Vegan and Gluten Free Winter Spice Pumpkin Cake!

Vegan and gluten free cake is taken to a whole new level courtesy of these recipes from Freya Cox's Simply Vegan recipe book! I don't think I've ever used a recipe book quite as often as I have this one, and I honestly cannot recommend this book enough! Without further ado, say hello to my first show-stopping bake of the year, this vegan and gluten free Winter Spice Pumpkin Cake!

Confession time, I actually baked this cake nearly three weeks ago, but I've just been so busy with job interviews, buying a car, and more baking (of course!) that I've been struggling to keep up with writing about my bigger bakes. A few smaller posts helped to ease me back into the flow of blogging, and writing about my Aperol Spritz Mini-Cakes eased me back into longer posts, just like this one is about to be! 

Anyone who has been keeping somewhat up to date with my blog posts will know that I adore pumpkin spice, and wintery vibes in general. As the nights are getting lighter and spring is drawing nearer, pumpkin spice and comfy sweater season is officially nearing its end. I wanted to say farewell to the season for another year with a warming project of a bake that could double up as something of a showstopper (plus I had some leftover canned pumpkin puree taking up room in the cupboard from Halloween, it lasts for years but it'd be criminal to just leave it there!). For an added challenge, I decided to make the showstopper vegan and gluten free!

For the sponge, I followed the recipe for Freya's gluten free Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes, just with doubled quantities to make enough batter to divide amongst four 8" cake tins! I still find it fascinating how you use soya milk curdled with apple cider vinegar alongside vegetable oil as the liquids in these vegan cakes. To my understanding, the curdled milk becomes acidic through the addition of the vinegar, which gives the alkaline (basic) bicarbonate of soda something to react with, helping the sponge rise. I love it when baking begins to feel like science, makes me feel like the AS-level in chemistry was worth the suffering! I've also seen a few bakers say that the use of curdled soy milk enhances the flavour profile of the finished bakes, but I'm not sure how vital this is with everything else going on in this cake!

I chose to fill this cake with a spiced vegan cream cheese frosting. I wasn't confident in my ability to handle the cream cheese frosting well enough to use it as decoration for the outside of the cake, but the flavour was just too good to leave out of the cake entirely! By sandwiching the sponge layers together with this frosting, the perfect flavour combinations of the pumpkin from the sponge and the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger from the filling emerges!

Mandatory cross-section!

In all honesty, I've only attempted Swiss meringue buttercream once, but a vegan version is very easy! Adding aquafaba to vegan American buttercream (butter beaten with icing sugar, and cinnamon in this case) and whisking lends the buttercream a wonderfully smooth and glossy texture, perfect for decorating the top and sides of this cake!

Before dividing the sponge batter between the baking tins, I reserved enough to bake three cupcakes. Two of these would be used for decoration, whilst the third was simply to test the final texture of the bake before assembling the cake. With these sponge layers being both vegan and gluten free, I was curious to see how the texture would turn out (I have made these cupcakes before and knew what kind of texture to expect, but I feel like when I'm baking anything can happen!). I also reserved a little of the cream cheese frosting to top these cupcakes with in an attempt to bring together the different aspects of the cake!

Before assembly, the final thing to do was to prepare a batch of vegan and gluten free "Winter Spice" Gingerbread, essentially just gingerbread with added cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. I really wanted this cake to be abundant in winter spices, and adding extra spice to the gingerbread ensured a perfect compliment to the flavours of the cake! To decorate the gingerbread, I used a combination of icing sugar, aquafaba, and cream of tartar to create a thick icing that set relatively quickly and was easy to draw with!

Constructing the cake was relatively straight-forward. Sandwiching together the layers of sponge and frosting was the same as any other layer cake, and the Swiss meringue buttercream was a bit easier to smooth out than my previous attempts with other buttercreams! The obvious thing to look out for is the cake leaning, but I think I got off lightly with this one! To add a bit of extra decoration and use up the remaining buttercream, I used a closed star piping tip to pipe a kind of matching wave effect around both the top and base of the cake. I've used this style before, and I think it makes such a nice change from my usual spirals or "blobs"!   

As ever, I have several criticisms for this cake. The most prominent is that it's beige, hella beige! Given the flavour combinations there were a few other decorative directions I could have headed in. Seeing as one of the major flavours in the cake is pumpkin, I would have loved to have included some kind of orange-y colour on the cake, however the cinnamon in the Swiss meringue buttercream lent a darker colour to the buttercream, meaning the orange probably wouldn't have complimented the decoration in the same as it would a whiter icing. 

Another issue I have with this cake is the icing on the sides. Again, it's not entirely smooth, and I'm not convinced that I'm improving at this part of cake decorating. I definitely need to practice this some more to perfect those smooth edges! 

Gibby x