Happy New Year, YAY Me!

Well, again, it's been awhile folks, but I return with much great news! First of all, Happy New Year! I feel as though this is going to be a great year and I will accomplish much. I'm going to shoot for that cookbook project I mentioned last year (making a vegan desserts book) and also try to get back into my cooking more and more.

A good fire under my ass is always that lovely company, King of the Buttery spreads, EARTH BALANCE! This past December they again held their holiday bake-off and...... I WON AGAIN! I'm so so grateful to Earth Balance for picking me as a winner. I won a $400 Whole Foods gift card, a years supply of Earth Balance product, and some other fun items including a beautiful bamboo cutting board! If that's not inspiration for starting off this new year and my cookbook project (which needs a name!) I don't know what is. So YAY ME!

Here is the winning link!
And a link to the winning recipe. Spiced Sweet Potato Cake with Coconut Buttercream Frosting and Brown Sugar Rum Sauce.




I was originally going to make this cake with pumpkin or butternut, but at the last moment I saw these two lovely and fat sweet potatoes on my counter begging to be featured in my experimental cake. I obliged them. The result was an incredibly moist, fluffy, beautiful cake and I was quite impressed with how nicely it came out. I took a spin off of my traditional vegan buttercream and added coconut cream and used Earth Balance's new Coconut Spread, and it tasted delightfully of sweet and buttery coconut. To finish it off I made a sort of rum caramel sauce to soak into each of the layers and to drizzle on plates and anywhere else that demanded a drizzle of rum caramel.


One of my trusty kitchen steeds, the microplane! Doin its' job on ginger, orange and nutmeg. If you don't yet have one of these tools in your kit, I highly suggest it! I could've used dried ginger and store bought nutmeg, but why do that when you can shred it fresh?! It makes a difference.


Gorgeous! The sweet potato color sure stayed vibrant, even in the baked cakes yielding a nice golden hue. Their juicy nature made for a lovely moist cake, which became even more juicy with a good dose of rum sauce in between each layer. :)




I will be posting the rest of my recipe entries in the next week. Thank you for coming and reading. Wishing you all a wonderful, happy and healthy 2012 filled with lots and lots of great food!