OM-Tastic Chai Cakes!

Oh yea... That's right... Finally a DESSERT recipe! It's a Ben Original too. I used to love making chai cake a few years back. I used to bring it to any gathering I would go to and it would disappear quite quickly. The recipe I used to use was quite time consuming and relied heavily on white flour and white sugar. I've actually made this recipe much more Pagano friendly (it's still kinda cheating... but just have a good alkaline salad beforehand!) by reducing the amount of white flour used and eliminating cane sugar all together. Enjoy!





OM-tastic Chai Cake

1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cup unbleached white flour
1 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
6 chai tea bags
1 cup water
1 cup soy milk
1/2 cup safflower oil
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place water in a small saucepan on medium high heat until water begins to steam but does not boil. Place 3 teabags and stir constantly with a spatula. Regularly squish the teabags onto the wall of the saucepan to get more flavor out. Do this for about 5 minutes. Keep 1/2 cup of the mixture and set the remaining liquid aside. Discard teabags.

Combine the 1/2 cup of chai tea with the soy milk in the saucepan and add remaining tea bags. Repeat the earlier pocedure (stir, squish) for another 5 minutes. Once you're done you should have a very concentrated chai tea latte. Mesure out the liquid; you should have 1 1/2 cups... but you won't. Add the chai tea you put aside earlier to equal 1 1/2 cups.

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly oil a large muffin pan. I used a jumbo muffin (6 cups) silicone pan. (I have to say... I've converted to the silicone bakeware... it's awesome!!)

Sift dry ingredients and spices together into a large bowl. Wisk together wet ingredients in a seperate bowl until well combined. Of course, add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients making sure they're very well combined without overmixing.

Glob the delicious chai batter into the muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes until the muffins/cupcakes pass the glorified knife test. Take them out of the oven and allow them to cool before you pop them out.

Chef's notes : Depending how much batter you put in the cups you'll either end up with chai muffins or chai cupcakes. You could also just bake this in a normal cake pan and it would turn out great I'm sure. I'm just obsessed with making individual small cakes. The recipe also makes a bit more batter than you'd need for a 6 jumbo cup muffin pan but my friend Danika and I had no problems eating the left oven uncooked batter... MMMmmm!!

The Tao of Frosting

You'll notice the last cake is frosted differently than the first two. It's not a lighting trick... there really were two frostings at play here. The reason behind this is that Danika is allergic to seaweed hence cannot have the healthy frosting made with Agar Agar... and obviously I'm avoiding white sugar. So I made her a regular vanilla frosting and used a Pagano-friendly frosting for my cake. I'm such a good friend!

The Good frosting

I found this recipe on Vegan Chef and it was an amazingly great choice for this cake. The flavour marries itself beautifully to the spices in the chai cake. What would I do without the vegan chef!?

Almond cream

3 cups water, divided
1 cup whole almonds
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 T. agar-agar flakes
1/8 t. salt
1/2 t. vanilla
1/8 t. almond extract
[Ben added:
1 tablespoon soy milk
1 tablespoon arrowroot]

In a saucepan, place 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Add the almonds, boil for 1 minute, remove the pan from the heat, and set aside for 5 minutes. Drain and discard the water. Using your fingers, squeeze the almonds out of their skins and discard the skins.

Transfer the almonds to a food processor and process for 1-2 minutes or until a fine meal. While the machine is running, drizzle in the remaining 1 cup water, and process an additional 1 minute. Line a colander or strainer with a double thickness of cheesecloth (or coffee filters) and pour the almond milk mixture through the cheesecloth to strain.

In a saucepan, combine the almond milk, maple syrup, agar-agar flakes, and salt, and bring to a boil while stirring with a whisk occasionally. Reduce heat to low, simmer for 5 minutes while whisking occasionally, or until the agar-agar flakes are dissolved completely. Whisk in the vanilla and almond extract, and transfer the mixture to a glass container.

Place a piece of waxed paper on top to prevent a skin from forming. Chill until firm, or overnight.

When the mixture is firm, place in the food processor, and process for 1-2 minutes or until light and creamy. Taste and add additional vanilla or almond extract, if desired. [After the vanila extract was added, I added a slurry of 1 tablespoon soy milk and 1 tablespoon arrowroot to the mixture to make this more firm].

The Bad frosting

Who am I kidding? It's AMAZING frosting... if you're not avoiding the white stuff. This recipe came from How it All Vegan which is an amazing cookbook you all should own. I was a hopeless vegan until I stumbled upon this gem... it also taught me the basics of vegan baking.

- 1/4 cup margarine
- 2.25 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp soy milk
- 1 tsp vanilla

In a blender, combine the wet ingredients. While the blender is running, slowly add the powdered sugar. Voila!

Adding some OM to your cake

There are tons of stainless steel stencils on the market so you can powder patterns onto cakes (or even cappuccinos). I own a star shaped one which was used for these cakes. But you don’t need to spend a fortune or feel limited by what’s on the market… you can make your own! You’ll need the following…

1 exacto knife
1 cutting surface (I use a sheet of acrylic)
1 sheet of vellum or mylar
1 printer
1 pattern (you can find the OM pattern I used here)
1 mix of cinnamon/cloves/cardamom
1 good friend

Print out the pattern onto the vellum paper. Using an exacto knife cut out the pattern. You should wear goggles while doing this; the tip of the blade can sometimes snap off and become a deadly projectile). Get a friend with steady hands to hold the pattern over the cake while you lightly and quickly dust the cinnamon mixture over the cake. Voila! You have a really OM looking cake that would make Buddha proud!