Hey everyone! My friend’s birthday is coming up, and because he is allergic to eggs, dairy, nuts, and seafood, I decided to attempt a vegan (nut-free) birthday cake for the first time. Normally, I don’t make a lot of vegan desserts because of how much I love butter, eggs, and milk. However, since I couldn’t use any of those ingredients this time, I thought that I should challenge myself to try vegan baking. I was extremely nervous about this one but I’d like to thank my friend Regan for this opportunity to make a vegan cake for her super allergic boyfriend and for believing in me.
SO, I did a litte research. It seems the top faults in vegan cakes would be the taste, texture, and levels of moisture. A good vegan cake would be a cake that doesn’t taste like it’s missing normal ingredients, is light and fluffy, as well as super moist — no one wants a dry cake. As I was making this cake and decorating it, I thought, wouldn’t it be so cute to have little meringues on the top!?!?! And then I decided to challenge myself more and make vegan meringues.
It’s funny because meringues are literally made with egg whites and sugar, like how do you subsitute the main ingredient/backbone of a whole recipe and hope it turns out the same?!?! And here it goes… let me tell you how it went because I learned some interesting new things.
You know the liquid that surrounds chickpeas in a can? The liquid that you usually dump down the drain and rinse off of the chickpeas? Ok so APPARENTLY that stuff is MAGIC. It has the capability of acting like egg whites and whips up into a fluffy meringue! I am absolutely mindblown at how this is possible. I panicked a little while I was trying to whip it up because I didn’t have cream of tartar. It wasn’t whipping up after 10 minutes of being in the mixer. However, my pastry school education came in handy and I remembered that cream of tartar helps eggs to whip up because it is acidic, so I threw in a teaspoon of lemon juice et voila!!! Magic egg-free meringue.
Anyways, back to the cake. I adapted this cake recipe from Loving it Vegan and adjusted it for 2 x 8″ cake tins.
Vegan Vanilla Cake
Ingredients
For the cake:
330g (2-1/2 cups) Flour
300g (1-1/2 cups) sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
360 mL (1-1/2 cups) soy milk
1 tbsp vanilla extract
120mL (1/2 cup) any neutral oil, I used canola
23 mL (1-1/2 tbsp) white vinegar
For the buttercream:
130g (1/2 cup) vegan butter or margarine
675g (5-1/4 cups) powdered sugar
1 Tbsp soy milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method
For the cake:
1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. Grease pans with vegan butter or margarine.
2. Whisk Together flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt
3. In separate bowl, mix the soy milk, vanilla extract, oil, and vinegar
4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour the wet ingredients into the center, whisk until everything is incorporated. Make sure there are no clumps and do not overmix!
6. Divide batter equally between two 8″ cake pans
7. Bake cakes for around 30 minutes or until a toothpick pierced into the center of the cake comes out clean.
For the buttercream:
1. Beat butter or margarine with a stand mixer and paddle attachment or a hand mixer.
2. Add the icing sugar and soy milk and beat the sugar and butter on low speed until incorporated, add the vanilla, and then beat it on medium-high speed until it is light and fluffy.
Vegan Meringues
Ingredients:
Liquid from 1 can of chickpeas
1 tsp lemon juice
150g granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Food colouring of your choice (optional)
Method
1. Pour the liquid from one can of chickpeas into a stand mixer with a whisk attachment.
2. Add the lemon juice
3. Whisk the chickpea water and lemon until it starts to resemble soap bubbles. Slowly rain in the sugar as it whips.
3. Whip the mixture until it forms stiff peaks, add vanilla and whisk just to incorporate.
4. Paint streaks of food colouring on the inside of your piping bag (optional)
5. Fill the piping bag with the meringue with a piping tip of your choice – I used a plain tip
6. Pipe large drops of meringue about an inch and a half in diameter on a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray.
7. Bake at 250F for 45-50 min or until the meringues easily peel off the parchment sheet. Leave it to cool in the oven with the door slightly ajar for 2-3 hours or overnight.
Decorate the cake as you like. Below is a quick instagram story video on how I made the cake. Check out my Youtube channel for more cake videos and tutorials. Enjoy!!
ally bakes 