Scenes, Beans and Zebra (Cup) Cakes

Behold, Zebra (cup) cakes

A combination of baketivism and plastic-wrapped nostalgia at its finest.  

These were for last weekend’s Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale in Portland, inspired by a big ole vganized Zebra cake that J. Legume and I made a few months ago. I vaguely remember our conversation on what type of cake to make for a gathering, and the vegan ode to the Little Debbie ‘classic’ arose.

Inside these cupcakes is truly vanilla cake, a marshmallow buttercream filling (thanks to a delicately melted Dandies buttercream), and both white and dark chocolate ganache coating. Our original bake sale idea was for mini zebra cakes, but dude, I am not a patient froster and didn’t want to sit there cutting away edges of cupcakes.

As it was, we carried a mere dozen, having run out of flour during the late night baking scene. There was a big call for bakers, and as someone with public-baking anxiety, I’m relieved they were cute enough to mosy their way onto the spread with all the gorgeous pastries and savoury items from generous vegans and legit vegan bakeries.

Portland’s bake sale benefited the Cat Adoption Team and Green Acres Farm Sanctuary’s S.O.S. Project

Plus, I got to see lots of friends and since the event was at Mississippi Marketplace, grab a Mississippi bowl from Native Bowl while J. Legume opted for mac & cheese a la HoGroSmo, which sadly, doesn’t happen very often being such Southeast-ers, or whatever.

Soy latte date, Coava

Soy lattes have become more rare as I budget and budget some more. Perhaps I’ll dig out my old Ikea frother to stay afloat.

On another day, these flowers said so much.

In project-land, I’m nearly a full week into cooking lupini beans from scratch.

Lupine poisoning be damned.

I’m following this guideline - it’s quite the Mediterranean endeavor, and the notion of salted lupini beans and cold beer makes me want to head into the realm of global bar bites. Of course.