Accidental Vegan Trifle

BAKING DISASTER!!!!

I've been battling a rather annoying head cold (probably brought about by sitting in near arctic conditions at work last Tuesday) which may explain why I did something to a recipe, one that I've used many times before, ( and which follows at the end of this post) to make the results look like this:

Now, I was actually baking these to take to a WI meeting, and no amount of frosting was going to hide the fact that the cakes had sunk completely.  I had little choice but to bake another batch, paying closer attention to the recipe.

The second batch turned out fine - but what to do with all the sunken cakes?  They tasted fine, they just weren't very presentable....

Trifle, maybe?

The idea of making a vegan trifle had never occurred to me because trifle was never a dessert I felt comfortable with - possibly due to the the clash of textures created by eating cheaper versions of the dessert.  But I had almost twenty of these cupcakes so I had to do something.

Did I mention that I had a cold?  Well, that's probably why I failed to get any custard powder.  Oops....

Gotta improvise I guess ;-)

Take one sad looking sunken cake.

add two teaspoons of St Dalfour fruit preserve.

add two dollops of plain 'Wot No Dairy' dessert from Redwood foods,

and a sprinkling of chocolate chips.

EAT!

YUM!

Now here's the recipe if you want to sink your own cupcakes!

DRY INGREDIENTS

One and a half cups of rice flour

Three quarters of a cup of sugar

One teaspoon of baking powder

One teaspoon of bicarbinate of soda

One teaspoon of ground flax seeds

WET INGREDIENTS

The juice of four average sized lemons

One tablespoon of lemon zest

Three quarters of a cup of flavourless oil (like sunflower)

Half a cup of rice milk

One teaspoon of orange essence.

Pre heat the oven to 250 degrees/ gas mark 6

Mix the dry ingredients first and create a well in the centre of the mix.

Mix the wet ingredients.  The resulting mix will look as though it's separating, and your first instinct may be to try and whisk the ingredients to get them to blend.  But, really, don't worry about the whole oil and water thing - just pour the mixture into the well in the dry ingredients.

At this point you may think your ears are deceiving you - they're not, the mixture is actually fizzing (this is caused by the citric acid in the lemons reacting with the bicarbinate of soda.)

After the 'fizzing' the mixture is going to look a little weird, like it won't hold together, but keep calm and carry on until the cake mix is at 'dropping' consistency (a healthy spot between the texture of dough and the texture of a smoothie.) 

Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases, or a lightly greased baking tray and bake for approximately 20 minutes.  trust your sense of smell when it comes to the baking time....

NB They taste even better the day after baking :-)