Nutella Swirl Pound Cake

First and foremost, I have to say Happy VEGAN MOFO everyone! I have been mega busy lately but I hope to get a few more things up here before the end of the month. I have been on a real kick lately making all sorts of loaf type desserts...it all started with the never ending supply of my Spiced Banana Bread. Then I started making pumpkin bread variations on it. It was only a matter of time before my dessert journey ended here....homemade Nutella and pound cake. That's right folks....Nutella swirled into pound cake. And the result...heavenly! Sometimes, you just have to take risks to get great desserts, right?

Also, I think I am secretly trying to come up with some awesome desserts because Chris' birthday is on Thanksgiving this year!!! Crazy! That means double desserts. I am going to be in a food coma for a long time after next Thursday.

Nutella

2 c. hazelnuts, toasted and mostly shelled

2 tbsp. cocoa powder

1/2 c. powdered sugar

3 tbsp vegtable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 c. water

4 oz semi-sweet chocolate, melted

Pound Cake

3/4 c blended silken tofu
1 c. sugar
1/3 c canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
3 tbsp corn starch
2 c flour

To start, you will want to begin with the nutella. Toast the hazelnuts in a 350 degree oven for about 12- 15 minutes. Using a kitchen towel, scoop about maybe 1/2 c or so of the hazelnuts, and use the towel to rub off as much of the skins as you can. If you have some skin left on the nuts, it will be okay, you just want as much off as you can get. Repeat for the remaining hazelnuts.

When all the hazelnuts are done, place in a food processor and blend until it gets to be almost like peanut butter like consistency. This will take several minutes of blending/pulsing to achieve. First, it will be kind of like bread crumbs, and slowly the natural oils will come out of the nuts and make it into a sticky, peanut butter type paste.

When you have the right texture, add your powdered sugar, cocoa powder and oil. Pulse and blend until everything is combined. You might have to stop several times to scrape the sides down. Everything will probably get very thick at this point.

Next, the trick to get this more of a smooth consistency, I transfered everything to my KitchenAid mixer. While you are mixing and fluffing the nutella, add a 1/4 c. of water at a time until you have a smooth, more spreadable mixture. For mine, I ended up using 1/2 c. of water.

Now, set up a double boiler and melt 4 oz of semi-sweet chocolate. When the chocolate is close to being all the way melted, take the bowl off of the double boiler and continue to stir until no pieces of chocolate remain. Add to your nutella spread, and mix until everything is smooth and combined.

Note: This makes about 2 c. worth of nutella, and for the cake, you will likely only use a little over a cup. But hey, this means nutella for breakfast, for lunch, for snacks! Anytime!

Okay, onto the cake. I know that just making the nutella was a lot of work, but the cake goes quickly and you will have almost a whole hour to rest up while it is in the oven. So, let's get this cake going!

Take your silken tofu and blend in your food processor. This will make sure there are no lumps, and it should almost resemble the consistency of yogurt. Take the blended tofu, add your sugar, oil and vanilla, ,mix until everything comes together to a nice, smooth batter. Add the baking powder, baking soda, salt and corn starch. Then add your flour, one cup at a time. Mix for a couple of minutes, the batter should be fairly thick in consistency.

Now for the fun part! Take a 9x5 inch loaf pan and spread about 1/3 of the batter as the bottom layer. Then take the nutella and spread a layer on top of the batter. Since the nutella is a lot thicker than the batter, I found that spooning out small amounts of nutella and dotting it across the batter works best. Then take the back of the spoon and spread it out as best as possible. Take about 1/3 of the batter and spread over the nutella. Repeat the nutella layer. Then pour over the rest of the batter on top.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 55 - 60 minutes or until a toothpick/knife comes out clean when poked in the center.

Now eat cake! With nutella on top! And maybe ice cream if you have any around!

Nutmeg Cake

For the past couple of months, I have had a growing obsession with nutmeg. I add it to almost everything I make lately, especially anything tomato based. The flavor of nutmeg with a slow, simmering pot of fresh tomatoes make the most excellent pasta sauce.

