustainable. 

For all his talk of only liking grapes of the fermented variety, I bet Hozier can’t resist a peak-season strawb.

Let me shove the glasses up my nose and explain: Dessert has an inertia problem when it comes to sustainability. Baked goods sometimes rely on carbon-intensive animal products like butter, cream, and eggs because they genuinely are critical for flavor or texture (think: flaky croissants, fluffy meringues), and other times because, well, they’re what we’re using to using. Ye old standbys, ya know? But often—like in certain cakes, cookies, and even silky curds—plant-based ingredients can create equally delish results, if only recipes would call for them instead of relegating them to the substitution notes.

What I’m suggesting, and am going to try to do more of myself, is a lil recipe-writing flip-flop. Where veganizations do no flavor harm in a dessert (or better yet, actively do some flavor good), let’s call for plant-based ingredients first—let’s make them the new defaults, and make dairy and eggs our ‘plan b.’ 

This balsamicky chocolate cake is a case in point. Plant-based milk and ground flax or even applesauce moisten and bind together the batter just as effectively as dairy milk and an egg. I know that because I nailed the recipe as a vegan cake first, and then, as a final step last week, tested a version with animal-product substitutions. The two versions weren’t identical—the vegan crumb was slightly softer, the non-vegan one was slightly tighter—but guess what? Testers and I loved them both. In these cases, I say, let us bend the arc of the dessert universe toward plants. 

And let us also think outside the butter box and use more olive oil in desserts, as pastry chef Philip Khoury told us a few weeks back, because its fruity-savory flavor works wonders alongside chocolate as well as all those cusp-of-summer berries you need to use up by flinging atop a cake.

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One more thing! It’s been thrilling to realize over the past year that so many of us dessert demons have sustainability on the mind and want to figure out the sweet side of climate cuisine together. That’s climate hope, if I’ve ever tasted it. If you want to pitch in the modest, voluntary subscription fee to make sure I can keep this project—and all my research, interviews, and endless chocolate cake tests in my Brooklyn kitchen—going, I’d sure appreciate it.

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Vinaigrette cake

Portrait of a balsamicky cake with Ann Patchett and Jamie Loftus and Iliana Regan.

Hozier, as I said, would approve of this cake. This cake wakes up dark as a lake. The chocolate cake batter gets a suggestion of savoriness from extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and the frosting adds punchy tang thanks to cream cheese and an easy, DIY balsamic glaze. Drizzle a little reserved balsamic glaze over top and scatter on some halved strawberries, and you’ve got a cake that takes its whiskey neat. If you need to, you can swap the ground flax “egg” for a chicken egg, sub the plant milk for dairy, or make the frosting with real butter and cream cheese. Note that if you do make the cake with animal products, you should knock a few minutes off the bake time. And FYI: when you see a chocolate cake recipe call for boiling water instead of room temperature, as this one does, it’s because boiling water helps bloom the cocoa powder, creating a chocolate flavor that takes its coffee black and its bed at 3. 

Ingredients

Cake

• 1 flax egg (1 tbs ground flax + 2 tbs warm water)

• 1/2 cup plant-based milk

• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

• 1 cup flour

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 3/4 tsp baking soda

• 1/3 cup cocoa powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 1/2 cup boiling water

Balsamic glaze

• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

Balsamic frosting

• 2 tbs plant-based cream cheese

• 2 tbs plant-based butter, at room temperature

• 1.5 cups powdered sugar

• 1 tbs balsamic glaze, plus up to 1 tsp more

• Pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 350F (175C). Grease a 9-inch round cake pan with a very thin coat of vegetable oil. Optionally, line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper for easier removal.

Prepare the cake batter. In a small bowl, combine the ground flax and two tablespoons of lukewarm water. Set aside for a few minutes to let it thicken up.

In a liquid measuring cup, combine the plant-based milk and the balsamic vinegar. Set aside for a few minutes to let it curdle. 

In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt. Then add the wet ingredients—flax egg, balsamicky buttermilk, and extra virgin olive oil—and mix with an electric hand-mixer until thoroughly combined. Bring the half-cup of water to a boil in a small saucepan; then while mixing on a low speed, carefully and slowly drizzle it into the batter and mix until thoroughly combined. The batter will be liquidy. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 27-32 minutes, or until the cake springs back toward you when you press it gently with a finger. Let the cake cool to room temperature in the pan. 

While the cake is baking, prepare the balsamic glaze. Bring half a cup of balsamic vinegar to a boil in a small saucepan. Boil until the vinegar reduces to the texture of maple syrup, about 15 minutes. Let it cool. It should be drizzle-able at room temperature. (If you make it too thick, you can always whisk in a little water to thin it back out.)

Prepare the balsamic buttercream. In a large bowl, use a hand-mixer to beat together the room-temperature butter and the cream cheese until they’re as smooth and even as lotion. Add the powdered sugar and mix until evenly incorporated. Add the salt and balsamic glaze and mix until evenly incorporated. Taste, and add more balsamic glaze if you like.

Decorate the cake. Use a spatula or spoon to spread the frosting evenly across the top of the cake. Drizzle with reserved balsamic glaze, then top with halved strawberries.