Banana Cake with Almond Butter Frosting

My friend hinted to me the other day that her birthday was coming up, so my scripted response was, "What kind of cake do you want?" She said she needed some ideas, so I sent her my cake page on Pinterest with about 2000 cakes and she happened to pick the one that I made for my birthday last year. Weird. But not so weird because it's a delicious cake from the tolerant vegan.

yes, the letters are like that on purpose..

I love that the recipe calls for 3 whole cups of banana. I think that came out to about 6 large bananas for me. Any banana baked good should use a whole bunch of bananas for optimum nanna-i-ness, in my opinion. And because I'm a banana fanatic, I add a box of banana flavored pudding. (It won't taste artificial, only give a little extra oomph to the natural banana flavor. My mom scoffed at this artificial addition when I first dumped the box in, but said she could only taste fresh banana in the finished product and thought the cake was great.) Pudding mix is also cornstarch based, and cornstarch is a great egg-replacer. Not that you need it here..especially with all the banana. But it will make for a better texture. Using pudding mixes is one of my favorite easy ways to flavor cakes. Just cut down the sugar in the recipe a bit and add it with the dry ingredients. If you're like my mom and hate the idea of a processed pudding mix going into homemade food, then you can leave it out. It also tastes just fine and banana-y without it.

I made the cake at work a few days before because we happened to have 80000000 overripe bananas. I had always planned on using my mayo frosting, since I think it's similar to, yet better than cream cheese frosting. And then I used the last of the vanilla in the cake.. and the mayo frosting pretty much needs vanilla so you won't guess you're actually eating mayonnaise on top of a cake. The only other extract we had was almond..and we had plenty of almond butter...

Hmmm... 

Yes, of course...almond butter frosting.

And it was fabulous. 

This one has more Vegenaise/almond butter and less powdered sugar in the frosting than the birthday one.

This one has more powdered sugar in the frosting. I could pretty much mold this frosting with my hands. It was almost fondant texture.

So here is my banana cake (only slightly modified from the tolerant vegan) with almond butter frosting.

Banana Cake with Almond Butter Frosting

3 cups flour

1 1/4 cups sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 box banana flavor pudding mix (Jell-o banana creme is accidentally vegan.)

1 cup melted Earth Balance

3 cups pureed banana

1/2 cup almond milk

3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 and grease 2 8 or 9 inch cake pans. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside. I prefer pureeing my bananas, to make it less banana bread-like, so pour your almond milk into the blender and add a few bananas at a time until your blender bowl says 3 1/2 cups. I think that's actually easier than mashing and measuring out 3 cups anyway. Add the rest of the wet ingredients to the blender and puree until smooth. (I also like emulsifying the fat too.) Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and whisk until combined. Bake 25-35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. 

Make the frosting.

Now here I didn't measure out any ingredients and I came out with different textures each time I did it. Basically you want to use the regular mayo frosting recipe with the higher sugar amount, but use almond extract (but much less almond because it's so strong) instead of vanilla and add almond butter. This is what I estimate my amounts to be. If you want it stiffer, add more sugar, softer, add more Vegenaise and almond butter. See the pictures above for different consistencies.

1/2 cup grapeseed Vegenaise

1 lb powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

2-3 tablespoons almond butter

You don't even need an electric mixer for this. It whips up smooth with just a hand whisk.

To add chocolate decorations, melt some chocolate chips, put them in a zipper bag, cut off the corner and pipe designs onto parchment paper. Transfer the paper to the fridge for 5-10 minutes and then peel off your decorations!

So I guess I should mention that I won in the cake category for the Earth Balance Bake-off...

Why yes, I did...

I was waiting to post about my cake until the contest was over, cause I didn't want to somehow jinx my chance of winning. It was hard, because I spent so much time concocting this thing and went through many cakes trying to perfect the recipe and I was so excited when I unmolded and bit into the last one to find that I had gotten it just right...I just wanted to share with everyone!

So how did the peanut butter tunnel cake come about? Well, I've always been intrigued by the tunnel of fudge cake that won the original Pillsbury Bake-off and launched the bundt pan to stardom in the 60s. Looking at it simply, a tunnel cake is just an undercooked bundt cake..but when you make the filling something different than the rest of the cake, that's more of a challenge. (More challenge=more reward.) So I thought..I've never seen a peanut butter tunnel in a chocolate bundt, and for good reason...seriously, google it. They don't exist. But I thought they should..and they should be vegan too.

classic 60s recipe: 800million eggs and a frosting box mix

I won't go through the process I spent trying to perfect this thing, cause that would be a novel. I'll just give you the recipe which is on the Earth Balance website too, but hey it's my recipe, so it's gotta go on my blog (particularly since I'm so proud of it.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Tunnel Cake

Peanut Butter Filling

3/4 cup Earth Balance Creamy Peanut Butter

3 tablespoons Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread

1 1/2 teaspoons molasses

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 cup Earth Balance Unsweetened Soymilk

1 1/4 cups vegan powdered sugar

1 tablespoon all purpose flour

1/2 tablespoon corn starch

Chocolate Cake 

2 cups Earth Balance Unsweetened Soymilk (one or both cups cold)

1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons natural cocoa powder

1 teaspoon instant coffee crystals

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon vanilla

3/4 cup Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread

2 cups + 2 tablespoons vegan granulated sugar

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Optional ganache and peanut butter glaze toppings

1 cup vegan chocolate chips

1/2 cup Earth Balance Unsweetened Soymilk

1/4 cup Earth Balance Creamy Peanut Butter

1-2 tablespoons Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread

1 tablespoon agave nectar

superoptional: extra chocolate chips

First make the chocolate slurry for the cake so it can be cooling while you make the rest of the recipe. In a small saucepan, whisk 1 cup Earth Balance Unsweetened soymilk (save the cold cup for later) with cocoa powder and instant coffee crystals until smooth. Turn on the heat to medium and whisk occasionally until mixture begins to boil, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool while you make the peanut butter filling.

