I love chocolate, especially chocolate cakes. I love the richness of them. I love the color of them. I love the fact I can have milk chocolate, German Chocolate, or dark chocolate. This time I tried something different, a vegan chocolate cake. That’s right I made a vegan chocolate cake. Or so I thought!!  Unfortunately most white sugar contains bone char. So after bragging about how good this cake was to my vegan friends they nicely let me know that it was almost a vegan cake LOL My next try will require me to use beet root sugar or agave as the sweetener.

Although I am not a vegan I had to see what the fuss about this cake was. It’s an eggless, dairy less cake chocolate cake. This cake received so many rave reviews that I decided to try it. And I must say I’ve never eaten a vegan cake before, but after enjoying this almost vegan chocolate cake I may try more of them. It was super moist, light, and had an excellent chocolate taste. This cake was easy to make, and baked beautifully. It’s so good that if you don’t tell anyone they will never know it’s an almost vegan cake. Below is the recipe.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar

1 cup water

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease one 9×5 inch loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add the oil, vanilla, vinegar and water. Mix together until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

I use this recipe when I have to entertain unexpectedly. I call it Easy Ziti. If you don’t have much time before your guests arrive this is the dish for you. Its three easy steps involved before you can enjoy this dish boil, mix, and bake. Once your done baking this dish serve on a beautiful dish to show it off. You can usually find them at your local party supply store. Below is one of my favorite dishes to serve Easy Ziti on and the recipe make it.

Easy Ziti Recipe :

1 box of your favorite ziti

2 bottles of your favorite spaghetti sauce

1 can of your favorite diced tomatoes

1 container of small 16 oz ricotta cheese

2 8 0z bags of mozzarella cheese

parmesan cheese

Cut your oven on to 375 while you put together the dish.

Follow directions on the ziti box to boil the noddles, make sure to salt your water and add a little oil to it. Once your noddles are done strain your noodles. Once you strain your noodles season your noodles with a little salt and pepper or your favorite seasonings. Pour your noodles into your baking dish. Open and drain your tomatoes, then mix with pasta.

Take the ricotta and mix it with half a bottle of spaghetti sauce to loosen and spread. The sauce should be thicker than spaghetti sauce but less solid than ricotta. Toss the noodles with this mixture. Pour the remaining spaghetti sauce over the noodles. Cover noodles with mozzarella cheese and bake at 375 about 20 minutes until cheese melts and slightly browns.

Serve on beautiful dish with Parmesan cheese on top. Enjoy.

]]> http://bluesodacake.com/2012/01/great-easy-food-for-fast-fun-times/feed/ 0 http://bluesodacake.com/2012/01/ginger-bread-townhomes/ http://bluesodacake.com/2012/01/ginger-bread-townhomes/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:19:06 +0000 BlueSodaCake http://bluesodacake.com/?p=1489

ginger bread townhome

I’m used to seeing the traditional ginger bread house, but I thought I’d like to live in a ginger bread townhome instead. What about you?

]]> http://bluesodacake.com/2012/01/ginger-bread-townhomes/feed/ 0 http://bluesodacake.com/2012/01/london-bakery-loses-19000-using-groupon/ http://bluesodacake.com/2012/01/london-bakery-loses-19000-using-groupon/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 04:37:17 +0000 BlueSodaCake http://bluesodacake.com/?p=1466  

A bakery owner in London lost almost nineteen thousand dollars on a deal she did with GROUPON. Brown’s Need a Cake Bakery has a staff of eight, and they were forced to make 102,000 cupcakes after being bombarded with orders from their GROUPON offer. The cupcakes were discounted 75% off a dozen of cupcakes. The bakery received so many orders through Groupon that they had to use a temporary agency to hire staff to fulfill those orders.  The company lost between two dollars and ninety cent and  four dollars and seventy cent on each batch she sold. The company told the BBC “Without a doubt, it was my worst ever business decision.”  More details at MSNBC .

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Top Chef University is now available online. The Wall Street Journal describes Top Chef University as a high energy celebrity chef lead classes, including one of my favorite Chefs Carla Hall. Top Chef University offers lessons on knife skills, introduction to cookware, kitchen tools, chicken roasting, stock making, soups/sauces, a variety of cooking techniques,  global cuisine, desserts, etc.

Top Chef University distinguishes itself from other online sites with structured/organized curriculum ( Over 200 lessons), professional Top Chef Instructors, trusted source and brand, progress reports, Top Chef certificate of completion, printable recipes w/lessons, professional video production, and cutting edge delivery platforms.

