This week is hands down the best tasting of my “trompe l’oeil” desserts to date. The pound cake I used for the sandwich “bread” was amazing. I think the loaf of pound cake was actually supposed to be much larger then it ended up being. Possibly because I kept tasting the raw batter and “accidentally” (I’m apparently all about the quotation marks today, what up with that?) left way too much leftover dough in the bowl? Oops, how did I not notice that before placing the pound cake in the oven? Well, waste not want not right? Mmmmm….raw dough. Errr… pound cake soup anyone? Yeah, that’s what I’m going to call it, makes me sound a little less crazy 😉 .
If you do choose to embark on this little journey of falsifying yourself some dessert grilled cheese, please do as I say and not as I do. I was so paranoid about overbaking this, that I made the opposite mistake, and the cake sunk in the middle and was a smidgeon underbaked. The flavour was so scrumdiddly-umptious though that I really didn’t care, but I then became a bit more restricted in the slices I could use for photographic purposes. Unless you like your grilled cheese to have the appearance of a child’s unwanted, sat upon lunchtime sandwich of course. If that’s the look your going for, then totally underbake it, because then it’ll be spot on! 😉
To get that grilled cheesy look, I basically just treated the slices of cake the exact same way as you would actual grilled cheese. Except, absolutely, under no circumstances should you put the “cheese” (aka icing) on while grilling!!! I didn’t do this, but I can definitely envision it being a disaster of epic proportions (and the clean up involved sounds positively sob-inducing). Butter one side of the cake, place in pan, bake until toasted bread looking.
Here’s the thing though, I didn’t think this cake could get any tastier, but toasting it was just… I can’t even. If you don’t care about making the grilled cheese look, I still can’t recommend enough toasting it anyway. It added a delicious light crunch to the exterior of the cake, and the soft, warm inside contrasted with it beatifically. Frankly, reminiscent of what you’d imagine French toast would be like…but even better. In fact, maybe I should have a slice of this toasted with some maple syrup?…..Sorry folks, I’ll be back, I’ve got some experiments to perform. In for a penny, in for a pound (cake), am I right? 😉
Yield: 1 bread loaf sized pound cake
Ingredients
Pound Cake
- 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon vegan butter
- 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons of honey (or more maple syrup)
- 4 egg replacer
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- zest from 1 orange (or 1.5 teaspoons orange zest)
- 2 cups cake flour
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
Icing
- 1/4 cup vegan cream cheese
- 1/4 cups vegan butter
- zest from one large orange
- 1/8 – 1/4 teaspoon turmeric (for colour – basically add enough to get the colour you’re looking for without compromising the flavour)
- 1-2 teaspoons beet juice/ grenadine (again, just for colour)
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla
- ¼ teaspoon orange extract
- 1-1 1/2 cups icing sugar
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 9×4 bread loaf pan (or whatever size you have I’m sure is fine, you just might have to alter the baking time a bit if you use a larger or smaller baking vessel 🙂 )
- In a medium sized bowl, using an electric mixer, beat together the butter, coconut oil, and sugar for a couple of minutes.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, honey, egg replacer, vanilla and orange zest. Gradually beat into butter/sugar mixture.
- Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder and gradually beat into wet mixture on low speed until just combined.
- Pour into prepared pan and smooth out the top (either with a spatuala or spoon, or just jiggle it back and forth a bit until the top looks smooth).
- Bake for 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for at least 15-20 minutes before removing from loaf pan.
- While cake is cooling, make frosting – in a medium bowl, beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth and creamy.
- Beat in the orange zest, turmeric, beet juice/ grenadine, vanilla and orange extracts.
- Slowly add the icing sugar until you get the desired spreadable consistency and sweetness you want.
- Once pound cake is completely cooled, slice it into grilled cheese bread sized slices. Preheat a skillet to medium and spread vegan butter on one side of two slices of cake.
- Place the cake slices butter side down in the pan and cook until toasted.
- Remove carefully from pan and allow to cool slightly before spreading a thick layer of “cheesy” frosting between two slices of cake.
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