...Vegan Chocolate Pound Cake...

...as promised...a dedicated post about Scout's delicious 18th Birthday Cake...

....If I'm making a 'shaped' cake of any sort...I always prefer a nice dense (but still moist) pound cake...they just hold their shape so much better...

...and I wanted two fairly large numbers for this most special of birthday numbers...so I made two pound cakes...each in a 9 x 13 pan...

...I sketched out paper patterns for the numbers...I'm sure you could do this freehand...but I wanted to use as much cake as possible...HA!...

...placed the patterns on the cakes...

...and just trimmed around them...the insides of the 8's were a bit tricky...but I just used a spoon to get that cake out...

...I put all of the leftover cut off pieces in a bag in the freezer...maybe I'll make some cake pops or something like that with them later...

...then I did a really messy crumb coat...as dark chocolate really shows through white icing...

...and then finished with a second coat...these two large cakes used a lot of icing...so you'll need two recipes worth...

...and then I wanted to do some haphazard squiggles of colour all around the edges...Blue and Gold...

...but it turns out that I'm not all that good at the haphazard effect...I'm much better piping 'nice' designs rather than messy ones...HA!...

...and once I'd gone down the messy squiggle decorating path...it was sort of hard to change...I guess I could have scraped it all off and started over...but the Man assured me that it was 'fine'...

...so we went with it as it was...

...and added 18 mismatched blue and gold candles as well...

Vegan Chocolate Pound Cake

Ingredients

Wet (Whisk all together):

3/4 cup non dairy milk
1/2 cup cashew cream
2 tbsp non dairy yogurt
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp melted Earth Balance

Dry(Whisk all together):

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder...I always use this delicious Baking Cocoa from Equal Exchange
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Mix wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined. The batter will be thick. Place batter in a parchment lined 9 x 13 pan...
Bake at 350 degrees F for 50 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick from near the center comes out clean...
Cool for 5 to 10 minutes...then remove from the pan and let it sit on the cooling rack to cool completely before carving into shapes...

Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz. Vegan Cream Cheese...any brand...or make your own...
1/4 cup Earth Balance, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
1 pkg. powdered sugar (about 4 cups)

Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until blended.
Add sugar gradually, beating after each addition until blended.

...this cake is so rich and delicious...

~Have a lovely day!