Vegan Strawberry Rose Birthday Cake

.... and how not to use a chocolate transfer sheet! Read on to see what I mean.....

I made this birthday cake for my friend Alice, not that we needed more cake as we also went out for afternoon tea! But I wanted to try out a chocolate transfer sheet and review a couple of products so I thought this would be a good opportunity.

Alice is vegan so I found a suitable recipe online for a strawberry cake. Check out the Snow Child blog for the recipe. I used the cake recipe but changed the icing and decoration.

I followed the quantities in the recipe- this makes quite a big cake.

You need:
4 cups plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1-2 cups pureed strawberries
1/2 cup soya milk

I didn't use the food colouring or the strawberry extract recommended in the recipe, as I found the fresh strawberries gave a good enough colour and flavour.

Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt

Add the oil and mix well, though it will still be quite lumpy at this stage

Puree a punnet of strawberries

Pretty!

Mix in to the dry ingredients

Add the soya milk and mix well.

I filled two 8-inch cake pans

Bake at about 180C for 40 minutes. I sprayed the cake pans with Dr. Oetker cake release spray and they came out perfectly.

Make some buttercream by mixing vegan margarine such as Pure or Vitalite with icing sugar

I pureed half of another punnet of strawberries and added to the icing. However, it made the mixture far too runny and I had to add in a ton of icing sugar to make the icing stiff enough to spread and not run out of the cake!

The icing was a lovely pink colour, at least.

Spread the icing on the cake

I decided to try out a chocolate transfer sheet I bought at Cake International in November. These are acetate sheets printed with a pattern made of cocoa butter (so they are vegan). You place the sheet onto chocolate or icing and apply heat to the reverse and the pattern transfers onto the chocolate or icing. It sounded like a great idea at the time and I know people who have had success with using them on chocolate. However I don't know anyone who has managed to do it on icing... myself included!

I used some Regal-Ice ready to roll fondant Dr. Oetker sent me. A 500g packet is just the right amount to cover a cake, and it is very easy to add colour to the fondant by kneading it in. I use this kind of icing a lot, particularly for making novelty cakes.

Here I've rolled out the icing

Unfortunately when I unrolled the transfer sheet, I found it had somehow dried out and half the pattern - which was a cute strawberry print, so perfect for this cake - had flaked off, leaving semi-blank patches in the middle of the sheet. I wasn't given any information on how to store the sheet when I bought it and it was given to me rolled up, so I stored it that way in an air-tight container for a couple of months. So I was really disappointed to see what had happened to it when I unrolled it.

I decided to have a go anyway to see if it would work. I've looked on the internet and found there are three ways to apply heat to transfer the pattern: either by melting chocolate or candy melts and spreading it over the reverse, using a hairdryer, or an iron on a low heat. I know someone - who shall remain nameless - who tried the hairdryer technique and it didn't work - all that happened was the fondant melted!

I decided to place a clean teatowel over the transfer sheet and iron over it on a low heat. Bearing in mind part of the pattern was missing so I knew it wasn't going to work, I wasn't expecting much... part of the pattern did transfer, as you can see below, but the fondant did start to melt as well and it was completely unusable!

So much for that... I'd be interested to know if anyone else has used a transfer sheet on fondant and how they did it!

I decided to try a different tack and spread more of my strawberry icing over the cake (it was intentionally messy as I was going to cover it with fondant).

I took another packet of Dr.Oetker Regal-Ice and kneaded in some pink food colouring so I had a large piece of pink fondant, and covered the whole cake. I used the offcuts to quickly roll some simple roses to go on top.

I used a letter set to indent my friend's name around the front of the cake, and used a leaf plunger cutter with some green fondant to make leaves to accompany the roses.

I was quite pleased with this cake in the end despite it all going a bit wrong initially. I am a total convert to vegan cakes as this tasted lovely!

I'm sending this to Bake Fest as their theme this month is eggless vegetarian bakes. The challenge is hosted by Nivedhanam and Vardhini at Cook's Joy.

I'm also sending this to Celebrate Summer, hosted by Nivedhanam and Jagruti ; the theme is vegetarian recipes with no eggs.

Vegan apple cake

I met up with my school friends on the weekend after Christmas and thought it would be a good excuse to bake something to take with me. One of my friends is vegan so I wanted to make sure I made something she could eat, and I found this recipe for a vegan apple cake online - it used up some ingredients I already had in the house, which was good.

