On my hunt to find the perfect birthday cake for Reno's 2nd birthday coming up in 2 weeks, I have been trawling lots of ideas and dinosaur cake designs. That all lead me to discovering both a paelo chocolate cake and a yogurt chocolate cake.

So I decided to combine the two to make an EPIC 'cheats chocolate' cake. Now I have made it, I think it's far too grown up for a kids birthday party as it comes out all gooey, luxurious like soft chocolate fudge . Not the best for cutting into a dinosaur shape, but I am happy I discovered it non the less. Anyone who is free this week and fancies a piece with a cup of coffee, just holla me up!

From the recipe's I found, I halved the sugar to just 1/2 cup coconut sugar, rather than the 1 cup specified. Then I realised I was going for a 3 egg version and after cracking open the egg box, I discovered I only had 1 egg. So I had to think fast " what can I use when I have a 3 egg recipe and only have 1 egg???"

At the very back of my fruit drawer in the fridge I see a VERY black, sad old banana... Perfect. 1/2 a banana acts as 1 egg, so this will do just great. My husband hates bananas and what was awesome about this cake mix was I gave him the spoon to lick and as it was only 1 banana he couldn't taste it and so that was the check mark for me to know I was onto something good ;)

You could make this with either the banana sub, OR 3 eggs. FYI... The banana added another dimension to the flavour which was nice, and again took the edge of the chocolate and sweetness. Granted, I did add a handful of chocolate chips into the batter so it was pretty intense. It was Sunday, I was feeling rebellious ;)

I also realised mid prep that I was clean out of vanilla extract. So, don't forget to add that, you could also add a tablespoon of coffee liquor or an espresso shot if you fancy being a bit more grown up about it too.

So, to make this combo harvester cheat cake you will need:

1 cup of plain flour (you could totally sub for rice flour I reckon if you want GF)
1/2 cup good quality coco powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1 cup greek yogurt
1 banana
1 egg
1/2 cup coconut oil
optional vanilla extract / coffee liquor / espresso shot

I put all the dry ingredients into the main bowl and stir them together
In a small bowl I beat the egg, added the mashed banana and yogurt and blitzed with the hand whisk.
I melted the coconut oil and let it cool then added that to my wet ingredients.
Mix the wet into the dry with the hand whisk to get a luxurious texture.
For extra decadence I added a handful of chocolate chips
put it in a 9inch round cake tin so it fills up nicely, it doesn't rise too much
bake at 350 / 180 for 45 minutes, the knife will come out so clean!
set it to cool before trying to present or it will fall apart :)
put some more of the chocolate chips on top and let them melt and smooth out to make a topping, then i added a handful of raspberries for decoration.