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Spicy Christmas Fuyu Persimmon Bundt Cake

Published December 14, 2009 Cakes 5 Comments

I know, I know, I promised more holiday cookie recipes, but this sweet and spicy cake I made on Saturday was so good, I have to share it with you first! In the next few days I pinky-swear to post pictures and recipes for holiday cookies, so don’t fear! Keep checking back

The Fuyu persimmons are a non-astringent variety of persimmon (it won’t dry out your mouth, I promise). They are flat, and not pointy like the other type. You want to eat them while they are still firm and crunchy like an apple, and you can eat them peeled or unpeeled. They are very sweet. I love them! It was a good thing we had so many of them growing on our tree outside, although when I made this cake I doubled the recipe and used up every single persimmon we had left! I’m already looking forward to next year’s persimmon tree harvest so much! Previously I posted a recipe to make Dried Persimmons and for Persimmon Granola, and typically the only recipes I’ve found elsewhere for using Fuyus in are for salads, salsas and chutneys. A few years ago, I blended some of the Fuyus up and put them in cookies, and they tasted sweet and very autumn-like, especially because of their beautiful orange color. So, I thought, why not put them into cake? My mom found this recipe online, and it’s originally from an old Sunset Magazine. I’ve adapted it a bit, to make it vegan and a little spicier.

This cake has a near-gingerbread taste, although it has no ginger in it to speak of…Although, it does have a lot of other spices! The cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom really give this cake a wonderfully spicy holiday touch, which was perfect because I brought it to a Christmas party this past Saturday. (Can I just say, I had two Christmas parties to attend on Saturday, and I heard about a few others that were being held at the same time – Hello people, it was only December 12^th, two weeks before Christmas! And it was the second night of Hanukah! Goodness, Christio-normative world!). But I say all this with a grin and an eye-roll directed purely at myself, because I actually really do enjoy Christmas celebrations, especially ones like the cozy, warm, beautiful, and delicious party thrown this weekend by one of my colleagues. And I have many more to look forward to in the coming weeks, which makes me wish I had more persimmons to bake with!

Because of the persimmon’s brilliant orange color, the cake had a deep reddish-orange hue:

Fuyu Persimmon Cake Ingredients:

3 firm Fuyu persimmons peeled and chopped (3 cups)
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup Earth Balance, softened
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 eggs-worth of egg replacer (I used Ener-G, but I think it would also work to substitute cornstarch mixed with water, or ground flax seeds)
3 tsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. pure vanilla
2 cups flour (I used 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour and 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cardamom

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a bundt cake pan.
Blend your persimmons till smooth. Add baking soda and blend till well combined, and then set aside while you mix the other ingredients together.
In a large bowl, beat the Earth Balance with the sugar. Add your egg replacer, lemon juice, and vanilla and beat until fluffy.
Stir in the fuyu mix (it should be much firmer than before, more like a jello-consistency).
Sift together flour, baking powder, ground cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. Fold the dry mix into the wet.
Pour (or spoon, because the batter is thick) into prepared bundt pan. Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake tests clean.
Wait until the cake is cooled to invert and take it out of the pan. Dust with powdered sugar or drizzle with an orange glaze.

Pumpkin Cheesecake with Whipped Coconut Topping

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday yesterday, filled with family and friends, and of course lots of delicious food. Based on my own experience, I suspect that you stuffed yourselves, although hopefully not as much as I did! But, however full I felt last night (and still this morning!), I always enjoy looking at more food, so here is a sample of what I made and ate last night.

For our feast, I made a Pumpkin Cheesecake and topped it with a rich Whipped Coconut Creme. It tasted quite delicious, although definitely more like a pumpkin pie than a cheesecake. I think if I had used a Vitamix or a more powerful food processor, I could have gotten the filling to have a more even consistency (like the one in the original recipe’s picture, here), but nonetheless it tasted great. It had a wonderful pumpkin taste, and the pecans in the crust complemented the fall flavors very nicely. We had a little bit of extra crust dough that I baked separately, and it ended up thick and tasty as a simple shortbread-like cookie on it’s own. The coconut creme was from a recipe in Sweet Freedom, for a sugar-free, gluten-free, soy-free vegan whipped cream. Dolloped on top of the pie, it was rich, sweet, and certainly very creamy, but not as light and fluffy as whipped cream should be. Our consensus was that it would have been very good as a fruit tart filling, and next time I make one I will definitely use this recipe!

