The Ultimate Vegan White Chocolate Cake
The ultimate vegan white chocolate cake recipe that doesn’t taste vegan! It’s entirely dairy free with a fluffy vegan buttercream and easily decorated to be a fun and festive holiday cake!
The BEST vegan Christmas cake recipe
This is truly my favorite white chocolate recipe ever, hands down. And it’s entirely vegan?! Seriously, no one would know. In fact, every time I make it, everyone is shocked that it’s dairy free.
This is a super tender and moist white chocolate cake that’s entirely egg free, dairy free, vegan, and can be gluten free. It’s topped with a fluffy and easy vegan buttercream frosting, and decorated for the ultimate vegan Christmas cake.
I personally can’t stop eating it once I have a slice. The white chocolate works so beautifully in creating a really light yet tender cake that truly just tastes magnificent.
If you make any vegan cake recipe this holiday season, let it be this one!
How do you make vegan white chocolate?
I’m sure you probably guessed it, but regular white chocolate is in fact not vegan. However, I have a vegan white chocolate recipe that tastes nearly identical to classic white chocolate, and that’s the recipe I recommend using for this vegan white chocolate cake.
Technically, white chocolate isn’t really chocolate, though it’s derived from cocoa butter (completely vegan, just the fat from the cocoa bean). And to make white chocolate, most variations mix in milk solids as well.
Well, to make our own vegan white chocolate for this vegan Christmas cake, I decided to use cashew butter, cocoa butter, and powdered sugar. This is the full recipe for vegan white chocolate.
Now, keep in mind: if you’re using roasted cashew butter, like I do, it will look more caramel in color than white. However, this homemade white chocolate will still taste absolutely amazing.
You can also purchase vegan white chocolate if you’d prefer not to make it yourself! The brand I recommend is Pascha Organics. I know that King David also has a white chocolate (what I used to make my Jack Skellington figurine), but personally it’s not my favorite.
How to make a white chocolate cake from scratch
Like my other vegan cake recipes, you can make this white chocolate cake into an 8″ cake, as I did, or a 6″ cake. Just keep in mind that your 6″ cake layers will need to bake a bit longer, as the vegan white chocolate makes this a really thick batter!
Making this vegan white chocolate cake is just like any other cake (and vegan cake for that matter!). The recipe card down below contains the full directions, along with the ingredients.
However, let’s go over some tips for ensuring that your vegan white chocolate cake tastes absolutely amazing (and that people will be in shock when you tell them that it’s vegan!):
- Make this vegan white chocolate: I swear this is the key to why this white chocolate cake tastes so incredible. If you’re nut free, you can definitely purchase a vegan white chocolate, but if you can have cashews, then I highly recommend making your own.
- Melt the white chocolate before beginning the cake: this ensures that the white chocolate isn’t piping hot when it goes into the batter, which will drastically alter the texture of the cake while it’s baking. You want to make sure that the white chocolate is essentially room temperature to touch. To melt white chocolate, you can melt it in increments of 20-30 seconds in the microwave or via stove top over a double-boiler.
- Measure out all of your ingredients before beginning: the reason being is that once the liquid hits the baking powder and soda, the chemical reaction that gives a cake its rise begins, and you’ll want to move those cakes as quickly as possible into the oven. It also makes for a less stressful baking process, and ensures that you don’t miss anything!
- Make sure your cakes are completely cool before decorating: trust me, it is NOT a fun process for a cake to land on the ground because the layers were too warm when you iced the cake!
How to decorate a vegan Christmas cake
My all time favorite part of any cake baking process is the decorations. I wanted to give this white chocolate cake a Christmas theme, as I’m making it for the holidays and I tend to enjoy vegan white chocolate more in November and December.
I wanted to give this white chocolate cake a sort of arctic vibe, so I made a polar bear and snowman out of marzipan dough. The lovely part about marzipan is that it’s completely vegan and is so much like modeling chocolate.
The only downside is that it’s really sticky when it’s warm, but that’s not too much of a deterrent!
I also added on top my mini vegan gingerbread houses that I made from my vegan gingerbread cookie dough, and these cute little tree figurines that I picked up at Michael’s.
You can decorate this white chocolate cake however you please. Maybe you want to melt some more vegan white chocolate and create a drip effect on the top of the cake.
Or maybe you want to make a little igloo out of marzipan! I think cakes are like a blank canvas, and you just have fun!
I hope you love this vegan white chocolate cake as much as I do! It’s truly my favorite vegan Christmas cake, and I can’t wait to make it again right before Christmas.
If you make this cake, let me know down below in the comments section, as well as giving it a rating so that others may find it.
As always, I absolutely love to see your beautiful creations on Instagram and Pinterest, so be sure to tag me there!
Happy white chocolate cake baking!
Want to save this recipe for later? Add it to your favorite recipe board on Pinterest!
Vegan White Chocolate Cake
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 35
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 16 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
The ultimate vegan white chocolate cake recipe that doesn’t taste vegan! It’s entirely dairy free with a fluffy vegan buttercream and easily decorated to be a fun and festive holiday cake!
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 cups cake flour or gluten free 1:1 baking flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups dairy free milk with 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, room temperature
- 1 cup unsweetened applesauce, room temperature
- 1/2 cup vegan white chocolate, melted and cooled to room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 batch vegan buttercream
- Marzipan, cookies, sugar coated cranberries, etc. to decorate
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F and line and flour three 8″ cake pans with parchment paper, oil, and flour.
- Make sure that the vegan white chocolate is melted and is not warm to touch. Prepare the vegan buttermilk by mixing together the dairy free milk and apple cider vinegar. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.
- Add in the vegan buttermilk, unsweetened applesauce, vegan white chocolate, and vanilla extract. Use a rubber spatula to mix the batter until there are no dry streaks of flour left. You can also use a stand mixer here.
- Divide the batter amongst the cake pans evenly. Lightly tap the pans onto the countertop to release any air bubbles.
- Place the cake pans into the oven to bake for 35-36 minutes, or until the tops of the cakes are lightly golden. The toothpick should come out clean.
- Remove from the oven and allow the cakes to cool in the pans for 10 minutes. Then transfer the cakes to a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Once the cakes have completely cooled, you can begin to make the vegan buttercream. Prepare the vegan buttercream frosting according to directions.
- Frost the cake: spread about 3/4-1 cup of frosting onto the first layer, place the second cake layer on top and repeat. Place the third layer on top and frost the cake with the remaining frosting.
- Decorate the cake with marzipan dough, sugared cranberries, mini gingerbread houses, and more.
- Slice and serve!
Keywords: white chocolate cake, white chocolate cake recipe, vegan Christmas cake, vegan white chocolate cake
