We celebrated a special lady's birthday last weekend which challenged me to make a vegan cake for her. This was my first attempt and a proud one - you can get creative with your caking toppings too!
Ingredients
Applesauce
6 apples, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
Cake
2 cups unsweetened almond milk (I used almond breeze)
2 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 ¼ cup homemade apple sauce
2/3 melted coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ¼ cup flour (I used self-rising)
1 1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
Frosting
1 cup vegan butter (softened)
3 cups powdered sugar
¾ cup cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup almond milk (unsweetened)
Applesauce
Peel and chop 6 red apples. Boil a pot with enough water to cover apples, once boiling, add apples, cinnamon, and sugar, and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes
After, drain water and mash the apples with a potato masher and/or blend in a food processor. Place aside to use in the recipe.
Directions
Cake
Preheat oven to 180C/350F and grease two 8-inch round cake tins or 1 large rectangle pan (I used three small, shallow tins that were all different sizes oops). Dust with cocoa powder and shake out excess.
Mix the 1 ½ cups almond milk with vinegar in a large bowl, leave it for 5 minutes to activate. Add remaining almond milk, coconut oil, vanilla extract and applesauce and beat until foamy with a hand or standing mixer (if the coconut oil hardens, head mixture in microwave for 10-15 seconds).
Add the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to a sifter and slowly sift over the wet ingredients while mixing with a mixer. If you don’t have a sifter, just make sure to mix all the dry ingredients together and break up another large lumps. Beat until there are no lumps and the mixture is creamy.
Divide/pour (depends on the tin) your cake batter.
Bake for 25-30 minutes (I did 27 minutes) until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow it to cool completely before adding any frosting.
Icing
While the cake cools, prepare the frosting by beating together all the ingredients. Add powdered sugar in small amounts until its thick and your desired consistency. If its too thick you can try thin it out with almond milk; otherwise if it’s too thin, add more powdered sugar. I left the icing to cool for one hour, so it was thicker when I iced the cake.
Preparing the cake
Once the cake is cooled, frost the cake generously with the frosting. If a 2-layered cake, add a thick layer of frosting between the bottom and top layers, and then frost entire cake.
Decorations
I used fresh flowers on this cake. The trick is to wash them carefully and to give them enough time to dry. Once they've dried, cut the stem to about 1-inch, and poke a tooth pick into the bottom of the stem. Wrap the toothpick and step entirely with tin foil (or masking tape). This helps avoid the actual flowers touching the cake! You can also decorate with shredded coconut, crumbled cake bits, chocolate, oreo's or anything else!
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