Saturday was my birthday, so I baked myself a cake. Happy birthday to me!

Since it was my birthday, I chose to have a chocolatey chocolate cake. What else? The cake recipe was from veganbaking.net, topped and filled with a (not quite) double amount of Rich Chocolate Ganache from of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, p. 143, and drizzled with melted white chocolate. A friend helped with the strawberry arrangement. I would never have thought to stand them on end like that, but I was quite pleased with the result.

A few notes on the recipe:

• If you're looking for a rich vegan chocolate cake, this is a good one. You could look at it as a rich chocolate cake, or a light mud cake. Either way, it was good.
• The cake recipe explicitly said to use natural, not Dutch processed cocoa powder, and someone commented that they had had poor results using dutched cocoa. However, I bought a 5kg bag of organic fair trade Dutch processed cocoa powder earlier this year... The cake still rose as it should have. If you're Australian and confused about what I'm talking about, most cocoa in Australia is dutched.
• I didn't have any bread flour on hand, so I mixed vital wheat gluten/gluten flour into ordinary plain flour. Use 1 teaspoon per cup. I removed the equivalent amount of plain flour first, or, in other words, used 1 teaspoon of gluten flour for 1 cup minus 1 teaspoon of flour, though that may have been unnecessarily pedantic.
• I went easy on the espresso powder, because I didn't want a coffee flavour in my cake.
• There are two layers of cake here, sandwiched with chocolate ganache. To do this, I doubled the recipe and spread it between two cake tins. 
• Be careful watching the cake towards the end. I tested mine at the minimum time, and it was still underbaked, but a few minutes later, the toothpick came out completely clean, and I was aiming for not quite clean to ensure moistness - and it was on the dry side, though not badly so.
• There is a lot of cake here. You could get at least 16 slices out of this.
• I need to figure out how to ice the sides of a cake without also icing the plate...
• To do the white chocolate drizzle, I used a small round icing tip. However, if you don't have any icing tips, you should still be able to get a good effect using one of these methods
• Just dip a spoon in melted chocolate and gently drizzle it from a height. This will produce a thick and thin result, but I've done it in the past for other applications, and it still looks great.
• Snip the corner off a ziplock bag, fill it with melted chocolate, and use the snipped off corner as make-shift piping tip. The hole should small, err on the small side, you can always make it bigger.

My first multi-step decorated cupcakes

No new recipes today, I'm afraid, But I have some pictures of my recent efforts that I want to share. Yesterday was a good friend's birthday, and as I'm finished exams (Yay me!), I tried my hand at some decorated cupcakes to take along. This is only my second attempt at piping icing, and my first attempt at 2-part piping (the buttercream, and the ganache), but I think they looked impressive enough, if not exactly the product of an experienced and steady hand. Unfortunately, most of the photos didn't turn out (the photos of all the cupcakes laid out in rows for a start), but here are a couple of half-decent ones.

The recipe I used was the Peanut Butter Bombs on p. 37-38 of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World . I followed the instructions exactly, except that I only used 2 cups of icing sugar in the frosting instead of 2.5, and didn't add any soymilk to thin it out as a result. The icing was still more than sweet enough. I was a bit concerned that with less sugar, the icing mightn't be stiff enough, but I iced them the night before, and the icing was still well-defined the next day. I also sprinkled them with crushed nuts instead of chocolate shavings, for no particular reason.

I can see more decorated cupcakes in my future.

Vegan butter

Giving up butter was a major hurdle for me in going vegan. Let's face it, Nuttlex tastes rather like the solidified grease it is, and while I know of one other brand of vegan margarine in Australia, I'm not prepared to go to a health food store to buy my butter alternative, nor am I prepared to pay health food store prices. In fact, I've never even tried Melrose. So Nuttlex it was, and it did the job in some contexts, even while it failed miserable on hot fresh bread or on pancakes.

