Mason's Birthday--with Vegan Chocolate Sheet Cake!

The 15th was Mason's birthday!
We started celebrating when he got home from work on Thursday afternoon. I made a tiny mint chocolate chip ice cream cake, which we ate while we watched movies and he opened a few early presents. Friday, we got up early to watch Olympic soccer and Mas walked across the street to the newly opened Taco Joint (which deserves it's own post) to pick up a breakfast of vegan potato and bean tacos. When I asked Mas what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday and he requested a vegan version of his Nanny's chocolate sheet cake, I was more than a little worried. I've never made a vegan sheet cake and Nanny's is amazing. I decided to be as safe as possible, so I adapted this recipe for Texas Sheet Cake, which sounded pretty close to the one that Nanny makes. It turned out really well! Probably not as good as Nanny's, but we haven't had it in so long that it didn't matter. We ate it with vanilla ice cream (we both love the 365 vanilla) and he opened all of his bicycle related presents. For dinner, I made spicy seitan pepperoni, two kinds of hummus and tofu egg salad sandwiches to pack up and eat while we went to thrift stores. As Saturday morning breakfast, Mas wanted biscuits to eat with black pepper pork chops. I decided to try the JOVB biscuit recipe--and, just as I expected, it was great. However, the recipe calls for 24 walnut sized scoops of biscuit dough. That seemed a little strange to me (is it regional? in other parts of the US, do people eat tiny biscuits?), so I halved the recipe and then doubled the size of the scoops for six medium biscuits. They were the lightest drop biscuits that I've ever had, and we both agreed that they would be excellent for biscuits and gravy. We had leftovers and way too much cake for the rest of the day. Now, Mas is back at work and I'm putting off cleaning the kitchen by making this ridiculously long run-on sentence of a post.



Vegan Chocolate Sheet Cake
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 c. soy milk
1 c. Earth Balance
1/3 c. cocoa
2 c. sugar
2 Ener-G eggs
1/2 c. soy milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a 13x9x2 inch pan.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside
Whisk (or blend) 1/2 c. soy milk with apple cider vinegar and set aside to curdle.
In a saucepan, begin melting Earth Balance while adding cocoa and 1 c. soy milk. When well combined, but not yet boiling, add sugar. Bring to a boil while stirring constantly. Remove from heat and beat into the dry mixture until thoroughly blended. Add sour soy milk, Ener-G and vanilla and beat for one minute on medium. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes.

Chocolate Frosting
1/4 c. Earth Balance
3 T. cocoa
3 T. soy milk (with a dash of ACV whisked in)
2 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

In a saucepan, combine Earth Balance, cocoa and soy buttermilk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and beat in vanilla and sifted powdered sugar. Beat on medium until well combined. Pour over cake as soon as it comes out of the oven and spread with a spatula. The frosting sets up as soon as it starts to cool, so try to spread it as quickly as possible if you care at all about it looking decent. I can't stress this enough--the frosting will set up to a thick fudgy consistency very quickly. You really don't even want to have to spread with the spatula more than once.


(Reading this back, I've realized just how rambling it is. Sorry for that. This should really be a few separate posts, but I'm much too lazy to change it now.)