Righteous chocolate loaf!

Jini once went on a mission to try out as many different chocolate cake recipes as possible and found one that made her heart sing; I have a chocolate brownie recipe that has pleased my chocolate loving friends all over the world and I intend to hand it over to my grandchildren to keep the tradition alive! That is our dedication to a delicious, decadent chocolate cake, and when we had to come up with a healthy version of this all time favourite treat, neither of us was very excited because we didn't want to diminish the joy of biting into a piece of deep, sinful heaven.

We were determined to find and customise a recipe that would not only be wholesome and delicious but also easy to source locally. Some very systematic trawling of the world wide web brought me to this recipe of a Dark chocolate and walnut whole wheat loaf on Passionate about baking's blog which we tweaked by upping the chocolate like Jini wanted and adding Kahlua like I wanted!

There are three things this recipe does to make it healthier:

1) No butter; instead uses malai or cream that forms on milk when boiled

2) No sugar; substituted with jaggery. Now jaggery is surprisingly effective for weight loss. It has a high potassium content which boosts metabolism and counters water retention!

3) No refined flour; uses whole grain wheat flour, full of nutrients and fiber.

The result?- A sumptuous chocolate cake that you can enjoy guilt free!

So without further ado..

What you need:

• 130g malai/ butter (if malai is not available)

• 175g powdered jaggery

• 2 eggs

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 175g whole wheat flour

• 50g cocoa powder

• ¾ tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp baking soda

• 150ml plain buttermilk.

• 100g dark chocolate chips

• 75g walnuts, chopped and toasted

• 1 tbsp Kahlua

How we stir:

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and line a 9 X 5” loaf tin.
2. In a large bowl, cream the malai and jaggery until light just like you would butter and sugar in a cake recipe. Beat in the eggs one by one, followed by the vanilla extract and Kahlua.
3. At this point our mix looked like it had split and we were wondering if it was the end of our chocolate cake experiments but we kept going and it all turned out great!
4. Sift the whole wheat flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
5. Add alternately a third of the dry flour mix and the buttermilk into the butter mix. Fold gently and finish with the flour.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts.We also impulsively added a tiny amount of white chocolate shards because we thought it would look lovely against the dark almost black cake!
7. Transfer to the loaf tin and bake in the oven for about an hour or till skewer comes out clean.
8. Cool in tin just till it is not too hot to touch. Ideally you should cool it till room temperature before you slice into it but we couldn't wait. We sliced it while it was still hot because we were desperate to find out if this was a success.

And a success it was. Everyone we served it to absolutely loved it. The whole wheat flour provides a kind of nuttiness which is lovely married with the dark chocolate and the jaggery!This cake is best eaten warm and I would say definitely have it for breakfast with a cup of steaming coffee. What a virtuous yet luxurious breakfast that would be!