Vegan Birthday Cake

Friday was my dad's birthday and it seems to be my new thang to make birthday cakes for every one's special day. My older sister's birthday is in June and as she was eating this cake she said, "so, what kind of cake am I going to get for my birthday."

I actually like this new tradition because I've never been seen as the baker/chef in the family and now the tide is beginning to turn in that direction and I think it's great. Yes, this cake is vegan, and yes it's delicious. It's the same cake recipe that I used for the bundt cake a few weeks back, but I got the frosting recipe from the blog Fat Free Vegan under a post titled German Chocolate Birthday Cake. Super simple to make and super delicious.

Now, I'm definitely not vegan and I'm definitely not vegetarian, but I have stopped eating all land based animals and I am making a conscious choice to avoid eggs and dairy where possible. This is still most definitely a journey that I'm just beginning, but I'm enjoying all the different possibilities that the vegetarian and vegan culinary world has to offer. CB will never be vegetarian, but he has adopted the ideal that you should never eat meat (beef, chicken, etc.) unless you know where it came from and that it was treated humanely, as humanely as any animal born and bred for human consumption can possibly be treated. That being said he doesn't eat meat unless we buy it from a local farm and we haven't had the chance to go to the farm in a long long time, so it's been tofu and tempeh entrees for him for a while. Saturday we had the chance to go to the farm, it was going to be a full day so we packed our travel cooler, loaded with ice packs into the car and headed to the farm so he could stock up on meat for a few weeks.

Among his meat purchases was sliced turkey breast for sandwiches, seriously, pounds of it. The reason I mention this is because as we were traveling on the highway back from the farm, a car in front of us hit a wild turkey that was trying to cross the road. All the cars, including ours (CB behind the wheel) swerved manaically around the severely injured turkey so that we wouldn't hit it. Herein lies my great observation and question, why did my husband driving a car, containing a cooler packed with dead turkey meat, break and swerve as to not hit the injured turkey in the road.

All the cars went out of their way to not hit the injured turkey. All these cars containing people who, I'm sure devour turkey on Thanksgiving Day, swerved left and right to avoid killing it. And me, the one who doesn't eat turkey said to my husband, "you should have just run over it and put it out of it's misery." I couldn't stand to see it suffer, rotating around on one leg, its banged and broken wings unable to take flight. It just seemed wrong to me, and backed up my thought that if you wouldn't be able to kill it, you shouldn't eat it.

Vegan German Chocolate Frosting
1 cup plain soymilk
1/3 cup coconut milk (may use lite coconut milk)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup cornstarch mixed with
1/4 cup water until smooth
2 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

In a medium saucepan, mix the soymilk, coconut milk, sugar, and vanilla together. Add the cornstarch mixture and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until mixture boils and thickens. Cook for one minute after it boils. Remove from heat and stir in coconut and pecans.Allow to cool for about 10 minutes (mixture should still be warm) before spreading on cake.

Makes enough for one 2-layer 8-inch cake.

Rating = Damn Good