Vegan Chocolate Blackberry Cake

Make a mini vegan purple and black cake for your next gothic or punk rock celebration. With layers of dark black chocolate cake and blackberry buttercream frosting, the dark chocolate spikes accentuate the deliciousness.

This recipe makes 1 mini black and purple cake (using either three 4-inch mini springform pans or four heart pans).

Table of Contents

(click the links below to skip to the section you’re looking for)

• Cake Recipe
• Chocolate Spikes
• Blackberry Frosting
• Cake Assembly
• Ingredient Substitutions
• Contact Me with Questions
• Similar Recipes

I was lucky enough to meet a lot of my friends when I DJ’d at KSCU, the college radio station at Santa Clara University. One of those friends, Josipa, had a punk rock show. Since the theme of her birthday is a purple tea party, I thought a black and purple punk rock birthday cake would be appropriate. If you don’t have punk rock friends to make this for, it’s also perfect for Halloween! You can also make it cute and goth instead of punk by omitting the spikes.

If you identify as a vegan spring goth or vegan summer goth, you might like the vegan summerween tea party we had for my friend Jessica’s birthday.

Ingredients for a Mini Black Cocoa Cake

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• 1 cup nondairy milk
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¾ cup organic or raw sugar
• ¼ cup sunflower oil
• 1 ¼ cups flour
• 3 tablespoons black cocoa powder
• 3 tablespoons any other cocoa powder
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt

How to Make a Mini Dark Black Chocolate Cake

Prep time: 25 minutes | Bake time: 16 minutes

Cut a piece of parchment paper for each of your pans by setting the pan on the parchment, tracing it, and cutting it out.

Oil all of your mini cake pans, stick the freshly cut parchment paper in the bottom, and oil the top of the parchment paper. This may seem like overkill, but the first time I tested this recipe, the cake wouldn’t come out of the pan, and it ended up breaking. It was catastrophic. I don’t want you to suffer the same undesirable fate.

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Mix the nondairy milk with the vinegar and let sit.

Sift the dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, black cocoa powder , and cocoa powder ) in a medium sized bowl and whisk until it all turns gray.

Add the sugar, vanilla, and oil to the milk mixture and mix well.

Pour half of the dry ingredients and mix until there’s no visible powder. Add the other half and repeat. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula to ensure you incorporated all of the powder into the batter. Mix again. The color should be black when it’s all mixed.

Divide the batter evenly among all of your mini cake pans. I used 4 of the 5 heart pans that come in the set.

Bake at 350º with all the cakes on the same level rack in your oven.

Remove the heart cake pans from the oven after 16 minutes (as long as when you insert a toothpick into the center of a couple, it comes out clean). If you’re using the 4" round springform pans, remove them from the oven after 30ish minutes, when a toothpick inserted into the center of a couple comes out clean.

Cool on a cooling rack until room temperature and then chill in the fridge.

Ingredients for Chocolate Punk Rock Spikes

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• ½ cup vegan chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon cacao butter
• 1 teaspoon charcoal or vegan black food coloring

How to Make Black Vegan Chocolate Spikes

Prep time: 20 minutes | Chill time: 30 minutes

Add the cacao butter and vegan chocolate chips to a microwave safe bowl.

Melt the chocolate chips and the cacao butter together in the microwave for 1 minute and 15 seconds. When you stir it and it’s completely smooth, then you know it’s ready.

Add the activated charcoal or black vegan food coloring to the chocolate and mix well.

Pipe or spoon the chocolate into each spike cubby, making sure it gets all the way to the bottom. I used a toothpick in each one to poke the chocolate down and swirl it around. When the chocolate is all used up, tap the mold on the counter a few times to get any air bubbles to come to the top. If you don’t already have a silicone mini cone mold , you can use the link to buy one, and it helps support my blogging.

Chill for 30 minutes in the fridge or freezer until solid.

(Optional) If you want to make the spiked ball on top of the cake, you’ll also need a 2-inch semisphere mold.

Ingredients for Purple Blackberry Buttercream Frosting

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• 4 tablespoons blackberry preserves (seedless)
• ½ cup room temperature vegan butter or margarine
• ½ cup palm shortening
• 5 cups organic powdered sugar, sifted (measure before sifting)
• 2 teaspoons butterfly pea flower powder
• 2 teaspoons blue spirulina
• 2 teaspoons pink pitaya powder

How to Make Vegan Blackberry Buttercream Frosting

Prep time: 15 minutes

Whisk the vegan butter and Spectrum sustainable organic palm shortening using a stand mixer or a handheld electric mixer.