So you can imagine my delight when I stumbled upon a recipe for Nutmeg Cake! I had to try it out right away. This vegan version is adapted from "The Herb and Spice Bible" along with my own Pumpkin Spice drizzle.

What you will need for the cake:
2 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp coriander
2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
1/2 cup Earth Balance, or your fav. vegan butter
1 egg equivalent
1 1/4 c. soy milk

Pumpkin Spice Drizzle:
1 c. confectioners sugar
2-3 tbsp soy milk
1- 2 tsp pumpkin spice

Preheat your over to 350 degrees and mix together 1/2 of your flour, all of your sugar, cinnamon, allspice and coriander. Add your 1/2 c. Earth Balance or vegan butter to the mix, and crumble the pieces of butter with the mixture. It will be somewhat coarse and chunky, and that is a-ok.

Spread a bit of Earth Balance onto the bottom of your pan. I used a bundt pan, but an 8 inch round cake pan will work nicely as well.

Sprinkle the flour, sugar, spice, butter combo onto the bottom of you pan to coat it. Whatever you have leftover, add your other 1 cup flour to this mixture, add your baking powder, salt, nutmeg, soy milk and egg equivalent and whisk together.

Pour this batter over the crumbs in your pan, and bake for 50-60 minutes. Depending on what kind of pan you use, your baking time will vary slightly, so keep an eye on your cake at around the 50 minute mark. The cake is done when you can insert a fork into it and it comes out clean, it should also feel springy to the touch.


While you let your cake cool in the pan, prepare your Pumpkin Spice drizzle. Mix all ingredients together, and adjust the amount of soy milk until you get a somewhat thick liquid. Set aside.

Remove cake from pan, and drizzle the Pumpkin Spice drizzle over the cake. And if you are feeling festive like I was, decorate your nutmeg cake with autumn colored sprinkles!

Caramelized Pear & Ginger Cake

I have envisioned this tangy, sweet and delish flavor combo for a while now. Ginger and Pears. I could not get this out of my mind, so I came up with a way to combine these two flavors into a sort of cobbler like cake. The cake has a bottom layer, then the fruit, and then topped again with small pieces of dough that was used for the bottom layered on top of the fruit.

Pears have such a great sweet and mild taste, the addition of the ginger and some other spices really are a nice addition to this cake.

Here is what you will need:
4 - 5 pears
1/2 c water
2 tbsp finely minced ginger
1 tsp fresh nutmeg
1 tsp fresh all spice
vegan sugar to caramelize pears

For the dough:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (i used the chunkier, kosher salt here)
1 cup vegan sugar
3/4 cup vegan earth balance
3 egg equivalents for Ener-G (use warm water)

Begin by making the dough, as it will need to set in the freezer for about 30 minutes for you to be able to handle it easier, and it won't be a sticky mess.

Begin by adding the earth balance and the 1 cup vegan sugar into your mixer, beat for about 5 minutes so it becomes a nice, light, fluffy mixture. In a seperate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Also mix 3 egg equivalents of Ener-G together.

When your sugar and butter mixture is nice and fluffy, slowly add about 1/3 of your ener-g mixture at a time, making sure each 1/3 is incorporated before adding your next 1/3. Add your bowl of dry ingredients slowly. Continue to mix until it comes together into a very smooth dough. It is going to be very sticky, wrap this up in plastic wrap and leave in your freezer for about 30 minutes.

While the dough is in the freezer, start to prepare your pears. I cut mine in half length wise, then in half again. Do this to all of your pears. Then, take a small plate and pour some of your vegan sugar onto it. This will allow you to place each pear section into the sugar to coat it.

Heat a non-stick pan on medium high, and place each pear slice into it, cut side down. They might be a bit smooshed in the pan, but that is ok. Cook for about 5 minutes, and then add your 1/2 cup of water, in addition to the ginger, nutmeg and all spice. Let this cook for another 10 minutes. Make sure to keep an eye on this, you don't want the sugary syrup to burn. If it looks like it is getting too thick or burning, add a little bit of water to it. Set aside and let cool.

