Many Cakes

As predicted, I did not get a chance to post all weekend. The boy and I went downstate Friday and came back Monday, only to have to rush and prep dinner for seven, as his extended family was visiting his parents and they wanted to come see the house. I was cooking the entire time I was away pretty much though, so I do have a few pictures to share.

My Nana turned 90 over the weekend, and wanted a big party, hence my trip downstate. I helped cook a bunch of stuff including two cakes. I used Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World recipes and made 9 inch round cakes. Each one recipe of cupcakes makes one layer of an 8 or 9 inch round cake, if you ever want to convert them. It tends to take an extra 10 minutes or so in the oven, but they bake up just fine!

This first cake is a hazelnut cake with raspberry filling, vanilla butter cream, and chocolate ganache. The raspberry filling is from the Raspberry chocolate chip blondie recipe out of Vegan with a Vengeance. This cake had a major structural problem and the entire back end pulled out from under it when I tried to remove the wax paper (to protect the serving platter) after I decorated the cake, hence the downward slope in the back.


The second cake was a Vanilla Agave cake with Lemon Buttercream decorated with pomegranate seeds, blueberries, strawberries and kiwis.

And, while many guests commented on how beautiful they were, the cakes mostly went untouched in favor of this bakery monstrosity: (And it's not even because it was "ew vegan cake" or anything since no one knew it but my immediate family)

My dad did say my vanilla agave cake with lemon frosting was the best tasting of all 3 of them :P

Ahem, moving right along...

Last night for dessert I made a pumpkin chocolate chip cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. It was super yummy and really moist, despite the cake having been made a solid week ago and frozen (made the frosting fresh last night). The decorating left a bit to be desired, but after the other two this weekend, I was about fancied out, so it's just drizzled with chocolate and sprinkled with fall themed sprinkles.


Here's a graphic inside shot for you folks who are into that sort of thing:

And so, that is my tale of three cakes. I think I'm just about caked out for a while now!!

Mom's Apple Cake

Can you tell school started again on August 28th? Yep, it's been busy around here. I've had to get more creative with my meal planning since I get home late at least one night a week, but we've still been eating! I have pictures that I have to figure out what recipes coordinate with them, and some I should have finished jotting down the ingredients as I went along. Here's one that I do have a recipe written down for, and pictures!

This is a veganization and slight altering of my mother's apple cake. I only call it my mother's because she used to make it, though she didn't invent the recipe, someone gave it to her. It is VERY sweet and very rich, and also really moist and delicious. To celebrate the beginning of fall, I made the cake with apples, pears, and dried cranberries, whereas Mom's is just apples. All apples is good, and all pears would probably be good too! If you want to use pears, be sure to choose ones that aren't too ripe since they'll just disintegrate.



Mom's Apple Cake
5 cups apples OR 2 1/2 cups each apples and pears; peeled, cored and diced
1/2 cup dried cranberries (optional)
5 tsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup crushed pecans or walnuts (I like pecans)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup plain or vanilla soy-yogurt
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup orange juice
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

1. In a large bowl, toss together the fruit, 5 tsp sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.

2. In another large bowl (or the mixing bowl to your mixer), beat together sugar, soygurt, vanilla, orange juice and oil.

3. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add to the wet ingredients until combined. Do not overmix.

4. Thoroughly grease and flour a tube pan (you can see I didn't do a good enough job and I couldn't get the cake off the middle!). Layer the cake batter and fruit in the grease pan as follows: batter -> fruit -> batter -> fruit -> batter -> fruit. Try to do about 1/3 of each for each layer. The fruit from the previous layer often peeks through. That's fine.

5. Bake for 90 minutes, but DO NOT open the oven during baking! Let it cool, then fight to remove it from the pan.