My youngest turned 4 on Christmas day, which of course we couldn’t really celebrate it since everyone was celebrating Christmas, so in his 4 yo mind, we didn’t really celebrate his birthday. Thus, every other day, he would ask for a birthday cake 😅😅😅😅 He is one comic boy for sure.

Yesterday was World Nutella Day, and little babe had been bugging me for a SpongeBob birthday cake since last week, and I kept saying, okay, soon.

We planned to drive out of town yesterday and it got postponed (or so I thought) so I started baking, yet once cake was cooling, we decided we would still go and so I wrapped the cake away.

The drive was so bad to and from the other town, thanks to hard ice on the road, snow storm, and just misserable stressfull driving on winter night, that we arrived close to 10 PM last night and we woke up to a slow and tiring morning earlier, yet as soon as little babe woke up, first thing came out of his mouth ‘make SpongeBob cake for me, please mommy’ 😳

What I planned was to have vegan Nutella as filling, cover the cake with buttercream and fondant, and decorate with fondant cutouts, but I was so lazy to roast the hazelnuts that I just prepared cheater notella – vegan Nutella. I didn’t even feel like really decorating, so I just painted SpongeBob and heavily used edible marker 😂😂😂😂

I am glad he is only 4yo, not many complaints at this age 😂

Cake

Ingredients

2 1/2 c flour
1/2 c sugar
2 tsp BSoda
2 tbsp Dutch cocoa powder (4-6 tbsp for regular cocoa powder
2 c water
1/2 c vegetable oil
2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp almond essence (or vanilla)

How To

Grease and flour (flour mixed with cocoa powder) your pan
Preheat oven to 350 F
In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients, pour in wet ingredients, stir to combine
Pour batter into prepared pan, bake for 40 mins
Cool on rack

Vegan Nutella – cheater way

Enough nut butter, I used cashew butter
Enough icing sugar
Enough Dutch cocoa powder
Enough DF milk
Mix everything and microwave for 30 seconds intervals, until nut better soften/melted
Stir to combine well, adjusting everything as needed, until it reaches the consistency you like

For covering the cake, use vegan friendly fondant

Instead buttercream as planned, i used jam instead, lazy mum here 😳

Decorating The Cake

Roll flat fondant, lift it carefully, and lay it on washed and dried pan (the pan you used for baking the cake – mine was SpongeBob obviously) – high end bakers would debate this method, saying this is for non professional bakers, I don’t care, it gets the job done, the easy way 😂✌️😂
Brush the inside side of the fondant with jam (or pipe buttercream)
Slice your cake in the middle, so you’d make two layers. Lift the top layer and flip, place it on the baking pan
Cover this layer with vegan Nutella , then lift the other cake layer, flip, and place on baking pan.
Brush the cake with jam – this way cake won’t move around once placed on cake board.
Cut excess fondant that is hanging, then flip the whole cake onto serving board/cake board.
Ta-daaaa
Start decorating! So simple, right?? 😁

Happy baby, less stress for mommy 😁

Happy Belated World Nutella Day!

Note: this method of laying fondant on your shaped cake pan can be used for any shapes of cake pan!

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