Best Ever Vegan Gluten Free Chocolate Cake (Made with Oat flour!)
This easy vegan gluten free chocolate cake is the ultimate chocolate cake recipe! Super moist, decadent and rich, you won’t believe that this healthier chocolate cake is made from just oat flour, is completely oil free, and naturally eggless, dairy free, and refined sugar free! This chocolate cake recipe is stress-free, minimal ingredients, and downright DELICIOUS!
You’ll love this super easy vegan gluten free chocolate cake!
If you’ve been looking for the best gluten free vegan chocolate cake recipe around, then look no further. You have ARRIVED.
You are just going to love this gluten free chocolate cake for a few reasons. The taste is just perfect: super rich, decadent, chocolatey, and sweet. And the texture is soft, moist, and tender. Paired with this easy vegan chocolate frosting, it’s a dream in a bite.
Then we have the best part about this easy gluten free vegan cake recipe: it’s made with just oat flour as the main flour (no other flours!), is naturally oil free (just applesauce and vegan buttermilk!), and is entirely nut free, eggless, and dairy free.
Not to mention, this chocolate cake recipe is the definition of easy. You simply mix everything together in a bowl and bake! It couldn’t be simpler!
Need a non-leavened gluten free chocolate cake for Passover? Try this vegan flourless chocolate cake as well!
Ingredients:
As I mentioned above, you’ll only need a few simple ingredients for this easy gluten free chocolate cake recipe. This chocolate cake recipe is entirely oil free, eggless, and dairy free, so the ingredients are all plant based and vegan as well.
For this cake, you’ll need:
- Oat flour: The gluten free flour that we’re using for this vegan glutenfree chocolate cake is actually just oat flour! You can use store bought oat flour, such as by Arrowhead Mills or Bob’s Red Mill, or make your own, like I did. I recommend using One Degree Organics for a great texture in the cake. I don’t recommend using a gluten free flour blend here, however. If you’d like a gluten free vegan chocolate cake using a gluten free flour blend, you can try my original classic vegan chocolate cake. This cake was specifically designed for oat flour!
- Cocoa powder: you can also use cacao powder if you really want to. However, the acidity in natural cocoa powder will help this cake rise more. So keep that in mind!
- Coconut sugar: using coconut sugar will keep this gluten free chocolate cake entirely refined sugar free. However, you can also use maple sugar, a keto-friendly sugar, or even regular granulated sugar.
- Arrowroot starch: this is interchangeable with cornstarch.
- Applesauce: I used unsweetened applesauce here, which acts as the egg replacement from regular chocolate cake recipes.
- Dairy free milk: this will be mixed with a touch of apple cider vinegar to make a vegan buttermilk! You can use oat milk, cashew milk, soy milk, or whichever dairy free milk is your favorite.
- Leavening agents: just your baking soda and baking powder- pretty standard baking ingredients here! 🙂
Never made a vegan cake with oat flour before?
Not to worry- if you’ve never made a cake with oat flour before, then you’re in for a treat. When combined with arrowroot starch or cornstarch, the texture is sublime. Soft, tender, and perfectly fluffy. It is a bit more delicate than regular flour. However, it makes for a great substitute for anyone who’s gluten free and doesn’t want to use gluten free 1:1 baking flour.
If you’ve tried my vegan gluten free vanilla cake that uses oat flour, then you’re going to really just fall in love with this chocolate version.
How to make an eggless chocolate cake:
You might be wondering how the heck we’re going to achieve a vegan gluten free chocolate cake without any eggs. After all, in traditional baking, eggs give a cake recipe its lift and rise, along with stabilizing the cake.
However, you can still achieve a well risen, structured vegan cake without eggs. Our vegan egg replacement for this vegan gluten free chocolate cake is using applesauce.
How to make an easy gluten free vegan chocolate cake (overview)
For the full written instructions and ingredient measurements, see the bottom of this post in the recipe card. You can also hit the “jump to recipe” button at the top of this post! Here, we’ll go over a brief overview of the steps, along with providing visuals for a better understanding of the recipe.
To make this easy chocolate cake recipe, here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Whisk together the dry ingredients.
- This is your oat flour, cocoa powder, arrowroot, baking powder, and baking soda.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the coconut sugar, applesauce, and dairy free milk.
You can just use a whisk again!
- Then, add the dry to the wet
- Whisk gently until everything combines. This will take a few whisks.
- Pour the batter into your cake pans and bake!
You can use 6″ cake pans or 8″ cake pans.
- Allow the cakes to fully cool before frosting!
