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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Banana Coconut Macadamia Cake for Nik's Birthday (and back-up green cakes)

In the lab, everyone is responsible for the next person's birthday after theirs.  My birthday was a month ago, and Nik's was today (the next one).  Nik bakes amazingly beautiful cakes so I was a little concerned about how mine would turn out, especially since I haven't done that much vegan baking yet.  This was a largely successful experiment...

Banana coconut macadamia cake
(based on the how it all vegan banana bread recipe posted here)

4 mashed ripe bananas (3)
1½ tbsp lime juice (1, lemon juice)
3/4 cup canola oil (1/2)
3/4 cup sugar (1/2)
2 1/4 cups plain flour (1.5)
3/4 cup desiccated coconut (1/2, wheat germ)
3/4 tsp salt (1/2)
3/4 tsp baking powder (1/2)
3/4 tsp baking soda (1/2)
splash of coconut milk (fake milk type) (none)

Grease and line two 9 in cake tins. Heat oven to 375F. Mash bananas then mix with wet ingredients. Sift dry ingredients together. Mix wet into dry, then add to tins. Bake for ~30 minutes.


Made 1.5 times more than a standard quantity as I wanted a deep cake. On reflection, this was perhaps a mistake, but it did look quite impressive once dressed up. The recipe was lovely and simple, and tasted really banana-y, but it was quite crumbly. Perhaps my changes to the recipe were to blame?


Coconut frosting
(from chef chloe here)
(enough for 12 cupcakes?)  

½ cup refined coconut oil
2 teaspoons flavouring (lime juice in this case, vanilla would be an alternative)
4 cups powdered sugar
¼ cup non-dairy milk (coconut)
food coloring
Beat coconut oil and flavouring then powdered sugar one cup at a time. Add milk 1 tablespoon at a time until desired frosting consistency.

I could only get unrefined coconut oil, don't know how different they are.  It was quite solid and I had to warm it a little to be able to beat it.  Mashing it with a fork seemed to be a good way to go.  It was pretty tough to get all the sugar in and I found it better to add coconut milk alternately with the sugar to get good consistency.  It came out really good in the end.  This is pretty much the only fat I've ever been tempted to eat out of the jar!  And this may well have been the best frosting I have ever made!

I spread some frosting on either side of the middle of the sandwich and then put chopped macadamia nuts in between and sandwiched it.  Then I spread the rest of the frosting on top and covered the top with chopped macadamia nuts.

The amount of frosting I had was enough for the middle and top of the cake and the holes in the fairy buns...


Green (tea) fairy cakes

Took chef chloe's recipe as a basic cupcake.

1 ¾ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup veg oil
1 cup fake milk (used coconut)
2 tbsp green tea
1 tbsp lime juice

Preheat oven to 350F. Lined a 12-cup cupcake pan with brown paper cups. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in large bowl. Combine oil, milk, tea, and lime juice in separate bowl. Add wet to dry and mix thoroughly.  Add a little green food colouring to make more green.  Distribute evenly in pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until toothpick come out slightly crumby/clean. Let cool and decorate.


I made nine into fairy buns with some of the coconut frosting described above, with a little green tea and a little green colouring added - cut an inverted cone out of the top, removed and put about a teaspoon of frosting into the hole, then cut the cut-out piece in half and replaced on top to look like little wings. The curved cut edges go towards the middle.

The other three I mixed up a little water icing with icing sugar, green food colouring and water, then iced the tops and added some shredded coconut to look pretty.

They looked good and tasted pretty good too but didn't really taste like green tea. I could try using green tea instead of milk, and/or using matcha powder, which would probably give a stronger flavour and colour (although Sarah says you have to be careful not to use too much and make it taste bitter).
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