My mom had a birthday yesterday and we helped her celebrate over the weekend.  Since I have TONS of lemons, I went for a lemon cake with lemon buttercream.  To fancy it up a bit, I added layers of blackberry jam too.  To make the cake, I used the chocolate cake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking but just left out the cocoa powder and added a few teaspoons of lemon zest. The cake was fine, but still not great. I haven’t found a vegan vanilla cake recipe that I love yet, but I’ll try the one from ED&BV next and report back.

I totally cheated to make the layers too. I baked the whole batch of batter in a jelly roll pan and just cut out squares once it was cooled.  All of the squares then just got stacked together. It made life a whole lot easier– no having to level the layers or do any fancy carving. I used the lemon buttercream recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and found that it is way too soft. I recommend only using half the amount of liquid at first. The buttercream kept slipping down the sides of the cake when it wasn’t refrigerated and it wasn’t even a warm weekend.  It tasted good and everyone seemed to love it, so yay for me!