Vegan Chocolate Cake

This cake in the pictures are not exactly Vegan as i've used Hersheys semi-sweet cooking chocolate (contains milk) to make the ganache for the topping. The cake itself is vegan - no eggs and no dairy products used. So, this recipe is for the cake only. I've made this about 4 times and each time its a hit! I made a cupcake version of it for my son's 4th birthday and i didn't get to taste even one :-(

Ingredients

Dry
- 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

Wet
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Coffee
- 1 cup hot water
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee


Directions

1. Mix the instant coffee into the hot water and set aside to cool.
2. Sift the ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well (by hand) to combine well.
3. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients and stir/mix well (using a mixer would be good).
4. Add the wet to dry gradually mixing gently until lump free (don't over mix).
5. Grease a 7 or 8 inch diameter baking pan.
6. Pour the mixture/batter into the baking pan.
8. Drop the tin lightly to get rid of the bubbles in the mixture.
9. Bake in an oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 30 minutes or until top of cake is springy to touch and a toothpick/cake tester inserted comes out clean.
10. Cool the cake by leaving it aside for 1 minute or so. Then invert onto a rack.

Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese frosting

I was looking around for a recipe that uses strawberry puree for its cake instead of artificial coloring and flavoring and i saw one that looked pretty easy to follow from Allrecipes.com ( http://allrecipes.com/recipe/60564/strawberry-cake-from-scratch/ ). But i did make a few changes to the ingredients, the quantity used and the method. The cake turned out nice and tasty.

This is the picture of the cake.  #baking, #photography, #StrawberryCake

Ingredients

For the Cake

• 1.5 cups brown sugar -- Original Recipe required 2 cups of white sugar, i prefer to use brown and lesser sugar.
• 1 (3 ounce or 85g ) package strawberry flavored Jell-O -- I used normal jelly/agar agar powder 
• 1 cup (about 227g) butter, softened 
• 4 eggs (room temperature) -- Separate the yolk and whites
• 2 3/4 cups sifted cake flour -- I used 2 cups of self raising flour and 3/4 cups of all purpose flour 
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder -- Since i used self raising flour, i used only 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1 cup whole milk, room temperature 
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 
• 1/2 cup strawberry puree made from frozen sweetened strawberries -- I used fresh straberries and pureed it  

Frosting in between cake

• Fresh strawberry jam 

Topping / Frosting

• 8 oz / 250g cream cheese
• 1 cup of icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Some Strawberries
• Melted Chocolate - For decoration

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C 
2. Grease and flour two 9 inch round/square cake pans. -- I found this to be a bit dense, next time i'll try to divide it into 3 pans 
3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and dry jelly powder until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each. 
4. Combine the flour and baking powder; stir into the batter alternately with the milk. Blend in vanilla and strawberry puree. 
5. In a separate mixing bowl, Beat the egg whites until soft peaks and then fold it into the cake batter.
6. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.
7. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a cake tester/small stick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow cakes to cool in their pans over a wire rack for at least 10 minutes, before tapping out to cool completely.
8. After the cakes are cooled, spread the strawberry jam on top of one of the layers and stack the other layer on top.
9. Spread the cream cheese frosting all over the cake and decorate it with the strawberries and melted chocolate.