Vegan Clementine Cake with Chocolate Frosting

 

When I stumbled upon King Arthur Flour's recipe for Vegan Clementine Cupcakes, I immediately thought of my vegan friend. I made and brought the cupcakes into work and they were a hit. I really liked how fast and easy they were to make. They could even be made for breakfast! One really important feature of this recipe is how close it's texture is to that of a non-vegan cake. Since the cupcakes were a success, I decided to try and make a cake with the recipe for her going away party.

I made a two changes to the King Arthur Flour recipe. I used a little extra baking powder and I did not use fresh clementines. I thought it would be easier if I used canned mandarin oranges instead. There were two advantages to this: the canned mandarin oranges are already peeled and the pith has been removed. For one recipe a 15oz can results in 1 cup of drained and crushed mandarins; to double the recipe, you can use can the large can 29oz for 2 cups.

Vegan Clementine Cake (or ~16 cupcakes/muffins)

 From King Arthur Flour: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/vegan-clementine-cupcakes-recipe

2 ¼ cups of flour (I used King Arthur)

1 cup sugar

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 can (15oz) of mandarin oranges, crushed and drained (makes 1 cup)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

⅓ cup vegetable oil

1 cup orange juice

 

Preheat your oven to 400°F. If making cupcakes, place cupcake papers in in muffin pan. If making a cake, grease appropriate pan size. This recipe make about 4 cups of batter. I used oval pans from the Wilton Course 2 Kit.

Using a fork, transfer the mandarin oranges to a measuring cup. Crush and break apart the orange segments. You do not need to pulverize the mandarins, just break them apart so there are not any whole segments or very large pieces. Drain. Mix the dry ingredients with a whisk. Using a fork again, add the drained mandarins to the dry ingredients. Add a few at time so that all of the pieces are coated in flour and there are no large chunks. Use a spatula to mix the mandarins into the flour mixture. Mix the oil, orange juice, and vanilla then add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Fold with a spatula just until everything is mixed and there are no ‘pockets’ of unmixed flour. 

In the batter you can see the bits of mandarin orange. Taste the batter! There are no raw eggs.

Place batter into cupcake papers or greased cake pans. Fill the cake pans about halfway. For the cupcakes, fill them 2/3. Bake for 15-25minutes. The cupcakes will take less time than the cakes.  Test cupcakes or cakes by poking them with a skewer or knife. If the skewer or knife comes out clean, they are done!

To make the glaze, mix 2 cups of powdered sugar with 3 tablespoons of orange juice. You can either spread the glaze on the cupcakes or dip the tops in the glaze.

To frost the cake I used 2 cans of Pillsbury Chocolate Fudge Funfetti frosting---it’s vegan. I split and filled the bottom two layers. The top layer I did not split. (The fourth layer I froze for a later time). I was surprised to find out that the frosting can be piped into a variety ways. It is probably too soft to make a rose, but any design with a star tip (shell, rosettes, etc) are possible.

 

The frosting came with sprinkles so I decided to put them in lines on top. I had tried to stencil a design but the sprinkles were large and my pattern was not suited to them.

Cupcakes with Orange Glaze

On the right you can see the texture of the cupcake. It is very close to that of a non-vegan cake made with butter and eggs.

The Chocolate Cake to End all Chocolate Cakes

When I've made chocolate cakes in the past, they've left a little to be desired. My last attempt had a nice dark cocoa coloring, but was really dry and fell apart easily - which made for really messy slices. Recently, I had renewed hope when my co-worker and friend told me about a chocolate cake recipe she perfected for her sister's wedding. One of the lessons she learned was that the Bake Even Strips by Wilton are absolutely necessary to prevent the cake from falling in the middle. 

This recipe is based on the Caramel Mousse Cake Recipe from Chocolatier Magazine.

Cake 

1 ½  cup sugar

2/3 cup oil

2 large eggs

1 ¾  + 1 tablespoon Cake Flour, sifted

1 ¼  teaspoon baking soda

1 cup cocoa powder (Hershey's Special Dark)

½ cup sour cream

1 cup buttermilk

Chocolate Coffee Buttercream Frosting

½ cup of butter (1 stick)
½ cup of shortening
4 cups of powdered sugar
1 tsp almond extract
liquid (water, milk, coffee, etc - we're using coffee here)*

Chocolate Leaves

Wilton Candy melts or your favorite chocolate, melted. 

*For the coffee I mixed one package of the single serve Starbuck Via with a few tablespoons of hot water until the it dissolve. You can also use a few tablespoons of (cooled) strong coffee or espresso.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Sift all of the dry ingredients together.  Beat the sugar, oil, and eggs until light. (about 8 minutes) Combine the sour cream and buttermilk in a separate bowl. Alternatively add dry and wet ingredients to egg mixture, mixing after each addition. Pour into greased baking pans.  Bake until cake tester comes out clean. (Start checking at 18-20 minutes.) This makes 1 8in x 3in cake.

The cake was split, filled, and frosted with a coffee buttercream. I’ll admit, I’ve been making buttercream for so long that I stopped measuring the ingredients, so this is just the basic recipe. Cream the butter and shortening together until smooth. Add the almond extract. Add the (sifted) powdered sugar in small batches so that you do not end up with the 'cloud' of powdered sugar when you start the mixer. When the frosting becomes too stiff, add the cooled coffee, a little at a time, until you reach a smooth, spreadable consistency. The icing needs to be a little stiff if you are going to pipe decorations. The cake was piped with Wilton tip #21.

