My daughter turns 17 tomorrow so she requested a chocolate vanilla layer cake. This is fantastic because I also love this cake. I am a real fan of the vegan cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I heavenly ever baked the vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, but they are so dang good, I just haven’t ventured past page 38.
I don’t have permission to reprint the recipes, but you can buy their fantastic book HERE and check the recipes out yourself. You will not be disappointed. Since getting their books, I just can’t even consider making cakes with eggs and butter any more. These cakes are THAT GOOD.
So to the buttercream. I used Gretchens Bakery’s Aquafaba Swiss Buttercream recipe. I’m actually NOT a fan of buttercream, or sugary frosting, but I have yet to find a nice frosting that is vegan, low sugar and low fat (yes, that would be fresh strawberries). But when you make a cake, you need to covert in something and I really cannot stomach the amount of sugar used in American buttercream. Even when I use Xylitol, it’s still too sweet.
I had a major FAIL with this buttercream because I was cock sure of myself that I was an expert and I did not measure my ingredients (I don’t need that much shortening!). Needless to say – if you want your stuff to work out, follow the recipe to the letter. Normally I weigh everything so I’m not sure why I just eyeballed it this time. To cut along story short, eventually it worked out fine.
The chocolate mousse is adapted from an ice-cream recipe from From The Land We Live On. This (or variations of it)has been my go-to recipe for all things chocolate for the past year: ice-cream, mousse, easter egg filling, frosting -you name it, I use it. I now know it so well I can make it without the recipe. I even delete the coconut oil and halve the number of dates and it still tastes absolutely sensational.
So, as my friend Gretchen would say, this is a ‘building on recipes’ cake.
You need to make:
1 recipe of Vanilla Cupcakes (made into two 6″ round cakes)
1 recipe of Chocolate Cupcakes (made into two 6″ round cakes)
1 Recipe of Chocolate Ice Cream (refrigerated – not frozen)
1 Recipe of Aquafaba Buttercream (2/3 vanilla, 1/3 chocolate). To make the chocolate I just added 1/4 cup of raw cocoa powder.
Now, If this was MY cake, I would have added some home made sugar free cherry jam – but that’s just me. I’m addicted to black cherries.
So, It was pretty simple. I didn’t actually need to torte the cakes as they baked nice and flat. To stop them from crowning I always use Wilton Bake Even Strips. I built the cake in the 6″ pan lined with Glad Wrap then froze it overnight as this buttercream is very unstable in the heat of Hong Kong.
1 layer of chocolate cake , 1 layer of chocolate ice-cream, 1 layer of vanilla cake, 1 layer of chocolate ice-cream, 1 layer of chocolate cake. Then a crumb coat of vanilla buttercream and back in the freezer, followed by a final coat of chocolate buttercream. The decorations are King David Vegan White Chocolate Chips. So cute. So yummy.
I hope you give this cake a go. It is moist and yummy and completely vegan. Enjoy.