While the mixture cools down, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Take out your plastic wrapped dough, take 1/2 of the dough and use this to create the bottom layer of the cake. I used a pie pan for mine, but I think a 9" springform pan would work nicely as well. Spread out the dough to get a nice, even bottom layer.

Take your pear mixture, and spoon the pears over the bottom dough layer. Make sure to save the sauce, but feel free to scoop out all of the small pieces of ginger and add to the pears. Take your other 1/2 of the dough and layer the top with table spoon sized chunks of dough. Try to cover almost the whole layer, but there will be small spots where the pear layer peeks through. This is ok, as the dough will spread out during baking.

Now for the neat part. Take your sugary, syrup like sauce and cook it on high heat for about 2 - 3 minutes. It will bubble like mad, start to turn a caramely brown color and get thicker.



Pour this syrup over the top of your cake. This will make the top layer of your cake have a nice, really cripsy top.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes, or until the top is baked golden brown.

Also, learning this from experience, put another pan, like a pizza pan, underneath your cake just in case there are some juices that bubble and spill over. Not fun to clean up.

Eat right away, or let cool and savor later.

Peach & Plum Tea Cake

Ever since this month's Gourmet Magazine has been out, the Plum Kuchen has been popping up everywhere...I could not get away from seeing it. And when I finally caved and bought the magazine for myself, it was the opposite page that had a little section on a Stone Fruit Tea Cake! I knew that was the baking project for me...I mean, I am sure the Plum Kuchen is wonderful...but this Tea Cake really caught my eye.

It features a shortbread-like dough that is not overly sweet, which balances beautifully against the fresh fruit that is layered into it. I chose a mixture of peaches and plums. I really wanted a kind of sweet and tart to play off of each other, and the combination of the sweet peaches against the slight bitterness of the plums really adds a yumminess to this cake, in my opinion. However, you can use any combination of stone fruits, or go all out with your one and very favorite!


Peach & Plum Tea Cake (adapted from Gourmet Magazine, Aug. 2009)

you will need:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (i used the chunkier, kosher salt here)
1 cup vegan sugar
3/4 cup vegan earth balance
3 egg equivalents for Ener-G (use warm water)
3 cups fruit (I used 1 large peach, 2 large plums)
brown sugar (this will be sprinkled on top, so you will not need much)

Begin by adding the earth balance and the 1 cup vegan sugar into your mixer, and beat for almost 5 minutes to cream it. It should be a nice, light, fluffy mixture. While this is mixing up, I mixed together in a seperate bowl my flour, baking powder and salt. I also got my 3 egg equivalents of Ener-G together.

When you are done mixing your sugar/earth balance mixture, slowly add about 1/3 of your ener-g mixture at a time, making sure each 1/3 is incorporated before adding your next 1/3.

After all of your Ener-G is mixed together with your sugar and earth balance, add your bowl of dry ingredients slowly. Continue to mix until it comes together into a very smooth dough. The texture almost reminded me of sugar cookie dough while I was making this. Wrap this up in plastic wrap and leave in your freezer for about 30 minutes.

While the dough cools in your freezer (it will be easier to handle when cooled) roughly chop your fruit. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

After you have cooled the dough, take about 1/2 of the dough and spread it evenly in the bottom your pan. Add the fruit over this layer, and then crumble the remaining dough over the fruit. This does not have to be small crumbled pieces, I made mine about table spoon sized. Sprinkle with brown sugar.

The original recipe calls for a 10" pan, but I would recommend a 9" spring form pan. It almost seemed like my first half was not enough to spread out across the 10" pan.

Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.



I know this is the hard part, but you want to wait a little bit before cutting into this awesome tea cake. All of your fruit has released its moisture, forming a sticky liquid. As it cools, the liquid will thicken up and make it easier and neater for you to take out your cake.

Ok....now, enjoy!