Grasshopper Cake!

(Vegan) Grasshopper Cake
adapted from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky
© 2011 from Skyhorse Publishing


As some people might know, Dan once told me that vegan food can't taste good.  If you know me, then you'll guess at once that meant CHALLENGE.  I'm not a vegan--I'm not even a vegetarian...but I have definitely been on a mission to make delicious vegan food! (Just to prove Dan wrong).  So, without further ado, here's the latest addition to the challenge--vegan grasshopper cake.  I will put a disclaimer on this recipe, however, because I don't think too hard about actually ensuring that I'm using 100% vegan ingredients.  I generally just use what I have on hand.  That being said--I'll give you the cookbook recipe and let you know if/when I made substitutions. Sound fair?


Pre-heat the over to 350°F and lightly grease 3 8-inch round pans or 2 9-inch round pans (or, you can do like me, and do 2 6-inch pans and 12 cupcakes!)


Devil's Food Chocolate Cake

• 2 1/2 cups plain non-dairy milk (I used Unsweetened Almond Milk)
• 1 TBSP apple cider vinegar
• 2/3 cup canola oil (I used the regular vegetable oil I had on hand)
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp instant coffee powder (I actually used instant espresso granules)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour (I used Softasilk Cake Flour)
• 1 cup natural cocoa powder (I just used by regular Nestle cocoa powder. Natural?)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine the milk and vinegar and let sit for ~5 minutes.  Pour this mixture into your stand mixer and add oil, sugar, and instant coffee. Mix well (until slightly frothy).

In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and soda, and salt. Whisk briefly and then add to stand mixture in 3 additions, allowing the mixture to combine well between each addition. Once you've added all the dry goods, add the vanilla and mix just until incorporated.

Distribute the batter between your prepared pans and use a spatula to smooth down the tops. Bake for 24-28 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pans.

Creme de Menthe Frosting

• 2 medium sized ripe avocados
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 7-9 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1 cup non-dairy margarine (I actually didn't even have regular butter or margarine on hand...so I used 1/2 cup of Vegetable Crisco...)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 TBSP Creme de Menthe
• 1/2 tsp peppermint extract

Prep the avocado and puree in a food processor or stand mixer, adding in the lemon juice immediately and pulsing to combine.

Toss in the margarine (or Crisco) and mix.  Scrape down the sides as needed to make sure the mixture is homogenous before continuing. Slowly add the sugar in three separate additions.  Add the salt, vanilla, creme de menthe, and peppermint.  Allow the food processor or mixer to run, mixing and whipping the frosting for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy.  Frost your cooled cake!

Quick Chocolate Drizzle

• 5 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup plain non-dairy milk (I used Unsweetened Almond Milk)

This is totally an optional adornment for your cake, but it's absolutely delicious!

Place the chocolate and milk in a microwave-safe dish and heat for 30-60 seconds in the microwave, until the chocolate is mostly melted.  Stir thoroughly with a spatula until completely smooth, and voila, instant ganache! Drizzle to your heart's content!

(I actually put my ganache in a small plastic baggie and then cut the corner off to do the drizzle.  Just my little trick!)

Hubby's Birthday Cake

So, anyone who knows my husband is well aware that his favorite type of cake is strawberry. Yes, pink, girly strawberry cake. And I love him for it. So…for his birthday, I made it my mission to make a strawberry cake from scratch (how hard can it be?) and to hunt down a good “white wedding frosting” for it (because, again, his favorite type).
After sifting through many, many strawberry cake recipes that involved strawberry jello, strawberry extract, and red food coloring, I finally cake across a recipe on a food blog that caught my eye. No strawberry jello. No extract. No food coloring. Just strawberries. (In case you’re wondering it is from the blog “Confections of a Foodie Bride” here) The comments on the post all sounded good so I decided to give it a shot. The batter was pretty pink color and had a definite strawberry flavor to it. Now, one thing that I did change a little was the strawberries. The strawberry puree in the original was no sugar added organic frozen. Well, we bought the sugar added HyVee brand….because it was the cheapest! *duh*
Anyway, moving on to the frosting, I know how to make basic buttercream (thanks to my cake decorating for beginning Wilton class). However, it’s never “quite right.” So, I commenced again with searching to find a worthwhile recipe. The one I ended up settling on was from the website/blog Dine & Dish. It looked simple (read: EASY) and not THAT much different that what I normally. The only differences were milk instead of water and half butter/half shortening instead of all shortening. They taught us that this was an option in class…but then your frosting is, well, perishable.
The frosting turned out pretty well. I was quite happy with it (and so was the boy). I took a little bit of the frosting and added a bit of powdered sugar and some of the juice drained off the strawberries and made a thinner strawberry frosting for between the layers.

Well, the only real problem I encountered while making the cake was….the middle. I wanted to make the center section just a tad thicker, so when I made my dam with the white frosting, I doubled it up (something they taught us that we could do in class). The problem: my white wasn’t thick enough to support this. I definitely needed to make a thicker frosting and maybe double the width of the dam as well. Perhaps needless to say, the cake did a fair amount of sliding as I attempted to frost the cake.

In the end, I couldn’t get the frosting as smooth as I like (because of the sliding)…so I covered it with sugar sprinkles and threw it in the fridge in hopes that it would get a bit more solid. It didn’t…not really. The top tried to slide off when you cut it!!

The cake was pretty good overall. The strawberry icing in the center was FANTASTIC (too bad I have no idea how much strawberry stuff I put in). The cake didn’t have a very strong strawberry flavor to it. The flavor was there, but it wasn’t very prominent. If you are looking for a strongly flavored strawberry cake, you probably should just use the box mix! However, it was delicious–rich, dense, and moist! I’d make it again in a heartbeat, especially with the frosting.