I am seeking suggestions for a delicious vegan cake for a milestone birthday.
Preferably non chocolate, but am willing to consider chocolate as a last resort.
Can be scaled up or down as needed would be very good.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
I just looked at the Chain Baker site and you tube. Its great. Thanks.
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With or without frosting?
My favorite birthday cake just happens to be vegan and is very easy; I like it best as chocolate, but you can pick your flavor of choice.
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This is similar to @Saregama recipe. I use this recipe all the time for a quick cake to take to a party. I’ll throw a quick glaze on top (powered sugar, meringue powder and water) - food coloring - to make it fun.
It is a chocolate cake, though.
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In the middle of making a milk bar carrot layer cake.
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Saw a few friends this week-end… so obviously did some baking for them. It was a a friend’s birthday earlier this month, and I finally got to see her. She is lactose intolerant, so I tried baking with vegan butter. I made these https://www.davidlebovitz.com/salted-chocolate-chip-tahini-cookies-cookie-recipe/. I think that they are better with butter, but still pretty good apparently.
Then I baked up a roll of salted chocolate chip shortbread cookies. https://smittenkitchen.com/2017/12/salted-butter-chocolate-chunk-shortbread/ the dough was a bit crumbly… still tasted good!
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Flaky Cheese Biscuits from Erin Jeanne McDowell’s Savory Baking.
This is a yeasted, laminated, sour-cream biscuit dough – one fold with butter, three with cheese. I gave the dough an overnight rest in the fridge after the final fold, as suggested in the recipe.
I used a sharp white cheddar for the cheese and did not add the sugar (optional). I find most of EJM’s portion sizes in this book too generous for our household, and made 4 biscuits out of one-quarter recipe (instead of the suggested 3). As a result, the bases were relatively narrow, and the biscuits toppled. Still, they were hugely satisfying – light as air, crispy and flaky.
Hard to call them a biscuit, but definitely a pastry. Will make again.
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I also made cheesy bread. I bought a lot of Eric Kayser’s cheese bread when I was working in Brooklyn, so I was happy to see a recipe for it released a little while ago on his YouTube channel. I used some Gouda I had, so I doesn’t taste exactly the same as his version made with Emmental, but the bread tastes like the one at his shops otherwise. This one is made with starter and a little yeast. I used starter that I refreshed a couple of days ago straight from the fridge, so my bulk fermentation took significantly longer than 1.5 hours. But I just kept going until the dough looked nice and bubbly, then shaped and only needed about an hour on final proofing.
Btw, I’m looking to make Rose Levy Beranbaum’s white genoise from The Cake Bible, but I don’t have a copy of the book here and was wondering if someone would be kind enough to share the recipe with me. I found an Italian blog entry that seems to be it, but I’d like to make sure it hasn’t been changed from the original.
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I’m not at home at the moment, but I can share it in a bit when I am.
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Those look and sound amazingly good! I am a very unskilled baker. Would it be worth me tracking down that recipe and giving it a try or does it need more than 12 YO level baking skills? My feelings will not be hurt if you tell me to pass, I promise.
I sent it in a message.
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The author describes the difficulty as “medium”. If you are familiar and comfortable with the process of lamination, or willing to risk good ingredients in order to become so, then I’d say go for it. Otherwise, there are probably better choices for you out there in biscuit world.
Youtube has a ton of videos on dough lamination. I wish I could recommend a particular one. Maybe one of the youtube afficianados here will chime in with a good reference.
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That makes sense and thanks for your honest answer. I think lamination is aspirational at this point for me. I will just enjoy looking at the fruits of your labor.
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This is classic lamination, but it can be much simpler and quicker than this.
Like this
Or this
Or Chinese scallion pancakes:
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Dorie’s bake and tell recipe this month is rough puff. Does anyone hear use it?
Quite often. I’m partial to Dan Lepard’s versions (one “sweet” one made with egg yolks and milk, and one spelt for savory uses), but I’ve made the classic version many times.
You can see it made here.
Also, I meant to include this link as an example of easy lamination. It’s some of the prettiest puff I’ve seen.
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@Shellybean on the topic of the pan - you say you prefer to bake Stella’s in a 9-inch. Is that a regular springform? Do you bake the other recipe in that same pan?
I like push bottom pans rather than springform, but springform is fine, too, and I use them sometimes. I also use regular cake pans and as long as the cheesecake is cold and the pans lined with parchment they release well.
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