Dairy Free Lemon Layer Cake with Vegan Mocha Frosting

I hope that you have some fun weekend plans, and I think a layer cake can sweeten whatever they are! I have a pretty exciting weekend planned, actually. On Friday night Official Taster and I are celebrating our upcoming nuptials with some of our friends here, and then we'll catch a late screening of Harry Potter. I'm both excited and a little sad that it's the last movie. I also have some highly anticipated girl time scheduled. What about you? Big plans or just enjoying some sunshine? If you have any to spare, Seattle could use some.

If you made a Rainbow Cake, you may have some egg yolks in your refrigerator just crying out to be used. I know I did. So I dug through my books and ended up adapting a recipe for gold layer cake from the classic Joy of Cooking.

It was a significantly simpler process (2 layers instead of 6 makes quite a difference) that yielded delicious results. I'm not sure how long egg yolks stay ok in the fridge, but I used mine within 24 hours. If you choose to use real butter, you'll also need to add 1/4 tsp salt.

Lemon Layer Cake
2 C cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 C vegan butter at room temperature
1/2 C sugar
3 egg yolks at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla or grated lemon rind*
3/4 C almond milk, or other non-dairy milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Oil and line your 9" cake pans with parchment paper.

Sift the cake flour and baking powder (and salt if using real butter) together into a bowl and set aside. 

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Beat in the egg yolks and then vanilla or lemon rind. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk. 

Divide the batter evenly between two 9" cake pans and bake for about 18 minutes. When the layers are done, allow them to cool for about 10 minutes in the pan before turning out onto a cooling rack. 

Mocha Frosting - Vegan
1 stick vegan butter at room temperature
3 C confectioners sugar
1/3 C cocoa
1/4 C strongly brewed coffee at room temperature (ish. NOT an exact measurement)

Cream the butter and then add the sugar and cocoa a little bit at a time. Add the coffee slowly, until you've reached the desired consistency. It should take 10 minutes or so to combine everything and beat it enough to give it some volume.

When the cakes have cooled and the frosting is ready, layer the cake and frost! Raspberry jam would also make a great filling flavor.


*I actually used a 1/4 tsp Fiori di Sicilia (a little goes a long way. it's quite potent) and 3/4 tsp vanilla

Simple Summer Supper - Vegan Avocado Sandwiches

It's summer (almost everywhere), so if it's too hot to cook, or you're too lazy tired after a long day, these no cook open face avocado sandwiches are a great solution. The best part is that you can pair the avocado with whatever you happen to have available. I combined mine with bbq sauce, hummus, and some romesco sauce.

Because there are so few of them, each ingredient really counts, so use good crusty bread and nice ripe, flavorful avocados.

These were really satisfying, especially when I followed them with the first peaches of the season. 

Rainbow Birthday Cake with Mocha Frosting! {dairy free & vegan}

I got my first sunburn of the summer this weekend while spending the day at the beach. Granted, I was wearing a sweater, and it took several hours to get a little bit of pink on my nose and forehead, but still. 

Beach. Sunburn. Birthday cake. Good times. 

Now, it was no ordinary birthday cake, but, then again, it was no ordinary birthday girl. E and I have been friends since high school, and she has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders, whether I want the attention or not. I hope you all each have someone (or a few someones) like that in your life.

Rainbow Birthday Cake 
This cake is not as complicated as it looks, but you do need to have several hours to devote to it. I baked my layers on Friday afternoon and put the whole thing together on Sunday morning. If you do them in separate steps, wait for the layers to cool completely, then wrap them each tightly in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator until you're ready to layer and frost the cake.

I made mine dairy free, but the recipe works with the same quantities of real butter and milk. Please add 1/2 tsp salt to the cake batter.

I like this frosting because it is egg free, and avoiding raw eggs at a picnic seemed like a good idea.

White Rainbow Cake - Dairy Free via Whisk Kid
2 sticks vegan butter at room temperature
2 1/3 C sugar
5 egg whites at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
3 C flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 C almond milk at room temperature
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple gel food coloring. liquid food coloring will make pastel layers

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Oil and line your 9" cake pans with parchment paper. Unless you have 6, you'll need to reuse them.

Sift together the flour and baking powder (and salt, if using real butter).

Weigh a large mixing bowl. Either note it's weight or tare the scale. Use that bowl to cream the butter and sugar, and then add your egg whites a little at a time (it's easier to separate them while they are still cold, so do that when you first take them out). Add the vanilla and mix until thoroughly combined. Then, alternating between the flour mixture and milk, add each in two parts (flour, milk, flour milk).

Now weigh your bowl + batter and determine the weight of the batter. Divide that weight by 6, and then separate 6 roughly equal amounts of batter into separate bowls. Add a good amount of food coloring to each bowl and whisk to incorporate.

Pour into cake pans and bake each layer for 15 minutes. When you remove each pan, allow the cake to cool in it for about 10 minutes, then flip onto your cooling rack to finish cooling completely.

Mocha Frosting - Vegan
I used 2.5 batches of this on my cake, but unless you have a stand mixer (I think?), I would recommend making it at least the two separate times. If I had made it all at once, I'm pretty sure my hand mixer would have started to smell burny.

1 stick vegan butter at room temperature
3 C confectioners sugar
1/3 C cocoa
1/4 C strongly brewed coffee at room temperature (ish. NOT an exact measurement)

Cream the butter and then add the sugar and cocoa a little bit at a time. Add the coffee slowly, until you've reached the desired consistency. It should take 10 minutes or so to combine everything and beat it enough to give it some volume.

Assemble the Layers!
Stack the layers in whatever order you'd like, and frost just like you would any other cake. This and this are good tutorials if you need instructions or a refresher.

It should be fine at room temperature, but my frosting definitely showed signs of slipping when it was outside for a while, so refrigerate it before you do that and keep it out of the sun.

Tea Party

Did you know that it's really, really hard to find glass pitchers with lids? I needed a new iced tea pitcher, and I wanted to avoid plastic because, well, it's plastic and all that entails. I don't drink anything that comes in those nice glass half gallon jars (they're sort of rectangular shaped) to repurpose, and nothing suitable in my cabinets. I looked around at multiple stores, online and in person, with no luck. The best option (unless any of you lovely people have a better idea) was a litre-sized carafe found at my neighborhood thrift stores. with a plastic cup on top to keep out the bugs. 

Why is a glass pitcher with a lid such a crazy idea? It seems very logical to me, especially with the research about BPAs and the overall superiority of glass to plastic. 

So I just thought I'd share the ghetto tea party that's happening on our balcony right now. Mr. Hibiscus, who has miraculously survived Seattle, carafe 'o tea, and Buddy. He likes the sun. 

Cake fun coming soon!

Free Printable - Patriotic Cupcake Wrappers

Perhaps you're aware that it's a holiday weekend? Maybe you are going to whip up some appropriate cupcakes? Great! Now head on over to Food Art Party for some free 4th of July cupcake wrappers to elevate your cupcakes to the next level. 

Have a great weekend!

Tour of Bob's Red Mill

It turns out there really is a Bob and he really has a red mill. If you're one of the many fans of Bob's products, read the interview and tour over at the kitchn. Even if you're not familiar with Bob's Red Mill, I always find it interesting to see the inner workings of companies.