Vegan MoFo - Mix v. Scratch: Battle Lemon Drizzle

I know I said I was gonna blog about tamales, and I will. But here's the thing - I was too full of tamales and busy trying to catch up on "Glee" while my best friend was here and didn't have time to blog yesterday, and today I've been up since 4.45 AM for a work thing (for which I didn't get home until 7 PM). I'm super exhausted and can't be bothered sorting through my pictures (I took about 100 for the work thing), so I'll talk about tamales tomorrow and instead talk about the final Mix v. Scratch Battle.

Battle Lemon Drizzle

Let me first say that I've never strictly had a lemon drizzle cake before Monday. I'd never heard of the lemon drizzle cake as such until I moved to Edinburgh, by which time I was already vegan. For some reason it seems to be more than just a lemon cake with icing, though I'm not sure why. But, meh. I should also mention that I didn't bother to make sure I had margarine before I started, and it turned out I needed it. So I ended up not making the filling and only making icing, but it worked out fine.



How I made it vegan: The mix I used was just the Sainsbury's own-brand stuff. I had some soy yogurt left over from my baking spree the week before, so I subbed 1/2 c soy yogurt for the 2 eggs called for in the recipe. The only other thing it would've needed was margarine subbing for the butter for the filling (which I didn't make).

Time: This was another one of those "beat for some ridiculous amount of time" mixes. I was terrified that I was gonna overstimulate the gluten (or whatever happens when you mix too much), but it worked out. Aside from that, it didn't take that long.

Initial results: I thought the cakes were awfully thin, but at least they cooked quickly. I thought it tasted alright, but it was a little more moist than I would've liked.

For the scratch, I made the lemony version of the golden cupcake recipe (oil rather than margarine) in VCTOTW.

Time: I've made this recipe a billion times, so it was pretty damn easy (even with doing a different version). This is the first recipe in the book, super basic but wicked versatile, and incredibly easy to make. It really didn't take much longer than the mix.

Initial results: This was a denser, less moist cake, and it tasted less like chemicals. I thought my icing was better than the packaged icing. I preferred this one.



Verdict: Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only one who preferred the scratch cake. Everyone else basically said it should've been a combination of the two - the moistness of the mix with the fluffiness and icing of the scratch.