Vegan Shag Cake
Colorful cake with vanilla sponge cake, oranges and coconut cream in “Shag Rug” style inspired shag carpets from the 70s. A perfect cake for parties that will impress everyone.
This cake is deliciously airy & juicy and a real eye-catcher. The vegan buttercream is piped on the cake with a piping bag so that many small shags are formed. The buttercream is coloured with natural spices in several colours.
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Vegan Shag cake
You certainly don’t see such a cake every day! And when you say, this masterpiece is vegan as well, hardly anyone will believe you! The cake is definitely suitable for a special occasion such as birthdays, holidays and parties such as Easter.
The shag cake comes from the USA and refers to the buttercream shags that decorate the cake. This aesthetic is inspired by the shag carpets from the 70s. I’m not that old, but I used to have a shag carpet as well when I was a kid. Madly beautiful and special, but terrible when cleaning!
How to make the shags of buttercream?
The vegan buttercream is first divided into three (or more) parts and then dyed with colors. Here you can get creative and choose a combination of colors. I didn’t have any food coloring at home and in my opinion natural ingredients work just as well (and you cannot taste them in the cake):
- Yellow coloured with turmeric powder
- Pink coloured with some hibiscus/ or beetroot powder
- Dark red coloured with a lot of hibiscus/ or beetroot powder
Then the buttercream is added to a piping bag and piped on the cake. The buttercream and the cake must be at the right temperature so that the buttercream is stable. To make the shags, you need a grass noozle on the piping bag, which has many small holes. The different coloured creams are then simply and intuitively created with a little imagination.
Vanilla biscuit
The vanilla cake is very fluffy & soft and consists of a simple sponge dough. For the shag cake, 3 cakes are baked and then stacked on top of each other. The vanilla cake itself is already very moist, but is additionally soaked with orange juice or orange liqueur.
The vegan vanilla sponge cake consists of simple ingredients that are mixed together. The liquid ingredients (vegan buttermilk made from soy milk and vinegar, melted butter, apple sauce) are first mixed together and then mixed with the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder) until a homogeneous mass is formed. To make the cake even more delicious, it is flavoured with lots of vanilla and refreshing orange zest. The dough is then baked in cake molds with a diameter of 24 cm.
Orange filets
The sponge cakes are filled with a simple coconut cream and filleted oranges. The orange fillets work perfect with the vanilla cake, as it has been flavoured with orange peel and soaked with orange juice. Like that the cake tastes pleasantly fruity and aromatic.
To fillet oranges beautifully, you need a sharp knife. You cut the outer skin from the orange and carefully separate the pulp from the white, inner skin. If you want to make it easier, you can also buy already filleted orange pieces in the can.
Coconut cream
The filling of the cake consists of orange filets and a cream of coconut milk. This cream consists of only a few ingredients and is quick to prepare: Coconut milk from the can is stirred with powdered sugar and refined with aromas such as vanilla and lemon zest.
When using coconut milk for the preparation of creams, it is crucial which coconut milk is used. Important: best use caned coconut milk with a non-reduced fat content. A high quality of coconut milk can be recognized by the fact that it consists mostly of the white, thicker part, which is very creamy. Only this part is used for the cake filling.
Vegan buttercream
The buttercream consists of only a few ingredients and is prepared quickly. Above all, however, the temperature of the vegan butter must be taken into account. If it is too high, the buttercream becomes too soft. If the butter/margarine is too cold, it is impossible to prepare a buttercream.
For the right temperature you should remove the vegan butter from the fridge several hours before use and store it at room temperature. Before decorating the cake, the buttercream and also the cake must cool down slightly.
The advantages of this vegan butter cream:
- lighter than classic buttercream
- creamy and stable
- reduced in sugar
- dyed with natural ingredients
- made from only 2 ingredients
- pleasantly sweet
- can be piped with a piping bag
- perfect for great decorations such as shaggy decors
If you make the recipe, feel free to give me a feedback or write a comment on how it turned out. And if you share your homemade dish with your friends on social media, I would be very grateful when you link me (Instagram @flavour. dreams) and set the hashtag #flavourdreams. Of course I am always available for questions. Enjoy to try the recipe!
Vegan Shag Cake
Equipment
- a piping bag with a grass noozle
- a cake thin with 24 cm diameter
Ingredients
Vanilla sponge cake
- 260 ml soy milk
- 4 tsp apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
- 150 g vegan butter or margarine melted
- 225 g apple sauce unsweetened
- 330 g sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
- 560 g all purpose flour sifted
- 2 tsp baking powder
Coconut cream
- 2 cans of coconut cream high quality and not fat-reduced
- 50 g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
- ½ tsp lemon zest
Vegan buttercream
- 600 g vegan butter or margarine
- 300 g icing sugar
- natural spices for dying I used tumeric and hibiscus powder
In addition
- 1 orange
- orange juice or liqueur for soaking
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C or 356°F and grease 3 cake tins (or alternatively just one) with some oil.
- For the vanilla sponge cake: mix the soy milk with the apple cider vinegar and let it stand for 5 minutes.
- Mix all liquid ingredients for the biscuit with a whisk. Then add all the dry ingredients and stir until everything has mixed well.
- Divide the cake dough into three parts and put into the moulds. Bake them in the oven for 40 minutes until you can put a toothpick in the cake and it comes out clean. If you have only one cake tin, you can also bake one cake at a time until all three cakes are baked. Allow the cakes to cool completely.
- For the coconut cream: Open the 2 cans of coconut milk and place the thick white part in a bowl. The rest can be used for Asian dishes or coconut curry. Then mix the white coconut milk with the powdered sugar, vanilla and lemon zest whisk gently.
- For the orange filets: Use a sharp knife to cut the outer shell of the orange away. Then take the orange and carefully cut along the white inner skin to the middle of the orange. If you do this on both sides of the pulp piece, you’ve cut out an orange filet. Repeat this process with the whole orange. Alternatively, you can also buy orange filets in a can.
- Cut the cooled cakes evenly so that they have a smooth surface on top. Prepare the first cake, soak it with orange juice, spread with coconut cream and cover with orange filets. Then put the next cake on top and repeat everything again. To make sure the cake is stacked straight, you can stack it in a tall cake tin. At the end, cover the third cake and coat the surface and sides of the cake with the remaining coconut cream to create smooth surfaces and edges. Put the cake in the fridge.
- For the buttercream: whip the soft margarine and slowly add the icing sugar. Beat until the ingredients have combined well. Divide the buttercream into three parts and dye them. I dyed one part with turmeric, one part with little hibiscus powder and one part with a lot of hibiscus powder. Store the buttercreams in the fridge.
- Add a coloured buttercream to the piping bag with grass noozle and creatively pipe the shags on the surface and the sides of the cake. It takes a little patience and imagination at this step. Then pipe the other buttercreams on the cake with the piping bag as well, until everything is covered with colourful shags.
- Store the cake in the fridge for a maximum of 3 days.
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