Flamingo birthday showstopper cake

I celebrated my birthday during lockdown this year and it wasn’t too bad at all - I’m at home with my husband and two year old daughter who makes every day special. I had some nice presents, including an Instant Pot which I will blog about once I’ve used it a bit more, enjoyed a takeaway lunch from a nearby cafe and a takeaway dinner from a local Italian. My husband and I both took the day off work as well and it was nice not juggling working from home and looking after a toddler for the first time in a while!

This year my birthday cake was a chocolate cake from the supermarket - the first time in many years I haven’t made my own. But I had no free time before the big day and didn’t really want to spend hours in the kitchen on my birthday so was happy enough with a shop-bought cake.

But I’ve realised that I never actually shared the cake I made for my birthday last year, so here it is! It was a milestone birthday so I had an extended celebration, including a visit to my family, a weekend in a hotel with my husband and daughter followed by a weekend back in my home town with my school friends where we had a professional photoshoot, did an escape room and went out for dinner.

I made a cake to take with me as we were staying at a friend’s parents house while her parents were out of town (it’s like we were 16 again!). I settled quite quickly on a flamingo theme - I prefer llamas but I thought flamingos might make for a more glamorous cake!

One of my friends I was getting together with is vegan so I looked online for a suitable cake recipe and used this one from One Green Planet:

https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/pink-strawberry-cake-vegan/

It was really moist and delicious and the perfect cake. 

Here’s how to decorate a flamingo cake:

To start with I covered the cake with buttercream but realised the sides were quite messy (I never understand how people get perfectly neat sides!). So partly to hide it, and partly for a fun nostalgic throw-back, I added a cake banner, if that is the correct term. We had one made of foil as a child that was put on every birthday cake for me and my sister year after year, and carefully cleaned and put away again – I can remember exactly what it looks like. I had some flamingo print wrapping paper which I used to the same effect, but of course as it’s paper it can’t really be cleaned and reused!

For the top of the cake I knew I wanted the centrepiece to be a flamingo. You can make one from flower paste or even a fat 3D one from fondant, but as I was in a bit of a hurry I decided to cut a flamingo shape out of cardboard. I did however make the wings, by melting white chocolate and adding a little pink food colouring. I placed a piece of greaseproof paper on a board and using a silicon brush, created the wings by sweeping the melted chocolate in the shape I wanted and leaving them to set. I did a few layers so the wings would be thick enough to pick up when they had dried, and I was able to stand them on the top of the cake to represent the flamingo’s wings just as I wanted.

For the final decorative touches I added mini meringues – again you can make your own and if you want this whole cake to be vegan (which makes sense given the recipe is vegan!) you can actually make vegan meringue. Did you know that? It’s actually quite surprising given meringue is usually made with eggs – you can make a very good substitute meringue from aquafaba, which is the liquid you get in a tin of chickpeas!

I also used some white chocolate buttons (which were vegan) to fill in a few spaces on the top. I was quite pleased with this cake as it delivered a lot of bang for its buck – it looked fairly impressive but didn’t take a huge amount of time to make or decorate and tasted delicious, so I’m glad I’ve been able to share it with you at last!

Easy Vegan Pumpkin Pie to use your leftover pumpkin

I was determined to use up my pumpkins in cooking this year and not just throw them away so as well as this pumpkin and gnocchi gratin I made a pumpkin pie. I've made a pumpkin cheesecake (vegan) before, and this chocolate pumpkin cheesecake, but I've never made an actual pumpkin pie before.

I was spending the weekend with friends so a pie seemed like a nice thing to take; one friend is vegan so I needed to find a vegan recipe. I had a look online and ended up creating my own recipe based on this one from Yummy Mummy Kitchen, but using shop-bought shortcrust pastry, which is vegan, and using my fresh pumpkin rather than canned, coconut milk and cornflour to thicken, and brown sugar and golden syrup to sweeten it. The end result was a soft baked pie filling, almost the consistency of a baked cheesecake, which tasted delicious! It was very popular with my friends, vegan and non-vegan alike.

