Vegan chocolate cake

Someone very special to us turned 2 yesterday. Unfortunately, we were not with him to celebrate. He does not know about us yet, but (hopefully) soon, our lives will be completely and intricately connected. It was a difficult day for me - celebrating the birthday of a son we don't yet know, but love and want. Yes, we are adopting a little boy - he lives with his foster family in India and we are waiting ..
To celebrate his birthday, I baked a chocolate cake and V and I ate the cake last evening. As I was searching for recipes for a cake, I came across this collection of Moosewood recipes. About 8-10 years ago, when I started getting into cooking more, V's aunt, cousin and I discovered this treasure trove of books from Moosewood and I used to use the recipe books regularly. I may have said this before - but, it's the one book that I don't substitute much. I follow the recipes pretty closely. Then, the blogs opened up new worlds and I have not used the recipe books as much.

The vegan chocolate cake recipe looked easy enough and not too much of a hassle. I made it in the pan as described in the recipe and cut down the sugar to half a cup (I just felt that one cup may be too much). I added a few chocolate chips in the batter - for a surprise chocolate taste!

For the glaze (which I liked more than the cake), I added a tsp of orange flavoring to add a little orange twist to the cake. To make it more fun (and because V likes it), I added cherries to the top of the glaze before cooling it!

Verdict - The cake was a little crumbly and not too sweet. It tasted great with the glaze and I loved the addition of the orange flavor. I was not a huge fan of the cake without the glaze, but I never complain about chocolate!!