The Vegan Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
For the frosting of this gluten free chocolate cake, we’re using my all time favorite, vegan chocolate buttercream frosting. This recipe can be made either with coconut sugar or with powdered sugar, and it’s so freaking easy.
The biggest tip for the frosting is ensuring that your vegan butter is about 65-68F. This will ensure that the vegan butter isn’t too soft that it won’t become creamy and fluffy when mixed.
This frosting is ultra lush, rich, decadent, and smooth, all while being naturally dairy free. For vegan butter brands, I recommend Miyoko’s vegan butter or Flora Plant Butter- this will give you the closest taste to true chocolate buttercream, and it’s a great sub if you’re new to vegan baking!
Can this cake recipe be used as a smash cake?
Since babies shouldn’t have cocoa powder until at least 24 months old, this gluten free vegan chocolate cake shouldn’t be used as a smash cake for a first birthday. However, we do have a smash cake-friendly vanilla oat flour cake recipe on the blog, that would work perfectly! You can swap out a few of the ingredients as needed, depending on what your baby prefers (and what’s recommended by your pediatrician).
Can I use another flour for this gluten free vegan cake recipe?
This gluten free vegan chocolate cake recipe is actually specifically designed for using oat flour cake. This is because I’ve seen tons of amazing vegan chocolate cake recipes on the web that use almond flour or coconut flour, but I wanted to contribute something different!
So unfortunately, if you can’t use oat flour, then I recommend a different chocolate cake recipe (or maybe trying my vegan chocolate cake recipe with gluten free 1:1 baking flour! That’s been approved!).
Recipe Tips & Tricks
The applesauce: I recommend sticking with applesauce for this vegan chocolate cake recipe. You can use mashed banana, but there will be a bit of a banana flavor to the cake. If that doesn’t bother you, then go for it! I do not, however, recommend swapping in a flaxseed “egg” here. Great for other recipes, but not for this one!
Use room temperature ingredients: this is super important, whether you’re making a regular cake or a gluten free vegan cake. Not using room temperature ingredients will yield a super gummy texture, rather than moist and soft.
Vegan buttermilk: this is the best trick for getting a fluffy and soft gluten free vegan cake! I used oat milk here, but you can use any dairy free milk that you’d like.
Allow the cakes to fully cool before frosting: if you don’t want your cakes to fall on the floor as you frost, then allow the to fully cool before even making the buttercream! I usually give the cakes about 45 minutes to rest after baking. Then you can make the frosting!
How to decorate a layer cake:
This is the really fun part! Once you’ve fully frosted your cakes, you can make any design you’d like. I love to top my gluten free vegan cakes with fresh fruit and flowers.
You can also pipe regular vegan buttercream colored with vegan food coloring for fun floral buttercream decorations.
For how to assemble a layer cake, check out this layer cake tutorial by Beyond Frosting!
Some other topping ideas include:
- Vegan chocolate chips
- Crushed nuts (if not nut free) or chia seed
- Edible flowers
- Vegan candy
- Vegan fondant decorations
This is truly the best gluten free vegan chocolate cake recipe:
This easy chocolate cake is:
- Naturally eggless, dairy free, and gluten free
- Super easy to make and stress-free
- Fail-proof
- Perfect for all occasions (birthdays, graduations, weddings, and more!)
- Easily made into cupcakes or muffins (or even a loaf cake!)
- Super rich and chocolatey while being refined sugar free
- Perfect for the healthier eater or someone who wants to try something new!
- Friendly to both beginning and advanced bakers
- Great for first birthday smash cakes!
- your new favorite chocolate cake recipe!
You’re just going to absolutely love this easy vegan chocolate cake recipe, and your family will too!
More gluten free vegan cake recipes you’ll love:
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If you make this recipe, please be sure to leave a comment and a rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ below. This helps others to find the recipes! As always, I absolutely love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there as well!
Print
Best Vegan Gluten Free Chocolate Cake
- Prep Time: 10
- 45, cooling time:
- Cook Time: 40
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 16 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
This easy vegan gluten free chocolate cake is the ultimate chocolate cake recipe! Super moist, decadent and rich, you won’t believe that this healthier chocolate cake is made from just oat flour, is completely oil free, and naturally eggless, dairy free, and refined sugar free! This chocolate cake recipe is stress-free, minimal ingredients, and downright DELICIOUS!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups (350 g) unsweetened dairy free milk + 1 tsp acv, room temperature, mixed before the batter
- 3 cups (360 g) oat flour, sifted
- 2/3 cup (65 g) cocoa powder
- 2 tbsp arrowroot powder
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups (375 g) unsweetened applesauce or dairy free yogurt, room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups (250 g) coconut sugar or organic granulated sugar
- 1 batch vegan chocolate buttercream
Instructions
- Please read through all instructions before beginning.
