Baker's Help:How can I change a chocolate cake recipe to a vanilla one?

Last time I made chocolate chip cookies, I used a recipe for chocolate chocolate chip cookies. I think it had ¾ c. of cocoa in it, and I ended up substituting about ½ c. or so of regular all-purpose flour for it. They turned out perfect. I’m not sure if cake would be exactly the same but….I don’t see why it would be much different? So like, ¼ c. flour?

I found this recipe for a vegan vanilla cake. It looks to be pretty similar to your chocolate cake recipe.

1½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼–½ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
⅓ cup oil
1 tablespoon mild vinegar
1 tablespoon vanila
¼ teaspoon almond extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix or sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

2. Measure in the wet ingredients, and stir with a fork until no lumps remain.

3. Pour into an 8×8” pan. No need to grease if you’re serving it from the pan. Otherwise, grease and flour pan.

4. Bake for 35 minutes or until tests done.

There’s also this recipe, which I found on a message board somewhere, which the poster claims is light and fluffy:

1⅓ cup unbleached flour
⅔ cup white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp fine sea salt
⅔ cup water
⅓ cup pure olive oil
1 cup pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Put all dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and whisk together. Put all wet ingredients into separate mixing bowl and whisk together. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir just until combined, take care not to overmix.

Pour batter into either 9” cake pan that’s been greased, had parchment added to bottom, and greased and floured, or into a greased and floured 9” springform pan. I often, for a layer cake, simply double the recipe and pour into two cake pans. Bake for about 25 minutes (for one recipe), or until the center “feels” done and a toothpick comes out clean. Set the pan on a rack to cool.

You need to take out the cocoa powder, and replace it with flour along with vanilla flavoring.

The cocoa powder doesn’t have a structural function in this recipe; it’s only there for the flavor. Cocoa powder doesn’t have either the starch or the gluten that flour does, so compensating with flour will only make the cake denser.

The cocoa brings in some additional fat in the form of residual cocoa butter, but you’ve already got a fair amount of oil in the recipe, so no need to add more. You could actually just leave the cocoa out and not have any change in the structure of the cake. You might want to cut back slightly on the water, since the cocoa would absorb some water during baking. Remove about 2T from the cup.

@thorninmud has it.

@thorninmud When I left the cocoa out of the cookies (before I remembered to sub in the flour) the cookies came out flat as if they were missing something. After adding the flour they were perfect. Why would it make a difference there and not here I wonder?

Thanks all. I will do a test run without the cocoa, with adding some flour and I will try the vegan recipe @Seelix suggested to see which I like better. Making them for my cousin’s birthday. Worst comes to worst I’m sure my junk-food lovin’ hubby will eat the ones I don’t want to present to her. THANKS AGAIN! :)

please let us know how it turns out.

JCA
The Update Lady

^^Will do. :)

@deni The cookie dough works on a different principle. It relies on having a certain amount of solid stuff to keep the dough from flowing when it gets hot and the butter melts. The cocoa supplies some plain old bulk solids to prop up the dough and keep it from spreading so much. Putting in the extra flour did the same thing. It could have just as well been ground nuts, or any other solid.

The cake batter is contained in the pan, so spreading isn’t an issue.

Are you having trouble finding a vegan vanilla cake recipe?

@Anemone I don’t have one that I’ve tried. I’ve seen many out there, but I need to know that it tastes good, since I’m making it for someone for their birthday and not just for me.

I tried omitting the cocoa and I tried omitting cocoa and adding flour- Didn’t care much for either. I don’t think there’s enough flavor without adding a little something more. Will try the recipes posted here next.