See below for the full recipe - I also want to mention here the vacuum seal food storage container from Ozeri that I used to transport and store my pie in. You get two large domed containers in the pack, and you simply close the valve at the top and push down to create a vaccum seal; when you want to open the container just open the valve. This keeps the food fresh and there's also a handy dial you turn to show which day you put the food in the container. They are fairly large to store but are a nice sturdy design and I like the fact that the lid is clear plastic so you can see what's inside, so this is also a nice way to serve food for instance when you are outside in the summer and want to keep the insects away!

 

It's currently available on the UK Amazon site but with fairly high shipping costs as it comes from the US, or you can find it on other Amazon sites which are cheaper to ship to the UK.

So here's how I made my pumpkin pie
Serves 10-12

Flesh from one large pumpkin, skin removed, chopped
500g shortcrust pastry block
The cream from the top of a 400ml tin of coconut milk plus some of the milk making up 200ml in total
150ml golden syrup
75g brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
3 tbsp. cornflour

Stew the chopped pumpkin in a pan of boiling water until softened then drain. Allow to cool then pulse in a food processor until you have a smooth puree.

Preheat oven to 180C. Roll out the pastry and use to line either a deep tart tin or a loose bottomed cake tin. Line with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans and blind bake in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is starting to turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cook while you make the filling.

In a large bowl, mix the pumpkin puree, coconut cream and milk, golden syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cornflour and beat until smooth.

Pour into the pie crust and return to the oven for 45 minutes. If the top of the pie starts to brown too much, cover with foil.

 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool then chill overnight in the fridge - this should make the filling set.

I'm sharing this with Baking Crumbs hosted by Jo's Kitchen Larder and CookBlogShare hosted by EasyPeasyFoodie.
 

Thanks to Ozeri for the food storage containers to review.

Vegan Chocolate Baby Shower Cake

 

One of my friends has just had her second baby, another boy, the day before her own birthday. We - my group of school friends - all went to see her a couple of weeks ago for a combined birthday and baby shower celebration.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go until the last minute as we already had two other things on that weekend - a relative visiting and my father in law’s birthday - but we were able to arrange things so that we were able to go.

Making cakes for celebrations when we get together is usually my thing so I couldn’t turn up empty handed, but I didn’t have the confidence I would have enough time in between taking care of my five month old to make anything really elaborate so I decided to keep it simple.

One of my friends is vegan and I remembered seeing a recipe for a vegan chocolate cake in Tea with Bea, the recipe book from the Bea's of Bloomsbury café.

I'm also publishing this recipe on my new parenting blog, Mini Moo Life - if you're interested in all things baby, parenting and family related, hop on over and have a look! Or follow the blog on Twitter @MiniMoo_Life or Instagram @mini_moo_life.


I used white wine vinegar instead of the red wine vinegar given in the recipe as I had a bottle in the cupboard already (and white wine vinegar is often used in vegan baking so I knew it would be ok). I made a simple vegan buttercream from Pure dairy-free spread, icing sugar and cocoa powder.

The guideline cooking time was given as 40-55 minutes with an extra 5-10 minutes if necessary, which is quite a large range. I found the cake needed the full 65 minutes, in fact I think I left it in even for slightly longer and it was still really light and moist.

I bought a gold cake pick with the word 'baby' from my local party store to go in the top and sprinkled the top with edible gold lustre dust. The cake tasted really good - if you are new to vegan baking and need reassuring, this cake tastes even better than a lot of non-vegan chocolate cakes!

Here's what I did
To make one 8 or 9 inch cake you need:

275g plain flour
100g cocoa powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
450ml soya milk
2 tsp red wine vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
320g caster sugar
320ml sunflower oil (I used vegetable oil)
2 tbsp. vanilla extract

For the buttercream
200g vegan spread eg Pure
400g icing sugar

Here's what I did

Preheat oven to 160C. Mix the flour, cocoa powder, bicarb of soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

In another bowl, mix the soya milk, vinegar, sugar, oil and vanilla, whisking until combined.

Fold into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Grease an 8 or 9 inch cake tin and spoon in the prepared mixture and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour (I've increased the cooking time slightly from the original recipe). Test the middle with a skewer and bake for another 5-10 minutes if needed.

Allow to cool in the tin then turn out onto a baking rack.

