Vive la France végétalienne!

At the Paris Vegan Day, VG-Zone sold a cake that they called Caribbean Sponge Cake. It was extremely delicious and I was amazed that one could create such a beautiful, perfect cake just like that at home. Reading the comments on their entry about the Vegan Day, I found out that the recipe was on their website, with just a few changes. Some little crazy voice in my head told me to try making it. With half the amount of the ingredients. Only a tiny, tiny cake. And - what can I say - praise VG-Zone! Really! It worked very well, and I now have a beautiful and tasty Caribbean Sponge Cake, size XS.

The recipe is online, but in french, therefore I will translate it and add my comments. (A friend told me about a Google translation to german which included a coal-burning power plant and a plastic hair brush... something tells me this can't lead to the correct cake...) I am sorry for the quality of the photos, but this was a very spontaneous action and I do have no space and bad lighting.

This is the original recipe for the dough. (I made half of that recipe.)
This is the original recipe for the filling and assembly, if you replace absinth by rum and leave out the black color. (I made 1/4 of the filling.)

Preparation time: the day before: 1 hour for the dough, 5 minutes for the raisins; the day of assembly: about 1 hour, probably less.
Suggested music: 8 femmes soundtrack (for example this song)

Equipment:

• 16 cm diameter pastry ring or round baking pan
• rolling pin
• parchment paper
• wrapping film
• cutting board, larger than the diameter of the pastry ring

For the dough:

• 165 g flour (T55 in France, which is the normal wheat flour you get at the supermarket)
• 150 g sugar (use a very fine one, or make finer in a mortar)
• 1/2 package baking powder (5.5 g, or 6.5x 1 mL as measured by my smallest 1 mL swedish cup "kryddmåt")
• 1.5 g baking soda (I used 3x 1 mL which was a bit too much I think)
• pinch of salt
• 30 g margarine
• 150 mL soy milk
• 75 mL water
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 package vanilla sugar (or any other vanilla to taste)
• 3 drops almond flavoring

What to do, part I:

1. Preheat oven to 180 °C. 
2. Grease the inside of the pastry ring and a circle of the same size on a very flat baking tray lightly with margarine. Place the pastry ring on the baking tray. To prevent escape of the dough, add some flour mixed with water on the baking tray on the outside around the pastry ring. 
3. Mix all the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately. Then add the wet to the dry, and mix until all clumps disappear. Pour into the pastry ring. 
4. Bake for about 30 minutes (until a toothpick, knitting needle, or your favorite thin sex toy comes out clean). Let cool, cover, and let rest until the next day. 
5. Don't forget to add the rum to the raisins, before you go to sleep! (See below)

For the filling and topping:

• 50 g raisins
• 25 mL rum
• 3/4 tablespoon starch
• 1/2 tablespoon sugar
• 90 mL vanilla soy milk
• some other vanilla, if you want, or use more vanilla and normal soy milk; I used the inside from about 2 cm of a vanilla bean.
• about 150 g almond paste (I had a package of 250 g and you can see in the picture below how much I had left over. And I could have made it thinner.)

What to do, part II:

1. After making the dough, add the rum to the raisins, cover and let rest over night.
2. Mix the starch and sugar, and add a little bit of cold water to mix.
3. Heat the soy milk in a pot. When it is boiling, add the starch sugar mix. Stir until the mixture thickens. 
4. Add the raisins and rum, and let cool a bit.

Assembly:

Carefully remove the pastry ring. Cut in half horizontally using a long knife or a cake cutter. Place the upper half on a baking sheet, the lower on your desired cake location.

Cover the cutting board and the rolling pin in wrapping film. Roll out the almond paste roughly circular, and relatively thin.

Spread the filling on the lower half of the cake, not too close to the edge.

Add the upper part of the cake and press down a bit.

Wrap the almond paste carefully around the rolling pin and roll it over the cake. Lift the edges a bit and press them slightly on the sides of the cake without producing wrinkles.

Cut the almond paste along the bottom of the cake with a pizza cutter or knife. (Wrap the leftover almond paste in some of the wrapping film and store in the fridge.)

Decorate! Mine is not decorated because of spontaneous baking action :-) I am not sure yet how to store the cake, but I would suggest not too warm and covered or wrapped.