A fabulous occasion cake that just so happens to be vegan? Yes please! This is a great recipe to have in the locker, you can use a different cake recipe for a non-vegan option and still use the same decoration techniques. Don’t be intimidated by how ornate this cake looks, it’s actually surprisingly simple! This recipe is from the fabulous Little Blog Of Vegan.
Preparation-Â 10 minutes
Baking time-Â 28-30 minutes
Serves-Â Approximately 10-12
Ingredients for the cake
– 480ml of dairy-free milk
– 2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
– 420g of self-raising flour
– 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
– 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
– 470g of golden caster sugar
– 1 teaspoon of baking powder
– 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
– 120g of coconut oil (melted)
Ingredients for the buttercream
– 210g of dairy-free butter
– 600g of icing sugar
– 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
– 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
– 1/2 teaspoon of dairy-free milk
– Cocoa powder
– Biscoff spread (melted)
Method
- For the cakes, preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and line three 6″ cake tins with grease proof paper.
- In a bowl, combine the dairy-free milk with the apple cider vinegar and whisk until fully combined. Set aside for 10 minutes to curdle. This creates a vegan ‘buttermilk’.
- In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Mix well to combine.
- Add the melted coconut oil into the ‘buttermilk’ and whisk to combine.
- Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix.
- Pour equal amounts of batter into the lined cake tins. Make sure to tap the tins on the worktop to remove any air bubbles.
- Pop the cakes into the centre of the preheated oven and bake for around 28-30 minutes. You will know they are done when you put a knife or skewer in and it comes out clean and they are springy to the touch.
- Place the cakes on a cooling rack and allow to cool fully. Once cool, pop them into a sealed container to keep them fresh before frosting.
To make the buttercream
- In a bowl/stand mixer, cream the butter on high then add in the icing sugar and vanilla extract. Divide the buttercream between two bowls.
- To one of the bowls, mix in some cocoa powder to make the chocolate buttercream for the filling.
- Stack and fill the cake with the chocolate buttercream. Drizzle over some Biscoff spread between the layers (optional).
- Crumb coat the whole cake with chocolate buttercream and pop into the fridge to set. This will take around 1 hour.
How to create the fault line with buttercream
- Add a thick layer of buttercream to the outside center of the cake.
- Press broken up Biscoff cookies into the soft buttercream. Alternating them so that they fit next to each other perfectly.
- Add a thick layer of buttercream to the top and bottom of the cake, leaving the cookies exposed, and using a cake scraper or large spatula, smooth out the buttercream.
- You want the buttercream to be thick so you don’t scrape off the cookies. Check out this amazing tutorial on Youtube.
- Paint the edges of the buttercream (the fault line) with edible gold (optional).
- To decorate, I added leftover buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a medium open star tip nozzle and piped some swirls around the top of the cake, added on some Lotus cookies and cookie crumbs.
- Serve fresh or store in a sealed container in the fridge, the buttercream will firm up at room temperature. Best eaten within a few days!
