Easy Chocolate Cake with Date-Sweetened Chocolate Frosting

I’m going to be honest with you: I stopped feeling inspired in the kitchen sometime last trimester. I’m still into eating, eating is great, but I just don’t want to be the one making the food. It takes so much mental energy to think of what to make. A few weeks ago, on a Thursday night when we had friends coming into town for the weekend, I realized with panic, sometime around 6 or 7 p.m., that we hadn’t planned ahead for dinner and now we had to think of something fast, and then our friends arrived, and I was starving, so we pulled out the Vitamix

and blended up oranges right there with them in the kitchen, when they’d just come from dinner out. So tacky but so necessary. I’ve been theorizing about what’s going on, about how a person who normally loves spending free time in the kitchen become a person who wants all the food all the places as long as she doesn’t have to make them, and all I can say is who knows. Maybe Baby’s taking my brain power. Maybe all my creative energy is going towards nursery decorations and labor preparation plans and figuring out what to drape on top of this growing bump. Maybe I’m changing, the way every veteran mom is always telling me I’m going to. Or maybe it’s just a season and, like all seasons, is just a temporary thing that will one day pass. Tonight, while Tim made our dinner, bless him, a feast of (baked) fried chicken alongside our favorite green beans, I had the small victory of whipping up the fastest, easiest chocolate cake I know of, and I even did it in the Vitamix

because that’s how lazy looks, and then, while it baked its quick half hour in the oven, I tried Kris’s recipe for date-sweetened frosting telling myself some random Pinterest fact I’d read about dates. Tim’s had another version of date frosting that involves coconut cream to cover the caramely date flavor a little more, so sometime we’ll try that too, but tonight I ate a big slice of this simple cake and this gooey frosting after dinner alongside my husband and my brother-in-law while the baby kicked, and it was nice.

PS! Send me all your easy recipes! And, should a miracle put me into nesting mode the next few weeks, I welcome all freezer recipes, too. It’d be nice to prep a bunch of meals ahead of time, theoretically, so tell me what you’ve got!

Lazy Easy Chocolate Cake Date-Sweetened Chocolate Frosting
Adapted from the wacky cake recipe I posted in 2011 and this frosting recipe from 80twenty.ca
Makes one 8 x 8 cake, or about 9 servings

Ingredients:
for the cake:
1 1/2 cups your favorite all-purpose flour (I used einkorn

)
3/4 to 1 cup coconut sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup water
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

for the frosting:
1 cup (about 7 or 8) pitted medjool dates
1/2 cup boiling water
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon all-natural peanut or almond butter
Pinch of salt

Directions:
for the cake:
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees and grease an 8″ x 8″ pan. To mix the batter, you can use a mixer and a bowl or you can go laaaaazy and pull out your high-powered blender or food processor and dump all the ingredients inside. I first dumped in the dry ingredients, pulsed just enough to stir them together, then added the wet, using the Vitamix

tamper to make sure everything came together. Then I poured the mixture in the prepared pan. The entire process took less than 10 minutes, including pulling out ingredients, and nonetheless I felt like a champ. Bake cake for 30 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool slightly before frosting.

for the frosting:
While the cake is cooking, get out a high-powered blender or food processor and add the dates and boiling water. Let them sit for 10 to 15 minutes; then blend until super smooth. If you’re doing this in a Vitamix, use the tamper to make sure everything gets smooshed around.

Add the remaining ingredients and blend again until smooth. Once the cake has cooled, top with this frosting and enjoy! Leftovers should be kept in the fridge.

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