May's Lemon Poppy Seed Cake... with almond frosting!

So it's that time again. Cake time! This month's cake was a Lemon Poppy Seed with Almond Frosting. (Sidenote: last month's was banana cake with chocolate frosting. It was amazing. I have not blogged about it. I've been busy. Forgive me for a lack of timeline synchronicity that will soon occur. Is that a word? Don't think so.)

Since I'm still doing this whole quest of quasi Veganism - no wheat, meat or dairy - I was a little perplexed about how exactly to approach this cake. What followed was an adventure in substitutions and super market shopping. I'm pretty sure I should apologize to any one who was at the store around 10pm for my delirious, hysterical cell phone conversations with my mother was we tried to determine how the heck cake flour differed from all purpose flour. Apparently, it is not only lighter and airier or whatever, but it has the lowest gluten content of any wheat flours. Yay!

[Side note #2: I'll update on the status of my personal culinary and diet exploits in the near future. I know I promised to do that sooner. Bah. In brief, it's been almost 7 weeks and I feel fantastic. Digestive peace is attainable!]

In summary, this cake was delish. It was light weight, I'd assume from the 3 egg whites stirred in at the end. The lemon (picked fresh from our tree!) was refreshing and added a nice, bright flavor. I ended up halving the recipe, and baking it in cupcake sizes for easier distribution to willing tasters. I substituted soy milk for the buttermilk, mixing it with a scant tablespoon of lemon juice and letting it sit, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.

The almond frosting, well... I'm pretty proud of this one, folks. I made a VEGAN cream cheese frosting. I used earth balance in place of the butter, and tofutti in place of the cream cheese. It was really, really sugary, so I could handle too much, but as I love the flavor of almond extract, I thought it was quite nice. I think next time I'd cut back on the powdered sugar a bit, and maybe add a little more almond, or some other flavor (lemon, vanilla) to brighten things up.

Sorry about the lack of pictures. Because these cupcakes were freaking beautiful. So beautiful that my camera died and my computer refused to upload from the chip. Bah. I actually busted out a piping bag, and then artfully placed sliced almonds on top of each cupcake. If I can salvage a picture, I'll stick it up here later.

This would be a great cake for a brunch or luncheon with a group of ladies... give it a try! Assuming you attend brunches and luncheons or things of that nature. I don't. But if you do, goodonya.

Oh yeah, and this cake was from Sky High Cakes. Credit where credit is due, and all.

Here's a link to the recipe, as it is in the book:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQWt0aeyZ3lLZDdrMmI3bl8xMWN0ODd3a2Y0&hl=en