Thank You, Duncan Hines

Since I finally got my much-coveted KitchenAid stand mixer and this awesome vintage cake carrier for Christmas, there was no question as to what I would bring to today's Ethical Eating lecture and potluck at the Unitarian Universalist Church. A layer cake, of course!

My parents found this on eBay! It's all metal and I love that it has a lid holder.

You may remember my Granny's yummy vegan Coconut Icebox Cake picture from my Thanksgiving post. It was a moist yellow cake topped with a frosting made from fresh coconut, cream of coconut, and sugar.

I knew I wanted to include her recipe in my cookbook, but since I didn't have the recipe, I gave Granny a call. She revealed that her secret yellow cake recipe was actually Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix (which is vegan, by the way)! Since I didn't want to put Duncan Hines in my cookbook, I attempted to develop my own vegan cake recipe.

Not such a good idea for a last-minute potluck cake. Though the taste was spot-on, the cakes were gooey in the center. I know I used too much liquid since the batter was soupier than it should have been. But I'll tweak that recipe for the cookbook later. In the meantime, I had to act fast. So I ran to Kroger and bought the Duncan Hines. The layers baked beautifully and tasted like heaven.

I frosted the cake with coconut mixed with evaporated cane juice and Tofutti sour cream (even though Granny used cream of coconut last time, she advised I try vegan sour cream since the cream of coconut was hard to work with). Here's the result:

Admittedly, it's not the prettiest cake. The top layer broke in half when I flipped it out of the pan, so I tried to mask the flaw with frosting. And then since I used extra frosting in the ugly spot, I ran out for really filling in the sides.

But the cake was a hit at the potluck. Oh, and I didn't tell anyone it came from a box. :-)