BBC Radio 2 - Elbow Live
KT Tunstall ~ Eye To The Telescope
KT Tunstall ~ Drastic Fantastic
KT Tunstall ~ Tiger Suit
 |
| A fantastic vegan birthday cake for a very special little nephew! |
Can you tell My Love is going to see KT Tunstall next week? lol.
It has been cake baking and decorating central in the Rocket and Roses house this week. Our lovely cheeky nephew M turns 5 this weekend. 5! 5? Blimey where do those years go, eh? lol. So it's our honour to make his birthday cake as we do for all the little ones and all big ones actually when we can.
M started school this year and found Ben 10 which is some strange cartoon that is a boy that can turn into various monsters who fight the good fight against the bad guys and monsters. Ben does this by slapping his watch and then transforming into the relevant monster. Which means that M and our other nephew J run around slapping their wrists and shouting out weird sounding names. Followed by our niece N who is Gwen 10. lol. Oh well..it keeps them amused. lol. I used to run around pretending to be the Bionic Woman and sometimes Wonder Woman so who am I to judge. I think I also remember being a member of ABBA for my pal Sal too! lol.
When it came to cake selections this year the Ben 10 watch was My Love's idea and M's parents agreed. So it would be a fib to say that I made this one. A huge fib as I'm still not quite well enough to spend the hours it takes to make them yet. But as it was more of a Geeky project My Love took over the reigns and got planning. I have to say My Love has enjoyed the project a lot.
Stage one of the cake making was begging our oven to bake the cakes needed and not cremate them. And what do you know...it baked them perfectly. lol. My Love used our old faithful vanilla sponge recipe as it's quite dense and can take the decorating well and it gets better taste wise the longer it lasts. I found this recipe a few years back on vegweb.com and it was posted by E-Man...so thanks there fella. lol.
Originally My Love had planned a large rectangle as the base cake with a round cake for the top to form the watch but my expensive extra large brownie tin seems to have disappeared (muttering many expletives here! lol) so My Love had to come up with a plan B quickly. Which was to bake two large square and 1 round sponges. And the size of the tins that were used required a double batch of this recipe each time. Another good thing about this recipe..it doubles up and cooks lovely.
 |
| Perfect vegan vanilla sponges from the left...lol |
 |
| Perfect vegan vanilla sponges from the centre..lol |
 |
| Perfect vegan....yada yada..you get where this is going eh? lol I couldn't get them all in the same shot just right..they were too beautiful not to photograph all..lol |
Perfectly baked vegan vanilla sponges..thank you oven! lol. My Love was very happy with these...quite rightly so!
E-Mans Vanilla Cake (One single sponge)
1 cup of plain white flour (sifted)
1/2 cup plain wholemeal (sifted)
3/4 cup of sugar
1 1/2 tsp egg replacer
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup of sunflower oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of cold soy milk
Preheat the oven to 350'F/180'C/Gas mark 4. Line a nine inch round baking tin. Set aside.
In a large bowl whisk together the egg replacer, milk, oil, lemon juice, sugar, and vanilla until completely combined. In a separate bowl, mix white flour and wholemeal flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Dig a well into the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the mixed wet ingredients. Gently stir the two together until it looks combined and until all large lumps are gone. Be sure not to overmix! Let the batter stand for 5 minutes.
Pour the batter into the pan, place on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 45 minutes.
Cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes and then leave out on a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting or icing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Armed with black, green and white vegan fondant icing and a bucket of jam My Love then went on to the Stage 1 of Icing....
 |
| Can you tell what it is yet? lol |
Stage 2 took a couple of attempts as it became apparent the face of the watch was the wrong way round. So this is how it looked after much
 | |
| Almost there...it's beginning to look monster/alienish..lol |
 |
| Hurrah! The cake is finished and just has to dry out..marvelous. |
So a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY M!! and much love from us both...now we just have to get it to the party in one piece..Yikes.
~R~
