Vegan Treasure Chest Cake

Last week was a bad week. Nothing majorly catastrophic, just a collection of a lot of really crappy little occurrences culminating in a minor anxiety attack in a checkout line at Target:

• I was turned down for 3 different jobs
• I got a parking ticket due to my own stupidity (and they are not cheap in LA)
• both of my embroidery machines were crapping out on me the week before I'm vending at World Fest

I know in the grand scheme of life, these are not a big deal but in my own little reality it was certainly frustrating. Needless to say, I was desperately in need of some creative therapy and lucky for me my nephew's 6th birthday party just happened to be last Saturday. 

It has become a tradition for me to make him a birthday cake matching the theme of his party. There has been a monster truck, a Transformer and this year it was a treasure chest from Jake & the Neverland Pirates. In years past I didn't make the cake vegan because I'm the only one in my family who is, but this year I decided to go for it and not tell anyone until after they said how awesome it was (I'm nefarious that way).

I found a Betty Crocker chocolate fudge cake mix that was accidentally vegan (I know, I know, not the most healthy of choices, but my baking from scratch attempts usually end in complete and total failure). I substituted the 3 eggs it called for with 3/4c unsweetened apple sauce and it turned out AMAZING!

The bottom part of the chest was made up of 4 layers of deliciously awesome chocolate cake and the lid was formed from handmade vegan rice crispy treats. I used chocolate fondant to cover both parts and yellow colored vanilla fondant for the decorations.

There were a lot of little details I didn't have time to get to, but I think it turned out super cute! The whole process of decorating a cake like this is therapeutic for me. I find the kneading and rolling of the fondant to be soothing. It was definitely exactly what I needed to forget about the previous events of the week - and chocolate cake can solve almost any problem - amiright?!

Everyone loved the cake and it was fun to tell them it was vegan after they all raved about it! My nephew had a fun pirate themed pool party and he seemed to be excited about the treasure chest cake his auntie made him.

Me & Jake