Smooth Sailing: Vegan Vanilla Rum Cake

Armed with one recipe in my arsenal, I set out to acquire more.  Next event: Mother’s Day 2011.  Since I came up short on my Mom’s birthday last year, I wanted to create something special for her and my grandmother.  My all-time favorite cake has to be the St. Honoré Cake from Dianda’s Italian American Pastry in the Mission District of San Francisco.  An exquisite rum-soaked vanilla sponge cake filled with pastry cream placed on top a layer of flaky caramel pâte brisée and surrounded by light and puffy profiteroles.  In short, Heaven on a plate.  This cake was the only thing I asked for on my 21st birthday, and again for my 33rd.

My 33rd Birthday

Now there was absolutely no way I was going to attempt Veganizing this holy grail of cakes.  Some things are much too sacred to be tampered with.  And obviously I don’t yet possess the skill to create such a marvelous masterpiece.  With my current ability, I set forth in creating a Vegan Vanilla Rum Cake with Pastry Cream filling.  First things first, how to make a vanilla cake.  It’s not as easy as it may seem.  I was afraid all of the Vegan substitutions were going to overpower the delicate flavor of the vanilla.  Would the egg replacers, margarine, soy milk, apple sauce and such not allow the vanilla to shine through?  I needed to search for a much simpler recipe.

Thumbing through the internet, I found that some folks were having success baking the Golden Vanilla recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World as a layer cake.  So I gave it a try and it worked.  What a huge relief to have a recipe succeed on the first trial run.  The only substitution I made was canola oil for the margarine because I didn’t want a butter flavored cake.  Cake recipe, checked.

Ms. Daisy

My next challenge was to make Vegan Pastry Cream, but it proved to not be a challenge at all.  Classic pastry cream is an involved process including separating eggs, tempering yolks in milk, and delicate work at the stove top.  Without the worry of it turning into sugary scrambled eggs, making Vegan pastry cream couldn’t be any easier.  Pastry cream recipe, checked.

The last piece of the puzzle was presentation.  I couldn’t just willy-nilly slap strawberries on top of the cake, as I had done previously.  I wanted it to appear more elegant.  I searched through Google Images for some inspiration and discovered that there are so many ways to sculpt a simple strawberry into small edible pieces of art.  What drew my attention were the strawberry rose garnishes.  I found a tutorial on YouTube revealing how simple it is to create these little gems.  Although, at first glance, his technique paired with the throbbing epic music made me anxious that he would hack off a finger.  Don't worry, the video is safe to watch.  Presentation, checked.

All there was left to do was to construct the cake.  When I arrived at my Mom’s house, the look on her face upon reveal made me take pride in my work.  In the end, all that mattered was that Mom and Grandma were pleased.

Vegan Vanilla Rum Cake with Pastry Cream Filling

(Based on Golden Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)

Dry Ingredients:

 2 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

4 tbs Corn Starch
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Sea Salt

Wet Ingredients:

1/4 cup Soy Milk + 2 tsp Raw Apple Cider Vinegar

2/3 cup Canola Oil

1 1/2 cup Sugar
1 3/4 cup Soy Milk

4 tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 320ºF.  Add vinegar to 1/4 cup soy milk and reserve.  Sift together dry ingredients into a medium sized bowl.

Pour oil and sugar into a large bowl and beat with a wire whisk until well incorporated.  Whisk in 1 3/4 cup soy milk and vanilla.  Fold in dry ingredients.  Lastly, fold in soy milk and vinegar mixture.  Pour into two 9-inch cake pans and bake for 27-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Allow cakes to cool. 

Rum Syrup

1/4 cup Dark Rum

1/3 cup Water

1/2 cup Sugar

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over low heat to dissolve sugar.  Allow to cool to room temperature.  When cooled, brush syrup over cooled cake layers with a pastry brush until absorbed.

Pastry Cream Filling

(Based on Vegan Pastry Cream by The Vegan Chef)

1/2 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 cups Vanilla Soy Milk
1/3 cup Sugar
1 pinch Sea Salt

2 tsp Vanilla Extract
3 tbs Earth Balance Vegan Margarine

Place flour in a small bowl and whisk in 1/2 cup soy milk.  In a small saucepan, pour remaining soy milk, sugar and salt, and whisk to combine.  Add flour mixture and cook over medium heat while whisking constantly until mixture thickens (around 5 minutes).  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and margarine.

Place in a glass bowl and cover the cream directly with plastic wrap to avoid a skin being formed.  Place in the fridge until thoroughly chilled.

