Vegan strawberry mousse cake

It has been a while since I wrote my last vegan post so here it comes!

I decided to make a victoria sponge cake this time which I think is more appropriate for the mousse because is lighter and fluffier than the madeira sponge cake I use when I need to put fondant on it. The thing with this cake is that it is more difficult to cut as it is not as thicker as the madeira one. That's why I chose to make two cakes and then just put one on top of the other.
The mousse was not going to be easy to figure out as ordinary gelatin which is used for making it has an animal origin. So there I was in the supermarket in the baking section trying to figure out a substitute when I discovered the vegan gelatin!!! I am telling you, there is a whole different vegan world out there.

One last thing before we move to the kitchen. I know I said there was going to be chocolate in it but in the end I thought strawberries and vanilla were a better choice. So let's get started!

The recipe for the sponge cakes
Ingredients for each cake
400ml of soy milk
200g of sugar
400g of self-raising flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of vanilla extract

We whisk the flour, the baking powder and the sugar all together in a bowl. Then we add the soy milk, the vanilla extract and we mix everything with a whisk until we get a smooth batter. We won't use an electric mixer as we do not want to over mix the batter. This would affect the texture of the cake.
We bake the cakes in a 22cm round mould for 45-50 minutes at 180 C.

The strawberry mousse
It is amazingly simple!
Ingredients
1 bag- 6,25g of vegan gelatin powder (I use the brand I found in the supermarket of my town:
Vegegel from Dr. Oetker)
250g of strawberries
200ml of soy cream

We wash and cut the strawberries. We put them in the blender to get a smooth strawberry pure (around 200ml). We put it in a bowl, we pour the gelatin powder on it and whisk a little to get rid of the lumps. 
In a separate bowl we put the soy cream and we use the hand mixer to get a fluffy and spongy cream.
Now we take some of the cream with a spatula and 
mix it with the strawberry gelatin we made. We want to use folding movements to keep the fluffy effect. We will continue adding the cream in small portions and that's it! We could even use this as a dessert itself if we pour it in some cups and put in in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Now we need some buttercream to cover our cake. 
Ingredients
325g of 
250g of vegan butter
2 tablespoons of soy milk
2 tablespoons of vanilla extract

We put everything in a bowl and we use the hand mixer first on low speed for a couple of minutes and then on high speed for five more minutes. 
In this case I dyed part of the buttrecream with pink to make my decorations.

It is time to assemble the cake. 
I cut off the top of the cakes to make them flat. You can use the part you cut to make cake pops or just to eat at breakfast. My kids will thank me for that tomorrow.

Then I use a pipping bag with just a little buttercream in it to make a border around the cake we will place on the bottom. It will prevent the mousse to overflow when we put the other cake on top. Then we put the strawberry mousse in the centre and we keep adding until we cover the surface we have inside the buttercream ring. Then we
put the other cake on top and 
cover the cake with the rest of the buttercream. I put white on the top with some pink swirls and pink on the sides with a spatula but you can make your own design. 

The buttercream is quite versatile and allows a great number of different decoration techniques.
Hope you like the recipe and enjoy the cake!!!

Decorated Cake Roll

Last week was crazy here. My son turned 4 and we prepared a huge party with 15 kids plus their parents. It was incredibly fun for the children and for the adults too! He is all about Spiderman these days so I made a Spiderman cake and a lot of Spiderman cookies. You can see some pictures of them in the photo gallery. I took them with my phone in the last minute so they do not have the best quality.
This week was my birthday too! I decided to make a small cake just for the family using the cake roll technique which gives amazing results. This cake is dedicated to all of you who remembered the date and sent birthday wishes. Thank you!

To make this cake we will need to different types of batter. One for the decorations and one for the rest of the cake.

Ingredients for the decoration batter
100g of butter (room temperature)
3 egg whites
90g of sugar powder
125g of flour

We put the butter and the sugar un a bowl and we mix with the electric mixer until we get a creamy blend. We add the three egg whites and blend all that until is well combined. Next we add the flour gradually while we keep mixing. Next step is dying the dough. I used three colours so I divided the mixture in three bowls and add the colours I chose. You put the mixtures in pipping bags with numbers two or three pipping nozzles.
It is time now for making our design. I draw it myself on a piece of paper this time but you can print out any design you like. Remember it has to be reversed! You fix the design to the cooking tray with some tape and put baking paper on it and fix it too. Now you just go over the design using your pipping bags. It is just like colouring!
Once we are done we put the tray in the freezer while we prepare the other batter.


Ingredients for the rest of the cake
4 eggs
100g of sugar
90g of flour
60g of melted butter (room temperature)

First of all we separate the egg whites and the yolks. We mix in a bowl the egg whites with 50g of sugar until we get a fluffy soft blend. In a separate bowl we combine the yolks with 50g of sugar until we get a smooth yellow cream. Now we are going to incorporate the egg whit mixture in the yolk mixture. We take a spatula and with some egg white mixture, we put it in the yolk mixture and we fold it in. We continue like this until we run out of egg white mixture.

We add now the melted butter at room temperature and the flour. We will fold it in until we get a smooth batter.

We take our tray out of the freezer and separate the template we used to make our design. Now we cover the design with the new batter and we spread it with a spatula to make it flat.
We let it bake in the oven for about 7 minutes.
When we take it out of the oven we immediately flip it over with help of another tray and we carefully and slowly remove the baking paper. We put on it a new piece of baking paper and we flip it again. We roll the cake to make it take the rolling form and we leave it like that to cool.

Once it has cooled down we unroll it carefully and remove the baking paper on the top to put the filling in. I chose chocolate ganache but you can use any cream or filling that you like. Remember to leave some room on the sides and at the bottom because now we have to roll it again and the filling will be pushed forward.

Happy birthday to me!!

Red Velvet Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Even though these are a classic it is always a surprise for everyone every time. These are the most elegant cupcakes you will ever find. They are spongy and moist and the colour makes a huge impression. Your guests will always remember the gorgeous red cupcakes you make. They are a warranted success.   Everyone loves them!

Ingredients for the cupcakes

150g of sugar
140g of all-purpose flour
120ml of milk
12ml of lemon juice
60g of butter (room temperature)
1 egg
10g of unsweetened cocoa powder
2,5ml of white vinegar
2,5ml of vanilla extract
2,5g of baking soda
2,5g of salt
2,5g of baking powder
red food colouring paste

We start whisking in a bowl the flour, the cocoa powder, the baking powder and the salt.
In a separate bowl we beat the sugar and the butter with the electric mixer on low speed until we get a creamy mix. We add the egg and the vanilla extract and we keep beating until it is well integrated.
We mix the milk and the lemon juice in a glass and we add the food colouring.
Now we incorporate half of the flour mix to the butter using the electric mixer on low speed. Then we add the milk and then the rest of the flour. We should not stop beating at any point.

We activate the baking soda pouring the vinegar on it and then we add this to our dough. We mix a little more and now it's ready to be divided in the paper cases. We bake them in the oven at 190 °C for about 25                                          minutes.





Ingredients for the cream cheese frosting

225g of cream cheese (cold)
75g of non-salted butter (room temperature)
100g of powdered sugar
2,5ml of vanilla extract

We mix the sugar, the vanilla extract and the butter in a bowl and when they are well combined we add the cream cheese. We keep beating until we get a smooth and creamy frosting.

When the cupcakes are cold we can start decorating. We can use a piping bag or just a spatula to cover the cupcakes. I made a couple of each so you can see the effect. We can finish our decorations with a small detail made with fondant.