Orange Chocolate Cake

Published October 22, 2009 Cakes , Chocolate 4 Comments

My dad’s birthday was last week…or more like two weeks ago…or some time awhile ago (oops) and since I’m a graduate student now I literally have no time to bake or post new blog posts, so really I’m just very behind in posting this recipe. But I hadn’t realized it had been that long. I guess I owe a big apology to my dad and all his friends who I’m sure were checking my blog obsessively (yeah, yeah, I have about 2 readers, who am I kidding?) to see the pictures and get the recipe for this fantastically rich chocolate cake that was dense, delectable, and delicious. And very difficult to stop eating! But that was okay, because it was healthy. Healthy? Cake? Well, it had extra special ingredients that added lots of vitamins and nutrients, so it was healthy, as healthy as a chocolate birthday cake really can be.

The first fruit in the recipe was orange juice, because I wanted a citrus-blast in this chocolate confection. That taste was obvious after the first bite. However, the secret “healthy” ingredient was avocado. Yes, you read that right: Avocado. Before I added the cocoa powder, guess what color the batter was? A lovely bright green! I almost didn’t want to add the cocoa and just savor the neon color, but I knew my dad would appreciate the chocolate cake A LOT so I went for that.

I used a recipe for a chocolate cake that just happened to have avocado in it, and I found the recipe here. I simply substituted fresh orange juice instead of the water that the original recipe called for, and I got an Orange Chocolate Cake! I made an easy Dark Chocolate Ganache to go on the outside of the cake (1 pound of vegan dark chocolate, melted, then blended with plain unsweetened almond milk, then refridgerated for 4 hours till hard enough to spread) and made a quick Orange Buttercream to use as a filling between the three layers of cake and as decoration on the top. The Orange Buttercream was a variation of the Orange Buttercream recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, based on what I had on hand at home. I used orange extract and fresh orange juice and it was delicious.

Orange Buttercream Ingredients:
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegan shortening
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance)
3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 tsp. orange extract
2-5 Tblsp. fresh orange juice

For the frosting, cream together the shortening and margarine until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the orange extract, and continue creaming. Slowly add the orange juice until the frosting reaches your desired consistency, and beat for another 5-7 minutes until fluffy. Spread or pipe onto the tops of your cupcakes in whatever design you choose.

Here’s a shot of the cake, after cutting into it:

Decadent Coconut Layer Cake

Published October 5, 2009 Cakes , Lemon 5 Comments

I baked this incredibly rich and delicious cake for my friends’ triple birthday party last weekend. It was three layers of moist flavorful coconut cake, with homemade vegan Lemon Curd sandwiched between each layer. The citrus from the lemon complemented the coconut in the cake, which really brought out the tropical flavor nicely. I topped it all with a silky smooth coconut frosting that was a treat for every taste bud!

Cake Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup coconut flour
1 cup dried unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1 2/3 cup coconut milk
1 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. apple cider vinegar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans.
In a large bowl, combine AP flour, coconut flour, shredded coconut, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a medium sized bowl, whisk together oil, coconut milk, almond milk, sugar, and vanilla.
Create a well in the middle of the dry ingredients bowl, and pour your wet mix in. Stir together, making sure to smooth out any lumps. Your batter will be fairly thick.
When thoroughly combined, gently fold in the apple cider vinegar, making sure it’s completely incorporated.
Scoop batter into prepared pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Frosting Ingredients:
1/2 cup Earth Balance shortening (or other vegan shortening), room temperature
1/2 cup Earth Balance margarine, room temperature
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup dried shredded coconut (for garnish)

Whip together the margarine and shortening with electric beaters until creamy and fluffy.
Slowly add the powdered sugar, alternating with the coconut milk.
When fully combined, add the vanilla and continue beating till the frosting is smooth.
If the consistency is too runny to spread onto your cake immediately, you can refrigerate it for a few hours until it has thickened.
Spread onto your cake and top with dried coconut.