To make the chocolate leaves, I found a leaf that I liked (I think maple leaves look great) and traced it onto an index card. From there, I used my template to trace the leaf shape onto parchment paper. While you can also use waxed paper, I've found that the cooled chocolate releases much more easily from parchment paper.

HINT: If you fold the parchment paper into a rectangle a little larger the leaf, you only need to trace and cut once for multiple leaves.

Place one side of the parchment leaf into melted candy melts. Carefully place the leaf on a baking sheet for flat leaves, or in a curved flower form for rounded leaves.  After the chocolate has cooled, peel the parchment paper off the chocolate (it can be reused to make more leaves). Arrange the leaves decoratively on and around the cake.

I thought the cake was a bit plain, so I used a pastry brush to add gold luster dust onto the leaves.

I wasn't the only one to enjoy this cake - it was a hit at work! It was everything that a chocolate cake should be. It had a rich cocoa flavor, it was moist, and it didn't fall apart when sliced. 
 

Chocolate Mousse with Strawberry Caviar

For Christmas my best friend gave me a Molecular Gastronomy kit! How awesome!

I went to a dinner party a few months ago and I brought dessert. When deciding what to bring, I thought about also testing the kit out. I originally was going to make chocolate souffle but decided on chocolate mousse.

I used Julia Child's recipe from http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2008/05/perfect-chocola/.

Since the chocolate bars I used were 3.5 ounce each, I used one full 70% bar and made up the difference with the 85%. **

From the picture you can tell the difference in the 2 different types of chocolate.

Strawberry Caviar
1/2 + 1/8 cup of water (5/8cup)**
1 packet of Sodium Alginate (2g)
Strawberries
Sugar to taste

4 cups of water
1 packet of Calcium Lactate (5g)

 **since I did not want to make a bunch of caviar and it was my first attempt, I decided to halve the recipe.

In a medium sized bowl or measuring cup mix the sodium alginate and water. I used a hand mixer and the whisk attachment since I did not have an immersion blender. (The dvd containing the recipes and video used an immersion blender.) It'll take a while for the sodium alginate to dissolve.

Pour the mixture in to a small saucepan and heat until boiling. Transfer to bowl to cool for 10 min. (I just poured in back into the Pyrex measuring cup I used to dissolve it.)

You can see that the volume decreased a bit


Blend the strawberries. You will need enough strawberry juice to equal the volume of the sodium alginate syrup.

Mix an equal volume of the strawberry juice (pass it through a strainer to remove the seeds) with the cooled sodium alginate.

Mix the 4 cups of water with one packed of calcium lactate. This dissolves easily so a mixer is not needed.

Using a syringe or pipet, add drops of the strawberry solution into the calcium lactate water. It will take some practice. I tried both the syringe and the pipet and my caviar had tails. I also tried dropping from different heights. In the end, I think the strawberry juice was closer to a puree and that made perfectly spherical caviar difficult. Once in a while I would get a perfectly round one.

Fishing (haha) out the caviar with the little slotted spoon provided in the kit is close to impossible. It is important to not let the caviar sit in the calcium lactate solution too long otherwise the inside will be a solid instead of liquid. I decided to use a strained to retrieve the caviar. I poured the solution of calcium lactate and the caviar into a strainer that was in another large bowl.

I also rinsed them in another bowl of water. My caviar look perfectly round despite them having tails when they were first made.

The finished product:

**The second time I followed this chocolate mousse recipe, I halved it and used this chocolate:

The result was fantastic. I highly recommend it. I want to test it with raspberry chocolate. The only (small) downside of using this chocolate is that it has a few almond slivers (very few).

El Pastel de Tres Leches Cupcakes

For Cinco de Mayo I thought I would post el pastel de tres leches in cupcake form. Interestingly enough when I Googled 'tres leches cupcakes' only cake recipes came up, no cupcake recipes. I figured it would be pretty simple to adapt the cake into cupcakes. The one thing I had to take into consideration were the cupcake papers. Since the basis of the cake is the tres leches mixture I had to use foil cupcake liners. Also, you will most likely have extra tres leches sauce.

Cake
3 eggs separated
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup whole  milk
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Sauce
1/2 (12 ounce) can of evaporated milk (2/3 cup)
1/2  (14 ounce) can of  sweetened condensed milk (almost 1 cup)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

1/2 cup of whipped cream flavored with vanilla and sugar.

**Use foil cupcake lines.**

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add the sugar slowly and beat until the egg whites are glossy. Set aside. Beat the egg yolks and vanilla extract until they are a light cream color. Add the milk. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites. Sift the flour and baking powder together into the bowl. Mix gently by folding the ingredients together. Fill cupcake foil 2/3 full. (You MUST use the foil cupcake papers because the regular papers will not be able to hold the tres leches mixture.)

Bake at 350F until a toothpick inserted in to the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack. Using a steak knife (or any other sharp knife) make small slits throughout the cupcake. This is to allow the milk sauce to get into the cupcake.

 
To make the sauce, pour the 3 different types of milk in to a blender with the vanilla extract. Blend to mix. Carefully spoon the sauce onto the cupcakes. You can wait for the sauce to absorb into the cupcake before adding more.

Top with whipped cream. Make 15 cupcakes.

 

Recipes adapted from:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pastel-de-tres-leches-three-milk-cake/?scale=6&ismetric=0 and http://www.patismexicantable.com/2010/02/tres_leches_cake/ .