Wedding cake!!

Finally, I’m going to share my wedding cake recipes with you. I only actually got a photo of the fruit cake uniced but the sponge looked amazing (and really tall!!!) and they all tasted great!

I had them decorated by a professional with vegan regal ice, which she also made some flower and petal decorations from.

Here we are about to cut the cake!

Bottom layer: 11” Parkin

12oz margarine (vitalite)
12oz black treacle
12oz golden syrup
24oz self-raising flour
24oz medium oatmeal
2 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoon mixed spice
360ml soya milk

1. Grease 11” round cake tin and preheat the oven to 160’C

2. Put margarine, treacle and syrup in a saucepan and melt over a low heat

3. Combine all the dry ingredients

4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, adding soya milk/water if necessary for a fairly wet cake batter. Mix well.

5. Pour into prepared tin and bake at 160’C for an hour to an hour and a half until firm and brown and a skewer comes out clean when inserted.

Middle layer: 9” fruitcake

10oz currants
10oz sultanas
10oz raisins

sherry or brandy (optional)
3oz glace cherries (chopped)1oz mixed peel (chopped finely)

24oz  self-raising flour
12oz soft brown sugar
1 pint soya milk
5 oz / 70g vegan margarine
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
2 tsp bicarbonate soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp mixed spice

1. Soak currants, sultanas and raisins in brandy or sherry for a few hours (optional step)
2. Sift flour, salt and spices into a large mixing bowl and rub in the margarine until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix in the sugar, soaked dried fruit and lemon zest
4. Mix in all but 3 tbsp of soya milk and mix well
5. Warm the 3 tbsp soya milk until about 60’C (not boiling but fairly hot) and mix in the bicarbonate of soda. It will fizz up. Quickly mix into the batter.
6. Pour into prepared 9” round tin and bake in the oven at 180’C for an hour, then turn down to 155’C for another hour. Once cooked the cake should be brown and firm and a skewer should come out clean when inserted.

I decided to go with a different sponge recipe as mine is often a bit crumbly. This one is denser and moister and I think it carved well.

7″ sponge cake

9oz vegan margarine
9oz caster sugar
1lb 2oz self-raising flour
6 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
1 x 500ml tub plain or vanilla vegan yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. In a saucepan, melt the margarine and sugar until melted. Allow to cool slightly.

2. Sieve flour and baking powder and salt into a bowl. Pour in the margarine/sugar mixture, yoghurt and vanilla extract and mix well.

3. Spoon cake mix into 2 prepared 7” round tins and bake at 180’C for about 40 minutes or until risen and golden. A skewer should come out clean when inserted.

4. Allow to cool and sandwich together with raspberry jam and vegan buttercream (I creamed vitalite with icing sugar for this)

Naughty Jen/Thanks for the treats! My first vegan food swap.

OK I’m about a week late on this post. I feel like a TERRIBLE member of the vegan community after signing up for a vegan food swap through tohappy vegans (http://www.tohappyvegans.com/wordpress/uk-vegan-food-swap/) receiving an amazing box of goodies and NOT SAYING THANK YOU.
A lovely lady called Kadian emailed me to check my address and any dietary requirements then went and got me loads of wonderful foods I hadn’t had before.
A few days after the email, I got home, slightly drunk, after going out for drinks with work people and not having any food. On the sofa was a big box, which I tore into and found inside:

So many exciting things!! I immediately ripped open the Lucy’s chocolate chip cookies. I love Lucy’s cookies and hadn’t had the chocolate chip ones before- they did not disappoint! I also had some dried pears (yum) and coconut chips (weird, but also yum).
I have been using the amazing chilli salt flakes in a lot of my cooking and salad dressings and they give a really great flavour.
The snapea crisps were hoovered up by me another evening- they are awesome!! Like dried out sugarsnap peas with salt I guess but with that texture you get with crisps like wotsits? Hard to describe but I need to find a supplier!!
I haven’t yet tried the chreese sauce but that will come soon, and I also got some nice little teas (great for taking to work)
So thanks, Kadian! I loved my pile of vegan goodies!

Excuses for being so rubbish:
1. I left my old job and started a new one 2 weeks ago, with just a weekend in between on which I was on my hen weekend!! Here is the giant vegan jaffa cake I made for my last day at the old job:

I’ve had to go through loads of training for the new job and have to take a test on what I’ve learnt tomorrow. Eek!!!

2. I’m getting married in less than 3 weeks!!! I have been organising like crazy and this weekend I made an 11″ parkin and a 9″ fruitcake (both nearly 4″ deep!) for the wedding cake! I’m having it professionally iced and will do a post on my recipes (also for the sponge on top which I’ll do 2 days before) but here’s a sneak peek of the fruit cake:

Am I forgiven yet? xxx