Animal Aid’s Vegan Bake Off

We received so many wonderful entries with a huge variety of recipes, proving that whatever your favourite treat is, it can easily be made vegan.

We were so impressed with our supporters’ creativity in all of the wonderful entries they submitted. We uploaded all of the photos to our Facebook page and the 10 entries with the most likes, comments and shares went through to our final. Our guest judge, Holly Jade from The Little Blog of Vegan, then had the difficult job of selecting our winner and she chose…

Animal Aid’s Vegan Bake Off 2020 Winner

Vegan Chocolate Lover’s Dream by Joy Besford

If you would like to create this chocolate masterpiece for yourself, Joy has shared her recipe:

INGREDIENTS – CAKE

Soya Milk 720g
Apple Cider Vinegar 3tsp
Caster Sugar 520g
Vegetable Oil 300ml
Flaxseed 2 tbsp
Water 60ml
Vanilla Essence 4tsp
Self Raising Flour 460g
Cocoa Powder 160g
Baking Powder 2tsp
Sea Salt 1/2tsp

INSTRUCTIONS – CAKE

Preheat oven 180 degrees (Gas mark 4)

Grease three 7” cake tins and line with parchment paper

1. Prepare flax eggs (mix flaxseed with water)
2. In a large bowl, using a hand whisk mix together soya milk and
   apple cider vinegar until bubbly
3. Then add sugar, oil, flax eggs and vanilla essence, gently
   hand whisk gently until combined
4. In a different bowl sieve dry ingredients and mix together
   (flour/cocoa powder/baking powder/salt)
5. Make a well in the dry ingredients and slowly mix in the wet ingredients
6. Spoon mixture evenly into the greased cake tins
7. Bake in middle of oven for 25-35 minutes then leave cakes to cool on a cooling rack

INGREDIENTS – CHOCOLATE GANACHE

Vegan Chocolate 700g
Coconut milk – Full Fat 700g

INSTRUCTIONS – CHOCOLATE GANACHE

1. Chop chocolate and put it in a heatproof bowl.
2. Warm the coconut milk in a pan until just boiling. Pour the warmed coconut milk over the chopped chocolate and leave to stand for 3 minutes. Then stir together until all the chocolate melts.
3. Once the mixture has cooled store in the fridge for around 2 hours.
   Stir occasionally, the mixture will thicken.

INSTRUCTIONS – CAKE CONSTRUCTION

1. Stack and fill the three layers of cake with ganache. Use the remaining ganache on the edge and top of the cake. Use a fondant-smoothing tool to level the side of the cake.
2. To finish, top the cake with your favourite vegan chocolate bars, so many are available from the Animal Aid Shop. I also use chocolate covered strawberries on the top and around the base.

We’re so grateful to everyone who took part, to Holly for being our guest judge and to the very kind Mr Organic for donating prizes for our winner.

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