Birthday Cakes

Its my Birthday! Well it was 1 week ago, but I didn't post anything on my blog, I was off having too much fun with Hubby and Marco. More to follow.....

When it's your birthday it is custom to take cakes in to work for your colleagues and this year was no exception. Although this year the cakes I was baking were all vegan. A few weeks ago I took in a selection of vegan cup cakes from "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World: 75 Dairy-free Recipes for Cupcakes That Rule by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope". I was testing the water so to speak and thankfully I had some good feedback.

After my disaster with the lemon drizzle cake I decide to use pre-tested recipes and went searching on amazon. I bought "Divine Vegan Deserts: Over 100 Delectable Dairy and Egg-free Recipes, by Lisa Fabry". This book is amazing and all the recipes look so tasty, so I decided to give a few recipes a go. I ended up doing 4 recipes; Chocolate torte, Coffee & Walnut Cake, Chocolate Cake and Lemon Cake. As with most recipes I didn't follow the recipes to the letter! I made the lemon cake into a lemon drizzle cake and I altered the measurements for the Coffee & Walnut Cake as my cake pans were so much bigger. I didn't have any soy milk so I used almond milk for the Lemon and the Coffee & Walnut Cake and I used Chocolate Coconut milk for the other two cakes!

I only took three of the cakes to work as hubby always complains that he never gets to taste them! Although he was dubious after he thought they might all be vegan. Even though he loved, and I mean LOVED the chocolate cupcakes I made, which were all vegan he really has a phobia with vegan food. If he knows its vegan he won't even try it! It's so frustrating. It doesn't matter how good the food looks he just won't try it. So I have to tell a few white lies and don't eat the same food at the same time he eats it. Strange but true.
I decided to keep the Chocolate 
Torte for home and took the Coffee & Walnut Cake, Chocolate Cake and Lemon Drizzle Cake to work. The Chocolate 'ganache' on both the Chocolate Torte and the Chocolate Cake is made with silken tofu. And I was pleasantly surprised it was beautifully silky and had a rich chocolate taste without being over sweet.

Hubby said that the Chocolate Cake looked lovely but then asked if it was vegan (!). He hasn't tried the Chocolate Torte yet, so i'm waiting on the verdict!

My work colleagues were happy though, and didn't bat an eyelid that the cakes were all vegan. Another success story,, the chocolate cake had the most compliments, all I need to do now is make up my own cake recipe. I fancy adding ingredients that you wouldn't normally expect. 
I'm thinking beetroot ...........