- Prep: preheat the oven to 350F. Grease and line three 6″ cake pans with cooking oil and parchment paper, and set aside. Measure out all ingredients. Mix together the dairy free milk and apple cider vinegar in a small bowl, and set aside to rest for 5 minutes. This will be called the vegan buttermilk going forward.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients: in a medium bowl, whisk together the oat flour, cocoa powder, arrowroot powder, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside
- Make the batter: in a large bowl, whisk together the vegan buttermilk, applesauce, and coconut sugar. Add in the dry ingredients, and whisk gently to combine the dry ingredients into the wet. Mix until just combined.
- Bake: pour the batter into the three prepared pans evenly, and place into the oven to bake for 37-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the oven and allow the cakes to cool in their pans for 10 minutes. Then carefully transfer them to a cooling rack to fully cool before frosting. There should be no heat within the cakes at all prior to making the vegan buttercream.
- Make the frosting: once the cakes are cooled, you can make the vegan chocolate buttercream frosting according to the directions.
- Frost the cake: apply about 1/3 cup of chocolate frosting between each layer, and frost the remainder of the cake. Decorate as you’d like (fresh fruit is my favorite!), and slice and serve!
- Storage: store any leftover slices in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Alternatively, you can freeze this cake in an airtight container for up to 2 months.
Notes
Oat flour: you can use store bought oat flour or homemade oat flour. Homemade will give you a more rustic look, like the photos.
Arrowroot powder: arrowroot is found as either arrowroot starch or arrowroot powder, depending on the brand. You can also use cornstarch at a 1:1 ratio.
Refined sugar free: to keep this gluten free vegan chocolate cake entirely refined sugar free, using coconut sugar for both the cake and the frosting.
Please read the full recipe post for all tips and tricks! Enjoy!
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 slice
- Calories: 439
- Sugar: 37.6 g
- Sodium: 108.4 mg
- Fat: 12.4 g
- Saturated Fat: 8.1 g
- Carbohydrates: 73 g
- Fiber: 6.2 g
- Protein: 6.8 g
- Cholesterol: 30.5 mg
Hi there , the recipe looks great 🙂 Can I use two 8 inch pans instead of three 6 inch ?? TIA
Hi there! Aw thank you! Yes you can 🙂 The bake time should be close to the same, but keep an eye on it!
This looks delicious! How many cupcakes would this make? And in what temperature and for how long should you bake them?
Aw thank you! This will make about 12-14 cupcakes, I recommend filling them about 3/4 of the way up! Bake at 350F, and check on them around 20 minutes in to see how they’re doing. It should be around 22-24 minutes!
This recipe looks great and I really want to try it. However, I do want substitute applesauce and coconut sugar with overripe bananas. How many bananas do you reckon would be the right amount? I am not keen on very sweet cakes so I feel the sweetness from bananas and buttercream would be enough.
Can we use normal milk and vinegar . Also is there any substitute for applesauce ?
Hi Krisha! So I have not tried this myself, as I am vegan- however, some of my readers are not vegan and do experiment with using regular dairy milk in my recipes with great success. I cannot guarantee the results, but you can try it! For applesauce subs, you may swap in an equal amount of canned pumpkin!
Thanks a lot:)
I love this cake recipe!! I’ve been struggling with gluten-intolerance for awhile now (especially since I lovee cake and all other baked goods)—I’m so happy to say that this is the best gluten-free dessert I’ve ever made! It’s chocolatey, moist, secretly vegan AND made with oat flour, ie. my favorite flour… literally a dream come true! The only tweaks I made were making 2-8” rounds and adding vanilla extract/espresso powder. I will definitely be back to bake this cake again :))
Can I use tapioca flour instead of arrowroot powder?
Yes! It won’t create the exact same texture, but very close!
Hi, I want to use eggs in this recipe. How do I make this adjustment?
Hi Grace! I can’t personally speak to how eggs will work in this recipe, as I’m vegan and don’t use eggs. However, many readers have used eggs in my recipes, and the general ratio is 1/3 cup applesauce or df yogurt = 1 egg. I hope that helps! I can’t guarantee it will work, but you’re more than welcome to try!