Rum Buttercream Frosting

6 tbs Earth Balance Vegan Margarine
6 tbs Earth Balance Natural Shortening
2 1/4 cups Powdered Sugar
2 tbs Rum
2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Using an electric hand mixer, cream margarine and shortening until light and fluffy.  Add powdered sugar in stages.  Lastly, mix in rum and vanilla.
  

Disaster, Disaster, Divine: Vegan Chocolate Rum Cake

With newfound confidence, I stepped onto the path towards successfully baking a Vegan cake.  First stop, my old friend Google.  I ran a search for "Vegan Cake" and stumbled upon a plethora of recipes.  Which one should I try out first?

In a few weeks, a good friend had planned a weekend getaway to celebrate her birthday, Passover, and Easter in one big shebang. This gave me a goal and a time-frame.  Rather than exploring a contrived and complicated recipe, I decided to keep it simple: chocolate cake.  Since the Vegan brownies were a success, I figured staying in the realm of chocolate would keep me safe.  So I chose a recipe that seemed fairly basic and easy, gathered the ingredients, followed the directions, and popped it in the oven.  What resulted was a brown gooey mess similar to the red massacre that befell my kitchen the last time I attempted to bake a cake.  What was I doing wrong?  I was starting to feel like baking a Vegan cake was next to impossible.  Cupcakes, sure.  A glorious multilayered thing of beauty, no way.  Baking a cake was quickly becoming the unicorn of my Vegan cooking repertoire.  But I wasn’t about to give up.  I was on a mission and my obsessive tendencies were getting the best of me.

Rather than sifting through more recipes, I thought, what better way to get proof of a successful recipe than to see one created before my own eyes.  Exit Google, enter YouTube and one of its sweetest stars, The Sweetest Vegan.  The video of her orgasmic Devil’s Food Cake recipe piqued my interest, and had me salivating.  Not only did her cake rise beautifully, it also looked oh so rich, tender and moist.  I went to my cupboard, measured the ingredients, mixed it all together per the instructions and popped it in the oven.  My kitchen smelled heavenly and when I peeked through the oven window, I noticed the cake was rising…including the middle.  “Success!” or so I thought.  About ten minutes before the cake should’ve been done baking, I noticed the middle starting to sink.  As the cake cooled, I had a solid 1-inch height around the edges, but the middle had sunk to less than half an inch.  I was able to stack and frost the cake, although it had a huge crater in the center.  Rather than throwing out another cake, I decided to bring this one over to my Mom’s house for a family dinner.  It tasted amazing, but I wasn’t fully content.

Were my cake pans problematic?  Was my oven not calibrated correctly?  Weren't my ingredients fresh?  I quickly turned back to Google in search of answers.  I ditched my cake pans for a nicer set (Thank you, HomeGoods).  I followed advice to bake at a lower temperature to avoid doming (although, I was getting the opposite effect).  I also tested the Baking Powder and Baking Soda, which were purchased only a couple months prior and were still active.

The weekend getaway was less than a week away and I was rapidly running out of time.  One evening, I finished teaching earlier than usual and rather than idly sitting in front of the TV, I went to the kitchen and cut the recipe in half to make one cake layer.  I painstakingly measured out the ingredients (difficult to measure half of 3/4 of a teaspoon), mixed the batter together, and realized the consistency was a lot wetter than in the past.  I goofed!  I halved all of the ingredients except for the water.  I didn’t want to measure the ingredients and make the batter again, so I had to rely on instinct.  I added some flour into the mixture to slightly thicken it, poured it into a pan and baked it.  It’s a lot easier to throw away a solid cake than liquid batter.  I set the kitchen timer, plopped in front of the TV and waited for the batter to solidify.  I knew I was going to toss it into the trash (an act I was familiar with), so I didn’t care to peek at it periodically as I had done with every other attempt.  The timer started beeping, I grabbed the oven mitts, opened the door, and lo and behold I had a cake!  Not only did I have cake, but much to my amazement, it had risen evenly.  I fought the urge to immediately cut right into it and allowed the cake to cool, all the while praying it wouldn't deflate.  Delighted, the cake maintained its height.  But how was it going to taste?  Cue the choir of angels.  After a year of letdowns, a Vegan cake was born.

With a few more tweeks, I had a recipe for Vegan chocolate cake that actually worked.  And just in time for the weekend getaway.  My old habit of adding booze to cake recipes arose and I altered the recipe to a Chocolate Rum Cake.  Although crudely decorated, my friends and I enjoyed the moist boozy cake, and I was satisfied in knowing that baking a Vegan cake is possible.

