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.