A foray into vegan-ish baking.

Do you ever really want to make something, and then realize that you don't have half the ingredients? Or better yet, your milk/eggs/SUPER IMPORTANT INGREDIENT is expired?

This seems to happen to me a lot... Maybe because I don't buy groceries that often. Or because life gets in the way and I don't actually cook anything when I originally planned on it... So I experiment!

A few weeks ago, I was planning to make Martha Stewart's Pumpkin Layer Cake for Thanksgiving, bought all the ingredients, and then we didn't have time to make it. And here, 3 weeks later, I still had all the ingredients... except the eggs and milk are expired... and there's no way in hell I'm going out in the freezing rain in NYC today just for some stupid eggs.

Experimentation! I've never tried vegan baking, but I've heard good things about it. Basically, you replace the wet ingredients like milk and eggs with things like applesauce, mashed banana, pumpkin puree, canola oil, etc.

After googling a few recipes, I started with this one for Vegan Old-fashioned Soft Pumpkin Cookies in mind... and added some other things to make it into cake batter... My additions are in pink.

INGREDIENTS

• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I nixed the 1/2 cup whole wheat flour because of course, I'm lucky to have ANY flour at all, let alone whole wheat)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (I didn't have ground cloves either, so I added an extra 1/2 t. of ginger)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened (So I cheated, it's not vegan anymore... because I have regular old unsalted butter in my fridge, no vegan margarine)
• 2 cups Libby's canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup applesauce (The recipe called for 1 T. of applesauce for the cookies, so for cake batter, I added extra applesauce)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• about 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (I wasn't measuring this... but adding it little by little until I got the desired consistency)
  

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease cake rounds.
3. Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt in medium bowl.
4. Beat sugars and butter in large mixer bowl until well blended.
5. Beat in pumpkin, applesauce and vanilla extract until smooth.
6. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Beat in olive oil little by little, guessing as you go to achieve desired consistency.... Cross your fingers...
7. Divide batter evenly into two cake rounds.
8. Bake for 30-35 minutes.
9. Pray to God that it turns out...

I cheated again and topped it off with Martha's Light Cream Cheese Icing... again, not vegan, but that wasn't really the point. The point was using up what I had, which was lots of cream cheese!





Annnnd the taste test...



It turned out really great! Of course, everything's better with icing... but no, really, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's moist and dense and not overwhelmingly sugary or pumpkin-y. It kind of reminds me of the pumpkin scones from Starbucks. Success!

Update: I brought my two pumpkin cakes into work this morning, and they were completely gone by lunch!