Zoe’s Fruit Tea Cake

Published September 23, 2009 Breakfast Pastry , Cakes 3 Comments

At the farmer’s market last weekend, my mom was lucky enough to be gifted with 16 nectarines, of various sizes and stages of ripeness. Some had to be eaten right away, their juicy sweetness oozing with every bite. I easily took care of that “problem”. I still had many left over, and I remembered that my friend Zoe makes the most lovely cake that she brings to nearly every brunch that she goes to. No one ever gets sick of it, and I request it even! With this abundance of nectarines, waiting to be consumed, I couldn’t resist borrowing Zoe’s recipe and making her delightful tea cake! You can make it with whatever kind of hard fruit appeals to you…I’ve had it with pears, peaches, nectarines, or plums, and it’s always delicious.

It is simple to make, using simple ingredients and a very quick recipe. I hope you enjoy it.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar + a little for dusting the top of the cake
1/2 cup minus 2 Tblsp. Earth Balance margarine
1/2 cup plain unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla extract
5 Tblsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice, divided
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup flour
2 nectarines, sliced (or other hard fruit)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon, for dusting the top of the cake

Sift flour, baking powder, and baking soda together into a small bowl. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar, and when it is fluffy, add the applesauce, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Mix well. Add the dry ingredients and thoroughly combine. You should have a very stiff batter.
Spread batter evenly into an 8 or 9-inch springform pan, and use a rubber spatula to smooth the top.
Place slices of fruit on the top in a petal formation, skin side up, on top of the batter.
Drizzle 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice on top, evenly. Dust heavily with cinnamon and sugar.
Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 325 and bake for another 40 minutes. Check your cake by sticking a toothpick into the center and if it comes out clean, then it’s done! You want the cake to brown, but not get too crispy.

Agave-Sweetened Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

Published September 12, 2009 Cakes , Peanut Butter , Refined Sugar-Free 17 Comments

It’s birthday party season around here! I made a Hazelnut birthday cake last week for Becca, and this past Friday I baked a Peanut Butter Cake for Talia’s birthday, and Julie’s birthday is coming up (her cake is planned and not going to be nut-themed, don’t worry, I do consume things without nuts these days!). I’ve been planning these cakes for awhile now; all three fabulous women gave me requests for flavors and specific ingredients, and then I got to play around with how to incorporate them and how to design the cakes to fit each person. I love coming up with ideas that match up, and then make the recipient so happy! Watching people eat my baked goods and enjoy them is really my favorite part of baking.

So for Talia’s birthday, she requested a dessert that had peanut butter in it. She also wanted it to not be sweetened with sugar, or to contain chocolate. Tall orders, right? And I’m vegan of course so I only bake that way, which never feels limiting – I just have to be more creative! So here’s what I had to go on: No sugar, no dairy products or eggs, no chocolate, yes peanut butter!

Hm. What to do? I knew exactly which agave-sweetened cake I was going to make, but I was a little stumped on the frosting. I’ve made frosting without sugar before, but it was a dark chocolate ganache-like frosting, or something more like a cashew glaze that I tried (and loved, but didn’t think was the most appropriate birthday cake topping). But since I couldn’t use chocolate, and I wanted a thick spreadable frosting to slather around the birthday cake, I went to my current cake-bible, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Of course they had just what I was looking for! The Super Natural Agave Icing with some added peanut butter would be perfect! I also used their Simple Vanilla and Agave Nectar Cupcake recipe to make my cake base. For both of these recipes, I simply doubled the recipe in the book (and added peanut butter to the icing recipe; I’ve reprinted my adaptations below). I put an extra peanut butter filling in between the three layers of the cake, for added nut-taste-explosion. This filling kept the cake incredibly moist, and the whole thing pretty nearly melted in your mouth!

For her birthday, Talia invented a game for us to play…It was quite a stroke of brilliance! I’m not really a game person, but this one I could seriously get into! I can’t give away all the details about how to play, because I’m hoping Talia will copyright it and will strike it rich, and can support me and my baking for the rest of my life Wouldn’t that be nice?

You may recognize the formatting here a little bit…Some of us are just a little obsessed with Craigslist! We were each given a few random silly phrases that we had to incorporate. This was one result of the game, which was written about me, and was so creative and on-the-fly that I have to share it with you! (Thank you Rachel!):

Ode to what just happened in my mouth – w4w – (living room)

with your crunchy hippie peanut butter
dotted like leopard print
i tried not to give my gasp away
not even a little hint
the flavors swirling ’round my mouth
agave-sweetened yum
i wanted to tell you how heavenly
the cake went into my tum
as cool as i am, didn’t know what to say
so i gave you a little wink
like a catchy bedazzled license plate
i got water from the sink
so maybe i’ll pretend it’s my birthday too
tomorrow and the day after that
you might accidentally make me a cake or 6
and i’ll give you a thank-you hat.

