Vegan peanut butter jelly cake and London workshop recap

Last weekend I taught a food photography workshop in London with Kimberly from The little plantation and I baked this vegan peanut butter and grape jelly cake to shoot. I kept a note of the recipe so I could share it with you. I am also sharing a recap from the workshop below the recipe on this post. I love peanut butter and jelly as a combo even thought it seems like a weird combo to me, I know it is very popular in America but it doesn’t seem to be as popular here. We decorated it with grapes from Kimberly’s garden.

Recipe

480 ml almond milk
2 tbsp. vinegar
400g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
190 ml olive oil
400g caster sugar
1 cup peanut butter

(originally I baked half this recipe but it wasn’t enough so I made a second batch so we would have four layers, so I have doubled the recipe for you here if you want four layers too, if not half it and use smaller tins and have two layers).

Grease and line 4 cake tins (9 inch)

Preheat the oven to 170c fan

In a bowl mix the milk and vinegar and let is sit for 5 minutes to make buttermilk. In a separate bowl whisk the peanut butter, oil and sugar and vanilla. Then in another bowl sift the flour, baking powder, soda and salt. whisk the milk in with the oil mixture and then mix in the dry ingredients. Pour evenly between the 4 tins then bake for approx. 20/25 minutes (the oven I used is very hot compared to some ovens to it may take longer for you)

let cool

Make grape jelly

2 cups sliced black grapes
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup boiling water
1 tsp agar agar
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a pan add the grapes, sugar and vanilla and add 1/4 cup water. heat gently until the grapes break down and stir over the heat, once there is lots of liquid from the grapes add the agar agar. let bubble for 5 to 10 minutes. once thickened pour into a bowl and cover and leave in fridge over night or for a few hours.

Frosting

2 cups vegan butter
1 cup peanut butter (use half a cup to start with and taste then add more to your liking)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. icing sugar

Whisk all the ingredients together, taste and see if it needs more sugar, then assemble the cake. place one of the layers of sponge on a cake stand then pipe on some of the frosting making sure it is higher around the edges to act as a dam so the filling doesn’t drip out then spoon on some of the grape jelly, then add the next layer. continue this process with the other layers and then spread the remaining buttercream around cake.

The workshop

During the workshop we shot the cake above and also a few other things, my favourite was beetroot gnocchi. I have put some of the other photos from over the two days below. We shot the whole recipe to show the students how to create a food story. Before hand I created a Pinterest board full of gnocchi pictures as inspiration and before we started doing any shooting we decided on 6 shots that we wanted to get. we got an action shot, an ingredient shot. a close up, a prep shot, and two of the finished dish. This is a great task to do if you are interested in visual story telling.

To see Kimberly’s recap visit her post here

I don’t have an exact recipe for the gnocchi but I just roasted and pureed 4 beetroot and then added some salt and flour a little at a time to make a soft dough. then you roll it out into long ropes and cut it and roll on a gnocchi roller, boil for about 3 minutes or until it floats and top with pesto.