I have so many vegan cookbooks, many of them focus on sweets. One of my many roommates, Dan, thinks that I have TOO many baking books. I cannot fathom this notion, honestly, this is because all of my teeth are sweet. I don’t have just one sweet tooth and I have the dental work to prove it.

I turned 31 this week and I’ve decided that I will undertake a year of cakes. I wanted to do this because I am not a great baker, I half-ass things at times or “wing it”, I am a baker of the people. The common baker. I will be baking one cake, every week for a year. For this first week I have made two, plus the one my fiance made. All of these cakes were for my birthday party.

For this journey I chosen Have Your Cake and Vegan too by Kris Holechek. I will be baking every single cake in this book

I am going to work my way up from the cakes that Holcheck has deemed “one beater” recipes, up to “5 beaters”

I started with a simple cake.

Basic Vanilla Cake (p 19) with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (p 140) . It was very easy to make and turned out fluffy and delicious. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.



My second choice was the Torta Limone (p 59). This cake was much more unusual, it called for olive oil and cornmeal. The directions called for fine ground cornmeal, which I used. When I tasted the batter I realized that it was too gritty, which the recipe warned about. At this point I freaked out, poured all of the batter into my Vita Mix, I don’t think it helped much to do this. What I should have done was used the dry mixer to ground the cornmeal more before hand. My fiance, John pointed out that it should soften the cornmeal when it baked. I found this comforting but soon found out that this was not the case. The cake turned out just out just OK. I give it 2 out of 5 stars.



The other cake pictured is a vegan ice cream cake, recipe from Party Vegan by Robin Robertson. This recipe, although I didn’t make it technically was easy and delicious. 5 out of 5 stars.



What I listened to/watched while making this cake: That 70s Show Season 4

New equipment: Electric mixer

Stay tuned till next time when I’ll make the Anise Orange Cake from Have Your Cake and Vegan Too