Guest Post: Liza Chrust

Happy Friday everyone!  Liza's graced us with a fabulous post and possible challenge for the weekend.  Anyone up for some serious baking?!?  And with no further ado, I present Liza:

Chef Chloe is the Ultimate:

Last week I had my good friend Jill’s potluck birthday dinner. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to make, although I knew it had to be delicious and vegan!  I was going to make my magic bars, but soon found out some else was making something very similar so It was on to the next idea.  And then I had my ah ha moment!  A birthday cake! How could I not make a birthday cake for a birthday dinner!  (I also wanted to make something healthy, so I made white bean and kale soup, but clearly not as fun as birthday cake!)  So in search of a fantastic vegan birthday cake, I of course went to Chef Chloe’s blog.  I found an amazing recipe for Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes, it won a food network challenge, Cupcake Wars!  HYPERLINK "http://www.chefchloe.com/videos/video/12.html" http://www.chefchloe.com/videos/video/12.html I turned this amazing recipe into a multi layered bundt cake!  It was super easy and ridiculously yummy! One of my friend’s had 5 pieces of it!

Here is the recipe (I double it for the cake): Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup coconut milk

½ cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (I didn’t use this ingredient, but they say that coffe brings out the flavor of the choclate)

Frosting, recipe below

1 ½ cups hulled and sliced fresh strawberries

Confectioners’ sugar, for garnish

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a 12-cup cupcake pan with paper liners.

Sift or whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the coconut milk, oil, vinegar, vanilla, and espresso powder until smooth.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix with a fork or small whisk.

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cupcake liners until each cup is 2/3 full. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. – For the bundt cake, just pour the batter into the mold and bake for 50 minutes.

Once the cupcakes are completely cooled, slice off the top 1/3 of each cupcake and slather with frosting and sliced strawberries. Place the top of the cupcake back on top and add an additional bit of frosting and sliced strawberries. Dust with confectioners’ sugar. – For the bundt cake, you will be slicing the cake into 3 layers (so two cuts).  You want to cut when the cake is cooled. The first cut will be about 2 inchs (a third of the cake) from the bottom (please use either dental floss or a bread knife.) The next cut will be halving the rest of the cake. When assembling the cake it will go as follows:

Cake, frosting (half of the frosting), strawberries (covering the frosting completely), cake, frosting, strawberries, cake, and then confectioners sugar!

*Frosting

Ingredients:

4 cups confectioners' sugar, preferably organic

1/2 cup non-hydrogenated shortening (refined coconut oil at room temperature OR vegan margarine will also work) – I used earth balance for this

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

¼ cup water

Procedure:

Combine the confectioners' sugar, coconut oil, and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer.

Beat on medium-high speed until combined. With the mixer running, add 1 tablespoon of water at a time, until the desired buttercream consistency. NOTE: You probably will not use all the water. Simply add as needed while beating.

Enjoy! It is one of the best cakes I have ever made!