Vegan Month of Food 2019 Day 10: SHOWSTOPPER!

Classy, Sassy & Quite Badassy Cake

Delivered at this temperature

Don't make plans, just don't do it. If you DO make plans, brace for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is all I can say.

90% of today did not go according to plans. I guess that means my glass is 10% full, and I should be happy anything went according to plans at all, including cake. You probably tuned in for a gluten free cake and recipe, but it's not here is it, no it's not. This is my contribution towards themes & prompts (I will hit them when I can) for YESTERDAY ... "showstopper." I simply forgot to check the prompts to see if I had something relevant, and of course yes I do have something relevant. But I had already written the other post, plus scheduled it for publication. I couldn't figure out how to undo it. The ultimate irony is that it didn't post on schedule, another unplanned blip. Now those blips are tiny in the scheme of what went down around here today, because I've already been up pushing about 17 hours now and I'm still not done with my day. All that is a long way of me saying: LOOK AT THIS CAKE! IT'S FREAKING AWESOME! I used Gretchen Price's banana cake recipe from Modern Vegan Baking (I had to adjust liquid quantities, we'll talk about that on another post because I made that banana cake twice so far), chocolate fudge frosting, filled with ganache, drizzled with Gretchen's caramel sauce (ohhh.... speaking of planning gone wrong, scroll below for the caramel situation), decorated with salted maple pecans, chocolate bar pieces (yes, vegan organic & fair trade... check in with the Food Empowerment Project to follow that bouncing ball), and a bit more Fleur de sel sprinkled around the pecan decorations because salt and nuts and chocolate and caramel is fire.

As one final hat tip to plans suck.... when I went to deliver this cake, it was 99 degrees out. Yes, 99 degrees. This cake was one I made for a friend who recently moved away. Another friend gone, it's getting mind numbing at this point.

This cake took some time, it's bigger than it may seem in the photo; 10" double layers of cake made a day ahead. The ganache filling made a day ahead. The frosting made the morning of. The caramel sauce made the afternoon before, and the toasted maple pecans made the night before as well. Then, I assembled the cake mid-morning for an afternoon delivery. This allowed time for the ganache to re stabilize as well as the entire cake being nice and chilled for better chances of it not sliding on the route to it's destination. I can say that this cake did make it to the party, but it was beginning to show signs of overheating and fatigue (just like it's baker).

Here's a fun fact about making caramel sauce: it sucks when you burn it, note photo below.

Guess which version ended up in the trash.
Make sure never to turn your back even for 30 seconds when making your caramel.
That's what it took for me to destroy 2 entire cups of organic vegan caramel sauce.
Bummer.

There's my showstopper. If you think being vegan means giving up anything besides cruelty, you're 100% wrong. Vegan is love, bad ass cakes and so much more. In a very uncertain world where plans go awry in a blink, vegan is, and always will be, love.

xo

PS: That's cake #10 of 31 in 31, yay!