Vegan Chocolate Cake & Icing!

I was recently in a position where I had to make a cake for someone who is lactose intolerant & another who is vegan. It goes without saying, I was pretty stumped on what to make. All the vegan cakes I have tried before were quite shocking with a flavour that resembled cardboard! So I started googling & found these recipes on Best Recipes. The reviews were decent so I thought I'd give it a shot - I figured if it was truly terrible I could simply blame the recipe!

Needless to say, I was quite surprised when people started complimenting me on my baking prowess (figuring at first they were simply being kind) but once I took a bite it all became terribly clear - IT WAS DELICIOUS! One of the best chocolate cakes I have ever had - for those in Australia, a good example would be that it tastes very similar to the Sara Lee chocolate sheet cakes.

The below recipes are adapted versions of those that I found on Best Recipes.

Cake Ingredients:

3 cups self raising flour
2/3 cups cocoa
2 cups caster sugar
2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup coffee (I used espresso from our coffee machine, but you could use strong instant coffee)
2/3 cups canola oil (you can use vegetable oil)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 180C (375F).
2. Sift flour, cocoa, sugar and salt in a large bowl.
3. Add all remaining ingredients & combine well.
4. Pour mixture into a greased cake tin - this cake pops out of the tin so easily once its cooked!
5. Bake until cooked through - I believe mine took about 40 minutes.

Icing Ingredients:

1 cup icing sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa, level
2 teaspoons nutelex (nutelex is a non-dairy spread made from canola oil. If your not a vegan or lactose intolerant you could use soft regular butter)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon boiling water

1. Sift icing sugar and cocoa.
2. Add nutelex (or soft butter) and vanilla. Pour in boiling water and beat well until combined.
3. Spread over cooled cake and refrigerate until needed (I made mine late at night whilst the cake was still warm & it ended up dipping all over the edges!).

You could also make this recipe into cupcakes, just divide the mixture into patty cases & cook for about 15 minutes. Either way, its super delicious so give it a try!

Sunny xx

Pokemon Cupcakes!

This month was one of my best friend's birthdays. So in celebration I made her some pokeball cupcakes! Please excuse my crappy middle-of-the-night-phone-camera photography!

They were very simple to make. Here's how:

1. Make some regular vanilla cupcakes
2. Whip up some buttercream icing and colour half red, leaving the other half white. Gel colours are nest as a liquid will make your icing runny.
3. Ice half the cupcake with the white icing. If you have time, put in the fridge for 20 minutes.
4. Ice the other half of the cupcakes red. Leave in the fridge for another 20 minutes.
5. Melt some dark chocolate in the microwave. Put into a piping bag and pipe a straight line down the cupcake where the colours meet.
6. Place a round white lolly (I used koolmints) on top and pipe melted chocolate around it to keep it secure.

This recipe also works really well with BIG cupcakes, so when making the cupcakes try to fill the patty cases 3/4 of the way up before baking.

x Sunny x

Georgie's Nanna's 80th

I did these cupcakes last year for Georgie's Nanna's 80th.

The theme she gave me to work with was an antique/old world look with a light pink/brown/pearl theme. She also ordered a mini cake so her Nanna would have something to cut. I did a mix of chocolate & vanilla cupcakes & a chocolate mini-cake.

Thanks to Georgie for taking some pictures for me as i forgot to take some myself before sending them to her! These cupcakes were decorated with buttercream & fondant.

Thanks again Georgie & I hope your Nanna had an awesome birthday! xx

RSPCA Cupcake Day

This year was the first RSPCA Cupcake day. After my friends at work alerted me to that fact we got to planning! above is the top layer of our 'tea lady' trolley that we wheeled around most of the morning. We managed to raise almost $400.00!

Here is the trolley in all its glory. My boss made some vegetarian curry pizzas to sell (on cupcake day?) and they went suprisingly fast!!

Here are some of the chocolate crackles we made. We all went over to Suzie's house on the sunday before and had a massive bake off. It was soooo much fun!

Here are Suzie and Georie filling the chocolate moulds and to the left you can see the chocolate dipped butter biscuit half bones.... complicated i know.


And the cupcakes pre-icing. It was at this point we all got on our sugar high and didnt manage to take anymore photos :)

Tash's Baby Shower!

For Tash's Baby Shower I made her some vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. It was a great shower and the food was incredible! A big welcome to baby Georgia who is the smallest and cutest thing i've seen in a while!

Leftovers for Briony's House Warming

After Pamela's order i had piles of cupcakes left and you can only force your family to eat a certain amount before it gets creepy!

Here are the cupcakes i made for Briony (who moved house on the weekend and we all know what that is like!) with leftovers from Pamela's order. They are Vanilla Butter Cake with a layer of chocolate icing and a swirl of vanilla icing. Topped off with the left over blue white chocolate stars.

Again, Sorry about the crap photography! only so much you can do with a container of cupcakes at 10pm on a Sunday night - That's a little late for cupcaking but its when the brilliant idea of giving them to Briony struck me!

Now if only all my leftovers were as pretty.....

Pamela's Order- Baby Shower for Tina & Vik

This is the triple decker milk and white chocolate layered mud cake I made for Pamela who hosted her friends joint baby showers.



Top Layer - Milk Chocolate Mud Cake
Middle Layer - White Chocolate Mud Cake
Bottom Layer - Milk Chocolate Mud Cake



The writing and hearts are piped in white chocolate and the icing is milk chocolate. Mmmm chocolate.



And these are the cupcakes... my pride and joy is forever cupcakes! These are Vanilla Butter Cake, made without eggs by request, and they were made in half sized cupcake tins (bigger than mini but smaller than regular size... confusing i know!).



The blue layer:



The pink layer:



A close up of the sugar paste bows...



Pink Cupcake Decorations: sugar paste birds, pink cachous, Pink sparkle sugar, white sprinkles and sugar paste bows. All on top of vanilla icing.



Blue Cupcake Decorations: White chocolate stars (coloured blue), Sugar paste birds, sugar paste bows, blue sparkle sugar and white sprinkles. All on top of vanilla icing.



These photo's aren't the best as my camera is out of action and these were taken on my mobile camera. I'll get better ones the moment mine is fixed :)