When cool, make the buttercream - cream together the marg and icing sugar. Carefully slice the cake through the middle and spread with the buttercream.

You can spread buttercream over the top and around the sides as well if you wish; I left mine plain and decorated the top with edible gold lustre powder.

I'm sharing this with the final We Should Cocoa linkup over at Tin and Thyme and also with CookBlogShare over at Easy Peasy Foodie.

CatFest London and vegan street food

CatFest was London's first ever festival dedicated to cats (in Shoreditch, where else?) featuring everything from handmade cat baskets to bejewelled cat collars (which could also be worn by humans), posters and paintings of cats, cat themed stationery and gifts, and books about cats.

It took place in July and I managed to get two tickets for me and a friend who was visiting. I left baby S at home with her dad and enjoyed one of the most random days out I've had in a while!

The event opened later than the advertised time so there was a queue of people waiting outside as we arrived, but luckily it didn't take long to get in. The stalls were arranged in rows around a hall and we took our time browsing, though the only thing I bought was a catnip toy. I did however get to meet Artemis and Apollo, two Instagram-famous cats with about 115,000 followers - this is a selfie with Artemis!

There was a stage at the front with various speakers over the course of the day, but nobody I had actually heard of - while we were there, a lady from the "Kitty Bungalow Charm School for Wayward Cats" (a cat rescue in Los Angeles) was giving a talk but we couldn't hear her very well over the general hubbub of the festival, and there was nowhere to sit and not much room to even stand in front of the stage - they would have been better doing this in a separate room with some seating I think. There were also some very odd 70s style dancers which we watched for a few minutes but I was more interested in the cats!

Having said that, other than the Instagram stars we didn't see any actual cats. There was an adoption area in another bit across the road, where you could meet cats and put your name down to adopt one, but I already have a cat and the queue to get into this separate area was very long - they were only letting a few people in at a time so not to overwhelm the cats, which was sensible, but we didn't want to queue in the hot sun.

 

Instead we visited the food court to get some lunch. For some reason all the food on offer was vegan and though there weren't that many stalls, there were choices from every end of the spectrum so pretty much something for everyone. My friend had a cauliflower patty served in a box with cous cous and a few other things, though as there was only a tiny seating area and we had to stand, she found it a little difficult to eat out of the box with a fork (given we also had a glass of Pimms as well!). I had a vegan hot dog from Pig Out - they had three options, all vegan, and I had American style with macaroni cheese on top the sausage. It was absolutely delicious and as they travel the country visiting various food markets and events I urge you to check them out if you get the chance.

I also spotted one of my favourite bakeries which just happens to be vegan - Ms Cupcake, based in Brixton, makes the best cookie sandwiches I've ever had. I had a salted caramel and took a chocolate chip home for my husband - he is about as far removed from vegan as you can get, and he loves them too!

I wore my cat print dress from Lindybop which I've had for a while but only worn once or twice before as it seems a bit OTT for daily wear but this was definitely the event for it - I got so many compliments from complete strangers!

 

CatFest was a fun day out though I did think the £20 ticket price was a bit steep considering that pretty much everything inside involved purchasing things, other than adopting cats, and the guest speakers, but even if we had wanted to stay and listen to any more speakers it wasn't very well set up for that, as there was nowhere to sit and even standing to listen we were in the way of people walking around looking at the stalls. So if this event takes place again, which I think is their intention, I hope they will drop the ticket price and also think differently about the logistics. The food was great and it was definitely something a bit different!

Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

I just had to share this with you even though it's not my own recipe. It's not only the best vegan cake I've ever made, but it's up there with the best cakes I've made, full stop.

Unlike other vegan cakes it doesn't contain a cupful of oil (I read the number of calories recently in a bottle of vegetable oil, and am still reeling). But it's still incredibly moist, so much so that you need to eat it with a fork rather than fingers, and really chocolatey. The peanut butter filling and topping are delish - even my husband loved this and he doesn't really like peanut butter. All together, it's a gooey cake that feels very indulgent - a real treat both for vegans and non-vegans alike.

