Mini Chocolate Raspberry Cake

Happy Birthday to Me!

I’ve always figured that I’m lucky to have a summer birthday. Being born at the end of July makes me a Leo (which makes me awesome), when I was growing up I never had school on my birthday, and my parties were always either trips to the county fair or a pool party. As a grown-up I still tend to take the day off for my birthday, but the other really awesome part is that there’s all kinds of pretty and natural stuff to decorate a cake with in the summer!

My birthday was on Monday, and I celebrated by going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (in 3D!) and getting myself a slice of vegan cake at my local Whole Foods. For the weekend, I made myself a birthday cake to eat with Vegan Boyfriend. We had been talking it up for weeks, and he even taught me how to say the name of the cake in Polish! Unfortunately he didn’t teach me how to spell it, so I can’t write it here. 🙂

One of the issues with making a standard fancy cake is that standard round cake pans are about 9 inches, so if there’s only two of you, you’re going to have a lot of leftovers. Which might be good, but I’d just eat them all!

So, I got myself some small cake pans, and made a layer cake with those! I used the chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I made some changes to the directions, so I am posting my version here, despite the ingredients being the same. I used the chocolate frosting recipe from the same book, but as I made no adjustments, I will not post that recipe, but you can look inside the book by clicking on the link above and find it!

Mini Chocolate Raspberry Cake

For the Chocolate Cake

• 1 cup non-dairy milk (almond, soy, rice, etc. I prefer almond milk.)
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup granulated vegan sugar
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

For the Raspberry Filling

• One 10 ounce bag frozen organic raspberries
• juice of one lemon
• 1 Tbs cornstarch
• 1/4 cup granulated vegan sugar

You’ll also need…

• Chocolate Frosting (many commercial brands are vegan; I used the recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)
• Raspberries, for garnish

Directions for the cake:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350F.
2. Spray with oil two 4×2 inch round baking pans.
3. Add non-dairy milk to a small bowl, and to that, add the apple cider vinegar. Set aside for 5 minutes to curdle.
4. In a larger bowl, add all the dry ingredients. Whisk them together (dry) to remove any lumps and to combine. Make a well in the center.
5. To the wet ingredients, add the sugar, oil and extracts. Whisk together throughly, and then add to the well in the dry ingredients. Stir to combine.
6. Once throughly combined (don’t stir it too hard!), divide the batter evenly between the two pans. Bake for 28-30 minutes.
7. Cool cakes at room temperature for an hour or so. If you have time, just cool at room temperature until the pans are cool enough to handle, then cover with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. You can leave them in over night, take them out the next day and thaw, or just put them in for a couple of hours, remove and proceed with decorating (thaw first if frozen). This helps to keep the cake really moist.
8. Proceed to directions for putting it together when you have your raspberry sauce and chocolate frosting ready.

Directions for the sauce:

1. Add all the ingredients to a small sauce pan over medium heat. Stir frequently.
2. When berries are all broken down and mixture has thickened, remove from heat.
3. Strain sauce through a sieve, reserving some of the seeds. You can add a spoonful of seeds or so back to the sauce for texture, if you like.
4. Cool in the fridge before using in cake. Use leftovers to drizzle over cake if desired!

Putting it together:

1. Slice the two cakes lengthwise through the middle to create four layers in total.
2. Lay one layer on a plate. Spread with a thin layer of raspberry sauce. Repeat with the remaining layers, omitting the sauce for the topmost layer.
3. Frost sides and top layer with chocolate frosting.
4. Arrange raspberries around bottom and on top.
5. To serve, slice in half then slice the halves in half to make quarters. Drizzle with remaining raspberry sauce if desired.

It makes 4 nice slices!

Makes for an awesome cake!