Two birthday cakes! Lucky boys!

Well today there is a party for two of our housemates tonight and I thought it was a great excuse for some baking! Luke asked for carrot cake which I have wanted to do for ages and I thought to suit everyone I would make a chocolate fudge cake as who doesn't like chocolate! I have to warn you...my icing skills weren't very proficient today as I just whacked it on with a spoon due to time!

I got my carrot cake recipe from: food.com
and my chocolate fudge cake from: veganvillage.co.uk
and the chocolate fudge icing from: veganfamily.co.uk

CARROT CAKE

Ingredients:
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
3 cups finely shredded carrots (best thing to use is a chocolate/nutmeg grater but it is a lot of grating!)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup applesauce
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 made up egg substitutes (I used Orgran)
1/2 cup of chopped nuts

Icing
3oz cream cheese substitute
1/4 cup margarine
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cup icing sugar

If you find a nice cream cheese then I would use more cheese and less/no margarine but I used tofutti for the first time and really didn't like it so I ended up making a buttercream. In these quantitities it was very much like a buttercream anyway.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees celcius
• Grease two cake tins, or one if you don't want a filling. Mine were 20cm.
• Mix the dry ingredients together
• Mix the wet ingredients in and nuts
• Divide the mixture into the two cake tins
• Bake for 40- 50 mins until a knife comes out clean
• Allow to cool
• For the icing just beat the ingredients together into smooth and spread on the cake when it is completely cool
• Simple eh?!

For decoration I sprinkled some more chopped nuts on top and also some orange jelly sweets and some terrible writing icing skills! (they are both 28 if you couldn't guess!).

CHOCOLATE FUDGE CAKE

Ingredients:

I did double this but it was rather a lot and had to make cupcakes too so I will write the ingredients for a much more sensible amount!

125g margarine

300ml soya milk

2 tbs golden syrup

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

250g plain white flour

50g cocoa

250g sugar

Icing

100g plain chocolate

1 tbs margarine

1 tbs icing sugar

1 tsp golden syrup

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius
• Grease the two cake tins (same as before)
• Melt the soya milk, margarine, and golden syrup on a medium heat (leave 4 tablespoons of the milk out).
• Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the soya milk.
• Mix all the dry ingredients 
• Add the wet ingredients
• Divide the mixture into the two cake tins
• Bake for half an hour then turn the oven down to 160 degrees and bake for a further half an hour.
• For the icing, melt all the ingredients in a pan. Allow to cool for a little while and spread on the cake when the cake is cool.
• Once again, lovely and simple!

I decorated it further with "milk" and white chocolate buttons and writing icing.

Apart from a few nibbles which tasted delicious there hasn't been a proper taste test yet but I will update you after tonight. I hope everyone isn't too drunk!


**UPDATE**: Both cakes are the best cakes of their type that I have made. This is very good for the chocolate cake as I have made many of those. The consistency was perfect and the icing was super delicious and the best complement to the cake rather than butter icing. I have only ever made one other carrot cake and it was a disaster! But this carrot cake was 3 million times better. Very moist, very moorish. It was quite dense but that is not a bad thing in my book. Both cakes went down a treat with everyone and these recipes will definitely be used again!

"Friendly" Sun-Dried Tomato Houmous

Now I bet you're thinking why is this particular houmous friendly and others not? Well, I have always found that some people have a bit of a problem with homemade houmous when all they are used to is shop-bought houmous. I think it is because shop-bought houmous has a sort of milder taste; a less stay-in-the-mouth flavour. At first I came up with the idea of cooking the garlic first as I thought it could be the raw garlic in the houmous which was causing the problem. That houmous was nice but still didn't quite have the effect I was after. Then, when realising I didn't have any of Jean-Paul's (my ever so slightly picky boyfriend) favourite sandwich fillings as I was making his lunch (he doesn't ask me to do this, I just enjoy it!) I thought I'd whip up some houmous and make a houmous and salad sandwich. he has had my homemade houmous before and has liked it so this experiment wasn't necessary for him but the Jean-Paul seal of approval is always good!

So here's the recipe for my "Friendly" Sun-Dried Tomato Houmous:

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 tin of chickpeas (I go for the easy from a tin option but obviously soaked and cooked chickpeas are also good!)
3 tablespoons of tahini
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 cloves of garlic (decent size so add more if they are small)
3 tablespoons of soya yoghurt (the magic ingredient!)
5 sun-dried tomatoes (preferably the ones in oil which are easier to blend but dried ones would work particularly if soaked before)
black pepper

VERY EASY METHOD: just blend in a food processor. I do find houmous making is best done by taste so once it is all whizzed up taste it! I often add a bit more of this or that to make it how I like it. I love sour things so I often add more lemon juice. The yoghurt is what gives it it's milder taste so add more if you want to make it even milder. For young children omitting the garlic may help.

Here is an "artistically" taken photo with the one spoonful which was left over!

Now apologies if you are expecting brownies! I will be getting round to them sometime soon! Also I have just got my new waffle maker through the post so something along those lines should happen soon too!

Adios.

Sorry brownies...we ate all the chocolate

Well I was in the mood for baking brownies and I wanted to put some nice chunks of chocolate in them that would melt in the oven and feel all sumptuous while eating. While perusing the local health food shop (As Nature Intended, Chiswick, London) I found Organica White Chocolate. Now I haven't had white chocolate for years and always preferred milk or dark chocolate in my vegetarian days bit when I started to think about the taste I just had to buy it. Originally it was intended to go in my brownies..a sort of white and dark chocolate brownie creation, but as I was too tired to cook that night we decided to just have a small taste...I mean there will still be enough for the brownies won't there? Well the taste was heavenly! You could see all the black vanilla seeds in the chocolate which just screams better quality than all the rubbishy "milky bars" out there. The chocolate melted so deliciously in the mouth. Pure pleasure! As far as I can tell it was a pretty great match to "normal" white chocolate and my boyfriend loved it too which is always a good review as he can be a bit critical on some vegan products! As you may be able to guess from the title the brownies have not yet been made. With university deadlines and a pretty exhausting life I didn't have the time plus within a few days all the chocolate had been nibbled away! Oops. Keep tuned though..I definitely plan to do the brownies in the next week or two!!!

YUM!