So when I came across a recipe for homemade vegan butter that claimed to taste just like the real thing, it caught my attention. It took me a while to track down all the ingredients, but it was definitely worth it. I've made it a number of times now, and while there's still some Nuttlex sitting in my fridge, it's been abandoned - I haven't had to replace it since I discovered this recipe. While I don't think it tastes exactly like dairy butter (it has a faint coconut aroma for a start, though that could be the oil that I'm using), it's an excellent alternative, not just a lacklustre replacement.

The only problem is that I always want to make a tipple batch (to fill my giant ice cube tray), and the original recipe is awkward to multiply out. This is further complicated by the fact that Australian cups and tablespoons are slightly different to US ones, something that I usually ignore, but in this case, I find it important to measure as accurately as possible. As such, I've reproduced Mattie's genius recipe below, with measurements converted to Australian units and tripled. I've also modified the steps slightly to incorporate some things I found helpful. However, I highly recommend you also read his spiel about how and why it all works. If you like this one, you might want to try some of his other vegan butter recipes. So far, I've also made the garlic butter, which was amazing, though not quite as versatile.

Vegan Butter

Makes: 6 x 100g (approx) blocks
Tripled and updated for Australians, with permission, from veganbaking.net

Notes

• Making smooth Vegan Butter is dependent on the mixture solidifying as quickly as possible after it's mixed. So when melting your coconut oil, be careful to just barely melt it. I find that a few floating lumps are dealt with just fine by my blender. If you're doing this on a hot day, you may actually need to cool your oil in the fridge before you start.
• Mattie recommends using this ice cube tray, and I also find that it does the job very nicely. However, any small container will do the trick.
• I know weird, hard to pronounce ingredients like lecithin and xanthan gum are scary to a lot of people. However, I know where they come from, what purpose they're serving, and I consume them only in moderation - probably a lot less than the average person since I rarely consume packaged foods. Don't tell me about health risks, I'm not interested. If you're concerned, just don't make this recipe.
• I wanted to avoid using multiple teaspoon increments on all these measurements, but unfortunately, without using non-standard kitchen measuring tools, it's not possible to be accurate enough going by weight for such small quantities, and I don't have anything to measure small quantities of liquid by volume. Sorry.
• Some advice on chasing down ingredients:
• Lecithin granules can be found in the health food section of Coles or Woolworths. I believe that liquid lecithin would give a better result and I intend to track some down, but the granules are fine for a first try.
• Coconut vinegar can be hard to find. My local Asian Grocer didn't stock it, but I found it at the Asian Grocer at the Prahran Market, and it was dirt cheap. If you're not in Melbourne, you're on your own as far as finding it goes, but if you can't find it, just use all apple cider vinegar.
• I found xanthan gum in a health food store. You may also be able to find it in Coles or Woolworths in the health food aisle. It's a common additive for gluten free baking.
• I haven't yet found a good bulk source of refined coconut oil. Currently, I'm using this coconut oil, but as it's purified and deodorised rather than refined, it leaves a faint though not unpleasant coconut flavour. If you know of another source, please let me know in the comments.

Ingredients

• 200mL soy milk
• 1 ½ teaspoons apple cider vinegar 
• 1 ½ teaspoons coconut vinegar
• 1 + ⅛ teaspoons salt
• 390g refined coconut oil
• 2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon canola oil, light olive oil or rice bran oil
• 3 teaspoons liquid soy lecithin or liquid sunflower lecithin OR 1 tablespoon + 2 ¾ teaspoons soy lecithin granules
• ¾ teaspoon xanthan gum or 1 ⅞ teaspoons psyllium husk powder

Method

1. Measure out soy milk in a small measuring jug, and add vinegar(s) and salt. If using lecithin granules, add now to give them time to soften. Whisk together with a fork, and let stand for about 10 minutes, until it curdles and thickens.
2. Meanwhile, melt the coconut oil in the microwave so it's barely melted.
3. Add the coconut oil, soy milk mixture, canola oil, lecithin (if not already added), and xanthan gum to a food processor or blender.
4. Blend/process for about 2 minutes, scraping down the sides halfway through if necessary. If using lecithin granules, you may need to process for slightly longer.
5. Pour the mixture into a mould and immediately place it in the freezer to solidify. Depending on how cold your freezer is set, it should be ready in 1-3 hours.
6. Store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 month or wrapped in plastic wrap or in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 1 year.

