“Replace the butter in cookies with avocado! You can’t tell the difference!”
NO, I shout. I LIKE BUTTER.
“You’re having eggs and toast? Why not have it with smashed avocado? Nom nom nom!!!!!!”
NO, I shout. I JUST LIKE EGGS.
For a long time, avocado has been sneaking its way into everything. Much like an evil villain in a superhero movie, we didn’t see it coming and it’s taken over.
Now it’s made its way into cake and I fear it will never be defeated.
Just back off, yeah. Keep your avocado out of my cake.
There’s some kind of saying about protesting too much or whatever, and so I made a cake with avocado in it to see what all the fuss is about. I feel ashamed even writing this, but one has to be open minded.
I used a BBC Good Food recipe, although I didn’t have gluten free flour and gluten free baking powder, so I used what I had in the house meaning that my version of the cake isn’t gluten free.
I did buy the soya milk the recipe uses. I couldn’t find unsweetened soya milk so I had to buy slightly sweetened. Have I actually read this recipe? As I’m not doing too well with the ingredients.
Anyway I find soya milk has a very strong taste, so I was keen to see if that affected the taste of the cake (even more than adding avocado might or might not change the taste).
So the first stage is to blend the avocado and sugar in a food processor. This bit really smells and it doesn’t get better until you put the cocoa powder in. At this point I wondered what I’d let myself in for.
The batter itself is quite smooth but the food processor didn’t blend it all so I had to get in there with a whisk. It was very thick though, and I think shinier than a non-avocado chocolate cake batter.
Then it went into the oven – the recipe says for 25 minutes but I left it in for about 29.
And then. AND THEN. I took it out. Please, my friends, can we just take a minute to look at the perfection I was met with when I opened the oven door?
I mean… look at that. I have never produced a cake that looked like that before. Utter perfection. I had to try not to get to excited; after all, hiding under all that is a mashed up avocado.
When I cut the tops off the cakes to level them/double check they were actually cooked, I sneakily tasted one of the off cuts and it tasted of… absolutely nothing. So I wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘Maybe the icing will help,’ I thought.
I gathered my ingredients to start making the icing, which also has avocado in it. Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it? If you’re going to make an avocado cake, just whack avocado into every single element of it.
Anyway there I was scooping out the flesh of my last half an avocado, when it flew out of my hands and into a sink full of soapy water. Looking back, it may not have been ripe enough.
I went to bed.
I intended to buy another avocado the next evening to make the icing, but I had a nap instead. I don’t know if you can sense it but my enthusiasm for this cake was low.
So then, finally, the evening after the nap I went to buy another avocado and followed the steps to make the icing.
If you’re vegan and you’re debating pushing avocado and sunflower spread through a sieve to make icing, here’s a tip: don’t. Just melt some chocolate and pour it over the top instead or something.
In fairness, once I’d put the icing on and put some sprinkles on it, it looked ok. Most things with sprinkles on do look ok though so really this means nothing.
When it came to taste testing, I was not excited. The icing was fine but it was a little bitter, but it had set to a nice, thick consistency. The cake was really chocolatey and fudgey… but for me there was something about it that wasn’t quite right. It had a bit of a funny after taste. Maybe it’s because I knew there was avocado inside it and I was biased. Maybe it was the soya milk. I don’t know.
It was nice. No. I’m going to rephrase that. It wasn’t horrendous. But in terms of chocolate fudge cakes I’ve made and tasted better. I didn’t eat my whole slice.
I took it to work, though, and it went down really well which baffled me. The team said they wouldn’t be able to tell it was avocado, and seemed to enjoy it.
I just don’t think it’s for me.
Would I make it again? I mean… yeah maybe, if I had a vegan friend who I was particularly fond of and who needed a birthday cake. I’m probably not going save the recipe. I don’t think I would want to eat it again.
So, bottom line. If you’re a vegan, good for you. If you love avocado, good for you. If you hate avocado then also good for you. There’s room for everyone in this world.
But do you know what there’s no room in the world for? AVOCADO IN CAKES.