Vegan Simple Vanilla Sandwich Cakes

I was just trying out my new mini-sandwich pan the other day (which I coveted for quite a while, because I kinda got tired of the usual cupcake shape) so this is a basic vanilla cake.
It's decorated with coconut icing and topped with pomegranate seeds and white chocolate shavings.
To say the truth, my white chocolate was not vegan, but I'm not really a vegan, I'm macrobiotic, so if I want it, (or don't have a choice :) I'll eat it, really...

Simple vanilla cake
Ingredients:
Makes 12 mini-cakes (6 sandwiches), or one layer in the 8-inch tin

1 cup soy milk
1 tsp cider vinegar
1/3 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup agave syrup
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup spelt flour (wholegrain +white)
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of sea salt

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 170°C and oil the cake tin.
2. Put soy milk and vinegar in a big bowl and mix with the whisk, leave for a couple of minutes, then add the oil, agave syrup and vanilla, gently beat till nice and smooth.
3. Place a fine sieve on top of the bowl and sift in the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix just a bit till no lumps remain, but try not to overmix.
4. Pour the mixture in the tin and if it's cupcakes, bake for about 25 minutes. If it's a cake, it'll take more time, depending on the size and depth of the tin and the type of the oven. Usually 35-45 minutes should work. Check if ready putting a wooden toothpick in the middle of the cake, which should come out dry.  I'd like to note that all ovens vary, so the aforementioned time and temperature are guidelines only.


Coconut kinda perfect icing

Ingredients:
150 ml organic creamed coconut (the yield from Biona's 200g vacuum pack)
2 Tbsp agave nectar
100 ml hot water
2 Tbsp coconut flour

Method:

1. Take the brick of the creamed coconut out of the package and chop it finely so it melts much quicker. Melt it in a bain-marie until it reaches an even consistency, and transfer it to the bowl of your mixer. Put the mixer on and slowly add agave first, then hot water and then coconut flour, one by one, preferably sifted. It won't take long to get to a nice stiff peaks texture. 
I'd like to note, that these proportions are good for piping, rather than spreading. If you want to spread your icing with the palette knife, you will need to find another kind of icing, because this one just doesn't work for that. It's not spreadable, I've tried to do it thinner but it just becomes grainy and not nice.
I think this icing may not be liked only if you don't like coconut flavour. Otherwise I think it's a great alternative to the traditional icing. And even if you aren't number 1 coconut fan, at least you should feel much better taking a bite off something healthy and packed with lauric acid and other wonderful things, rather than a lump of animal fat and white sugar.

Finally, the white chocolate shavings were made with a French potato peeler :)

Rosewater and Pistachio Cupcakes with Vegan Icing

This is probably the fourth post on rosewater cupcakes here, but it so happens that I like making rose-flavoured cakes. I like roses in their every form, including their smell and flavour.
However, this time it's worth talking about the icing.
Because it seems that I've just figured out the perfect vegan icing: it's stiff and never-melting like regular dairy and sugar-loaded icing, but at the same time it's sugar- and animal products-free.
I'm actually very proud.
But a few months ago I was very sad when all available British suppliers discontinued selling Soyatoo whippable soy cream, which I had been always using instead of icing; it was perfectly white and quite nice, but it melted quickly and was not stiff enough to hold the shapes long enough after piping. It was in the state of a "soft peak" at its best, unless I kept it in the fridge for ages and then immediately piped on and immediately served.
So when it disappeared, I had to seek for a replacement but to no avail, so I tried some recipes for vegan whipped cream from the Internet, but they were more to use in place of a cream, not icing, so not exactly what I needed. Actually I found one which promised to be good being piped, but it wasn't, and very fiddly to do - lots of ingredients and lots of preparation - cooking, melting, whipping, freezing, blending, freezing again...
My recipe requires only melting and whipping in a good mixer. Normally  vegan icings are based either on coconut milk, or vegan shortening (?), but they still have to have lots of caster sugar to reach the right stiffness. Mine doesn't! I really am happy)

So anyway, the recipe for Rosewater Cupcakes is here. To make it with pistachios, you'll need to add 1tsp freshly ground cardamom seed and half a cup chopped pistachios.

To make the icing, you'll need the product called creamed coconut by Biona, because it's so much thicker than even the fattiest part of the fattiest coconut milk you can find out there, so it whips like a dream. Actually this particular icing is not entirely perfect, because its not all-purpose - I used rosewater in it, so next time I'll still need to do some adjustments to the recipe if I want to omit the rosewater. I hope to figure out the formula for the basic icing soon.
  
Vegan coconut and rosewater icing
Makes for 10-12 cupcakes

Ingredients: 

150 ml organic creamed coconut (the yield from Biona's 200g vacuum pack)
2 Tbsp agave nectar
2 Tbsp organic rosewater
100 ml hot water
3 Tbsp coconut flour

To decorate
pinch of matcha green tea
1-2 Tbsp freeze-dried raspberry powder

Method:

Carefully melt the contents of the creamed coconut pack in a saucepan until it loses its bricky shape, but not heat it too much. Transfer to the mixer bowl. Add agave syrup first. Then add the rosewater, and whip a bit. Then add coconut flour, one spoonful at a time, looking at the consistency. If you're happy with it, you may not need all 3 tablespoons of coconut flour and hot water - I did it only because I needed more volume to cover all the cupcakes. If you think it's still too thin, add more flour; if you think its too thick - add some hot water.
To make the icing green, add a pinch of matcha green tea to the mixture in the end. After piping the icing on the cupcakes, sprinkle it with chopped pistachios or raspberry powder through fine sieve.

Vegan Rosewater Cupcakes with Whipped Rice &Coconut cream

This is just a decoration suggestion of my Vegan Rosewater Cupcakes, decorated with the whipped Rice Cream from this post 
and the roses from my garden
The cream sprinkled lightly with freeze-dried raspberry powder.

Quick and easy but pretty for some tea party :)

Queen's Diamond Jubilee cake

Nothing special, simple chocolate sponge with whipped rice cream (the latter was the result of some haphazard attempt)

Ingredients (for two layers):
2 cups of soy milk
2 tsp cider vinegar
2/3 cup baking oil
1 cup agave syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 cups whole spelt flour
1 cup white spelt flour
2/3 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 bicarbonate of soda
pinch of sea salt

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and oil the cake tin.
2. Put soy milk and vinegar in a big bowl and mix with the whisk. Add the oil, agave syrup and the extracts to the milk misture, beat till nice and smooth.
3. Place a fine sieve on top of the bowl and sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix with the whisk till no lumps remain, but try not to overmix.
4. This recipe is for two layers of the cake, so if you don't have two tins, divide all the ingredients in two and bake one after another. Bake the cake about 35 minutes, but it may depend on the oven. Check if ready putting a wooden toothpick in the middle of the cake, which should come out dry.  I'd like to note, that all ovens vary, so the aforementioned time and temperature are guidelines only.


Whipped rice cream was a bit of a random try, but as far as I can remember it was
1 carton of Rice Cuisine (200 ml)
4 Tbsp coconut flour
1 Tbsp corn starch
2 Tbsp agave syrup

Everything was just put in a beater one by one and mixed till stiff (about 2 mins). I wonder if it actually could do without corn starch, because this cream came out even stiffer than the regular dairy whipped cream. But it's not so bad, because it perfectly holds the rosettes for ever and ever. And it never melts or gets absorbed, like Soyatoo whippable cream does. Hooray.