I am planning to make this in a 9×13 for a family get together at a lake with limited refrigerator space. Can I leave it out of fridge for two days? Thank you.
Hi Karen! The cake will last about 2 days at room temperature if you’ve wrapped it very well. I would recommend really only 1 day, depending on how cool or warm you keep your house though (I know for me, the kitchen can get very hot especially in the summer!).
Hi there! I would like to use only one pan. Do you know the proper measurements? Thank you🤍
Yes! Were you thinking a sheet cake? I recommend a 9×13″ for that!
How necessary is the arrowroot?
Definitely necessary but you can use cornstarch if you’d prefer! The arrowroot helps with the oat flour binding so it’s not super crumbly and helps to create a smoother texture 🙂
Hi there Britt !
Thank you for this recipe.
Should it still turn out good if I use maple syrup instead of sugar?
Aw of course! And for sugar, I would recommend using maple sugar rather than syrup, since you need to replace a dry with a dry!
Ahhh okay ! Got it. Thank you so much !!
Absolutely!! Let me know how you like it! 🙂 Enjoy!
Hi! This looks delish, can’t wait to make it!! Can I use a 9×13 glass dish for baking this? I know glass and metal don’t bake the same. Tia
Hi Susan! Aw thank you!! For the glass pan, the cake might not cook fully when the outer edges are definitely done, so it’s something to keep an eye on- you should have success which such a long pan (if you were baking it in a square or round pan, I’d be more worried! But I think that using a sheet cake glass pan may actually work!). I hope that helps!
Hi,
Thankyou for your recipe. can I substirute flaxegg(flax seed powder+water) for the apple sauce? 4 flax eggs would do for this recipe? Kindly let me know as we do not get Apple sauce or canned pumpkin sauce in India as far as I know.
Thanks in advance
Hi Vatsala! So the flax eggs should work, but it might not be as soft as applesauce or pumpkin. You can swap in dairy free yogurt if you have access to that! That would be another good option!
Hi, I need to make a vegan cake in a pinch and I don’t have oat flour. Do you think regular wheat all purpose flour would work for this recipe? Thank you so much!
Oh yes, I would actually recommend using my regular vegan chocolate cake for that! Here’s the link: https://thebananadiaries.com/best-vegan-chocolate-cake-ever/ enjoy!
Hi! Can I bake it in one pan and then slice it in 3 pices? I don’t have 3 identical pans🙈
Hi Andreea! I think it would be a LOT of batter in one round cake pan! How big is your cake pan? I just don’t want it to overflow!
Hi! I made the recipe and the texture is absolutely great, but a little too sweet for my taste. Can I cut the amount of sugar in half? Should I do any other changes?
Thank you!🙂
Hello ! We have coeliac and a dairy allergy in our family, so I am transitioning to gluten and dairy free cooking. Thank you for providing this website! Am I able to substitute other non-gluten flowers, such as almond, flour, or blended flour in this recipe? Thank you. Fiona
Hi Fiona! Oh I completely understand! So this recipe is specifically designed and created for oat flour, but my classic vegan chocolate cake (https://thebananadiaries.com/best-vegan-chocolate-cake-ever/ ) I make 90% of the time gluten free with King Arthur Measure for Measure gluten free flour- in fact, my friends and family who AREN’T vegan nor gluten free always request it that way!! So I’d check it out, I think you’re going to like it 🙂
Thank you for the quick reply. I will check it out And it is Dairy free as well ?
Oh absolutely! And yes, all dairy free! Every recipe is dairy free here because it’s all vegan 🙂 So rest assured, if you ever see “butter,” “yogurt,” “cream,” etc., I’m referring to the vegan/dairy free versions of those!
Thank you!
Hi!
Can I use brewed coffee for the liquid?
Yes definitely!
Never made a vegan gluten free cake before and had a friend visiting so I gate this a try. I was surprised how delicious it was. Made my own ground oat flour, used corn starch, almond milk and used three 9-inch pans and baked for the same time in the directions. Also used the recommended buttercream frosting. Our friends loved it and took some home. I actually think the cake is better the second day and the rustic texture from grinding my own oatmeal was a great option. This gave me a chance to sample almond milk which I am using in my morning cereal. Glad I discovered this recipe. Thanks.
This is incredible!! Oh I’m so glad to hear it!! Thank you so much for the review 🙂 Enjoy!
Honestly I don’t even remember when I made this recipe, I was just looking through some files and wanted to say that it was awesome.
Omgsh you’re so kind!! So glad you loved the cake, thank you for the review!! 🙂