Coco's Carrot Cake

I finally baked something! Raise your hand if you approve! After hours, days, months of drooling over other blogs' sweet food porn pictures, I finally found the perfect opportunity to bake my favourite cake: packed with carrots, walnuts, a lot of spice and everything nice. I already mentioned before that tomorrow I'll be singing at an Amy Winehouse Tribute Session. Host and organizing wonderwoman of this session is my friend and Very Good Singer Coco. Within a week she managed to get together a whole band, with horn section and everything, and about 15 vocalists all singing their own favourite Amy song. So for rehearsals today, I chose to contribute by bringing everyone the joy of CAKE. And it worked, the thing was more popular than me, even though I was sporting a red dress and matching lipstick. Let's hope some of it's shine'll stay with me on stage tomorrow.

I roughly followed the recipe by Hell Yeah It's Vegan and made a few alterations, inspired by the carrot cake in Lisette's Ecofabulous book. Less oil, more applesauce, less sugar and more coconut. And MORE SPICE because I like it like that. There we go! (You see a part is missing from the cake? No idea how that happened, it certainly has nothing to do with me wanting to try the cake and not being able to stop 'trying' little pieces and hoping noone would notice. I swear.)

Coco's Vegan Carrot Cake

2 1/2 cups pastry flour (I used spelt)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp allspice (piment)
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with
1/2 cup warm water
3 egg substitutes (No Egg or EnerG)
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup agave syrup
1 cup applesauce
2 cups shredded carrots
1 thumb fresh ginger, grated
1 cup walnuts, chopped
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1 pack Tofutti Creamcheese
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
juice and zest of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 350F (gas mark 4). Cover the bottom of a 24cm baking pan with parchment paper, grease the sides with sunflower oil and dust with a little flour. Mix together the flour with the spices and baking powder and soda. In a large bowl, mix up the flax 'eggs', the egg substitutes, oil, agave and applesauce. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until fully dissolved. Finally fold in the carrots, walnuts, ginger and coconut. It'll have the consistency of a thick cake batter. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 40/45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

When completely cool, whip up a frosting with the creamcheese, sugar, lemonjuice and zest and cover the cake. Enjoy with your friends while singing along to some Amy Winehouse.

Magical Healing Black Bean Soup

Wow, it's been a week since I last posted. Time flies, especially when you're busy and having (a little bit too much) fun. It was a crazy week, with working, singing and volunteering in a kitchen at a vegan dinner for 150 (!) people, which was amazing. But I'll post about that later. Also, seeing this amazing speech by Gary Yourofsky inspired me to work on a post that goes a bit deeper into my transition to vegan, my no-doubt-about-it keeping up of this lifestyle and the questions and comments I got in the last few months.

But, save it for another day, right now it's all about food. Yesterday I wasn't feeling too well, to say the least. My throat hurt and I just wanted to sleep all day and stay under my blanquet, waiting 'til everything got better. And I wanted magical healing soup. Coming from a Mexican father, I am a sucker for black beans (and cilantro, ofcourse) and I think this simple and classic dish really has magic powers. You know, I might put it up behind a mic in a candle-lit room and have a healing session. For an adequate entrance fee, ofcourse, that is how these things work. For all you believers, here's the recipe.

Magical Healing Black Bean Soup

1 can of black beans
1 can of peeled tomatoes OR
3/4 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 red pepper
1 lime
1 tsp ground corianderseed
1 tsp dried epazote OR
1 tsp dried oregano
pinch of salt
1 ripe avocado
fresh cilantro
Chop up the onion, garlic and red pepper and sautée in some oil. Add the tomatoes, black beans, corianderseed, salt and epazote and let simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes. Mash it up (I used a hand-held blender) until soupy but still chunky. Sprinkle with limejuice, avocado and cilantro.


This afternoon I was feeling a lot better and I had two recipes to try out so I went to work in my tiny lil' kitchen. I made the baked pistachio falafel by Green Kitchen Stories and some creamy hummus using Vegangela's amazing tip (it's all about taking them skins off!). It was all very yummy and tasty, paired with steamed carrots with a drip of buttery canola oil, sundried tomatoes and slices of raw red beet in lemonjuice and vinegar. Just have a look and tell me you wouldn't be a happy camper when presented this rainbow platter.

Now, I'm off to work on my new blogpost, cleaning up the kitchen while listening to Amy Winehouse in preparation of an amazing tribute I'll be performing at this sunday together with about 14 other singers. Amy, I will not drink to you but I WILL sing to you.