Lavender Chocolate Cake

A blogger friend, Such Lovely Freckles, mentioned a delicious lavender chocolate candybar on a post a while back. I thought the combination of lavender and chocolate sounded heavenly! I was talking to Rainy about her birthday cake; she always picks unusual cakes for me to bake (I am not much of a cake maker at all, Rainy LOVES to challenge me). I mentioned the chocolate lavender to her, did a recipe search and found this recipe for Lavender Chocolate Cake at Bake Space. Rainy loved the idea!

What you need:
3/4 cup milk (I used soy)
2 tbsp. dried lavender
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
6 egg whites
3 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

To make the lavender milk:

Bring milk and lavender to a boil in a small saucepan. Turn off the heat, cover and let steep until you are ready to use. Strain and discard the lavender before adding the milk to the cake.

To make the cake:

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees
-Cream butter and sugar, then add lavender milk, baking powder, salt, egg whites, and vanilla extract.
-Blend in cocoa and flour.
-Pour into 2 greased 9-inch cake pans. Bake 30-35 minutes.
-Let cool.

Cake Assembly:
Level each cake by carving off the extra on top. Top one layer with fudge icing, then assemble one layer on top of another; ice in more fudge and decorate.

*2 T lavender buds was the perfect amount of lavender in this cake. With each bite you could taste a hint of lavender without it tasting like you were eating a "cleaning product" (as my sister's co-worker would say). It went very well with the vanilla soy ice cream! Enjoy!