Vegan White Chocolate and Raspberry Cake

This Vegan White Chocolate and Raspberry Cake is the perfect plant based celebration cake. Find out how to make and decorate it below.

Celebration cakes

There are so many opportunities throughout the year to celebrate. From birthdays to Easter, Christmas, New Year and of course other special occasions like passing an exam, getting a new job or even getting engaged.

And with any celebration comes cake!

Regardless of the opportunity to celebrate cake is a must and just because you or your friends and family are vegan doesn’t mean you need to miss out.

Vegan celebration cakes come in a whole range of shapes and sizes, and of course flavours! Today I’m here to share my recipes for Vegan White Chocolate and Raspberry Cake.

I think the sweetness of the white chocolate and the slight tartness from the fresh raspberries is a great combination! Of course the pink and white decoration looks pretty striking too.

As well as telling you how to bake the cake I’ll also share instructions on how to decorate the cake just like I did. Of course this is optional and you can decorate your cake any way you wish.

Vegan White Chocolate and Raspberry Cake decorated in a water colour style

How to make a Vegan White Chocolate and Raspberry Layer Cake

Vegan baking substitutes

Making a vegan cake doesn’t have to be complicated. I think there’s this common misconception that vegan cakes are difficult to make, particularly because you need to substitute out eggs.

There are so many commercial egg replacers on the market it can be hard to know which one to choose.

The good news is I don’t use these in my recipes. I want you to be able to make this recipe at home without having to buy any specialist ingredients from the shops.

That means I don’t use other egg replacers like flax seed eggs either. I use good old fashioned baking powder! More on how to make the sponge cake below.

If you want to find out more about substituting eggs and dairy in your cakes and bakes, check out my big vegan baking guide.

Making the sponge cake

There are two methods you can use when baking a cake: (1) the all in one method; and (2) the creaming method. Both work but I personally prefer the creaming method as I think it results in a lighter, fluffier cake!

The most important thing to do before making the sponge is to line your tins and weigh out all of your ingredients. You don’t want to work too slowly when making this cake as as soon as the baking powder hits the rest of the cake mix it will start reacting. We want to make sure the air bubbles it creates are trapped in the sponge so we need to work quickly. Having everything weighed out and the tins already lined will help with this.

Once you’ve lined your cake tins and weighed out your ingredients it’s time to cream the butter and sugar together along with the vanilla paste. You do this by adding them to a mixing bowl and beating (either by hand or using an electric whisk) until they are creamy. You’ll know its done because the mix will no longer be grainy (meaning the sugar has been fully incorporated) and it will be paler in colour with tiny black flecks from the vanilla.

Once they have been creamed together we slowly add the milk while still beating. This will make a thinner, creamy batter.

Next comes the flour and baking powder. I add the baking powder to the flour first and give it a good stir to make sure it’s evenly distributed. I then add the flour to the rest of the cake mix and fold it in using a spatula. Folding the flour in means you don’t over mix which would result in a tough cake.

And that’s it. The cake mix is made! Simply divide it between the two tins and you’re ready to bake.

How to decorate the cake

Once you’ve baked your cake and left it to cool it’s time to decorate!

Make up a big batch of white chocolate buttercream according to the recipe below and let’s get decorating.

First I add a teaspoon of the buttercream to the cake board to stick my first layer down. This means it won’t slide around while we’re decorating.

Next fill a piping bag with 2/3rds of the buttercream and pipe a ring around the top of the first layer of sponge. This is going to trap in the raspberry jam which we are going to spread in the middle.

Once you’ve topped the first layer with buttercream and raspberry jam, place the second layer on top and give it a good push down to make sure it’s stable and secure. The buttercream will hold it in place.

Next take the piping bag again and pipe the buttercream all around the cake and on top of the cake. Take a large, offset spatula and run it around the sides and top of the cake until smooth. If you find the spatula is dragging a little and it’s not entirely smooth, you can run it under hot water before running it around the edges.

Take the remaining butter cream and divide it into two. Colour one batch pale pink and the other a deeper, brighter shade of pink.

To get the watercolour effect, take a smaller spatula and add blobs of the two shades of icing around the cake. Do this at random rather than making them all neatly lined up.

Using the large, offset spatula, run it around the sides and top of the cake again, dragging the pink icing to create the watercolour effect. Keep running the spatula around and add more of the pink icing until you have the desired effect.

Add a large star tipped nozzle to a piping bag and fill with the leftover pink icing. Pipe 6 swirly stars on top of the cake then top with a fresh raspberry.

It’s now ready to serve so grab some candles and let’s celebrate.

The recipe