Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cake

I recently shared a post on my Instagram stories about healthy oils and many people were shocked to find out that coconut oil is not an ideal oil for overall health. This is due to its high content of saturated fat which is known to raise cholesterol and contribute to heart disease. Although coconut is slightly better when compared to butter, unfortunately, the studies still show that it has similar potential for raising cholesterol. For most people, this is a bad thing, but for me, this was a wanted thing when I first transitioned to more healthy eating. This is because when I first discovered healthy desserts and coconut oil, I had just come out of a severe antidepressant withdrawal reaction that basically took away my ability to eat for almost an entire year, and I continued to suffer from very poor appetite for a total of three years. I was severely underweight and needed some extra fat and cholesterol to help me put on weight and balance out my very low hormones, but I wanted to support my body with healthy food instead of processed foods.  Nowadays when I am almost 10kg heavier, I am not so concerned about my low cholesterol anymore. To be perfectly honest I actually dislike the taste of coconut oil and most coconut products. I have used it in my recipes in the past but usually in a way where the coconut taste is highly masked. Occasionally I will feel like a coconut flavoured dessert and I will go all out with the coconut taste, especially when making something summery and tropical, but these are not my favourite desserts, I make them for my boys who absolutely love tropical flavours.  Coconut oil has many wonderful properties, despite being high in saturated fat including being antimicrobial which is why I still choose to use it occasionally, especially in desserts like this! The reason I bring this up is that this recipe uses ALOT of coconut oil, much more than what I would usually put in my recipes, however, you absolutely can not taste it at all and this is the most epic peanut butter cake I have made yet! It definitely makes my list for my top most favourite recipes of 2020.

I have had a few questions about replacing coconut oil in desserts. It is a very difficult thing to replace, coconut has a wonderful ability to firm up and melt just like butter or dairy which is why it is so heavily used in vegan desserts. Cacao butter can be substituted but will change the flavour to “white chocolate” and it will be a thicker texture. I am currently experimenting with avocado oil, as I have noticed that it some firm when cool. I am not sure how firm avocado oil gets, but am hoping it can be an alternative in my future desserts!

The recipe is not my own, it is adapted from https://detoxinista.com/no-bake-peanut-butter-cup-pie-vegan/ I encourage you to check out the blog post from Detoxinista. She is an absolute genius at making epic tasting healthy desserts that are incredibly easy to make! It is completely vegan and refined sugar-free, it is also very easy to make!