Vegan Chocolate Rum Cake with Rum Buttercream Filling

(Based on "Britney Spears Femme Fatale Album DEVILS FOOD CAKE" by The Sweetest Vegan)

Dry Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
3/4 cup Cocoa
2 tbs Corn Starch
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Sea Salt

Wet Ingredients:
1/4 cup Soy Milk + 1 tbs Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
3 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer + 4 tbs Water

12 tbsp Earth Balance Vegan Margarine

1 3/4 cups Sugar
2 cups Water
1/4 cup Unsweetened Apple Sauce

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 320ºF.  Add vinegar to 1/4 cup soy milk and reserve.  Stir egg replacer and 4 tbs water, reserve.  Sift together dry ingredients into a medium sized bowl.

Using an electric hand mixer, cream margarine and sugar in a large bowl.  Add egg replacer mixture, water, apple sauce, and vanilla to combine until smooth.  Fold in dry ingredients.  Lastly, fold in soy milk and vinegar mixture.  Pour into two 9-inch cake pans and bake for 27-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Allow cakes to cool. 

Rum Syrup

1/4 cup Dark Rum

1/3 cup Water

1/2 cup Sugar

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over low heat to dissolve sugar.  Allow to cool to room temperature.  When cooled, brush syrup over cooled cake layers with a pastry brush until absorbed.

Rum Buttercream Filling

3 tbs Earth Balance Vegan Margarine

3 tbs Earth Balance Natural Shortening

1 1/2 cups Powdered Sugar

1 tbs Dark Rum

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Using an electric hand mixer, cream margarine and shortening until light and fluffy.  Add powdered sugar in stages.  Lastly, mix in rum and vanilla.

Decadent Chocolate Rum Frosting

1 12 oz. pkg Extra Firm Silken Tofu, vacuum packed (I use Mori-Nu brand)

3/4 cup Vegan Chocolate Chips, melted in double boiler (I use Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips from Trader Joe's)

2 tbs Dark Rum

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Blend tofu, melted chocolate, rum and vanilla in a blender until smooth.  Chill in the refrigerator until thickened to desired spreading consistency (around 20-30 minutes).

Flops and Fruition: The "Fudgiest" Brownies I’ve Ever Tasted

A month after my first cupcake experiment, I made the announcement that I was going to bake a cake for my Mom’s birthday the following month.  At the time, I was adhering to the “Superhero” phase of Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet, which is a strict macrobiotic Vegan plan.  Because I suffer from an obsessive personality, I was determined to create a delicious and healthy version of my Mom’s then favorite cake du jour: Red Velvet Cake.  I was up to my ears in substitutions: how to substitute non-gluten flour mix for all-purpose flour, agave syrup for white sugar, beet juice for food coloring, in addition to the normal substitutions for dairy and eggs.  It’s no surprise that the cake flopped.  It baked fine around the outer ring, but the inside of the cake was a mass of red goop.  Thankfully, it tasted fine (concern with beet juice in baked goods diminished), but there was no way to salvage that molten lava of a disaster.  So I made a few changes and gave it another chance, resulting in another kitchen disaster.  I desperately tried to save it, foolishly stacking and frosting the second attempt, but it ripped apart and thick sticky glop was all over the counter top. Blood red cake was everywhere: on my face, in my hair, in my fingernails, and probably even in my ears. One quick glance in the mirror, and I could have been easily mistaken for a cold stone serial killer caught fresh after stabbing his victim multiple times in the back.  Okay, so I exaggerate.  But I, like the cake, was a hot mess.  Disheartened, I scrubbed away the final remnants of failure, admitted defeat, and slowly succumbed to purchasing a cake at the local bakery for my Mom's birthday.  I gave up on Vegan baking.  It just wasn’t meant to be.  That is, until along came a beacon of hope.

Three months ago I was experimenting with the wonders of homemade seitan.  In order to convince friends to be my guinea pig taste testers, I offered a complete Vegan dinner including dessert.  From my perspective, having a Vegan dessert ready to serve was nothing more than insurance if a seitan mishap were to occur, leaving only side dishes to eat.  Luckily, the seitan experiments were successful.  For our first "Seitanic Feast" (get it?), we scarfed down a no-bake Vegan Chocolate Kalhua Silk Pie. It rocked!  For the next feast, I wanted to bake Vegan Brownies.  Really?!  Baking from scratch with all the headache-inducing Vegan substitutes again?  I must be crazy.  But to my rescue came the glorious Punk Vegan Cooking Goddess Isa Moskowitz and her kick-a** recipe for the “fudgiest” brownies I’ve ever tasted, which also happen to be Vegan.  For a few weeks I couldn’t stop baking these delicious chocolate-packed morsels.  Anytime an excuse arose for me to bake up a batch, I did.  And everyone who tasted them couldn’t tell they were Vegan (the mark of success for any Vegan cook).

