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Vegan Hummingbird Cake Recipe

vegan hummingbird cake

There’s still a huge pile of pictures from our trip to Playa del Carmen to go through. I looked at it earlier and it hurt my brain trying to think about how to divide up the posts so I decided to break things up a bit by posting my vegan hummingbird cake recipe.

Yep, this is the vegan hummingbird cake we had at Dough. It was one of our most popular items. It was not possible to make enough of these. They just flew out of the case.

Personally, I’m more of a chocolate fan, but there’s definitely something alluring about the banana, walnut and pineapple mixture. And it’s a perfect flavor mix for Summer gatherings. Just keep it refrigerated until you serve it. The frosting does not hold up in the heat very well.

Vegan Hummingbird Cake Recipe

3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
3 flax eggs (3 tablespoons of ground flax seed mixed with 6 tablespoons of warm water)
¾ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained
3 banana, mashed
¼ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Spray two 9-inch round cake pans with oil and line with parchment if you have it. In the bowl of your stand mixer or a large mixing bowl, combine ingredients through the sugar.

Mix together the remaining ingredients except for the nuts in a medium bowl and then combine with the dry.

Mix thoroughly. Stir in the nuts.

Divide the batter between the two cake pans.

Bake approximately 30 minutes at 350F or until the center of each cake is done. Let cool completely before frosting. It’ll frost better if you wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight before you frost it.

Vegan Hummingbird Cake Frosting

1 pound vegan cream cheese (we used Tofutti)
1/3 cup crushed pineapple, drained
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted if lumpy
4 teaspoons arrowroot powder
2 teaspoons instant clearjel (optional, but helps firm up frosting)
1 cup or so of walnuts or pecans, chopped fine

Whisk arrowroot powder and instant clearjel (if using) into powdered sugar.

Beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar together until smooth in a stand mixer.

Add remaining ingredients except for nuts and continue mixing until blended.

To finish cake

If cakes domed in the center, level with a serrated knife. Then eat those tasty snax.

Place a cake layer on a cake plate, cut side down if leveled. Spread frosting on top of layer. Sprinkle with nuts if you like.

Put second layer on top of first, again, cut side down. Spread frosting over top of cake then sides. Top should be thicker than sides. On the sides, don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Press chopped nuts all around the sides. Refrigerate until served.

Protip: there’s no reason to suffer crappy bakeware. We used Fat Daddio’s cake pans at the bakery. They don’t really cost more than the crappy ones usually sold to home bakers, they just last longer and work better.

If you have a restaurant supply that sells to the public, that’s where you want to go locally to get bakeware. We have one called Atlanta Fixture here. Seriously, professional quality tools that cost less. Check it out.

Would you have any interest in an ebook of vegan baking recipes? Drop a comment and I’ll contact you if I do one!

Note, I do use affiliate links on the site occasionally. The coinage goes towards B12 and vegan protein powder. Because vegans will go extinct without protein powder.

Vegan BLT Spring Rolls

First things first: do you get the Meatout Mondays email newsletter? If not, you should sign up. Each week they send a recipe along with some other interesting tidbits.

The week that I linked to above had a recipe in it for Vegan BLT Spring Rolls with Avocado. With cashew based ranch sauce. What? Does that not sound like perfect summer food? I thought so and left it in my inbox until I decided to make it.

vegan blt spring rolls

Dealing with rice paper can be a little tricky. But you usually get the hang of it after a roll or two. And if it tears, big deal. You can still eat it, right?

And rolling up spring rolls can be quite the production. There’s definitely a process to it. But these vegan blt spring rolls don’t have as many ingredients as most which makes it go a little faster.

Here’s a video showing you how to work with the wrapper. Bonus: you get another vegan spring roll recipe!

For the tempeh bacon, I just used my own standard smoky tempeh recipe. I guess I should post that some time. There are several commercial vegan bacon products out there like Sweet Earth Foods, Tofurky’s Smoky Maple Bacon, and Upton’s Naturals Seitan Bacon. Make your own or choose your favorite!

