Gluten free baking is pretty tricky. I’m still not very good at it, but I learn a little more every time I try out a new recipe. Trying to make a gluten free and vegan chocolate cake was really challenging for me. I tried no fewer than 10 recipes before finding this one, which was so easy to make (and only uses 1 GF flour) that I thought for sure it would be another fail for me. Not so.

Although I haven’t tried it, I’m fairly certain you could add any extract to the batter to change up the flavor. Orange might be nice, or maybe some lemon and lavender. Or lemon cake with lavender frosting. Actually that sounds REALLY good– I just might have to give that a try next after I recover from my sugar hangover.

We had some tiny birdhouses (“fairy houses”) that the kids could paint and take home with them.


I bought some teeny tiny glass bottles with cork lids that the kids filled with different colored sand (that I had mixed with the same color of glitter). Both projects were big hits!

Here are some food highlights from her (mostly vegan) birthday party:

Drinks: bottled water, lemonade, iced tea, Sangria and beer. I used this Sangria recipe and should have doubled the recipe. It went fast (and was SO delicious!!). To keep it cold without watering it down, I froze some of it and also added some frozen apples and oranges that I cut in half before freezing. It did the trick!

Food: falafal (some wrapped in whole wheat lavash, some in GF brown rice tortillas), bagels and cream cheese, fruit, veggies with hummus, corn and black bean salsa, guacamole, edamame. Also, all of the cups, plates, napkins and utensils were compostable! We had very little trash from this party.

And the pièce de résistance… the cake! The top tier is GF vanilla, middle is vegan vanilla, bottom is vegan chocolate. There were only a few pieces of the GF left. All the rest got gobbled up!

The cake was accompanied by 225(!) cupcakes, all vegan chocolate topped with handmade double happiness fondant rounds. This was a lot of work, but was also one of the most enjoyable cake projects I’ve had. I started making the dragon and phoenix a few weeks ago and they weren’t too difficult to make, but they did take a long time to get just right. For example, I spent over 5 hours just making the dragon head.

This weekend, I was hired to make cupcakes for the Redwood City Mother’s Club holiday party. This is my second year doing it and it’s a lot of fun. Emma and I stayed for the party after setting up and we had so much fun. She got to do some art and play with her friends and we got to spend some time together, just the two of us.

I’ve got one more holiday party to do this Saturday and after that I should have more time for blogging. I have a yummy recipe to post!

It took us about 3.5 hours to get there and it wasn’t too bad of a drive.  There are a lot of farms (like fruit/vegetable farms) south of us and that’s always fun to drive through.  There are  a lot of fruit stands off the highway that sell fresh, local produce for pretty cheap.  The best deal I saw was a 5 lb. bag of oranges for $1.  If we hadn’t been in such a hurry to get there (he had to be in Fresno by 6 pm to pick up his race packet), I would have stopped for some.  The best part of the drive is that Amanda slept the entire way and Emma took a nap for a good part of it.  Matt and I were able to have a conversation with each other where we could actually hear each other and not be interrupted.  It was nice.

Matt finished in 167th place out of 3316 overall; 142nd place out of the 1220 men; 27th of 196 in his age group; with a time of 1:41:47. He was in the top 5%!  Ok, I’m pretty impressed.  I’m not a runner and lost most of my athletic ability when I graduated high school, but I’m sort of inspired now to maybe start training for an itty bitty run– like maybe a 5K.  And our friend whom Matt ran the race with is the biggest inspiration of all.  Check out Travis’s blog here.  Travis has lost nearly 100 pounds so far and is training for a full marathon coming up here in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, so that’s why I didn’t post anything this weekend.  And prior to our trip, I had gotten a cupcake order that was pretty time consuming.  About a year ago, I started baking on the side in my spare time (back then I actually had some).  I started making cakes and cupcakes for people and really find it to be a lot of fun.  If you want to see some of the stuff I’ve done, you can fan me on Facebook and check it out:

Bliss Bakery

This particular job was 4 dozen mini cupcakes, a mix of chocolate and vanilla, each topped with handmade race cars.  The race cars are all made from fondant and are 100% edible, but were very time consuming to make.  Now that I have so little free time I realize just how time consuming these special details are.  Before Amanda was born, I would make these types of things at night while watching TV.  Now that she’s here, I make it a point to go to bed when she does so I have to find time to do them during the day. My client picked these up the night before the party so I had to send the race cars separate from the cupcakes (otherwise the fondant softens too much from the moisture of the cupcake).  Here’s all 48 race cars boxed up and ready to go:

I had a few leftovers and made a little display to get some photos:

Emma always loves it when there are leftovers!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  I’ll be back with more tomorrow.

]]> http://www.missionvegan.com/busy-busy-buy/feed/ 2 http://www.missionvegan.com/some-cakes-and-cupcakes/ http://www.missionvegan.com/some-cakes-and-cupcakes/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:46:06 +0000 maida http://www.missionvegan.com/?p=2932 I don’t always post all of my cake creations here on this blog, but I thought I would these.  My very loyal friend always contacts me about making a dessert for her law firm whenever they are hosting parties or gatherings.  I’m not sure what the the event was this time, but they requested 50 chocolate and vanilla cupcakes.  The colors of the linens were turquoise and pink, so I made some fondant daisies to match the linen colors.

And here’s some photos of the cake and cupcake display I made for my cousin’s graduation party.  It’s hard to believe she’s done with high school already; it feels like she just started last week!  The pattern on the cake matched the party invitations:

It’s interesting to note that most of the people who I make cakes for are not vegan.  Actually, most are not even vegetarian, but vegan cakes is a fun way to show them that vegan food isn’t weird or scary.  We eat what other people eat, we just make it in a different way.  At the party, it was interesting to see peoples’ reactions when they found out the cupcakes were vegan.  One party-goer who has a fondness for cupcakes ate 4 and told me that these were some of the best (or maybe he said the best) he’s ever had.  Another couldn’t believe I made them without butter.  I have to say that the reason why these cakes taste so good is that they are all homemade from scratch, I make them in small batches, and they are vegan.  If you stop eating dairy for any length of time, eating it again is totally disgusting.  There have been times when I’ve nibbled on something that has dairy in it (just to see if I would like it) and the only thing I can taste is the dairy.  I tried to eat a cookie made with butter and it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.  Yes, me… former lover of cheese and butter.  When I was vegetarian, I always said veganism was “too hardcore” because I love cheese and could never give it up.  Well, I did miss it at first, but now that I haven’t had it in a long time, there’s absolutely nothing appealing about it.

I digress… the point I’m trying to make is that I do enjoy making cakes for people who are unfamiliar with a vegan lifestyle.  It’s an easy, non-confrontational way to introduce them to vegan eating.

This is a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.  Everything on here is edible, except for Ariel, Sebastian and Flounder.

The cake is lemon with lemon buttercream frosting.  The mini cupcakes are chocolate and vanilla.  The dogs are made from a mix of fondant and gum paste and are completely edible.