Confectioning

By this veganpassion-blog I want to show people how easy and delicious it is to live vegan.
At the beginning I just posted recipes and I didn't realise how much my personality shapes this site and the site me. By sharing my experiences and adventures with my followers I discovered my biggest passion: vegan baking and cooking, especially confectioning.

Since I posted my two tiers peach champagne cake I got some requests for wedding cakes, what is really pleasant. This motivated me to experiment more with fondant icing and to create some blossoms and fancywork for decorating cakes.

I thought of different cake-designs these days. As nobody is able to eat that much artworks I just made them of 4 inch (10cm) in diameter. I used chocolate and vanilla-sponge, combined with different jellys and fillings.

I known there is some vegan fondant available at the internet too, but it has that much synthetic ingredients in it and I don't wanna to wait several days for the shipment. I love to start a sugar-session spontaneously.
The Arabesque-cake is the one I like most, on which's garnishment I refined really really long.


The cake with the little bow is kind of sappy. Quite good for a birthday or baby-party. Unfortunately you barely can't see the ornament on the white icing.


This was finally the left-over cake for my darling:


I didn't use these sugar flowers yet, but I am quite confident that they will find their corner soon:


For the sponge:
3 cups flour (350g)
2/3 cups suagr (150g)
10 fl.oz. water (300ml)
2 fl.oz. oil (60ml)
3/4 sachet baking powder
1 pinch of salt
grounded Boubon-Vanilla

Mix the flour, sugar, vanilla, baking powder and salt. Add oil and water and work everything to a smooth dough. For the chocolate-dough: just color half of the bulk with 1-2 tablespoons of cocoa. Fill it into 5-6 large cupcake-molds and bake 'em at 320°F (160°C) for about 30 minutes (of course the time is depending on the size of your molds - just test 'em with a toothpick).
As soon as the cakes are chilled, cut them into equal layers and remove the cap/top.

While the cakes are cooling down you may prepare the filling:
1/2 sachet custard powder (vanilla)
7 fl. oz. soya-milk (200ml)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon margarine
1 1/2 cups of oat-based cream (125g)
2 bars of vegan chocolate (1 cooking chocolate + 1 white vegan chocolate)

Boil up the custard powder together with sugar and soy-milk. Let the custard cool down while stiring it. Finally whip the margarine until it's foamy and stir it in.
Heat the oat-cream cautiously, let it cool down a bit and infuse then seperately half of the white and half of the dark chocolate and agitate it to a ganache. Add to both bowls each half of the custard.
Coat the chocolate-filling onto the sponge-layers (you may add some jelly or liquor to keep the cake juicy) and pile them. Pay attention that the coating isn't too thick and doesn't reach the edge as this way the fondant-icing would soaked through too fast.
Leave the cakes chill and draw over night.

Prepare the fondant-icing and blossom-compound also at the same day as they have to draw at least 12 hours.
For the icing:

1 sachet vegan gellant (Agar derivate)
2 fl. oz. water (60ml)
4 fl. oz. glucose syrup (120ml)
1 teaspoon glycerin
1/2 tablespoon citric acid
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon palm-oil (-grease)
2 pound icing sugar (1kg)

First let the gellant soak in water and afterwards heat it charily in the microwave until it's dissolved. Then dissolve the glucose syrup, glycerin, citric acid, salt and palm-grease in it.
Sieve the icing sugar into a big bowl, form a "swale" and fill in the gellant-water-mix. Let the kitchen machine do her work. If you don't have a kitchen machine, then work in 3/4 of the icing sugar with the hand mixer and the remaining bulk with your hands. Fill the ready fondant into an air-tight, greased freezer bag and fasten it (please don't store it in a´the refrigerator!)