Cake Recipe: I used the Simple Vanilla and Agave Nectar Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I made no changes, just double the recipe so I could make three 9-inch cake layers.

Peanut Butter Creme Filling Ingredients:
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine, room temperature
1/2 cup smooth natural Peanut Butter
1/2 cup light agave nectar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 Tblsp. unsweetened almond milk
2 Tblsp. soy milk powder

Put Earth Balance and peanut butter into the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat for a minute or two, until smooth and well combined. Add the agave and vanilla, and continue mixing. Add the almond milk and soy milk powder and incorporate fully. You can add a little more soy milk powder or almond milk depending on how thin or thick you want the consistency to be. Spread in between layers of cakes!

Peanut Butter Agave Icing Ingredients (adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World):
2/3 cup plain, unsweetened almond milk
2 Tblsp. arrowroot powder
2/3 cup light agave nectar
1/3 cup refined, nonhydrogenated coconut oil
1 cup smooth natural Peanut Butter
1 Tblsp. vanilla extract
1 cup plus 4 Tblsp. plain soy milk powder

In a small saucepan, whisk together almond milk and arrowroot. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wire whisk, till mixture thickens into a puddinglike consistency, about 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and scrape mixture into a medium-size bowl with a heatproof spatula.

Add agave nectar and whisk till combined, then add coconut oil and vanilla extract and whisk again. Add Peanut Butter and beat on medium speed with an electric mixer for 1 minute until incorporated. Add soy milk powder, and beat for another 4-5 minutes, until creamy and smooth. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 40 minutes until mixture is firm, or for best results, allow to chill overnight.

Vegan Nutella Cake and Hazelnut Shortbread Sandwich Cookies

Published September 4, 2009 Cakes , Cookies , Hazelnut 11 Comments

IMG_1276#2

For Becca’s birthday I made her something that I knew she would love. I’ve been planning it for awhile, knowing that her birthday coincided with her first day of classes (she’s starting school to become an American Sign Language interpreter!). She wanted me to make her something that she could take with her, to celebrate her birthday with her new classmates. Since she has to commute, she needed something easy to pack and carry, so it was easy to decide to make sandwich cookies. But, you can’t have a birthday without a birthday cake, and I made her a cake to match her cookies. I know that Becca loves nuts, especially hazelnuts, so that had to be included in the recipes. The cake I made had three layers of Vanilla Sponge Cake, with a rich Hazelnut Creme in between each layer. Mmm. And then the whole cake was smothered in vegan Nutella Buttercream Frosting.

I sandwiched together the Hazelnut Shortbread Cookies with a dark vegan Nutella cream in the middle. Because she’s studying ASL, I made them in the shape of hands! Aren’t they cute? I put some of them around the outside of her cake for extra decoration, and to unify the two birthday desserts.

IMG_1347#2

I’ve had a request for the Nutella Cake recipe, so I’m going to do my best to post it here. Unfortunately, the vegan nutella itself was not homemade, so I can’t share a brilliant recipe for that with you. In Holland, they have vegan nutella (not the brand name variety) stocked in all grocery stores. When I went there this summer, I couldn’t resist bringing back a few jars with me. I’ve already nearly run out – I wish I could just go back and get some more but the fact that I just started graduate school means that I just don’t have the time (or the money, let’s be honest). If you don’t have the luck to have been in Holland recently, you can find a recipe for vegan nutella here, it looks delicious!

The cake itself was a vanilla Sponge Cake from Hannah Kaminsky‘s cookbook My Sweet Vegan.* She uses it as a base for her Green Tea Tiramisu. I just doubled the recipe for cake batter and baked it in three 9-inch round pans. It is a delicious recipe; a dense (but not heavy) golden cake that certainly holds it’s own - it’s sweet and bright flavor makes it easy to adapt since it pretty much supports any flavor you want it to. I’d say it actually brings out more complex flavors in whatever you combine it with. It would be great with a light fruit sauce or jam spread on it, but since this was going to be a birthday cake, I had to make it rich! I made a Hazelnut Creme to go in between the layers, and then made a more traditional vegan Buttercream that I then added the vegan nutella to. The recipes for the spreads are below. If you can’t find hazelnut butter in your grocery store, you can buy regular hazelnuts or filburts and roast them in your oven till they are lightly toasted. Grind them in a food processor until they reach a smooth peanut butter consistency.