If you enjoy the show and want to learn how to cook like a Top Chef at home I suggest visiting http://www.topchefuniversity.com .

With North Carolina being the number one state in sweet potato production I should not be surprised that a delicious dessert like the sonker existed. The sonker is so popular a festival named after it (The Sonker Festival at Edwards-Franklin house) is held annually in Lowgap, NC.

Try Sarah’s Old Fashioned Sweet Potato Sonker recipe I dug up from the archives .

7 or 8 red sweet potatoes

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 stick margarine

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick margarine

1/2 teaspoon allspice

Water, enough to cover potatoes

1 cup flour

1 cup Crisco

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup sweet milk

Peel and slice potatoes, place in pot with water to almost cover potatoes. Cook until done. Place potatoes in 11×13-inch baking dish. Mix sugar, salt, margarine and allspice together. Sprinkle this mixture over potatoes. Combine flour, Crisco, and buttermilk. Pour over top of potatoes. Bake at 350 degrees until crust is brown. Remove from oven and pour cup of sweet milk over top of crust. Place back in oven for 5 to 6 minutes or longer to let milk soak into crust.

The world’s most expensive cake may look tasty, but was it? If this glitzy wedding cake’s creators are to be believed, no one ever knew.

Unveiled in 2006 at the Luxury Bridal Show on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, the expensive cake was created by cake designers Nahid La Patisserie Artistique along with jewelers Mimi So. That’s right—it’s decked with jewels both exclusive and priceless.

The cake wasn’t meant to be eaten—or even touched. During the show, it was surrounded by a team of uniformed guards. I’d really like to know what they did with it when the show was over, though.

So how much was the most expensive wedding cake in the world? The diamond-studded masterpiece was said to be worth $20 million at the time.

CHECK OUT WHAT ELSE IS TO TO EXPENSIVE TO EAT .

15,032 lb cake

World’s Largest Wedding Cake: 15,032 Pounds

Mohegan Sun Casino Attempts to Shatter the World Record in Guinness Book of World Records

Today, at the New England Bridal Showcase, Mohegan Sun unveiled what it hopes will be the world’s largest wedding cake. Measuring 17-feet tall and weighing 15,032 pounds, the seven-tiered cake is almost three-times the weight of the current record in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest wedding cake.

The Mohegan Sun wedding cake is vanilla flavored and decorated with bows and hearts. Ingredients include: 10,000 pounds of pound cake batter and 4,810 pounds of creamy frosting with a taste of vanilla and almond. Comparatively speaking, the cake weighs more than five Volkswagen Beetles and can feed up to 59,000 people.

Chef Lynn Mansel, Mohegan Sun’s Executive Pastry Chef and resident “Michelangelo of batters and buttercream,” began creating the cake on Sunday, February 1st in the Uncas Ballroom. Along with his team of 57 chefs and pastry artisans, Chef Mansel baked 700, 18×24 inch vanilla sheet cakes. Then, using frosting as cement, they created 200, five- and six-layered bricks, which were put together to form the tiers of the wedding cake. Steel discs were used as cake separators and two fork-lifts helped raise each tier as the wedding cake took shape.

The current record in the Guiness Book of World Records is 5,334-pounds, and was unveiled at Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2003. The five-tiered cake, which measured 22-feet tall, celebrated the wedding of the animated characters Shrek and Fiona — who were the main characters in the original Shrek movie — and the opening of the new Shrek 4-D ride at Universal Studios.

Mohegan Sun, owned by the Mohegan Tribe, is one of the largest, most distinctive and spectacular entertainment, gaming, shopping and meeting destinations in the United States. What began with the Casino of the Earth in 1996 has evolved into a legendary destination that now includes: the Casino of the Sky and over 300,000 square feet of total gaming space plus a 34-story luxury hotel, featuring 1,200 guestrooms and suites, premier meeting and convention space and a world-class spa.
More information is available by calling 1-888-226-7711 or visiting www.mohegansun.com

However, if you require a custom cake size, or you’d like to have a mini cake or cupcake tower created, please contact us for custom pricing.

We suggest you try to place your custom order at least seven (7) business days before your event, so we can be thoroughly prepared to meet all your needs.

Get a custom quote!

Please be advised that these products may include eggs, butter, flour, gluten, sugar, baking powder, milk, nuts, fruit, oils, extracts, and other flavorings; as well as may have been processed on equipment which handled the mentioned ingredients. Customers that suffer from food allergies should not consume the product. For best results, refrigerate and discard after 72 hours. For questions or concerns contact us.