It's been almost an entire week since my last post! Yikes. I have a bunch of food photos that are waiting to be blogged about, but it may take a while to get around to them, especially since the next week or so is looking to be pretty busy with Valentine's Day orders. BTW, the last day for ordering the 'Be My Valentine' Gift box and truffles was originally today, but I've extended it til Thursday, Feb 9. :)
Anyway, part of last weekend was spent making two birthday cakes:
Exhibit A and B.
The first was for Chris, who is a long-time friend, fellow vegan, and chocolate-lover. To ease his pain of getting older (I like to affectionately call him 'ajusshi' even though he's far from it), I made a three-layer chocolate cake using the recipe from 'Joy of Vegan Baking' by Colleen Patrick Goudreau. I then spread chocolate mousse topping from VCTOTW in between the layers and all around the outside. And even though it's a bit early in the year for strawberries, they're beginning to appear at the market, so I grabbed a pack to prettify the cakes.
The completed cake, before going in a cake box.
And here it is, lit up like a christmas tree. Happy Birthday Chris!
Here's what it looked like on the inside. Everything tasted awesome, if I may say so myself. The cake was moist, very chocolatey, and the strawberries added nice bursts of juicy freshness. And as far as I could tell, everyone really enjoyed it. The tofu chocolate mousse layers could've been thicker and maybe a little sweeter, but all in all, it turned out delicious.
slice #1...
and slice #2. Couldn't resist having seconds. :P
And as per Chris' request, we also had homemade vegan burritos and guac for dinner. For the main filling, we stir-fried rice, potatoes, onions, kidney beans, button mushrooms, broccoli, and fresh cilantro.
We also consumed about a bucketful of guac... T'was an incredible sight to see.
Everything wrapped up into a toasted wheat tortilla. You can get vegan tortillas at the foreign food mart, costco, or major department stores.
And now moving onto Cake #2! This was for T & S who are twin sisters and have been ordering cookies from me ever since I first started the bake shop. They have been so great that when T asked if I would make them a vegan birthday cake, I was more than happy to. :)
She asked for a pretty simple chocolate layer cake with butter-cream frosting, but then I felt that it would look too plain, so I ended up decorating the top with chocolate-covered strawberries and some flat chocolate buttons that I made just from melting dark chocolate.Happy Birthday T&S! :)
Too bad I couldn't cut into the cake to take a cross-section photo. I don't think their birthday would've been very "happy" if they got a cake with one slice already cut out of it.
Boxed up and ready for pick-up. :)
Oh, and when I met up with T, she was so sweet and gave me a bag of goodies from Veggie Holic bakery. 1 loaf of raspberry bread and 1 chocolate chip muffin! My favorite items from Veggie Holic. :) Ahh, I love my customers...