rants & recipes

Weird thing, before I became vegan, I was never really crazy about German Chocolate Cake - while I love coconut flavor, I'm not a big fan of dried coconut but lately, I've found myself wanting German Chocolate Cake with Coconut-Pecan frosting for some odd reason.

A few months ago, there didn't seem to be that much, out there, for already-veganized coconut-pecan frosting but a few blogs seem to have caught up with my cravings and saved me much experimenting it the kitchen. I don't know why I didn't see this post from FatFreeVegan until today - and a few days ago, there was a similar post from Meet the Shannons.

So today, a birthday-observed-cake - I halved the frosting recipe from FatFreeVegan and halved the "Crazy Cake" recipe from the link provided in that post.

My plan was to cook a single layer, cut it in half, and have half of a two layer cake. This cake, however, was really tender. I could probably have let it cook another 5 minutes. Oh yeah, and letting it cool, no doubt, would have helped too. I gave up on that idea, though, and just frosted it as a single layer. This frosting is really thick - if making a double-layer cake, I would double the frosting (which would be a perfect amount for frosting two tops) and not frost the sides. If you want to frost the sides, maybe make 2.5 times this recipe?

German Chocolate Cake

Ingredients, for a single layer cake:

• 1 1/2 cups flour (180 grams)
• 1 cup sugar (I used about 170 grams, plus I added maybe 2 tbsp brown sugar)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup cocoa (I used 45 grams - a 1/2 cup)
• 1 tsp instant expresso powder
• 3/8 cup oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1 cup water

Instructions:

1. Grease and parchment a 9" cake pan.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Mix all dry ingredients together.
4. Mix wet ingredients.
5. Combine wet and dry ingredients until thoroughly combined.
6. Spread batter into cake pan.
7. Bake 30 - 35 minutes.
8. Remove from oven, cool in pan 10 minutes.
9. Remove to rack to cool completely.

Coconut-Pecan Frosting

Ingredients, enough to frost top of single 9" layer:

• 1/2 cup soymilk
• 3 tbsp coconut milk
• 1/2 + 1/8 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3 tbsp cornstarch, mixed with 1/8 cup water (2 tbsp cornstarch would probably suffice - this is pretty thick.)
• 1 1/4 cups coconut
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Instructions:

1. Combine soymilk, coconut milk, sugar and vanilla in a small sauce pan.
2. Add cornstarch.
3. Bring to a "boil" - "boil" because even though the original instructions said to boil for one minute, my mixture never really boiled. Luckily, I noticed it was getting thick, on the bottom, and removed the pan in time, to whisk it all back in. (Tilt the pan, so you can see the bottom and whisk constantly.)
4. Once thickened, turn off  heat and stir in coconut and pecans.