I love you more than chocolate cake...

The completed cakes!

Happy belated valentines day!
This was my first valentines day as a vegan and I really wanted to make some vegan valentines goodies. 
I spent a while looking up various recipes but then I found this super easy one which was perfect as I am not a very experienced cake maker! 


The recipe (makes 20 cakes): 
225g of vegan butter (I used Pure)
100g of Caster Sugar
250g Self raising flour
125ml of Soya milk (any will do, for this I used Kallo milk)
25g Desicated coconut 
1 tbsp of vanilla essence


Optional extras for filling:
200g of raspberries
50g (half a bar) of Vegan white chocolate
50g (half a bar) of Vegan dark chocolate


All you need to do is mix all the ingredients together either in a bowl or a food mixer. I used a food mixer because it is much quicker but you can use whatever you want! Once you have made your batter you can either choose to have plain cupcakes or you can spice them up a bit and add some chocolate chunks or raspberries into your mixture for that extra fruity and chocolatey goodness when you take a bite!


The next step is to find some cute valentines cupcake holders and then fill them with your cake batter. They will rise a bit but not as much as normal cakes so don't be too afraid to fill the holders up. 


The cakes only took 15 minutes in my standard AGA cooker. I recommend that for other cookers you put them in for 10-15 and then check on them every 5 minutes or so after that. Don't forget the best way to check if they are done is to use a knife or fork and stick it in the cakes and see if they leave any residue. If the cutlery comes out clean...the cakes are done! 


Next comes the fun part...decorating! Of course, you don't have to decorate your cakes and, as I had added raspberries to my mixture, I found that some of the cakes looked rather pretty undecorated. However I love decorating so I went to town! I used strawberries cut into heart shapes, hundreds and thousands, some more raspberries and I also melted some 'Divine dark chocolate and raspberries' chocolate and then drizzled it over the cakes as a topping. Yummy!


If you are interested they are pretty low calorie considering how good they taste! With all the fillings and toppings I used, each cake is 197 calories, obviously without these it would be much less! I found that they lasted pretty well (Never put cakes in the fridge- it spoils them!) as long as you put cling film on them. However they were so delicious that they were gone in two days- my father and brother didn't even notice they were vegan!


You can use this recipe all year round and adapt it for any occasion. I hope you all had a wonderful valentines day and spread the love to the people around you! 


xoxo
Laura 

Delicious!