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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Guest Post: Vegan Chocolate Frosting

I have the pleasure of introducing you all to Jakob, a writer for Hometalk.com. He's here today to share his delicious vegan chocolate frosting recipe with us. Believe me, you will.not.miss the dairy in this. It only takes about 20 minutes to make this (15 minutes of the 20 minutes is how long it takes to cool) and it's so much healthier for you... If you are going to make something that you could eat by the spoonful, why not make it healthy (as you possibly can!)?
Thanks Jakob for your wonderful, gooey contribution!!
Read on:
Vegan Chocolate Frosting

As an avid DIYer I can tell you it’s good to take breaks and clear the mind for a few minutes before getting back to work. I could even recommend a whole bunch of healthy snacks but my favorite, which is great with a cup ofcoffee or tea, is a piece of one of my wife’s cakes with her special vegan chocolate frosting. Yes, you heard me correctly: vegan chocolate frosting.

For a few years now my wife and I have been moving towards a more vegetarian lifestyle and occasionally dab in the world of truly vegan recipes.

We’ve done some renovations to our kitchen to make it more user-friendly and picked up a few kitchen accessories along the way to make our lives a little easier such as a cuisinart, which works wonders when making raw food, and a good set of knives.

We also replaced our chemical based non-stick pans with healthier ones and installed a kitchen ceiling rack.

Then, at a certain point my wife got into baking and experimenting with various vegan dishes which is when one of her friends told her about the vegan chocolate frosting.

The frosting can go on just about any cake so if you like to mix it up a bit the sky’s the limit. Jus tnote that my wife usually makes this recipe in one of her eight inch springform pans so if you don’t have one you may want to do some adjusting.

Ok, now here’s what to do:
Have a small saucepan ready for boiling and prepare the following:
Take two-thirds cup of your favorite non-dairy milk and put it in the saucepan. My wife likes to use rice milk though almond milk would be just as great.
Put aside eight ounces of chocolate chips or a big bar of your favorite chocolate

Have three tablespoons of pure maple syrup available. My wife sometimes uses honey-but that would only make the cake good for vegetarians and not vegans.
Bring the milk to a boil in the saucepan and then simmer.
Stir in the chocolate and maple syrup.
Turn off the heat and keep mixing until thoroughly melted.
Let it cool for 15 minutes.

Now, assuming you have a cake ready to be frosted and you’re not going to simply drink the chocolaty gooey potion, pour it over the cake tilting the pan from side to side a bit so it fills in everywhere. Then place the cake in the fridge so the frosting can solidify.

If the frosting leaks outof the bottom of the springform pan it means the pan wasn’t connected tightly.

This happened to us a couple of times until we discovered it was bent out of shape from being in an awkward position in an overstuffed kitchen cabinet. Aside from having to purchase a new one I decided to remodel our cabinets so everything would be more organized.

Meanwhile, if you want to take the vegan chocolate frosting to a whole new level try spreading something like raspberry preserves across the top of the cake before pouring on th efrosting.

If that doesn’t make you plead for mercy I don’t know what will!

Jakob Barry is a Hometalk writer. Read more articles like this one or get help with your home projects on Hometalk.com.
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