I made this awhile ago, for my Mom’s late birthday present dinner thing (her real birthday was November 15th), but I’m really proud of how it came out so I wanted to post it up here. I haven’t updated for over a week (sorry!), but finals were eating me alive and I was sure I was headed for certain death. Alas! I have made it out alive and am now back at my parents’ house for the holidays. This means that I now have a kitchen at my disposal, so expect more frequent updates in this here blog. Vegan nom noms, indeed!

For this delicious beauty, I adapted the Caramel-Apple-Spice Cupcakes recipe from Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook into a one-layer cake and used the recommended caramel-penuche frosting.

To get the pretty frosting in the picture, I rolled the penuche between two sheets of parchment paper until big enough to cover the entire cake. I then very carefully removed one of the sheets of parchment paper and semi-successfully flopped the penuche on top of the cooled cake, removing the other sheet of paper and cutting away the extra penuche with a knife.

As you can see, I used the extra to make the little balls outlining the cake, but the possibilities are endless here, so go wild! I painstakingly wrote “Happy B-Day Mom!” with mini chocolate chips (or maybe they were carob *shrug*), dried cranberries and pumpkins seeds. Oh, and a hazelnut for effect.

Everyone devoured this in like 5 seconds. I have to say, I’m usually more a fan of chocolate-flavored desserts, but this was superb.