Saturday, February 20, 2010

Sydney Vegan Bake Off

Last weekend was Sydney's inaugural (and hopefully, annual) Vegan Bake Off hosted by Aduki Independent Press and Naked Espresso.
If you have been following me on twitter lately you would have noticed me tweeting madly about the bake off and a few creations I had been working on. I was super excited to introduce my Vanilla Slice Cupcake and Cherry Ripe Cake onto the Vegan community.
Armed with my treats, we drove to Basil Pizza in Newtown (which also moonlights on the weekend as Naked Espresso - a vegan brunch cafe).
I got to meet lots of lovely vegans - Mandee, Lisa, Cate and a few more whose names/blogs I can't quite remember.
So, onto the entries and pics



My lavender shortbread cookies. Made from a recipe off the internet called Sassy Shortbread. I added some culinary lavender to these just to make it taste a little different to usual. The lavender gives it a soft, velvety taste which goes well with a cup of Earl Grey. I used some cute teapot and tea cup cookies cutters to go with the theme.












My Vanilla Slice Cupcakes, which won in the cupcake category.
I had made these before, but worked on the recipe a little more and added custard to the middle. The icing melted a little but had the delicious zing of passionfruit to compliment it well.






To go with my current obsession of cake-ifying favourite Australian Slices into vegan goodness, here is my winning cake - the Cherry Ripe Cake.
This is a coconut chocolate cake filled with cherry/coconut filling and topped with a thick ganache and a few glace cherries for good measure.
Somehow I got this cake tasting just like a cherry ripe first go. Must be my awesome tastebuds and sweet tooth working together.





These are a few of the entries I was competing with.
Top Plate - Black Forest cake, Mars Bar Cookie
Middle Plate - Banana Split Cuppy (gluten free) Cherry Ripe Cake
Bottom Plate - Macadamia Slice, Vanilla Slice Cuppy, Chunky Choc Chip Cookie, Savoury Polenta Pie/Quiche, Lavender Shortbread.


Don't Worry, I didn't eat these all myself! There were six of us to share this between.

Winners of the best in show were Mandee and myself. Between us we won almost every category.
Best Cake - Cherry Ripe Cake (me)
Best Cupcakes - Vanilla Slice Cupcakes (me)
Best Biscuit - Mars Bar cookies - made with Go Max Go Twilight Bar(Mandee)
Best Gluten Free - Banana Split Cupcakes (Mandee)

We won a cute prize pack for the categories including some Aduki Books and some handmade wallets and brooches and pins made by Cate.
For best in show we also won a free brunch/dinner. I'm going for the new Hawaiian Pizza from Basil and Mandee will be having brunch at Naked Espresso



I really had a great time and it was nice to try other people's cooking and to show them my own.
I didn't enter to win, but it was a nice suprise. It offended me when i saw that someone said I only won because I had tattoos, but BOOOOOO to people like that! 



After the Bake Off we hung out in Newtown, checked out some op-shops and had a very light lunch at Green Thai Palace.
What a fun day. I can't wait 'til the next one.

All photos are courtesy of the lovely Michelle B

4 comments:

x said...

Great round up of the bake off! Congratulations again on winning, your entries were awesome and definitely worthy of winning!!

Great photo of us too :D

K said...

They all sound amazing, so jealous that I wasn't there to try them.

Cate Lawrence said...

So lovely to meet you, apologies I was a bit flustered.

Trust me, you didn't win because you had tatts, you won because your baking was awesome. It was all blind judging anyway as you saw from the fiddly raffle tickets I was trying to coordinate. Some people are just sore losers!

Didn't have much opportunity to try much but the lavender biccies were my favourite thing I tried!

Stacy said...

I could post you some if you like or give you the recipe :)