*If you don’t have Hannah’s cookbook, you could use your favorite golden vanilla cake recipe and it would be just fine. And I stress just fine. Your cake will still be delicious and hazelnutty and totally satisfying! But, if you want a drop-dead-perfect birthday-celebratory cake, go out and buy Hannah’s cookbook because this cake is GREAT and so is the whole book! You’ll be finding excuses to bake her desserts all the time!

Hazelnut Creme Ingredients:
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
1 cup hazelnut butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
2 Tblsp. plain unsweetened almond milk (or a little more)

Cream Earth Balance with electric beaters in a medium sized bowl. Add the hazelnut butter and combine thoroughly. Slowly add the confectioner’s sugar, beating in between additions until fluffy. Add the almond milk very slowly while continuing to beat with electric beaters, until creme has reached a spreadable consistency.

Vegan Nutella Buttercream Frosting:
1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
1/4 cup vegan shortening (I use Earth Balance brand)
3/4-1 cup vegan nutella/chocolate-hazelnut spread (to taste)
1 3/4 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 Tblsp. plain unsweetened almond milk

Cream Earth Balance and shortening with electric beaters in a medium sized bowl. Add the nutella and continue beating. Add the confectioner’s sugar and flour, and beat until fluffy. Add the almond milk and combine thoroughly. Spread on top of cooled stacked cakes.

Hazelnut Shortbread

Rustic Mango Pudding Cake

Published July 11, 2009 Breakfast Pastry , Cakes , Quick Breads Leave a Comment

I got the idea for this bread from Dorie Greenspan’s fan site “Tuesdays With Dorie” where blogging fans choose a specific recipe of Dorie’s to make each week and then they all bake the same thing and post about it. So it’s kind of like baking together, from all over the world! One such recipe and post was for Dorie’s Fresh Mango Bread. It looked moist and crumbly and delicious. So I had to veganize it and try it out! My version was certainly moist and crumbly and delicious, but perhaps a bit too moist and crumbly! Next time I will try to cut down on the wet ingredients a bit and turn the oven temperature lower (and increase the baking time) so that the inside cooks more. The inside was moist and pudding-like, especially with the chunks of gooey mango and chewy raisins. The inside firmed up a bit by the next morning, and it was actually quite a nice soft texture. I liked that the outside had a bit of crunch to it. And the taste! Yum. All the ginger and cinnamon spices were delightful, and the lime juice adds a lovely zing. It’s sweet but not too-sweet, was a great dessert cake (with a scoop of vanilla ice cream it would be divine!), and also was a great breakfast cake. Come on, admit it, you like to eat cake for breakfast, and this one is actually mildly healthy (just forget all the white flour, sugar, oil, etc. But it does have fruit in it! So that counts for something, I’d say).

I’ve written out my adapted recipe below; You can choose to lower the oven temperature or the amount of liquid if you want to.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup plain soy yogurt
3/4 canola oil
2.5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
2 cups diced fresh mango
3/4 cup moist, plump golden raisins
Grated zest of 1/2 lime
Juice of 1/2 lime
Topping:
1/4 cup of dried shredded coconut
1/8 cup chopped cashews

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8.5 x 4.5 inch loaf pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess. Put the pan on an insulated baking sheet or on two regular baking sheets stacked one on top of the other. (This extra insulation will keep the bottom of the bread from overbaking).

Whisk the soy yogurt and oil together. Add the sugars and continue whisking.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry, switch to a sturdy rubber spatula or wooden spoon and mix until blended — the batter will be very thick (really more like a dough than a batter) and not easily mixed, but persevere, it will soon come together. Stir in the mango, raisins, zest, and lime juice. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle the coconut and chopped cashews on top.

Bake the bread for 1.5 hours, or until it is golden brown and a thin knife inserted into the center comes out clean. (If the bread looks as if it’s getting too brown as it bakes, cover it loosely with a foil tent – shiny side of foil facing up). I did this at 45 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before running a knife around the sides of the pan and unmolding. Invert and cool to room temperature right side up on the rack. Let cool completely before slicing.

