vegan chocolate wedding cake

Once upon a time, I was in my best friend’s wedding and I made her wedding cake… and in true Valentina fashion, I forgot my camera. Ugh! Her wedding was in October, but I haven’t been able to blog about this because I simply didn’t have any pictures to go with the post. But now… it’s time. So I present to you my masterpiece! A delicious, chocolatey, buttery masterpiece that is completely vegan-friendly. Yay!

My dear friend went vegan after many years of being a strict vegetarian, and before she met me, she was just planning on not having a cake at all for her wedding. How sad is that?! Not being able to have a wedding cake because you wouldn’t be able to eat it? So… The Baking Fairy to the rescue! This cake is seriously the crown jewel of my baking career. An enormous 7-layer dark chocolate cake, filled with chocolate ganache, covered in vegan vanilla buttercream, and topped with plastic flowers and a handmade cake toppers {made by yours truly, of course}. I’m ridiculously proud of my cake baby!

I was in charge of the whole dessert table, so in addition to the cake, I baked up three different kinds of cupcakes: strawberry with cream cheese frosting, vanilla with chocolate frosting, and lemon with lemon frosting. We also set out different candies in pretty jars, and I made an Oreo “cake”! I simply stacked Oreos on a cake stand in a cake-like formation. Easy peasy!

Here is what the naked cake looked like… amazing to think that it turned out so gorgeous in the end when the beginning product looked so lame. Haha! This cake was definitely a labor of love but it was SO much fun. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything! I hate being so cliche, but it’s so true that you can accomplish amazing things if you really want to and work your butt off! I created this giant cake over the course of 3 days, in between classes and exams, and I put it all together in my matchbox-sized kitchen. After baking it in my stove-oven combination from like, 1980 {I wish I was kidding}. Yes, the circumstances weren’t ideal, but if you work hard and know what you want, nothing is impossible! 🙂 If you are interested in making this cake, the recipe is the same as that of the Vegan Bridal Shower Barbie Cake. What can I say, we found a recipe we liked and we stuck with it! 

This exact cake consists of five 8-inch round cakes and two 5-inch round cakes, and I made 3.5 batches of cake batter. I made a double-batch of ganache but I had a lot left over, so I would recommend making just one batch as written in the original recipe. For the frosting, I used one full batch for the crumb coat, and 2.5 batches for the decorating. I stacked the bottom tier with ganache in-between, and used long skewers to hold them together. I then stacked the top tier, and used more skewers! I didn’t need the thick cake decorating rods because my cake was not that massive, so regular long skewers worked just fine. The bottom is a simple 1M rose frost, and the top is just a sloppy-smooth frost done with an offset spatula. As for the decorations, I bought the flowers at Hobby Lobby, removed the stems, and hot-glued half of a long skewer to each. I simply inserted them in the cake after all the frosting was finished! The cake topper was made with gold glitter scrapbook paper, scrapbook stickers, gold striped twine, and paper straws.