Cookies & Cream Cake

Day two of Vegan MOFO. We will be posting a minimum of twenty-six days in the month of October to celebrate. We have chosen the theme “Vegan A-Z” and will be going through the alphabet highlighting different things we find important about vegan food and nutrition. We have also been asked to be guest writers on Vegan Mainstream and our first post will be up on October 7th. Make sure you check out the blog roll on VeganMOFO to see all the other amazing bloggers participating.

Raspberry Lemonade Cake

Ahh…Vegan baking. Hands down the hardest thing to learn after cutting out eggs and dairy.  The dairy part wasn’t as hard, soy milk works I just don’t care for the taste but that was an easy fix by switching to almond milk, at least for desserts.  Eggs on the other hand, well lets just say it took me six years to master the kind of decadent cake that I was use to.

Caramel Apple Cake

Something I didn’t read until many years into my experimenting was that you should never replace more than three eggs with any one type of egg replacer. This does not mean you can’t convert a recipe with more than three eggs, you will just want to use multiple replacers. Over the last couple years I have mastered vegan cakes so if you are new to vegan baking and want to make a cake from scratch try out one of mine, knowing that five years of failed attempts went into mastering the cakes and I have gone through all the stress for you.  After trying one of the recipes it will seem easy and you can start experimenting, recreating cakes of your past.

White Chocolate Rugelach

There have been other parts about baking that I crave from my dairy indulging days. Luckily our vegan grocery store Sidecar for Pigs Peace carries white chocolate chips. The other is peanut butter chips, which I haven’t been able to find vegan so I decided to make my own.

I read quite a few recipes and as a sweetener they all used honey. I didn’t have agave so I opted to use brown sugar. Tasted great but came out somewhat grainy. You may want to attempt agave but honestly I liked the flavor of the brown sugar so I think I will stick with it and just deal with the graininess that isn’t as noticeable when they bake.  Also I froze it as a brick and cut it up after so they are not nearly as esthetically pleasing as those morsel things but I am alright with that.  If you wanted them to look pretty you could easily put it in a pastry bag and drop them into little chips prior to freezing.

Peanut Butter Chips

Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp maple syrup
4 tbsp Vegan butter
1 cup creamy peanut butter

Line a 8″ x 8″ baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a sauce pan add all ingredients except peanut butter and stir until butter is melted and then cook over low for 5 minutes.  Add peanut butter.  Once well blended remove from heat and pour into lined baking sheet. Put in the freezer for a minimum of three hours. When done freezing cut into chips. Use as you would peanut butter chips or eat as is. Freeze what you aren’t going to use until you need them.