One of my friends, Mipa, had her birthday this past week. Mipa is the owner of Plant, a vegan eatery in Itaewon (check out her blog here). She makes uh-mazing vegan cakes and desserts and food (I mean, you can check out my frequent visits on my instagram... or posts here, here and here), but... well, you can't make your own birthday cake. So I decided to go into my first attempt at vegan cake-making. The only other vegan things I've made were either salads (um... yeah, that was hard), and a batch of vegan cookies (surprisingly not bad). A cake though... for a legit vegan baker... was another story.
But, call me determined (or stubborn, if you wanna call it what it is), I was gonna do it. So I went online to find a recipe that I liked. Now, I'm not a vegan, but I eat vegan about 80% of the time, and vegetarian 95% of the time, so I had most of the ingredients on hand already for this amazing cake - Vegan carrot cake with cream "cheese" frosting. However, warning to those of you in Korea: many of these ingredients aren't always available here, so make sure you head to iherb or a foreign market to get the items at a reasonable price.)
The cake turned out surprisingly well, and the frosting really covered up any mistakes I had! I finished it off by taking the top I cut from the cake, crumbling it by baking it on high heat in the oven. Thankfully, she liked the cake! I'm so glad that I was able to do something for this good friend of mine. Birthdays are absolutely one of my favorite things to bake for.
(Above: pic credit to Alien's Day Out's instagram)
Oh, and to add - we had dinner at Wang Thai in Itaewon. Seriously, I have heard nothing but good things about this restaurant and I wasn't disappointed. I ordered the Pad See Ew and the portion was so generous, noodles cooked to perfection, and the vegetables were still crunchy. I hate it when veggies have been cooked to the death, but this place made it so well!
They were absolutely the nicest staff I've come across in Seoul. They saw that we were celebrating a cake and they brought out the cake with plates and utensils right after they'd cleared our table from our amazing meal. They even brought us some coconut tapioca drinks for dessert, and packed up extra cake for us when they saw that we had some left over. LOVE this place, and will be heading back soon to try their other entrees.
To head to Wang Thai, go to Itaewon Station (line 6), Exit 1. Walk straight, passing the Hamilton hotel, until you reach the Young Hwa building. Wang Thai is on the 3rd floor. If you see Korea Exchange Bank, you've gone too far! Reservations at 02-749-2746 or find them at this address: Seoul-si Yongsan-gu Itaewo-ro 151.
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