I must admit, this cake doesn't even exist anymore. It was made and eaten last weekend, but I'm just now getting to the post! Laziness, I know.
This sloppily frosted, slightly off kilter cake has a very bright surprise inside of it. You see, I made this for my boyfriend's birthday, and he requested a rainbow cake. And while there's rainbow sprinkles on top, the real rainbow feature is hidden until you cut the first slice. Take a look:
Yeah! Legit six-layer rainbow cake! Unfortunately, the weight of the layers ended up squishing down the bottom layers, and each day it sat on the cake stand, the purple, blue, and green layers would get a little flatter. Still delicious though! I flavored some of the layers with fruit zest to match their colors (such as lemon zest for the yellow, lime zest for the green, etc.) but some of the layers just had a vanilla flavor. And while I'm usually against using food dyes, I made an exception this time.
Just look at how happy he is!
And this cake is not just for a grown man's birthday cake! It would also be great for a kids' party or an LGBTQ event! Recipe below.
Ingredients:
For each layer of cake:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup vegan butter (1/2 stick)
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp plus 1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or any other extract)
1/2 cup almond milk
various zests and/or flavorings
various dyes
For the frosting:
3 sticks vegan butter
2 pounds confectioner's sugar
2 Tbsp almond milk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Sift dry ingredients together in a small bowl.
In a medium sized bowl, mix sugar and butter until smooth. Add apple cider vinegar and vanilla. Stir until smooth.
Add flour mixture and almond milk, and stir until combined. Add any zests/flavorings/dyes. Pour into a well greased 8-inch cake pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Let cool in the cake pan for about 15 minutes. Then flip over and let the cake fall out of the pan onto a cooling rack. If this doesn't happen easily, smack the bottom of the pan while it's upside down with the heel of your hand a few times. If the cake still doesn't come out, return it to its upright position and let it cool a little longer. Chances are it just needs to solidify a little more before it will come out.
Repeat all of these steps until you get the right number of layers for your desired cake.
To make the frosting, beat together butter, almond milk and powdered sugar until it takes on a frosting-like consistency.
Once all the layers of cake have cooled, place the first one onto a cake stand or serving platter. Frost the top of this layer, then stack another cake layer on top. Continue frosting and stacking until all your layers are assembled. Then frost the sides of the cake, adorn with sprinkles, and then enjoy!
What you see above is my pan soaking in water to try and get the sticky, glued-on chocolate mess off of my pan from my first vegan brownie attempt.
Lately I've been in the mood for gooey, fudgey, super-rich brownies. I had always been under the impression that good vegan brownies would be hard to make, and alas, they are. Unless you like cake-like brownies, in which case, that's no problem. But dense, fudgey brownies are very hard to do without eggs.
I tried to adapt this recipe by replacing the eggs with an over-ripe banana and doubling the flour to get some extra gluten in there. What I ended up with was a delicious goop of buttery chocolate which, while it was quite edible, was not brownies.
Now that I've actually tried to make vegan brownies (instead of just telling people how hard it is to do), I think I will continue to try to make it happen. I can't see how the mess-ups couldn't be delicious!
As promised, I'm back with a vengeance. April has barely begun and hark, I already have a post for you! As a disclaimer, I apologize for my pictures on this one. The dough/cookies are actually bright green (!!!), but no matter how I photographed them, the color just simply wouldn't come through.
As I'm sure you know, there are many types of cooks out there. Just perusing through the plethora of food blogs out there on the Internet, I see everything from house wives wielding box mixes to food artists who have mastered presentation and photography of their baked goods (of which I will be forever envious), from over-the-top tacky combination of pies, cookies, AND cakes, to wonderfully simple yet decadent loveliness. What I'm trying to get at here is that every baker has their own style, and the cookbook I adapted this recipe from is no exception.
My sister gave me this cookbook as my graduation present a little over a year ago, and although its pictures are beautiful and its recipes are really good, I hate reading it. The woman who wrote it just seems so pretentious and like she takes herself (and these recipes) way too seriously. I mean, they're good, but geez, they're not unforgettable, such as the title of her book suggests. I guess that's just her "baking personality" though.
But sometimes, I just like to get myself all riled up over something silly, so I read her intro to this recipe. As she's explaining what green tea powder (matcha) is, she says, "you will probably have to mail-order it unless you have a well-stocked tea purveyor near you". Has this woman ever heard of an Asian supermarket? Guess not.
I got this at the local one (Chun Ching). It doesn't say Matcha Powder on it, but it's the same thing, and it's definitely cheaper here than at a health food store or a tea store! A tiny canister at the health food store here was about $25. This giant bag of it was only $7 at the Asian supermarket.
Anyway, hers turned out prettier than mine, but mine are vegan, so they're better :) Recipe, adapted from Dede Wilson's "Unforgettable Desserts" cookbook, is below!
Ingredients:
2 1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks vegan butter
2 Tbsp green tea powder
1/2 cup sugar
Directions:
Sift flour and salt together in a bowl.
In another bowl, mix butter, green tea powder, and sugar together until fluffy and a uniform green color. Mix in flour mixture until a crumbly dough forms. The dough should come together when you press it with your hands.
Form the dough into a ball with your hands. Sprinkle your counter top with flour and roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter to make as many cookies as you can with the dough. Place on a cookie sheet with parchment paper, then refrigerate for at least one hour.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake for about 15 to 17 minutes. Let cool, and then store on a plate or cookie jar. Devour!