For the dipping sauce, I made the zesty ranch dressing listed in the recipe. It was perfect and we had the leftover dressing on salads. If you want to get a little lazy, Hampton Creek just released their Just Ranch dressing.

vegan blt spring rolls inside shot Oh, and if you’re having trouble finding rice paper in your area, you can get it on Amazon. This is one of the brands I pick up at the Asian grocery here.

This recipe made at least 8 rolls. Plenty for a hearty dinner and there were leftovers that I ate the next day for lunch.

These would be a terrific potluck food. Whenever I bring spring rolls to a summer cookout, they are gobbled up. Oh, and these can easily be gluten free!

How about you – do you ever make spring rolls? What are your favorite innards & sauces?

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe

At Dough, one of the most requested items in our bakery case was the chocolate chip cookies. They were big, crisp around the edges and chewy in the center. And completely irresistible when they were still warm. If I’m totally honest with you, one reason we didn’t have them in the case every single day is that I would eat them every single day. Seriously, I can’t stop myself. Take that as a warning.

This recipe isn’t too far off from most vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes, but there is a secret ingredient that most others don’t have. Well, it’s not going to be secret in a second. That secret ingredient is brown rice syrup. Yes, that’s the magical ingredient that gives them a little extra chewiness. If you don’t have any or it is hard to get where you are, you can substitute corn syrup.

vegan chocolate chip cookies

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Makes about 4 dozen small cookies

3/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons brown rice syrup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar or white vinegar
2 flax eggs (2 tablespoons ground flax seed mixed with 1/4 cup warm water)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3 cups chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line baking sheets with parchment.

2. In a large mixer bowl, cream together the Earth Balance, sugars, brown rice syrup, and vinegar, then beat in the flax eggs. Beat in the vanilla, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir in the flour and chocolate chips.

3. Drop by cookie scoop or spoon onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, until they’re just set; the centers may still look a bit underdone. Remove them from the oven, and cool complete on a rack.

I’ll be posting more recipes from Dough from time to time. Any requests? Just leave it in the comments.

Would you have any interest in an ebook of vegan baking recipes? Drop your email below and I’ll contact you if I do one!

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Vegan King Cake Recipe

It’s weird. This is the first year in a while that I haven’t made vegan King Cake. It was hugely popular at the bakery and we sold through it as fast as it could be made. It’s not as hard to make as it looks.

Many people are afraid to make anything that involves yeast because they’ve had some failures. I have two tips that will help you deal with yeast.

First, when a recipe says to proof your active dry yeast in warm water, you have to make sure the water isn’t too hot or too cold. Above 140F will kill the yeast. The internet says the ideal temperature is somewhere between 130F and 140F. So your faucet water might be hotter than that and you might be killing the yeast right at the beginning. Of course, your active dry yeast might already be dead which seemed to happen to me about half the time.

Which leads me to my second tip…don’t use active dry yeast. Use instant yeast. Once I discovered instant yeast, I never looked back. No proofing required. Just add the same amount as the active dry yeast called for in with the flour and whisk in. Any liquid and/or sugar the recipe called for to proof the active dry yeast, just add in when the recipe calls for those ingredients or similar ingredients (liquid or sweetener.) Also, your dough will probably rise faster than the recipe says. Most recipes tell you to let it rise for a time period OR when the dough has doubled. Just put the dough in a container where it will be easy to mark double the starting level. Check it in half the time then gauge from that how often you’ll need to check before it gets to double. Seriously, replacing active dry yeast with instant yeast in your baking will change your life.

The recipe we used at Dough was adapted from Kittee Berns‘ recipe in her cookzine Papa Tofu. She has posted some updated King Cake recipes including a vegan gluten-free one so head on over to her site if you’d like to check those out.

