Coconut Cake

This coconut cake is a delicious as it is gorgeous!

Ingredients:

Cake:
8 ounces silken tofu
1 pound plus 5 ounces sugar
2 cups coconut milk
12 ounces coconut flakes plus additional to sprinkle over cake
1 cup canola oil
1 pound plus 4 ounces all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Icing:
1 pound soy margarine
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted
1/4 cup coconut milk

Directions:Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put first 5 ingredients the bowl of a food processor and puree until thick and uniform in texture. Add last 3 ingredients and process until incorporated. Pour batter into 2 (9-inch) parchment lined cake pans that have been coated with non-stick cooking spray. Bake for about 1 hour.

For the icing, mix ingredients until incorporated. Spread on cooled cake.

We threw a party yesterday. It was a joint birthday party/homecoming party for my friend Kaitlin who now lives in Boston. It was so awesome to see all of my friends with alcoholic drinks and a butt load of good food.

I didn't want to have someone go out of their way to get all kinds of vegan ingredients to make a vegan cake so I decided to make it. Also, I hadn't baked a cake yet and I was ready to get my feet wet.

Now I don't have a food processor. I should probably invest in one at some point but a blender works just a well. The wet ingredients just barely fit into my big ol blender so I had to mix the wet and dry in a big bowl. The batter turned out great. And again I emphasize the awesomeness of guilt free batter licking - no eggs, no salmonella = sweet sweetness. And after licking more batter than I should, I was pretty freaking excited about the finished product.

Unfortunately I did not taste test the icing before smearing it all over the delicious cake. How could you go wrong with coconut milk, powdered sugar, and soy margarine? Oh how little I knew. It tasted salty! The icing totally threw everything off. It was so disappointing. I was out to impress my friends with the surprise of a delicious vegan cake and I totally fell short.

Next time I am going to try more powdered sugar or maybe even substitute vanilla icing instead of the yicky coconut icing.

above - vegan coconut cake with birthday sparklers. photo courtesy of the loverly martha rue.