Accidental Vegan Chocolate Cake

It is my belief that everyone has the right to a birthday cake and my friends deserve one that's home-made with love.
The night before Luc's birthday I remembered that at his work they take a cake to work on their birthday - so at 11pm I started making one - I just can't bear people taking 'fake' supermarket cakes on their birthday. Last year I made him an incredibly rich chocolate layer cake by Nigella Lawson. It was decandent and very yummy but a bit too rum-filled for their safe workplace! Oops!
This time Luc again asked for a chocolate cake so I quickly started assembling the ingredients for a generic choc cake - only to find we had no butter! no milk! So shock horror, I ended up making my darling French butter-eater a vegan cake! (Top secret).
Our fabulous flatmate Julien offered to take it out of the oven when it was done - and both the recipe and Julien's help made for great results. It took only minutes to prepare and has a great texture. It must be said though that although the cake is vegan, it's still not healthy - unless of course, you compare it to Nigella's one!

So if someone you love is vegan, or you've just forgot to go shopping, here's a cake that works:

Vegan Chocolate Cake (makes a large cake)

Dry ingredients:
3 c flour and 2 t baking soda (or use self-raising flour like I did - it worked well)
2 c sugar
6 T cocoa
1 t salt

Sift these dry ingredients together in a large bowl and make a well in the centre.

Liquid Ingredients:
2 c water or non-dairy milk like soy milk
3/4 c vege oil (I used rice bran oil)
2 T vinegar
2 t vanilla extract

Add these liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix till there are no lumps.

Bake till cooked! (The recipe said 40 mins but it took somewhat longer according to Julien). Test by inserting a skewer/fork into the centre - if it comes out clean it's done. -if it is still wobbly as you're taking it out of the oven don't bother, just shut that door quick - this happened to Julien last night and luckily the cake didn't collapse as can happen.
When it's cooked, leave in tin on a wire cooling rack for 5-10 min (or overnight, covered with a clean tea-towel it will survive, too, it turns out), before releasing the cake from the tin (because of oil, it came out easily of the decorative ring mould with no baking paper). Ice with chocolate ganache and decorate with imagination! I used buds from the only flower in our garden - geranium and some decorative vine for the one he took to work and non-vegan Petit Ecolier biscuits - Luc's favourite - for the birthday candle one at home.

Chocolate Ganache:
1 c dark chocolate chips / 250gm broken dark chocolate
2 T margarine
1/3 c soy milk

Melt these ingredients together by putting them in a metal bowl on top of a saucepan of boiling water. Take it off the heat as soon as chocolate is mainly melted and stir - the residual heat of the melted choc and the bowl will melt the rest - this is important so that the choc doesn't cook (where it goes hard and lumpy) - then it's completely ruined and I love chocolate too much to do that to it! Let the ganache cool a little before pouring / spreading - a knife a spatula dipped in water will help smooth the surface if it hasn't spread nicely.