I made this the day after my birthday as I had a couple of friends coming over to do a room escape game (which was brilliant by the way, I can't recommend them enough). One friend is vegan and I wanted to make a cake she could eat, so had a look online and found this recipe on Dora's Daily Dish - pop over and have a look.
The recipe was quite interesting - as I said a lot of the vegan cakes I've made use oil. This one uses melted vegan margarine, flax seed, almond milk and coffee.

It's really easy to make, you just mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

 

Here the cakes have just come out of the oven

The frosting unusually doesn't use icing sugar and is just peanut butter, vegan margarine and agave nectar. I spread half in the middle of the cake and the other half on the top.

A fairly simple, classic cake - the two layers were pretty deep, this is a good recipe in that sense - and in fact in every sense!

 

I'm sharing this bake with We Should Cocoa at Tin and Thyme.

Super-Moist Vegan Strawberry Cake

 

I’m not that good at taking a hint, I guess. I made this vegan strawberry cake for my friend Alice’s birthday in 2013,

 

Vegan Strawberry Rose Birthday Cake - Caroline Makes www.carolinemakes.net I made this birthday cake for my friend Alice, not that we needed more cake as we also went out for afternoon tea! But I wanted to try out a chocolate transfer sheet ...

 and since then she has mentioned a few times that it was one of the best cakes she has ever had. So when it came around to her birthday this year, I thought I had better make it again!

 

I didn’t want to decorate it in exactly the same way – I covered the cake with pink fondant last time – and I recalled from reading my blog post that it was an absolutely massive cake.

 

The recipe below converts the quantities from US to UK measurements, and halves the amount. This was plenty to make a two-layer cake, which I filled and topped with vegan buttercream and fresh strawberries.

 

I brought the cake with me when I went to see Alice for her birthday and we all enjoyed a slice. The cake was really light and moist and as I’ve said often before, if you have preconceptions about vegan cakes not being good, you really must try this!

 

Vegan Strawberry Cake

 

280g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
140g caster sugar
60ml vegetable oil
600g strawberries
60ml soya milk
For the frosting:
200g vegan margarine eg Pure
400g icing sugar, sifted

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Add the oil and mix well. Puree 400g of the strawberries, keeping the rest for decoration, and mix the pureed strawberries into the cake batter along with the soya milk.

Grease an 8-inch cake tin with Cake Release or with vegan margarine. Pour the cake batter into the tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool in the tin and when cool turn out onto a board. Slice the cake through the middle so you have two layers.

Beat the vegan margarine with the icing sugar to make frosting. Spread half the frosting onto the bottom layer of cake and slice half the reserved strawberries. Arrange the strawberries on top of the frosting.

Repeat with the second layer of cake with the remaining frosting and strawberries and gently place the top layer of cake on top of the bottom one. Sprinkle with icing sugar if desired.

 

I'm sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK, and CookBlogShare, hosted by Hijacked by Twins.

 

WeightWatchers Rosemary and Butterbean Soup

I've been trying to avoid bread and at the very least not taking sandwiches into work for lunch, which at this time of year means soups instead. I am a pretty fussy eater (for those who hadn't figured that out yet!) and often skip over recipes because they have ingredients I don't like. But, I figured, when you are blending everything together in a soup, you don't really know you are eating it, right? Especially if it isn't an ingredient with a strong overpowering taste.

So I decided to make this rosemary and bean soup from an old WeightWatchers recipe book called Simply Autumn. I used butterbeans, though you can also use cannellini or borlotti beans. I added a little plain yogurt at the end to thicken the soup but if you don't do this, it would be vegan - great for anyone doing #veganuary.

According to the WeightWatchers recipe book this has 3 points per portion.

To make two portions, here's what I did:

 

You need:
Fry Light (low-fat cooking spray)
2 cloves garlic with the skins left on
400g tin butter beans or cannellini beans
1/2 an onion, peeled and chopped into wedges
1/2 a lemon, cut in half
1 small handful rosemary
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 pint vegetable stock
2 tbsp. low fat plain yogurt (optional - no longer vegan if you use this)
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 200C. Spray a roasting tin with Fry Light or similar. Put the garlic, butter beans, onion, lemon, rosemary and oregano into the pan, spray with more Fry Light, toss together and roast in the oven for 20 mins.

