We already knew what cake situation we would have at our wedding more than a year out because I am a planner.

So for this pairing, I thought “The Wedding Planner” would go well alongside our vegan, gluten-free chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.

We went easier on you a couple months ago using a box mix to make cupcakes, but we’re making this cake from scratch. We did keep the tub of frosting, though.

This 9-inch cake makes 8 “servings.”

Ingredients
1.5 cups 1-to-1 gluten-free baking flour
0.5 cups cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
0.5 teaspoons salt
1 assembled egg replacer (vegan & gluten-free)
1 cup oat milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
0.33 cups vegetable oil
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 10-ounce tub vanilla frosting (vegan & gluten-free)

Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch cake pan and line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper.

In a bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients: flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

Prepare your egg replacer. You can use a flax egg or a powdered egg replacer like we did.

Pour the egg replacer, oat milk, vanilla, oil (we used olive) and vinegar into a stand mixer or another bowl. Whisk until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Add in the dry ingredients and continue to whisk until a batter is formed.

Pour the batter in your greased and parchment-lined cake pan.

Bake the cake for 25-30 minutes, using a toothpick to determine if it is baked all the way through.
Cool your cake in the pan for a few minutes. Then move it to a cooling rack for at least 30 minutes (until it is completely cool, or your frosting will melt off).

Frost the cake. The tub of frosting I used was a little stiff, so I microwaved it in a safe container for 10 seconds then stirred it to soften it up.

Slice, serve and enjoy with “The Wedding Planner!”

The Easy Route
Like I mentioned above, you could use a chocolate cake mix instead of mixing all the dry ingredients together yourself.

Of course, you can also get a vegan and gluten-free vanilla-frosted chocolate cake from a bakery, just like we’re actually doing for our wedding.

The Pairing
I watched “The Wedding Planner” a lot when I was a kid. It’s another one of those movies that I found myself watching whenever I came across it on TV.

Jennifer Lopez plays Mary, the titular wedding planner. She has a variation on the meet-cute with Matthew McConaughey’s Steve.

Unfortunately, she quickly finds out that he is engaged to her new big wedding client, Fran (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras). Comedy and drama ensue.

I rewatched “The Wedding Planner” earlier this month, and I will admit some things don’t age well, like one use of the r word and Lopez being cast as an Italian person.

It is a movie I watched dozens of times in my early teens, and one of the only movies where I find McConaughey to be watchable.

The delightful Judy Greer rounds out the cast as Mary’s assistant, Penny, in one of her more memorable roles.

It’s one of the first movies that popped into my head when I decided to do this Married at the Movies series.

If you decide to make this chocolate cake and/or watch “The Wedding Planner,” let us know! Tag us in your Instagram posts & stories, tweets or TikTok videos: @veg_out_recipes

This is installment five of our five-part Married at the Movies series. The others:
Part 1: “My Best Friend’s Wedding” + popcorn four ways
Part 2: “The Wedding Singer” + vegan chicken bacon ranch pizza
Part 3: “Father of the Bride” + veggie pizza
Part 4: “Four Weddings and a Funeral” + root beer cocktail