I adapted the recipe and added some extra ingredients. Here's what I did:

200g self-raising flour
100g dairy-free spread
3 apples
100g caster sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
100g candied mixed peel
50g sultanas
2 tbsp apple sauce
2 tsp brown sugar

Cream the butter/ vegan dairy-free spread and the sugar

Mix in the flour

Take some apples... I only needed three in the end

Grate the apples

Add to the cake mixture

Add some apple sauce

And the cinnamon

Finally add the mixed peel and sultanas

I decided to use my silicon bundt tin; here it is going in the oven.

Bake at 180C for around 30 minutes

Sprinkle some brown sugar over the top and you're done.

I'd like to think this is a relatively healthy recipe as far as cakes go, but it probably isn't! However if you have decided to become vegan for a new year's resolution or for a January health kick (or just a change) then this cake would be the perfect treat! So I'm sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel of Dolly Bakes, as their theme this month is "new year, new you."

I am also sending this to Bake Fest, hosted by Nivedhanam and Vardhini of Cook's Joy as their theme this month is eggless vegetarian bakes.

Pecan puffs

I made some pina colada cupcakes for a barbecue recently and wanted to take something else along as well, and was thinking of cookies, until I saw these in the same recipe book as the cupcakes - Eat Me by Cookie Girl, aka Xanthe Milton. They are bitesize so easy to eat at a barbecue and I thought they would be a bit different. They were also quite quick and easy to make, which is always good when you are baking more than one thing at a time!

You need:

55g butter, softened

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

110g pecan nuts

110g self raising flour

Preheat oven to 180C. Chop the nuts in a food processor.



Cream the butter and sugar

Add ground nuts and the flour to the creamed butter and stir in

Roll into balls - I used an ice-cream scoop. Place on a greased and lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes.

The recipe says to roll them in icing sugar then pop back in the oven for 2 minutes to glaze, but I either forgot this part or didn't have time. Still, they don't look bad:

They were nice though a little dry so I think they would go better with a cup of tea than eaten at a barbecue, but for a quick and easy bake - and something that children could easily do - they're not bad.

As the letter for this month's Alphabakes is P, I am making my pecan puffs my second entry this month. If you want to take part check out the rules in my post and the prize we have to give away!

I'm also sending this to Bake Fest, guest hosted this month by The Mad Scientist's Kitchen, as they accept as entries anything that has been baked.

Pina colada cupcakes

 

Mmm, cocktails in a cake!

I went to a barbecue in the summer and wanted to bake something to take along. I decided that cupcakes were easier for people to eat but wanted to make something summery and something that said 'party'.... which to me means cocktails!

I took this recipe from Eat Me by Cookie Girl (Xanthe Milton) and adapted it slightly as I didn't actually have any Malibu and didn't want to buy a whole bottle for the 2tbsp needed, so I used rum flavouring instead.

You need:
55g butter, softened
140g caster sugar
120ml coconut milk
1 egg
140g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
425g can chopped pineapple (or pineapple rings, then chop them)

She also gave a recipe for icing sugar using caster sugar and egg white and Malibu, but I had some buttercream I needed to use up so decided that would work almost as well, and as I said I added a few drops of rum flavouring to it.

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream butter and sugar.

Mix coconut milk and egg and add to the butter and sugar. Don't worry if it looks a bit curdled like this, it's supposed to!

Beat in flour and baking powder then add chopped pineapple

Fill cake cases and bake for about 20 mins

 

I decided to make some pineapple flowers to go on top

 

This involved slicing some fresh pineapple very thinly and placing on a baking sheet and putting in the oven which was still hot from the cakes

The pineapple crisps and sort of curls up at the edges, which you can see on these cakes below.

I piped on the buttercream but as it was a hot day it went a little runnier than I would have liked. I added some coloured balls and some paper cocktail umbrellas for that cocktail on the beach feeling!

The letter for this month's Alphabakes is P, so my pineapple pina colada cupcakes are ideal! If you want to take part in Alphabakes and need to know the rules, check out my blog post from September 1st.

 

I am also sending these into Cupcake Tuesday, hosted by Hoosier Homemade.

 

 

Calendar Cakes, hosted by Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel of Dolly Bakes also has cupcakes as its theme this month, in honour of National Cupcake Week which is Sept 17-23. So I'm sending them my pina colada cupcakes as well.

 

 

Finally I am sending this to Bake Fest, guest hosted this month by The Mad Scientist's Kitchen, as they accept as entries anything that has been baked. They must get so many entries each month!

 

 

 Thanks to Janine at Cake of the Week who left a comment on this blog post, I can also enter these in another blog challenge. She has started a new monthly challenge called Baking with Spirit, based around cakes containing alcohol (what a great idea!) and her first monthly theme is rum. So these pina colada cupcakes fit perfectly - at least I think they do, given I used rum flavouring and not actual rum - but hopefully it's the thought that counts!