Vegan King Cake Recipe

Makes 2 King Cakes

Ingredients

Cake:
2 ounces (1/4 cup) Earth Balance
1 12 oz. box firm silken tofu
2 teaspoons lemon juice
4 ounces (1/4 8 oz. tub) Tofutti cream cheese
⅓ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 ½ teaspoons instant yeast
1 tablespoon Ener-G egg replacer mixed in 3/4 cup water
6 cups unbleached white flour
2 babies or just use dried beans if you don’t have babies
Frosting:
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1.5 ounce (2 1/2 tablespoons) Earth Balance, melted
4 tablespoons non-dairy milk
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
yellow, green and purple colored sprinkles (can’t find vegan sprinkles? Kittee has instructions for making your own at the bottom of this page. Remember, while confectioners glaze can be vegan, it rarely is.)

Instructions

Whiz the silken tofu in the food processor with the lemon juice and cream cheeze. Set aside.

Combine the Earth Balance, tofu cream cheeze mixture, 1/3 cup sugar and teaspoon salt in a medium saucepan. Heat until the margarine melts, stirring occasionally until smooth. Let the mixture cool to at least 105-115F.

Add the cooled tofu cream cheeze mixture, the egg substitute liquid, yeast and flour to a mixer bowl. Knead with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. You can do this by hand. I have no idea how long it will take. Do it until the dough is completely smooth and elastic.

Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl, turning to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled. If it’s kind of cold, it won’t be ruined, it’ll just take longer.

Meanwhile, get your choice of filling ready. Scroll down for recipes.

Punch down the dough and divide in half. Turn one portion out onto the table and roll into a 22″X12″ rectangle. Or as close as you can get to that.

Spread half of your chosen filling(s) over the rolled out dough. Leave about two inches free on the top for the cream cheese variety, because otherwise the filling will squish up as you roll up the dough and ooze out the top.

Starting at the bottom (wide side), roll the dough up jellyroll style to form a thick log about 22″ long. Hide a small plastic doll somewhere in the dough as you roll it up.

Pinch the seam really, really well to seal. Gently place the coil, seam side down, on a parchment covered baking sheet. Bring the ends together to form a ring. Pinch the ends together to seal well (if you don’t seal it properly, it will open up during baking and ooze).

Let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 350F.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350F until golden brown.

For the frosting glaze:

Melt the margarine.
Combine the melted margarine, sifted powdered sugar, milk and extract together and beat with a spatula ’till smooth.
Frost each cake with half the frosting then sprinkle with yellow, purple & green sprinkles.

FILLING OPTIONS (each is enough for 2 King Cakes)

Cinnamon sugar filling:

1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/3 cup Earth Balance very soft

Mix sugar, cinnamon and softened margarine together well.

For the cream cheeze filling:

12 oz. Tofutti Cream Cheeze
2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the cream cheeze until smooth.
Beat in the flour, sugar and extract until smooth.

Happy King Caking!

Pumpkin Walnut Muffins for World Vegan Day

Happy World Vegan Day!

To celebrate, I’m going to share another recipe from Dough, vegan Pumpkin Walnut Muffins. This was one of our most popular muffins at the bakery and while we made it year round, it’s particularly suited to this season. And bonus, these muffins don’t require any weird ingredients. It’s all stuff you can get at any grocery store.

vegan pumpkin walnut muffins

Pumpkin Walnut Muffins

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (or half all-purpose & half whole wheat pastry flour)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup canned pumpkin (just pumpkin, not pie filling)
1/2 cup non-dairy milk
1/2 cup oil
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 cup chopped walnuts plus one walnut half for top of each muffin

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin tin with 12 liners.

2. Whisk together the dry ingredients, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices in a mixing bowl. In a another bowl, whisk together pumpkin, milk, oil, and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just mixed. Stir in chopped walnuts.

3. Fill the muffin cups about 3/4 with batter or if you have one with #12 scoop. Put a walnut half on the top of each muffin. Bake for 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

vegan pumpkin walnut muffin closeup