Vegan Frankfurter Kranz (Crown Cake)
There is no other cake that reminds me so much of my grandparents than German Crown Cake. I guess there is always a piece of crown cake in the fridge of my grandma (or at least with a probability of 80%). But I never ate a piece of crown cake by myself. And to be honest, it never bothered me either, because I would always prefer other cakes (like Zupfkuchen or peaches & cream cake).
But when talking about cake classics, we definitely need to show you a vegan version of the German crown cake. And even if the cake looks elaborate, it's actually very simple. You just need to prepare a sponge cake and a cream made of vegan butter and vanilla pudding. Covering the cake with the creme, hazelnut brittle and candied cherries also takes a little time, but you can do that too. If you have the original cake tin for a crown cake at home, you are very welcome to use it. I used a cake tin for bundt cakes, and it also worked great.
Since the cake should always be cooled down in between, I recommend that you prepare the dough and the butter pudding cream the day before and only layer the cake the next day. Make sure you have enough time to cool down the cake in the fridge if needed. Especially in the summertime, you have to work very quickly cause we don't want the butter to become too soft (or even melting).
Vegan Frankfurter Kranz (Crown Cake)
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp vegan butter (for greasing)
sponge cake
- 450 g (3.5 cups) flour
- 250 g (1.9 cups) sugar
- 500 ml (2 cups) sparkling water
- 100 ml (0.4 cups) vegetable oil (rapeseed or sunflower oil)
- 16 g (0.5 oz) baking powder
- 8 g (0.28 oz) vanilla sugar
pudding buttercream
74 g (2 packages/2.6 oz) vanilla custard powder
1 l (4 cups) plant-based milk
80 g (0.6 cups) white sugar
200 g (0.8 cups) vegan butter (room temperature)
50 g (0.4 cups) icing sugar
200 g (7 oz) redcurrant jelly
decoration
- 15 candied cherries
- 250 g (8.8 oz) hazelnut brittle
Instructions
Sponge cake
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F, circulating air.
- Mix flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and baking powder in a large bowl.
- Add the oil and sparkling water and stir in only briefly.
- Grease a ring cake tin (Ø 28 x 8 cm) with vegan butter and add the dough.
- Bake on medium heat for 40 minutes at 180°C/350°F, circulating air.
- Test with a stick to see if the dough is done and then let the cake cool down completely.
Pudding buttercream
- Prepare the vanilla pudding according to the instructions on the packaging.
- Store the vanilla pudding in the refrigerator to cool down.
- Beat the vegan butter (at room temperature) and the icing sugar with a mixer in a bowl until foamy. Gradually add the pudding until a homogenous mass forms.
- Refrigerate the vegan pudding buttercream in the fridge.
Serving
- Take the cake out of the cake tin and cut the bundt cake horizontally into three equal layers/rings using a cake knife or a cake cutter.
- Spread half of the redcurrant jam on top of the bottom layer and add a layer of pudding buttercream.
- Place the second cake layer on top and proceed in the same way with the second and third layer.
- Coat the complete cake with a thin layer of buttercream but save some buttercream for the tuffs on top of the cake.
- Cover the cake with the hazelnut brittle.
- Place 12 - 15 tuffs on top of the cake. Place the candied cherries on the tuffs.
- Place the cake in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours.
