Super quick Vegan Butter Icing

This makes a really quick "butter" icing. I use soya fat so that it's vegan.
The quantities below will give you enough to do the middle and top of a cake, with possibly a little left over as a very naughty snack ;)

Ingredients

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Neither level or heaped, just a happy in the middle tablespoon.

175g icing sugar

1 tablespoon soya butter. Same as the cocoa, not too much or too little ;)

Minimum of 2 tablespoons of near boiling water

A small dash of orange oil or essence

Method

Throughly mix the cocoa and icing sugar so that there is no marbling in colour.

Make a well and place the soya fat in.

Poor in a very a small dash of orange oil.

Add the water for the first two tablespoons one at a time. You may need to add a little more water, if it's too dry, (teaspoons) and mix until smooth.

Or

You may need to add a little more icing sugar if it's to thin.

Vegan Chocolate Orange Gateau

This is a really easy cake to make, it's vegan and very tasty.

What you will need

19cm x 7cm tin.
I use a non-stick one with a pop-up base.
See notes below about using a wider tin.

Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Prep time: 10 minutes + washing up ;)
Cook for 45 minutes on the middle shelf - it will be moist in the middle.

Or

Cook for 50 minutes and it will be cooked through, and slightly moist.

Dry ingredients

275g White self raising flour
220g Caster sugar or Muscovado (slightly healthier)
50g Cocoa powder - I use Green & Blacks as it's got a strong cocoa taste.
15g Baking Powder

Liquid Ingredients

135 ml vegetable oil
350 ml of unsweetened soya milk
1 tsp or orange oil / essence

Special notes

Don't be tempted to use sweetened soya milk. It's normally sweetened with apple juice and gives cakes a funny taste.

If you want a sweeter cake, use 250g of sugar. I've reduced it over time; if you ice it with a vegan butter icing it will still be sweet without the extra 30g.

I use vegetable oil from Rapeseed as it is supposed to lower cholesterol.

If you want to you can line the tine with baking paper; I've never needed to with my tins.

You may want to experiment with a wider tin. With the 7cm deep tin, it gets slightly crispy on top. If you use a wider tin you may want to reduce the cooking time slightly, by 5 minutes.

Method

Sieve the dry ingredients together and mix thoroughly.

Measure and mix the liquid ingredients separate from the dry ones.

In stages, add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix, be gentle though as it makes quite a runny mix.

Unlike a sponge cake where you should spoon the mixture to preserve the air, you can poor this in to the tin. Using a glass bowel a silicon spatula will allow you to get all of the mixture in the tin.

Allow to cool so that you can ice it.  N.B. Really quick vegan butter icing recipe to follow.

Evenly mixed dry ingredients with no marbling (flour and cocoa not mixed). 

Vegetable oil and soya milk with orange essence.

It makes a runny cake mix.