Take out of the oven and use a fork or wooden spoon to crush the softened garlic and lemon. Remove the garlic skin and lemon peel and discard.

Scrape everything into a blender and add the stock. Liquidize to make a soup; stir in the yogurt if desired and serve.

I'm sending this to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for her veggie soup challenge No Croutons Required.

Vegan French Apple Tart

This month's Food 'n' Flix challenge is French Kiss - the 1995 movie starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. The film was chosen by Food 'n' Flix creator Heather at All Roads Lead to the Kitchen - you can see her announcement post here, and you can take part any time this month.

The premise of the film is that Kate (Meg Ryan) is flying to France alone, to confront her cheating fiancé; she is seated on the plane next to Luc (Kevin Kline), a thief who hides a stolen necklace in her bag. Which of course means that he needs to retrieve the necklace later, so Luc offers to help Kate win back her fiancé.

They bond and Kate learns that Luc gambled away his birthright to the family vineyard but dreams of buying his own vineyard some day. I won't spoil what happens as Kate goes after her fiancé and Luc tries to sell the stolen necklace - you will have to watch the film yourself!

I enjoyed the film even though it was a bit predictable and quite dated, but Meg Ryan is always good in a rom-com.

There are plenty of nice foodie references as well; for instance Kate finds her errant fiance eating in a restaurant with his new girlfriend's parents. She tries to hide and sneaks around the restaurant so she can spy on them, and predictably ends up crashing into a dessert trolley and getting a face full of food

Kate and Luc are having breakfast on the train of French bread and cheese and Luc tells her that there are 452 official cheeses in France; she tries some but is sick as she is lactose intolerant (presumably the cheese is worth it!). This means they have to get off the train part way, in what is Luc's home town and they stay at his family home, and this is where Kate learns about his dream to create a vineyard.

 

When I was thinking about recipes to make, I kept thinking of tarte tatin - a lovely French tart that is cooked upside down in a pan using apples or sometimes pears, that I have made a few times and really love. I wanted to make something a bit different but the vineyard idea had put fruit in my head as well.

I was visiting friends for new year's eve and had been asked if I could bring dessert. I made these chocolate brownies with candy cane frosting but wanted to make something that wasn't chocolate, and that my vegan friend could enjoy. (I would have made vegan brownies but was only using ingredients I already had in the house, and didn't have what I need).

I found a recipe on Good to Know for French apple tart and decided to make it vegan by making my own pastry.

What I love about this tart is that you have fluted apple slices on top which look appealing, but underneath a layer of sweet stewed apple. The combination of textures is amazing and it tasted delicious.

This is what I did:

To serve 6, you need:
for the pastry:
125g plain flour
55g vegan (soya) margarine - I used Pure
2-3 tbsp. water
for the filling:
6 eating apples
20g butter
50g caster sugar plus 2 tbsp. for later


First make the pastry, by sifting the flour into a large bowl and using your fingertips rub in the soya margarine to make a breadcrumb texture. Add a couple of tablespoons of cold water and mix by hand until you have a dough consistency. Form the dough into a ball and wrap in clingfilm; put the dough in the fridge while you make the filling.

Cut one of the apples in half and peel four and a half. Cut the peeled apples into small chunks and put in a saucepan with the butter and 4 tbsp. water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the apples have softened; you may need to top up the water as you go. You don't want the mixture to be wet at the end, though you can drain it through a sieve if necessary.

When the apples have softened add the 50g sugar (return the apples to the pan if you have drained them) and heat, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Leave the mixture to cool.

Preheat oven to 190C. Roll out the pastry and line a 9-inch fluted tart tin. Line with greaseproof paper and fill with ceramic baking beans or raw rice and bake the empty pie crust in the oven for 10 minutes.

Carefully remove the paper and the baking beans and bake the pie case for another 5 mins until golden brown.

Spread the apple filling over the pastry base then peel the remaining apples.

Remove the core with a corer or knife and slice the apples very thinly all the way around so you can fan them out over the top of the tart as shown.

Sprinkle over the remaining caster sugar and bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the apples have turned golden brown. Serve warm or cold.

I'm sharing this with Food n Flix as described above.

I'm also sharing this with CookBlogShare, hosted this week by Sneaky Veg.