Vegan Apple Torte

A friend of mine is heading away to attend law school this fall so I thought it would be appropriate to make her a tort cake (i know, lousy pun indeed).

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegan butter
1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 bananas
2 apple sauce containers (200ml)
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp soy milk
2 or 3 apples sliced
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp powdered sugar
2 tbsp chopped pecans

To start I cleaned, skinned, then sliced up 3 apples, collecting the slices into a ziploc bag and shaking them with cinnamon.

 Setting aside the apples I prepared the batter -- a simple mixture. All the ingredients just go into the mixer and blends until smooth - the key to this recipe is in the apple sauce, bananas, and baking powder, these act as egg replacers from a standard torte recipe. The bananas help add moisture to the batter, while the apple sauce provides flavour, the baking powder assists in leavening the torte. The batter complete, I take the apple slices and arrange them on the bottom of my punt pan, then pour in the batter.

 Bake for 30 minutes at 350F, until a toothpick can pierce and come clean from the torte.

When you slice the torte for serving each slice should have a few whole slices of cinnamon coated apples.

I hope you enjoy this recipe :)

Vegan Chocolate Stout CupCakes

It's been a while since I last posted a recipe... I've been very busy dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Igor (flooded basement), so just starting to get back to 'normal' now. This treat was made for my friend Anne's birthday.

Ingredients (CupCake):
1 1/2 cup soy milk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 cup & 4 tbsp flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup stout
2/3 cup canola oil
3 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients (Topping):
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
4 tbsp canola oil

To make the cupcakes: blend together the soy milk and apple cider in a bowl, then allow it to curdle. In a separate bowl sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Next, add to the soy milk mixture the stout, sugar, oil, and vanilla - mix until foamy. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, in small amounts, then beat the whole mixture for two minutes.

The topping is a simple sifting of the flour, cocoa, and sugar together in a bowl. Oil is added and then you toss the mixture until crumbs form. You can use your fingers to break down any larger crumbs. Once the crumb topping is made you just need to sprinkle some on top of each cupcake - it should just rest on the top of the batter. Bake the cupcakes at 350F for 25 - 30 minutes (should make 18 large cupcakes).

I hope you enjoyed these Vegan cupcakes, there somewhat sweet and the stout flavour is very subtle so don't worry that it'll taste only like beer.

Vegan Cupcakes

Anne asked me to prepare some Vegan Cupcakes for a BBQ party over the weekend, having never made such a dessert this is my first foray into non-dairy baked goods. I found recipes online for the cupcake base and buttercream frosting. I will note for you that your going to have to at least double the base recipe if you want more than eight or nine cupcakes - I was able to yield 16 via two batches.

Finding the 'vegan' ingredients wasn't too difficult, with a simple trip to my local grocery store I was able to find soy milk, soy based non-hydrogenated margarine, and all-organic-vegan-fare-trade gummi bears (added to the frosting as decoration).

Since the batter doesn't fill up all twelve cupcake molds in my baking trays I added some water to each empty cup in order to help provide moisture during the baking process.

The vegan frosting presented something of an additional challenge - it doesn't set like regular frosting. I attempted to work around this issue by piping frosting in a spiral pattern around the cupcake. As the frosting began to drip it would naturally just fill in the spaces between the lines... it was somewhat successful but in the end it still dripped over the cupcake wrapper's edge.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe, I think Anne's cat Calleigh approved.