Happy Birthday Hunter! (vegan vanilla sponge cake with buttercream frosting)

It was Hunter's birthday yesterday. I asked him what sort of cake he wanted for his birthday, and he said "a sponge cake". Seriously, what sort of person, given an open choice of cakes, selects sponge cake? Where's the richness? Where's the decadence? Where's the adventure? Ok, scrap that last one, there's plenty of adventure to be had in baking my first ever sponge cake, using an untested vegan recipe, in a never-before-baked in oven, and along the way doing my first ever decorated cake. How have I got this far in life without ever decorating a cake?

After failing to find a recipe on any of my trusted vegan recipe sources, I did a lot of Googling, and settled on using this cake recipe, but went back to the trusted veganbaking.net for the buttercream frosting.

Based on the comments below the cake recipe, I reduced the sugar down to just over 150g, and it was plenty sweet enough, especially with the icing. The cake as a whole was good, but not excellent. It was light, but didn't have the airy softness of a truly good sponge, and I think next time I might need to try a slightly more complicated recipe, maybe this one, which I decided against because I didn't feel like also trying to make yoghurt on a cold winter's day.

For the buttercream frosting, I made a double batch (one for the middle and one for the top), but thought I'd only use the amount of sugar for one batch, and then slowly work up. In fact, I didn't need to add any more than that, it was already very sweet, and I could have comfortably used even less. The flavour blend in the icing was amazing, and I definitely recommend it, just adjust the sweetness to taste. The only problem was that as the cake was rather domed in shape, some of the strawberries exhibited an unwelcome tendency to be more interested in being friends with the plate rather than with the cake. This may have been at least partially due the the reduced sugar in the icing affecting its stiffness.

Overall, the cake was a success, and I have decided that sponge cakes, while never destined to be my first choice, need not actually be that boring after all. The birthday was also good. We had some friends over and played some games, though unfortunately we didn't have time for any Magic. Due to an organizational glitch I had to leave for a few hours to do some tutoring, and then we all went to see Guardians of the Galaxy. Happy Birthday for yesterday, Hunter.

Rich chocolate brownies with raspberries

Game of Thrones is over for the year. Ok, so the last episode came out over a week ago, but evening work and the fact that we have a friend with an awesome TV set-up, means that we've usually watched Game of Thrones on the Friday rather than the Monday night.

To ensure we had something to lift our spirits after what was bound to be another depressing episode, I made my favourite (so far) chocolate brownie recipe. Mattie is truly a culinary genius. These are not just good vegan brownies. They are excellent brownies by anyone's standards, that also happen to be vegan. Even so, however, I couldn't resist changing them up a bit.

Instead of the walnuts, I stirred in about 1/3 cup frozen raspberries, and a handful of un-melted vegan chocolate chips, just to give it a bit of extra chocolateyness. Make sure you use frozen raspberries. I let mine partially thaw, and they kinda disintegrated when I mixed them in. I also left out the coffee.

The extra chocolate is a must, and the raspberries were a were a successful experiment. Rich and chocolately and fudgey, with raspberries. So said everyone, although I am still secretly dreaming about finding a way of making the brownies even richer...

As an aside, the last time I made this recipe, I didn't have any vegan butter, so I subbed in coconut oil, and while they were delicious, they were also a bit greasy. Do not use coconut oil, use vegan butter. If you can't be bothered making vegan butter, you can get away with using a combination of vegan margarine (such as Nuttlex), and coconut oil, which is what I did the first time I made these. You might also get away with pure Nuttlex, even though the instructions explicitly say not to... If you try that, let me know how it works.