egg-free, butter-free chocolate cake with crunchy rice topping

This cake is amazing. It's very dense, almost like a brownie, but I was really happy with how it turned out.

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1/2 c cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark b/c it is tasty and allergy safe!)
• 1/2 T baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 c sugar
• 1 medium sweet potato, mashed
• 1/2 c applesauce
• 1 c rice milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Mix thoroughly and set aside. Cream together sweet potato and sugar, then add remaining wet ingredients to large bowl. Add dry ingredients to large bowl in small portions and mix well. At this point I added ~1/4 c more applesauce to thin the batter slightly.

I tried to make this like an upside down cake by putting the crunchy topping in the bottom of the pan. However, the topping will stick to the pan and not to the cake. So here is what I am recommending until I test it myself:

Pour cake batter into pan of choice....I used a meatloaf-sized pan for this amount of batter....and bake 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cake cool enough to remove it from the pan and "frost" with crunchy topping while still warm.

Crunchy topping ingredients:

• 1/2 c sweet and salty toasted rice (or Rice Krispies cereal)
• 1/4 c sugar
• honey (a few "drizzles")
• 1 tsp butter
• 1/4 dark chocolate chips

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Microwave for 20 s stirring periodically until uniform. Use for cake topping while still warm.