December is here so prepare for the first flavours of Christmas! I saw this festive chocolatecake quite often on Pinterest and Instagram the past weeks and the delicious Belgians pears are perfect for this. I couldn't ignore this heavenly combination so I decided to try this one out.

Yesterday I marched together with 65 000 others for more (political) awareness for our planet for Claim the Climate in Brussels. Despite the fact that we can (and should) all change our lifestyle and choices by ourselfs, I think the politicians should play a way bigger role in all of this. Better forest management, a ban for all the products that contain toxic materials or contain ingredients that are causing huge deforestation like palm oil, more expensive plaintickets and instead cheaper traintickets are just some of the things I can think of.

But if we want to see the world change, we should first start changing ourselfs so I decided to turn this "Pinterest vs. reality" topic into a vegan one. In that way the meat and dairy eaters among us can discover even more possibilities in the world of veganism. I ain't a fulltime vegetarian or veganist myself to be honest and often that's out of habit like when I am on the go or because I don't have the right knowledge and experience with vegan cooking. But step by step I want to change this and I think my blog can be a good companion on that journey. The first recipe I tried for this topic already had a vegan option by the way!

Another thing I did last week was getting my sancruation for my first degree in Reiki, during four intense evenings. On Instagram I already shared this in the caption of my latest post this morning. For those who have no idea what Reiki actually is, I could describe this as an energetic, complementary form of therapy that can lead to happiness. My mom is already in this whole Reiki thing for quite a while and through her I got to know it as well. Luckily, thanks to her experiences I knew this could be a though period but I was still shoked by the effects of it. Heavy headaches, a painfull throat, very vivid dream that got under my skin, insomnia and sickness but also peace and shots of energy all got me during and after my selfhealings.

Those moments the energy all of a sudden kicked in I found some time to experiment with the recipe of Not Quite Nigella as basic idea and the recipe (in Dutch) of Zoetrecepten to make it all vegan proof. And that's how I got to this yummie and slightly gooey vegan chocolatecake.

What you need for the pears:

3 pears (I chose "Conference" pears) 4 cups water 1,5 cups sugar 1 ts cinnamon 1/2 ts nutmeg 1 ts vanilla extract 2 crushed cardamom pods

What you need for the batter: 225 gr flour 150 gr canesugar 1 package vanilla sugar 1 ts baking soda 1/2 ts baking pouder Pinch of salt 1 lemon 100 gr dark chocolate 50 ml almond oil 40 ml peanut oil 200 ml oatmilk

How to:

Peel the pears but make sure the stalk stays on while doing this. Start boiling the water, spices, sugar and vanilla extract together until the sugar mels. When this happend, add the pears and put all of this this on a small fire for about 20 minutes or till the pears are cooked.

Let them cool down a bit on a plate when ready.

Melt the dark chocolate in a bain-marie (double saucepan) and rasp the lemon in the meantime so you already have the zest with you when needed. Preheat the oven on 160°C and grease the baking mold.

Sieve the flour and put the baking soda, baking pouder, sugar, lemon zest and salt all together. Add the oatmilk and mix the batter, add the oils and lemonjuice of one lemon and mix again.

Pour the melted chocolate in the batter and keep on mixing until you obtain a homogeneous mass. Pour the batter in the baking tin and put the pears next to each other in the batter. They might slip away a little bit because of their round shape but you can always adjust this during the baking proces before the dough is ready. Bake the cake for about 55-60 minutes and let it cool down before you remove it from the baking tin.

Note: the pears are quite moist which effects on the batter, it's not fully baked out around the pears. I didn't read anything about this possible problem on other blogs so I didn't think of a measure to avoid this but in the future I might dip the pears in chocolate and let this dry up a little before I put them in the batter. It's not really a bad thing though.

This delicious cake is a little bit heavy so I am thinking about using beaten aquafaba in the dough to create a more lighter version of this vegan chocolatecake. Do you have experience with using aquafaba for this purpose? Please let me know in the comments if you have any tips!

Enjoy!

#vegan #ecologie #food