For filling: In a medium bowl, cream together Earth Balance Creamy Peanut Butter and Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread until smooth. Beat in molasses, vanilla and Earth Balance Unsweetened Soymilk until well incorporated. Beat in powdered sugar, flour and cornstarch until smooth and creamy. Spoon filling into a large zipper bag. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and generously grease and flour a heavy duty fluted tube cake pan. (To grease a fluted tube pan, rub 1 tablespoon Earth Balance shortening all over inside of pan, taking care to apply well to the crevices in the design. Mix together 1/2 tablespoon each of cocoa powder and flour and dust all greased surfaces. Using just flour will leave white marks on the outside of your cake.) 

Continue making the cake: In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt and set aside. 

To the chocolate slurry, add the cold cup of soymilk, vinegar and vanilla and whisk to combine. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream the Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread until light and fluffy. Beat in sugar. Alternate beating in the dry mix and the wet mixture a little at a time. Reserve 1 cup of batter and pour the rest into the prepared pan. 

Snip a corner off of the zipper bag (about an inch) and pipe filling in a circle on top of the batter. Gently cover filling with reserved cup of batter. Bake for 50 minutes. Cool in pan for 2 hours. Gently run a small thin spatula or knife around all edges of the pan. Shake the pan from side to side so you can feel that the cake has loosened from the pan. Invert a plate or platter on the pan and quickly flip over to unmold cake. If the pan was well greased and floured, the cake should unmold perfectly. If not, the toppings can cover imperfections.

For optional ganache topping: Heat Earth Balance Unsweetened Soymilk over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips.  Set aside to make peanut butter glaze.

For peanut butter glaze: Heat Earth Balance Creamy Peanut Butter, Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread, agave nectar and agave nectar in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth and melted. 

Spoon toppings over cake. Let toppings cool. Slice into cake for a tunnel of gooey peanut butter goodness! Enjoy!

Double Chocolate Chipotle Cookies

Chocolate and chipotle aren't just for putting into chili and adobo sauce! They make fabulous cookies too! I've made a few batches of These double chocolate cookies lately since most of my outgoing holiday gifts this year were those jar mixes...I just couldn't help but mix up a few complete batches as well. And today I had the idea of adding chipotle! And what a great idea it was! I don't think I'll ever make them without chipotle again. (And if you still have some belated gifts to give, those mixes are a great idea. I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of my kitchen table full of all my jars. It was epic!)

gotta love Costco's ginormous bag of choc chips!

So here I present this easy recipe, which is basically the PPK recipe with spices added.

Double Chocolate Chipotle Cookies

1 cup flour (I used half AP, half white whole wheat without the texture suffering any)

1/3 cup natural cocoa

2 tsp flaxseed meal

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon (Penzey's Vietnamese, as always!)

3/4 tsp chipotle powder

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup roughly chopped pecans or walnuts (I used walnuts this time)

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup non-dairy milk or water (tried it both ways, I cannot tell the difference)

1/3 cup veg oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350f. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper. Mix it all together. Form into balls and flatten slightly into discs. (Isa gets 20 cookies rolling 1 inch balls and I get 16-17 rolling slightly larger balls.) Bake for 10 minutes. Cool for a few minutes on cookie sheet and transfer to cooling rack.

rich, hot and smokey!

Vermillion Flycatcher, a bird native to Mexico from The Internet Bird Collection

Chocolate & graham cracker cake

So I was all excited to go see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre last night at the Alabama Theatre since TCM is my favorite movie (or at least tied with Taxi Driver) and The Alabama is an amazing place. The Alabama is one of the few remaining picture palaces from the 1920s. I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street there on Wednesday night, but was most excited about TCM on Thursday night.

Leatherface is not vegan.

And then my cousin called and asked me to come to her last dinner before she moves out of state..

OK Leatherface, you and I will just have to stick to DVD. Someday we will meet in an old theater with your face lit up at 30 feet wide and I can listen to your brother talk about headcheese and how bludgeoning cows provides jobs for people. (TCM is a rather vegan-inducing movie if you haven't seen it.)

So what should I make in about an hour and a half to take for dinner dessert? I wanted to do a recipe I hadn't done before and since vegan graham crackers were BOGO at the store this week, I went with the S'mores cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World but in cake form. 

There's a high liquid to dry ingredient ratio and the batter ended up being superthin. This worried me a bit, but I didn't have time to do make anything else, so I just went with it. The cake took about 35 minutes and still wasn't 100% done in the middle, but I didn't have time to leave it in longer. And underdone cake actually turns out to be a good thing in many cases..that gooey center that slides out as your fork presses into the cake!

I also discovered I only had 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar.. So I whipped out one of my favorite chocolate icing recipes from one of those old corporate recipe booklets.

Fudge frosting
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I used lite coconut this time)
1/4 cup Earth Balance
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1-1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix granulated sugar, cocoa, coconut milk, Earth Balance and corn syrup in a medium saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring frequently. Boil 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla.

I added a thin layer of icing to the bottom cake layer, covered it with graham crackers and then another layer of icing.

I did the same for the top layer and topped with graham cracker crumbs and chocolate chips. (The cake was still warm so the chocolate chips got soft and melty..it was awesome.) For a true s'mores cake, a tub of Ricemellow Creme would add in well (or Dandies melted with some Earth Balance), but the cake is very rich as is...and I didn't feel like stopping by Whole Foods on the way to dinner. 

The undone center mixed with the icing to make a supergooey rich treat that everyone loved. I recommend serving warm.

photo by Marina Cano