Culinary activism in the office
Our office's custom for birthdays is that each coworker supplies a card and cake for the person whose birthday is next in the calendar. My birthday was in September, and the next birthday to come along was my boss's, which is today, so I'm it.
Most folks buy the cake. The person in charge of my birthday was totally stumped by the prospect of procuring a vegan cake, so she got me an apple pie. I decided to show off my vegan baking chops and make a chocolate cake with chocolate icing for my boss.
I used a cake recipe I got from
tijmetje, who blogged the whole baking process on her food blog. It's a terrific cake -- very dark and moist. It reminded me of the chocolate cake my mom and grandma used to make for birthdays, which was pareve but did contain eggs. I baked it for the exact amount of time specified in the recipe and I think I should have checked it a little sooner. It's a little dry around the edges, and I think I could have prevented that.
For the icing, I used a recipe I found on VegWeb that sounded a lot like the Chocolate Butter Icing we used to make from the Joy of Cooking. Here's what I used:
1 cup margarine (I used regular Earth Balance)
1 lb powdered sugar (organic from Trader Joe's; yay!)
1/2 cup cocoa (also organic! also from Trader Joe's! also yay!)
2 tablespoons leftover coffee (it was supposed to be two tablespoons of vanilla extract, which sounds like an awful lot, but I used up all the vanilla extract in the cake)
Enough plain soy milk to make the icing easy to spread
First I softened up the Earth Balance; then I worked all the sugar and cocoa into it. I just used a soup spoon and a
silicone spatula, but the food processor probably would've been a good idea. Then I beat in the liquids until it was the consistency I wanted.
I wanted a layer cake, but the only round pan I have is a big springform pan, so I made 2 8" square cakes. Who decreed layer cakes would be round, anyway? Everyone knows the corner pieces are the best. I iced the cakes with the icing I made, and wrote "Happy 39th [boss's name]" with some packaged writing icing we had left over from baking pepparkakor. I added some dinosaur sprinkles BB had left over from a cookie-decorating session she did with the kids at the library. Et voila. Et yum. I et it, yum.
I think I'll go have another piece of cake.