Where to Treat Vegan: Ipanema - Richmond, VA

It seems that all roads lead to Richmond these days and I will most certainly be making a trip there soon. Last month when I was visiting Tangier Island I stopped by Richmond for dinner and a treat. You may remember last year's Somewhere New in Richmond when I went to Ipanema and split a piece of pie with my friend Compton.

This time around I wanted all the treat to myself! Ipanema has a daily list of their vegan dessert offerings and this time I went for the Mocha Chocolate Cake and a glass of wine - I was feeling particularly decadent.

After a day of touring and riding the ferry it was nice to curl into the booth at Ipanema under the soft yellow lights and eat a treat while doing a crossword. The icing was sweet but not overly dense and the cake was moist. I'll be real - I ate this cake and then bought another for the road. I STILL need to go back for dinner - expect an update of that in the next few weeks.

Ipenama

Location:

917 West Grace Street

Hours:

Mon - Fri 11am - 5:30pm
7 days a week 5:30pm - 11pm

Vegan Buttermilk Banana Cake

For those of you lucky assistants and friends that were at Adam's going away cookout, you probably got to try my non-vegan buttermilk cake. Well this is not the recipe for that and here is why - that milk and butter gives me a tummy ache! Plus I really want to learn to bake vegan - so I took the recipe I used for the non-vegan cake and made it vegan. Voila, the results!

My biggest concern in making this cake vegan was replacing the egg. Lets face it - those little guys do the job right. But! I read that you can use a banana and it will do mostly the same thing (comes out a bit denser but you will never hear me complain about a dense cake), but of course it will add the taste of banana. Well lucky me, I love bananas. I make banana bread like...like I love bananas.

Vegan Buttermilk Banana Cake

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (its almost healthy this way!)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp unsalted vegan butter spread, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
1 small banana, mashed well
1/2 cup vanilla soy buttermilk (almost a half cup of vanilla soy milk plus the juice of half a lemon - let sit for a minute)
1 cup vegan chocolate chips or carob chips
raw sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Butter and flour a 9 inch round cake pan, or a loaf pan.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and the salt. Set aside. In a separate bowl beat the butter and sugar together (cream it - in baking terms) with an electric mixer until it's fluffy. Add the banana, mix. With the mixer on low, beat in 1/3 of the flour. Add half the buttermilk. Beat in another 1/4 of the flour. Add the rest of the milk, then the rest of the flour. Mix until just combine. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spoon.
3. Scrape it into your prepared dish of choice and smooth the top. Scatter a small handful of raw sugar on top (or some fresh strawberries! I didn't have any).
4. Bake until the cake is golden and a toothpick comes out clean (25 to 30 minutes). Cool in the pan 10 minutes then put it on a wire rack.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (duh!)

The longest part of this process (aside from the baking) is the grating of the carrots. Don't buy the pre-shredded. I hear it doesn't work out so well.

Carrot Cake

4 eggs
1 1/4 cups veg oil
2 cups white sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tbsp baking soda
2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots (about half a bag of carrots for me)

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9 x 13 cake pan
2. In a large bowl beat the eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla together. Mix in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in the carrots. Pour into the pan.
3. Bake 40-50 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes in the pan then put it on a rack.
4. Frost the crap out of it.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

So I must have an obsession with chocolate chip cake/breads now. This one in particular I have made like 5 times already this year but while I wait for more bananas to ripen I thought I would make this. Its super easy, just like the other one, and if you like pumpkin flavored things you will love this. If I remember correctly I got this from Bread and Honey's blog, so props to those girls.

Pumpkin Pound Cake with Chocolate Chips
makes 2 loaves

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup veg or canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
3 eggs
1 can pumpkin puree
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips (im not going to lie...i poured a whole bag in..fatty fatty)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease 2 loaf pans

2. In a large bowl combine sugar, oil applesauce, eggs, and pumpkin

3. In a medium bowl stir together flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, and salt

4. Stir dry ingredients into the wet until just mixed. Stir in the chocolate chips.

5. Spoon into the loaf pans and bake for 50-55 min.

6. Let cool 10 min before removing from the pan

Tea-Time Cake

Today we had Jon's parents over to the house and we made French Dip in the crock (which I will post the recipe for soon) and I made Madeira cake, which is a pound cake-like treat with a lemon syrup. The cake was a hit (especially with Jon's dad) so I'm passing along the yummies.



Looks good doesn't it? See how the side though the glass looks kinda wet and sticky? That's the glaze you pour over and into it.

1 cup plus 2 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup confectioners sugar
5 eggs
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

For sugary crust/filling stuff

4 tbsp lemon juice ( I again used my squeezing power for this but you can use a juicer if you are high-tech or just the lemon juice you buy at the store)
1 tbsp light corn syrup (i used regular because stown doesn't have much to offer in the light department)
2 tbsp granulated sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Grease a 1.5 quart loaf tin (as you can see I used a glass pyrex..so use whatever you have)
3. Beat butter and sugar until light and creamy, then gradually beat in the eggs ( I like to crack the eggs into a separate bowl and pre-beat them before adding them to any mixture, makes it easy to catch stray shell pieces)
4. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt and fold in gently (ok I started freaking at this point because the mixture became very dense and it was impossible to simply "fold it gently" and it was all bumpy, but this is normal, just mix as best you can until all the flour is mixed in and have faith)
5. Spoon into the tin and level the top, bake 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a skewer pushed into the middle comes out clean (note this loaf cannot be pierced all the way to the bottom with a toothpick, its just too deep, so I used a knife because I don't have a kebab skewer or anything like that)
6. Remove cake and while it's still warm pierce it all over with the skewer (or knife) all the way to the bottom. Do this a lot...all over...really.
7. Warm together the lemon juice and syrup, then add the sugar and spoon over the cake right away. Make sure you get a lot down the sides and into the holes. You will really soak this into the cake as much as possible.
8. Chill for several hours or overnight and then serve..with tea or without! You can also make a clotted cream to go with this or just some butter, up to you. Enjoy!