My birthday is coming up (tomorrow, actually) and to celebrate, my friends and hubby treated me to a delicious dinner at Basil, then dancing at Bootie this past Saturday.  Matt was a guest DJ at Bootie and I try to go see him play when I can.  He didn’t disappoint– it was an awesome fun time!  Bootie is a mashup club in San Francisco run by some of my hubby’s good friends and it’s always a good time.  If you’re curious about mashups, here’s my favorite (made by my husband, of course):

dj-matt-hite-everybody-is-right

I made my own cake because I can’t resist any opportunity to make cake.  It’s something I find enjoyable and it’s good practice.  I will be good at making cakes one day!  Since we were partying it up at Bootie, I went with a pink pirate themed cake.  Get it– bootie, like pirates treasure booty.  Aargh!

The only problem is that my pirate that was supposed to go on top didn’t turn out.  Vegan white chocolate, while hard to find, doesn’t melt as well as non-vegan white chocolate.  That, and the fact that somebody’s little fingers kept messing with it (Emma!!), caused my pirate to fall apart when I went to put her on my cake.  I’ll give the technique another try later.  Anyway, so my pirate fell apart and I didn’t have the time/motivation to attempt another.  I ran off to the party supply store only to find a very small selection of pirate-themed party supplies, none of them pink, so I went with Hello Kitty instead.  Then I made her an eye patch out of chocolate fondant and that was my pirate cake!

The cake itself was the chocolate cake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking with a few teaspoons of coffee extract added to the batter.  I baked it (2 separate batches) in two 6-inch cake pans, for a total of 4 layers.  The buttercream in between the layers was a Kahlua Mocha Buttercream and it was so boozily delicious.

Kahlua Mocha  Buttercream Frosting

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1/2 cup non-hydrogenated shortening

1/2 cup non-hydrogenated, non-dairy margarine

5 cups powdered sugar, sifted

3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 cup (2 oz) good, dark chocolate, melted and cooled (or more cocoa powder)

8 TB Kahlua

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 tsp coffee extract

Cream together the shortening and margarine.  Gradually add the powdered sugar, cocoa powder and melted chocolate (your chocolate MUST be cooled, or it will melt the shortening and margarine and you will have a big mess on your hands).  Add the Kahlua and extracts.  If your frosting is too thin, add more sugar.  If too thick, add a splash more of Kahlua.

A few things first:  Good-tasting vegan fondant is hard to come by, unless you make it yourself.  After much research and experimentation, I have come up with a yummy chocolate rolled fondant recipe with an option to leave it a white rolled fondant.  Since I used chocolate fondant for my pirate cake, here’s how I made it:

Vegan Rolled Fondant

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Makes enough to cover a 10″ x 4″ high cake

¼ cup cold water

1 TB agar-agar flakes*

2 pounds (8 cups) powdered sugar, sifted

½ cup cocoa powder (omit if you want white fondant)

½ cup light corn syrup

1 ½ TB glycerin

2 TB non-hydrogenated shortening

1 tsp vanilla extract (omit if you want white fondant)

1.      Do not attempt to make this unless you can devote a solid, uninterrupted hour to it.  It probably won’t take you that long, but it’s not something that you can leave and come back to.

2.      Put the cold water into a small sauce pan.  Sprinkle the agar-agar flakes on top and set aside.

3.      Divide the powdered sugar between two large bowls.  In one of the bowls, add the cocoa powder to the 4 cups of powdered sugar.  Make a well in the center.  Set aside.

4.      Now that the agar-agar flakes have had a chance to soften in the water, turn the heat to medium to cook them.  Do not attempt to cook on high heat.  Low and slow is the rule here!  This is the most important step in the process of making fondant because you need to be completely sure that all of the agar flakes are dissolved before proceeding.

Notice all of the “speckles” at the bottom of the pan-those are the still undissolved agar flakes.  As the water begins to dissolve the agar, the mixture at the bottom will become gelatinous.  Add more water slowly (a tablespoon at a time), let it dissolve more agar, then add more until there are no more speckles of flakes visible in the pan.  You may end up adding more than cup of water to fully dissolve the flakes, but you need to do so gradually so as not to add too much.  The process of dissolving the agar takes probably 15 minutes.

Getting closer, but still not there!

Finally done!

And that’s what it should look like– gelatinous goo at the bottom of the pan.

5.      Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan and stir to combine.  Pour this mixture into the well inside the bowl of powdered sugar and cocoa.  Begin stirring, incorporating a little more powdered sugar from the outside of the well at a time.

6.      When all of the sugar from this bowl has been incorporated, start adding scoops of sugar that have been reserved in the other bowl.  When the mixture becomes too stiff to stir with a spoon, knead it with your hands.

7.      Knead in more sugar until the mixture doesn’t stick to your hands or the bowl anymore.  You will probably only use about 6 cups of sugar total.

8.      Shape the fondant into a ball, wrap tightly with plastic wrap and allow to rest at room temperature overnight before using.

9.      To make white fondant, follow this same recipe and process, but omit the cocoa powder and vanilla extract.

* I have only used agar-agar flakes for this recipe.  I have not tried powder.  If you do intend to use agar powder, use 2 tsp max.  EDIT:  If you find this recipe by a random web search, check out this post for more information on using agar-agar powder instead of flakes.  I find that powder produces a better finished product than flakes do.

So let’s revisit the boob cake:

I made up a batch of vanilla cake, but baked it in a small stainless steel bowl.  It took a long time, probably 40 minutes, for the center to be completely done.  Once cooled, I carved them to be roughly the same sized domes then covered them in a thin layer of chocolate buttercream, and then covered them with fondant (the same fondant recipe above).  I made white fondant (omitting the cocoa powder and vanilla) then tinted it with a few drops of yellow and red food coloring paste.  To achieve a true skin tone, I kneaded in several tablespoons of cocoa powder (a little at a time).  A few more drops of red added to the skin-tone fondant makes the nips.