Valentine’s Day is just around the corner! Do you have any special plans? While dinner, chocolate and flowers are great (I DO love some beautiful flowers!), I think Valentine’s Day should be more about your connection with your loved one than the material things. My ultimate V-day is spending quality time with my love, cooking dinner and appreciating each other. I’d swap a pre-arranged fixed menu any day for a home cooked meal, made together over a good movie or bottle of wine. Although you should celebrate love every day of the year, let’s be real – life is busy. We don’t always have time to dedicate towards our relationships and I like that there is a special day of the year dedicated to just that! A nice little pause in our day-to-day to spend with our loved ones.
Ok, so on to the good stuff…. the food!! This year, I’m really excited about our menu! For dinner, we will be making this Chick’n Fettucine Alfredo with Artichoke Hearts, and for dessert, we will be making these Chocolate Cookie Cakes and my favourite Vegan Vanilla Cake with Raspberry Jam and Buttercream Frosting (recipe below).
This cake is super easy to make, extremely decadent and perfect for almost any occasion. I added some natural pink food colouring (beet powder!) in this recipe, to make the buttercream frosting pink for Valentine’s Day, but it’s totally delicious without it as well. You could also play around with the frosting colour; make it green for St.Paddy’s Day, red, white and blue for the 4th, or red and white for Canada Day. It’s super versatile for any occasion!
Don’t worry if you don’t have special baking tools, you don’t need any for this recipe! Just two 8 inch spring pans and your ingredients.
Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day loves! Enjoy your time with your friends, family or whoever you will be spending the 14th with! <3
As always, if you make this dish, please tag me and use #theveganjetsetter… enjoy!!
- 3.5 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 1/3 cups of sugar
- 2 cups of non-dairy milk
- 1/3 cup and 2 tbsp of melted coconut oil
- 1 cup of your favourite raspberry jam
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Preheat oven to 350° F.
- Combine non-dairy milk with vinegar and set aside.
- In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients - flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix well.
- In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients - milk mixture with the vinegar, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, and vanilla extract. Mix well.
- Slowly pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture, mixing thoroughly as you pour.
- Grease 2 (or 3, depending on how many layers you'd like) 8 inch round pans with coconut oil. Trim a baking sheet to fit inside the pan and grease on top of that as well. The cake will be very sticky, so it's important to make sure the pan and baking sheets are well lubricated.
- Evenly distribute the batter between the pans and place in the oven on the middle rack for approximately 20 to 25 minutes. You will know they're ready when you stick a tooth pick in and it comes out clean.
- Allow cakes to cool completely before removing from the pan and frosting. Once cool, flip the pan over to remove the cake.
- Stack the layers of cake on top of each other, placing about a centimetre (or more if you really love jam!) of jam in between, leaving the top bare.
- Cover the entire cake with icing (recipe below), top with fresh berries and flowers for decoration.
- Store in the fridge until serving.
- 3 cups of organic icing sugar
- 1.5 cups of vegan butter
- 3 tbsp non-dairy milk (unsweetened)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 package of all natural red food colour by Color Kitchen
- Using an electric mixer, whip the butter until smooth.
- Slowly add in the icing sugar, whipping as you go.
- Once the icing sugar and butter is combined, add the non-dairy milk, vanilla and red food colour and continue to whip until completely smooth.
- Icing spreads better at room temperature, however should be stored in the fridge. If you're making the icing in advance, remove from the fridge 30 minutes before use.
- You may use less or more red food colour, depending on how pink you'd like your icing.
- If you can't find all natural food colouring, you may also use beet powder, açai powder or crush up freeze dried raspberries or strawberries into a powder.
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