Vegan Twinkies

 Finally the final post in my vanilla cake series!  Every time we have a family weekend at the cottage, my sister in law sends me recipe ideas that the whole family can enjoy (vegan and non).  I was never that in to Twinkies, but it is a rather fun way to eat cake and frosting.  She send me this recipe which looked good, but I wanted to make the traditional filling so it could be stable at room temperature.  

There is a little bit of wiggle room with this recipe.  The problem I had was getting the bleedin' cakes out of the pan.  No amount of greasing, flouring, etc. made it any easier, so I had to go with a more durable cake so it could get it out of the pan in one piece.  If you are better at getting cakes out of a pan than I am, you can add up to 2 tbsp more milk and up to 2 tbsp more sugar (see pic below). 

INGREDIENTS
Makes 8
Cake
- 100g cake or pastry flour
- 50g all purpose flour
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup soy milk
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp orange juice
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup oil
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp lemon extract
- 1/4 tsp almond extract

Filling
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup soy milk
- 3/4 cup icing sugar
- 1/4 cup cold margarine
- 1/4 cup coconut oil, room temp
- 1/4 tsp salt (or to taste)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

METHOD
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cake
1. Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together soy milk, orange juice, and lemon juice.  Whisk in sugar, oil, and extracts until smooth and consistent. 
3. Add wet ingredients to dry and gently whisk until smooth.  Divide batter evenly in the separate sections in the pan (60g per section).
4. Bake for 16-20 mins, or until golden and baked through. 
5. Allow cakes to fully cool before removing from pan. 

Filling
1. While cakes are baking and cooling, make your filling.  Whisk flour into the soy milk in a small saucepan.  Place over medium heat and whisk until thick and cooked through.  Set aside to fully cool.
2. When flour mixture is cool, use a hand mixer to beat in the icing sugar, the margarine, coconut oil, and salt.  When fluffy, beat in extract.  Place in fridge to cool down for a least 30 mins. 
3. Put filling into a piping bag fitted with a #5 tip (or similar).  Poke the tip into the underside of the Twinkies in three or four spots along its length and gently squeeze in filling.  You will feel the Twinkies swell.  Don't over fill. 

These cakes have the additional soy milk and sugar.  You can see that they are more tender (and are overfilled) but that has resulted in some breakage getting them out of the pan, and some splitting when they were filled.  They tasted amazing, though.


more recipes @ vegandad.blogspot.com