Vegan Chocolate Cake

Half way to work this gloomy, rainy Monday morning, my phone beeped to show I had a work email. Since I was stuck in standstill traffic, I checked to see what the header of the message was. To my dismay, it was an announcement that a co-worker whom I was joking with on the previous Friday, passed away that Saturday. Not the news I wanted to hear on a cloudy rainy Monday morning.  The rest of the day became a blur. I KNEW that I had to bake something to cheer myself up.

Tomorrow is my monthly Mommy Pokeno game night and I have to provide dessert. I asked couple of co-workers for some quick ideas which they provided, however, I ended up going with something vegan because we have two vegetarians in our group and didn't want to have to provide two separate options.

Who doesn't love chocolate right?

Ok, DS can do without it but that doesn't mean he doesn't like it.

 

Anyhow! The real test was if  DH would figure out that it was vegan. When he asked what I was making, I said chocolate cake.

 

Process is simple enough: Flour, sugar, cocoa, oil, water, vanilla, baking soda etc. What surprised me was no baking powder BUT you add balsamic vinegar. WHAT? VINEGAR in cake? OH YES. Apparently, balsamic vinegar goes really well with chocolate.

 

Wet and dry ingredients ready for mixing. No machine needed

Took two minutes

 

The recipe said to bake for 45mins at 350 degrees. It took longer to bake and I had to turn the oven down to prevent burning. I made one with vegan cocoa chips and the other without (mainly because I forgot while mixing the first batch). I could  have doubled the recipe, but that didn't work well for me the first time I tried with a new recipe.

 

With cocoa chips

One on the left without

While they were cooling, I made the icing. Also vegan.

 

Side note on the icing. I felt so silly at the store. I starred at the cake section for a while looking for traditional icing containers to no avail. The kind lady that came to help pointed them out to me and I stated "no, that's cake mix". Duhhh, reading is fundamental. My excuse, I had a bad day. She then went into telling me about how she doesn't like the smell of real butter. They just happened to have the vegan butter out with some fresh bread for tasting. I was sold at first tasting.

 

 

After I made the icing, DH walks in to "taste". Talked about how good it was and wanted to do a tasting with cake. He still didn't know it was vegan.

 

Outside is a bit crispy but inside is super moist. DH liked it and stated that the cake would have gone really well with whipped cream. I then kindly told him that it wouldn't since I needed it to be vegan.  Ah ah, was his reply and finished with, well it's still good.

 

SCORE!!! Now hopefully everyone else at Pokeno likes it.

Chocolate Filled Cake

Today I felt like having cake, didn't help when I saw this while looking for coupons to get flour from the store. The cake immediately spoke to my sweet tooth and I knew it will be a hit with the kids.  I didn't use the three cups of chocolate chip as recommended, way too much for my kiddos. I only have a few pictures since it impossible to take pictures with a toddler sous chef.

 

Enjoyed by all.

 

 

Cakes

I can not believe that I haven't blogged for months. Having two toddlers to deal with is proving quite tiring, but that's another blog.  I haven't felt inspired much lately except to bake birthday cakes for both kids.

My little man munchkin turned 2 in July so I made him a train cake. I came across the pan at the thrift store and figured why not. I had an inspiration site for the design, but can't find it right now. Once I do, I'll link it here.

I think it turned out better than expected. I made a yellow cake and bought the Wilton's icing from the party store. Mixing bright red icing was not my way of having fun.

Hence the end result. It was denser that I like, but the flavor was good.

My little girl munchkin turned 1 this October and boy is she a handful. I decided to go semi homemade for her cake and keep it simple.  Simple for me was trying my hand at Tres Leches cake.

What an awesome cake it turned out to be. Everyone enjoyed it very much. I used http://www.mommyskitchen.net/2008/11/tres-leche-cake-semi-homemade-style.html as an inspiration. I also made my own whip cream icing.

Yum

Chocolate Oreo Cake

Since today is my husband's birthday, I asked him what kind of cake he wanted me to bake for him.  His request was chocolate Oreo with full kid excitement.  I should have known that it will be something with chocolate.

I went to the "cloud" because other than Betty Crocker, I have never baked chocolate cake.  I found what I thought was a good recipe at http://meemoskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/07/tgi-friday-oreo-chocolate-cake.html.  Mine definitely doesn't look like hers, but the taste is rich and delicious (according to the birthday boy).

Recipe is on meemo's blog, but I altered it a bit (lack of ingredient). I used cool whip with the filling instead of whipping cream. I also cut the sugar for the filling from 1/2 cup to 1/3 cup.  My fear of sugar kicked in big time LOL.

Rating:
Ease of instructions - 8
Ease of baking - 10
Outcome - 7
Taste - 8

I need to get better at taking pictures.