Easy Eggless Chocolate Cake

My kids asked me to make a chocolate cake or chocolate chip cookie for them and i didnt have cake mix with me and i thought of baking it from the scratch and when i searched for eggless cake, i found this recipe. It was too simple and perfect for baking beginners like me :) My kids loved it and so did we.

I adapted the recipe from Sumathi's blog. She had submitted this as an entry for Madhuram's eggless event using white vinegar as an egg substitute. I was a little apprehensive, but i did not smell the vinegar at all.  This also uses the ingredients we usually have at home and made my job easier.

Ingredients :

All purpose flour - 1.5 cups (Can use whole wheat pastry flour too)
Powdered sugar - 1 cup
Cocoa powder - 3 Tbsp (heaped)
Baking powder - 1 Tsp
Canola oil / vegetable oil - 5 tbsp
White vinegar - 1 tbsp  (I had missed this earlier. Thanks for pointing it out Veggiehut)
Vanilla essence - 1 spoon (optional)
Milk - 1 cup
Sliced Almonds - 1/4 cup (optional)

Method :

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Now add the oil, vanilla essence and milk and mix well, till it forms a smooth batter.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Grease a baking pan with butter and dust with cocoa powder and pour the batter in the pan. If desired, add some chopped/sliced nuts on top of the batter. Bake it in 350F for approximately 25 minutes. To test if the cake is done, insert a tooth pick to see if it comes out clean.

The cake was super moist and delicious. I added nuts only on one half as my first son isn't too fond of almonds!

I didn't wait patiently for the cake to cool down and i cut it as soon as it was handle-able. So, it wasn't a clean job and it shows in my pictures!! But,i couldn't hold my excitement as this was my first cake from the scratch :-) and my two boys and my husband were waiting to attack the cake..so i had to take pictures before it was gone ;-)

Note : I removed the vanilla essence as soon as i poured it, because the brand i got had a very strong cough syrup smell. I bought this vanilla essence from an indian store and it had no information about the qty to be used on it. I was glad i removed it. Even the few drops that got mixed gave a mild medicine smell to the cake. I added heaped spoons of cocoa powder to get a darker colour and it looked very rich.
If you like your cake to be sweeter, please increase the sugar by another 1/4 cup or reduce the cocoa powder. It was perfect for us, with it being little less sweet. Both me and my husband like it that way.