Line a square 8-inch by 8-inch baking pan with a criss-cross of parchment paper. Sometimes I grease the pan a bit first to help the parchment stick.
If your butter is coming straight out of the refrigerator, shop the butter roughly and put in a pyrex measuring cup and soften in a microwave for 30 seconds. You only want to soften it, not melt it. Alternatively you can let it sit to soften on the counter-top for 2-3 hours.
NOTE: In some dairy-free baking, another prep step might be that you add the ACV to milk to allow it to curdle and then add that to the batter. But NOT in this recipe. First of all, there is no milk. Second, the ACV works just fine with the baking powder and baking soda in the batter.
Make the Cake
Of the wet ingredients, add the butter and sugar to the large mixing bowl. (Yes, I consider the sugar wet even though it's dry). Using a stand-mixer (or hand-mixer (that's what I use!), cream the butter and sugar completely. This creaming is probably the most important step in a vanilla cake, other than the choice of vanilla.
Next, EXCEPT for the water, add all the rest of the wet ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar mixture and blend completely. Hold back with the water; you'll need to use it to help add in the dry ingredients.
Now, incorporate all the dry ingredients into the medium mixing bowl.
NEXT, another important moment in your cake's life, haha.
Pour the dry ingredients and the water into the batter in three batches, blending between each addition set.
Like this, pour in ⅓ of the water, pour in one third of the dry mixture - and blend it up. Repeat two more times.
Once the batter is fully incorporated, pour it into the parchment-lined pan and bake for 30 minutes or until a tester comes out clean and top edges are brown (not dark brown).
Let the cake cool in the pan 15 minutes. Then tug on the parchment and pull it out and let it cool on a rack before your frost.
Make the Ganache Frosting
Microwave the chocolate chips in a pyrex measuring cup for 60 seconds. Stir immediately to help all the chips melt.
Add in the coconut cream, and stir until creamy. If the mixture is lumpy - perhaps the coconut cream isn't entirely melted, warm in gently in a water bath on the stove.
Depending on how sweet your chocolate chips were, taste-test here, and add a few tsps of maple syrup if you want a sweeter flavor.
Put the cake on a plate, and frost.
Set the frosted cake in the refrigerator if you want to be able to clean-cut slices. After about 30 minutes, heat a sharp knife in a post of boiling water. Wipe it dry, cut the cake and repeat until all slices are cleaning cut.
To Make Cupcakes
Follow cake making instructions exactly, but instead of pouring batter into an 8x8-inch pan, pour into paper lined cupcake tin. You can get either 8-12 cupcakes depending on high you fill them.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cool before frosting them.
You can frost with this chocolate frosting or your favorite vanilla frosting. The vanilla cream cheese vegan frosting I used is a recipe in my new book to come out in November 2019.
To replicate my halloween cupcakes here, pipe with a large french tip, approaching the cupcake from above, pressing on frosting and pulling straight up. Don't swirl the tip.
Spray the very top with gold dust to create "eyeshadow" for the creature. Pop on eyes!