Add 1 cup of sifted organic powdered sugar and whisk for a minute.

Add the second cup of sifted powdered sugar. Mix for a minute.

Add the chilled blackberry preserves, a tablespoon at a time, whisking between each addition. Try not to add more than 4 tablespoons of blackberry preserves (or jam), so the frosting doesn’t thin out too much.

Add the third cup of sifted powdered sugar and whisk for a minute.

Add the fourth cup of sifted powdered sugar and whisk for a minute.

Add the fifth cup of sifted powdered sugar and whisk for a minute.

Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with a silicone spatula to get all loose powder incorporated.

Add the butterfly pea flower powder and mix well. If you don’t have superfood powders on hand and don’t want to buy any, check out my list of vegan food coloring for other options.

Add the blue spirulina and mix well.

Add the pink pitaya powder and mix well.

Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a Wilton large round tip 1A and chill until ready to use (don’t chill more than 20 minutes or it will become too difficult to pipe).

How to Assemble a Mini Vegan Blackberry Chocolate Cake

Prep time: 15 minutes

Layer the 4 cake layers with blackberry frosting.

(Optional) Add chocolate spikes.

Ingredient Details and Substitutions

• Nondairy Milk: If you don’t have the full amount of nondairy milk that the cake part of the recipe requires, you can substitute 1:1 with water, coffee, or nondairy creamer. You can also mix and match different nondairy milks. I do this a lot when my macadamia milk only has a little bit left at the bottom and I use it up, and then I open a new container of almond, oat, or soymilk.
• Vinegar: If you don’t have apple cider vinegar, you can replace it with lemon juice, lime juice, or white vinegar. You just need some sort of acid to interact with the alkalinity of the baking soda to make the cake rise.
• Oil: I recommend using safflower, sunflower, avocado, or coconut oil for baking cakes because those oils are made for high heat, which helps you avoid transfats. However, you can use any other oil such as vegetable oil, canola oil, grapeseed oil, etc. People even make cakes with olive oil, but I don’t recommend it.
• Flour: To make this cake gluten-free, just replace the all-purpose flour with a gluten-free flour blend.
• Cocoa Powder: You can use any kind of cocoa powder you would like, depending on your comfort level. I like to use this fair trade, organic cocoa powder.
• Sugar: For the sugar in this recipe, you can use any number of sugars, as long as they’re vegan: sucanat, coconut sugar, raw sugar, organic sugar, or demurara. If you’re not sure if your sugar is vegan, you can contact the company and ask, but basically, just avoid conventional white sugar or granulated sugar, and you should be ok.
• Chocolate Chips: You can use any vegan chocolate for your ganache recipe. I like these vegan chocolate chips because they’re organic and fair trade, but you can save money by purchasing the semi-sweet chocolate chips from Trader Joe’s.
• Shortening: If you don’t have access to vegan shortening, you can replace it with additional vegan butter or margarine. My favorite is the organic whipped Earth Balance, but if you avoid soy, you can buy the soy-free Earth Balance. If you do this, your filling will be less stable at room temperature, so you should keep it in the fridge right up until you’re ready to serve it.
• Vegan Powdered Sugar: Here’s a list of vegan powdered sugar brands.
• Food Coloring: I used all-natural food coloring for this cake recipe: butterfly pea powder, blue spirulina, pink pitaya, black cocoa, and activated charcoal. If you don’t have superfood powders on hand and don’t want to buy any, check out my list of vegan food coloring for other options.

Comments or Questions?

If you make this recipe, I would love it if you’d snap a pic, post to instagram, and tag me @vegandollhouse. It seriously makes my day/week/month!

Please message me (instagram or email) if you have any questions or feedback about the recipe.

Similar Recipes

If you like cute vegan food with a punk or goth twist, you should check out my list of vegan Halloween recipes. For other vegan goth cakes, check out my pumpkin coffin cakes and my vegan chocolate mint cake decorated with bats.

If you like blackberry and chocolate together, you might also like my Chocolate Blackberry Halloween Cake.

For other naturally colored vegan cakes, check out my low sugar vegan cupcakes and my mini blue velvet cake.

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I mostly cook with organic ingredients, but only specify organic when it’s necessary to ensure the item is vegan.

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