I’ve been seeing these adorable unicorn cakes taking Instagram by storm. Then I came across a reindeer one and I was like NO. FLIPPING. WAY. I had to make one.
One thing you should know about me is that I’m that friend who is batsh*t crazy about Christmas. The one that listens to Christmas music non-stop starting November 1st (sometimes a few days prior to that depending on my feelz), makes sure the entire house is decked with lights and festive decor by December 1st, owns more holiday accessories and attire than one can wear each year, and prepares enough food to feed a village for Christmas parties. Not only do we need a 4 course meal, we have to have at least 3 desserts. This reindeer gingerbread cake was one of the three.
I don’t find the holiday season stressful at all, at least not the bad final-exam-type of stressful. If it’s for the sake of Christmas, I don’t mind baking for 3 straight hours and skipping lunch to make sure we have more than enough gingerbread cookies to decorate. The other day I had my church friends over for an afternoon of cookie decorating. I doubled I Love Vegan’s recipe for vegan gingerbread cookies just in case it only made 24 cookies. Turns out it made 70 on the dot. Initially, I was a bit shocked at how many cookies I had on my hands; we couldn’t decorate that many cookies that day. Luckily our annual Camel Crew Christmas party was 2 days later so we could finish the cookies then.
Camel Crew is what we call our group of friends from high school. We call ourselves camels based on one Facebook conversation we had a year ago. Chew discovered that the default emoji on Facebook messenger could be changed and she switched the thumbs-up to a camel. Everyone happened to be on the message thread at the same time and we sent camels of all sizes for at least ten minutes straight; everyone was obsessed and found it so hilarious. So now we’re The Camels. It suits us considering we meet sparsely but when we do we eat copious amounts. We’ve kept in touch these high school friends all these years and make the effort to have a big party at least twice a year: once in the summer and once around Christmastime.
At our Christmas party last year, we made enough food to feed us for three full meals. A first dinner, a second dinner, and brunch the next day. No complaints though because it was some dang good food. This year I got all fancy and made this vegan reindeer gingerbread cake as a centerpiece dessert. We need enough carbohydrates to keep our lungs functioning through the night ya’know.
While it looks complicated, the assembly is actually very straightforward. A one-bowl cake gets baked with ingredients you likely already have in your cupboard. While it cools, you whip up some coconut cream frosting. I took the easy route and made inedible antlers and ears out of stock paper. You could totally use gingerbread cookies for that; maybe a few of the 70 cookies I made could’ve gone towards the appendages of this cake.
Christmas is only a few days away and it’s up to you to have Rudolph make an appearance at your Christmas dinner. Any vegan or gluten-intolerant guests won’t be left out of this encounter either!
- CAKE
- 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- ¼ cup molasses
- ⅓ cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1⅔ cups oat flour
- ⅓ cup quinoa flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- ¼ tsp cloves
- FROSTING
- 1 can coconut cream, refrigerated overnight
- ¼ cup icing sugar
- 1 tbsp molasses
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- Pinch each of nutmeg and cloves
- ASSEMBLY
- Melted dark chocolate
- Paper cut-out antlers and ears
- Toothpicks or skewers
- 1 round red candy
- Decorative ribbon
- CAKE: Preheat oven to 375⁰F and line the bottom and sides of two 6-inch round cake pans with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients for the cake. Then add all the dry ingredients and mix until combined; you may need to switch to a spatula.
- Divide the cake batter evenly between the two lined pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes before transferring the cake from the pan to a cooling rack. Cool cake layers completely before frosting.
- FROSTING: Scoop the hardened coconut cream from the can and use a stand or hand held electric mixer to whip the cream to stiff peaks. Add the icing sugar and whisk until smooth and evenly incorporated.
- Add the molasses and spices to the whipped coconut cream and whisk until evenly incorporated.
- ASSEMBLY: On a wax or parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, draw two eyes with the dark chocolate. Freeze until solid.
- Frost the top of one cake layer with about ⅓ cup of frosting. Stack the second cake layer upside down then cover the entire cake with the rest of the frosting.
- Tape toothpicks or skewers to the back of the paper antlers and ears and poke them onto the top of the cake. Press the solidified chocolate eyes and red candy onto the front of the cake to make the face. Wrap a long strip of decorative ribbon around the bottom of the cake for the 'collar'.
Cake recipe barely adapted from our Vegan & Gluten Free Gingerbread Muffins
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