Chocolate Avocado Cake Recipe Adaptation/conversion

[gdaerin]

I've got a bunch of ripe avocados that I've been planning on using in some kind of baked good. I found this recipe online for <a href="http://ysolda.com/wordpress/2008/02/04/chocolate-avocado-cakes/"> Chocolate Avocado Cake </a>. Actually, I'm pretty sure that blogger got her recipe from <a href="http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_9..."> here </a>, but the recipe is basically:

Mix thoroughly:

1 very ripe medium avocado
3 eggs
1 tbsp runny honey
4oz light muscavado sugar

Fold Into That:

4oz plain flour, I used half wholemeal and half white
2oz ground almonds
2oz cocoa powder
2tsp baking powder

cook at 180c/350f

Now, I just made this, or attempted to, but the consistency didn't come out right at all! I'm sure this is because I had a really hard time converting the ounces to cups.

Here are the measurements/conversions I used:

4/5 cup flour (1 cup of all-purpose flour: 5 ounces
)4/9 cup dark brown sugar (1 cup of dark brown sugar: 8.5 ounces)
3/5 cup cocoa (1 cup of cocoa: 3.33 ounces)

Also 1 very ripe medium avocado is really vague, and I ended up using 2 smallish avocados because the "batter" just looked way too thick for cake.

Do any baker's care to share some insight? I'd like to make this again without having to "eyeball" 3/5 cup cocoa, etc.

[goodhealthgourmet]

Flour: 3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp
Sugar: 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp (your initial conversion was incorrect. for lightly packed dark brown sugar, it's only 5.3 oz per cup. the 8-oz. measurement applies to tightly packed dark brown sugar and granulated sugar.)
Cocoa: 2/3 cup
Ground almonds: 1/2 cup plus 1-1/2 Tbsp

going forward i'd suggest investing in a kitchen scale. they're not expensive, and measuring by weight instead of volume often allows for more accuracy - and better results.

hope that helps. good luck with the next attempt!

[gdaerin]

thank you!

I'm gonna try this tomorrow as is, and then I'm also going to try leaving the cocoa out because I think maybe the cocoa hides the taste of the avocado too much?

If I take out the cocoa do I need to increase the dry ingredients?

[goodhealthgourmet]

if you remove the cocoa, it's no longer a "Chocolate Avocado Cake" :) but yes, you either need to increase the dry ingredients, decrease the wet, or both. i'd either:
- omit one egg
OR
- replace the cocoa with 1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp flour AND add an extra 1/2 tsp baking powder because you're losing the acidity of the cocoa

good luck!

[gdaerin]

does anyone know why my links aren't working?

[sonia darrow]

The first link has some extra characters tacked on to the end of the url. When I deleted them ("%22%3E") from the address bar and tried what was left it worked fine. Second link worked fine for me with no tweaking.