With each batch of brownies baked, I was building the confidence to give Vegan cake baking another shot.  It hasn’t been easy, but at least I had the tools to start figuring out why some recipes worked splendidly, and why others flopped dreadfully.

The Fudgiest Brownies I’ve Ever Tasted

(Heavily based on Brownies by Isa)

1/3 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

2/3 cup Water

1 12 oz. pkg Firm Silken Tofu, vacuum packed (I use Mori-Nu brand)

1 cup Vegan Chocolate Chips (I use Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips from Trader Joe's)

1 3/4 cup Sugar

3/4 tsp Sea Salt

1/2 cup Canola Oil

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

3/4 cup Cocoa Powder

3/4 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 cup Vegan Chocolate Chips

Preheat Oven to 350ºF.  In a blender, puree 1/3 cup flour, water and tofu until smooth.  Pour into a medium size saucepan over low heat, and whisk constantly until thickened (8-10 minutes).  Turn flame down if mixture comes to a boil.  Do not allow to come to a boil.  Once thickened, remove from heat and stir in 1 cup chocolate chips, sugar and salt to melt and combine.  Allow mixture to cool enough (20-30 minutes) to mix in oil and vanilla.

While mixture cools, sift together remaining flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.  Fold dry ingredients into cooled tofu mixture until well combined.  Stir in remaining chocolate chips and spread into a greased 9x13 Baking Pan.  Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

(BTW, the brownies are even better the next day.)

Seduction, My First Venture: Vegan Coconut Lychee Cupcakes

My first foray into Vegan baking began a year ago.  My step-father's birthday was approaching and since I was enjoying my newly Vegan lifestyle of only a few months, I didn't want to slip up and eat traditional cake.  It had been a while since I sank my teeth into a creamy, dreamy, light and airy forkfull of moist crumbs.  Oh cake, why must you be the evil temptress for whom I have no will to overcome?  I needed to avoid this wicked temptation and decided to bring along dessert myself.

Vegan baking was completely new to me.  I was able to easily Veganize many of my meals, substituting tofu (wonderous thing) and seitan (even more wonderous) as the protein source in most of my favorite recipes.  But how was I going to bake a cake sans eggs?!  So, like most others facing a brain racking question, I Googled for an answer.

As other newbie Vegans can surely attest, Vegan baking looked alien and completely overwhelming.  Mind you, I had almost no experience baking a cake from scratch, except for the one recipe my Mom taught me for Flan Cake (a layer of rich decadent Filipino-style Flan nestled on top of a cloud-like sponge cake).  Nope, I was a box mix kinda guy, substituting liquor and exotic fruit juices, and adding pudding mix into the batter in hopes of creating an end product that didn't seem so, well, "box-y."

With all this new information in front of me, I decided to give it a go.  But instead of a full-on cake, I thought I'd ease into it with a cupcake.  Google (bless your webbed heart) steered me towards the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  Upon browsing, I noticed a recipe for Lychee Cupcakes.  Since my parents are from the Philippines, I am fortunate to have been exposed to savoring each bite of the juicy and tantalizingly sweet flesh of the lychee nut.  Lychee cupcakes sounded perfect.  Since I'm not a fan of glazes, I decided to top the cupcakes with a Shredded Coconut Buttercream instead of the recommended Coconut Milk Glaze.  I also made a few more alterations to the original recipe, trying to add more lychee flavor.

Well, it turned out good.  Not great.  But hey, it was my first venture.

Vegan Coconut Lychee Cupcakes with Coconut Buttercream Frosting

(Based on Lychee Cupcakes with Coconut Glaze from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups All-Purpose Flour

2 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Sea Salt

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup Canned Lychees, drain and reserve syrup

3/4 cup Lychee Syrup (reserved from can)

1/4 cup Coconut Milk

1/2 cup Canola Oil

1 cup Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 350ºF.  Sift together dry ingredients into a large bowl.  Blend wet ingredients in a food processor or blender.  Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour wet ingredients into the well, and stir until combined.

Fill cupcake liners with batter 3/4 full and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.  Cool cupcakes on a rack.

Lychee Coconut Buttercream Frosting:

1/4 cup Earth Balance Vegan Margarine

2 cups Powdered Sugar

1/4 cup Lychee Syrup (reserved from can)

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 cup Unsweetened Shredded Coconut

Using an electric hand mixer, cream margarine until light and fluffy.  Add powdered sugar in stages.  Mix in  lychee syrup and vanilla.  Lastly, fold in shredded coconut.