Three Layer Lemon Carrot Cake

Published July 7, 2009 Cakes , Lemon 2 Comments

For Jesse and Tara’s roommate Paul’s birthday, he requested a carrot cake with cream cheese icing. I have a great stand-by recipe, and it is one of my favorite cakes to make, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to make it for him.

There was a minor mishap because we used a pan that was too big for the amount of cake batter that we had, and our two layers of carrot cake were quite thin. Instead of stressing out about it too much, we decided that it was a great opportunity for us to make a third layer! Paul chose a lemon cake layer to go in between the two carrot cakes, and that sounded perfect!

I used a sponge cake recipe from Hannah Kaminsky’s My Sweet Vegan for the lemon layer, but I added a bunch of freshly squeezed lemon juice and lemon zest. This layer ended up looking fantastic! The top was beautifully browned, and was crisp and crunchy, and had a lovely split in the top-center so you could see the lighter yellow cake underneath. However, when we cut into the finished cake to eat it, this layer was quite gelatinous. It seemed a bit undercooked, but unlike most raw cake batters it was the consistency of a heavy lemon custard, more like a lemon pie or something. I had been the recipient of a cake made from this recipe for sponge cake before, and it had worked out perfectly and was fluffy and beautiful…I had imagined that the added lemon juice this time would react with the baking soda and would puff the cake up even more. However, I think we either added too much lemon juice (so there was too much liquid overall) or else our baking times and temperature were incorrect. We hadn’t wanted to burn the top while baking so maybe we just had the oven temperature too high? It wasn’t what we had envisioned, but it still tasted nice anyway, especially with the cinnamon flavors in the carrot cake and the lemon zest that we added to the cream cheese frosting.

This is the crispy top of our lemon cake. Isn’t it pretty?Here is my carrot cake recipe. I’ve had it for years and it never fails to be moist and delicious! It’s easy to change it or put different mix-ins into it, depending on what flavors or textures you want. I’ve made it into many successful cakes and cupcakes and it’s always a hit! This makes a thick 9×13-inch cake, or else two 9-inch round layers.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 mashed bananas**
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup canola oil
1 Tblsp. vanilla extract
3 cups grated carrot
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon (or use mostly cinnamon and add a bit of nutmeg and ground cloves for added flavor)
Depending on what flavors I want, I often add liberal amounts of: chopped nuts, raisins, grated coconut, or chocolate chips.

**Sometimes I also replace some or all of the bananas with applesauce. I use a ratio of 1/2 banana = 1/3 cup applesauce.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round pans, or one 9×13-inch sheet cake pan.
Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the wet ingredients in another bowl. Combine and stir until just mixed.
Bake for about one hour but check often after cake has been in the oven for 45 minutes. It should be firm to the touch but moist inside.
Cream Cheese Icing Recipe:
*Note: Usually I just make it up as I go along, but this is a good starting point. On the top and sides of our cake, we used a basic cream cheese icing, and in between the layers we used a lemon cream cheese icing (we just added lemon zest and a bit of juice to the cream cheese icing we had already made).

Blend the following ingredients with an electric beater till extremely creamy:
8 oz. Tofutti cream cheese
2 Tblsp. Earth Balance (or other non-dairy margarine)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2-3 cups powdered sugar (add until you get desired consistency)

Pumpkin Seed Oil Cake

Published June 22, 2009 Cakes , Pumpkin , Quick Breads Leave a Comment

IMG_9463#2 Tara’s mom lives in Vienna, and a popular item there is Pumpkin Seed Oil! They eat it on salads as a dressing, and there is a pound cake that is made with it as well. Pumpkin Seed Oil has an intense and exquisite nutty taste, and is rich in essential fatty acids, so it’s very good for you, as well as producing a great green color to anything it touches!

Tara was so excited about the oil that her mom very generously gave us some, and today we baked the cake! We had to pretty radically adjust the recipe to make it vegan, because it used a lot of butter and eggs. But we came up with something good and it worked very well. Our cake was a deep green and a good heavy consistency. As it wasn’t too sweet, it would be great as a brunch item (with green eggs and ham?), but we got a little creative and added a few different sauces and icings to sweeten it up. You can see from the photo above, that we made a cashew icing that I’ve used before, from Hannah Kaminsky’s blog. This time I wanted it thicker, so I simply doubled the amount of cashews. As usual, it was delightfully creamy and rich. It was perfect paired with the cake!

Continue reading ‘Pumpkin Seed Oil Cake’

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