Vegan Napoleon cake and Couchsurfing birthday party

When you are far away from home, it's hard to feel lonely. How come? Because of CouchSurfing!

I have been on CouchSurfing since 2007, I have hosted people from all over the world, I have been hosted in three continents and two islands. And I have always had one rule about it: if you are a guest, please, share a nice dinner (breakfast, lunch, etc.) with your host/hostess. So as soon as I started traveling and using CS, I've cooked a lot of vegan meals for my vegan/vegetarian/omnivore hosts - starting with the very first soy goulash in Helsinki (2007).

Now my obsession with food and CouchSurfing went even further and I am using this platform not only for traveling and meeting people, but also for sharing food. That's probably the easiest way to travel the world and try foods from all the planet Earth without even stepping outside.

CouchSurfing goes well with birthday parties!

While spending my spring of 2015 in Amsterdam (Netherlands), I met a lot of amazing couchsurfers and shared some nice meals together. Even my birthday party was related - almost all my guests were couchsurfers. And of course the food was vegan - we ate in the friendliest squat in A'dam - Joe's Garage. Every Monday and Thursday they serve three course vegan meal for only 4€. That's probably the cheapest you can get in whole city. 

Main course @Joe's Garage: sweet couscous with tahini sauce, salad and grilled veggies.

Every year I cook a vegan cake for my birthday. This year, however, I did not have any proper tools and equipment for cooking or making a raw nut cake. So I came up with a solution - "Napoleon" cake. You don't even need an oven to make layers for this cake!

Vegan "Napoleon" cake, yumm!

The recipe:

BATTER

3 cups of flour

200 g vegan margarine

3/4 cup of soymilk

a pinch of salt

CREAM:

0,5 l soymilk

1 cup of sugar

2 spoons of starch

250 g vegan margarine

vanilla (optional)

Preparation:

Mix all the ingredients for the batter. Knead it well and put in the fridge for an hour. Then separate it into 6-7 parts and roll each into a round sheet, ~2 mm thin. All the sheets must be the same size, so cut off extra batter from edges.

Heat a big pan, do not add any oil. When it's heated, add one sheet of batter and bake it. Pop the bubbles if you see any. Turn it around. It's done in a couple of minutes, so be careful and don't burn it!

All the leftovers cut from the sheets should also be baked. Then when it gets colder, crush it to crumbles.
Prepare the cream.

Mix the soymilk, sugar and starch. Bring it to boiling temperature while constantly stirring. Boil it till the mass becomes creamy. Turn the heat off and let it cool down. Add the margarine and whip it well.

Make the cake by spreading cream over the layers. Add more cream on top layer and sprinkle with crumbles.

Allow the layers to get softer. It's better to put something a little heavy on top of the cake and keep in in the fridge during the night.