Vegan vanilla cake with icing

Visit to native place, viral fever after the visit, followed by food allergy and workload at office kept me away from cooking, blogging and checking out other blogger's recipes. Made this vegan cake for my husband's niece's b'day this weekend. I came across lots of low fat vegan recipes. As it was for b'day, I did not want to take a chance. So I adapted the recipe from joyofbaking's vanilla cup cake recipe. I substituted 3 large eggs with 3/4 cup apple sauce, butter with nutralite and dairy milk with soymilk. For the icing too, I used nutralite. The cake was perfectly baked, soft, tasty and loved by all.

Here is the recipe as adapted from joyofbaking

Ingredients for the cake
Vegan butter at room temperature: 1/2 cup(113 gms) (I used nutralite)
Granulated white sugar: 2/3 cup (130 grams) 
Apple sauce: 3/4 cup(I used 1 apple to get 3/4 cup apple sauce)
Vanilla extract/essence: 1 tsp
All purpose flour: 1 1/2 cups(195 grams) 
Baking powder: 1 1/2 tsp
Salt: 1/4 tsp
Soy milk: 1/4 cup (60 ml) 

Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and grease the cake pan with vegan butter and dust with flour.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. I used a hand mixer(around 2 minutes) 
3. Add the applesauce and beat well.(around 2 minutes)
4. Beat in the vanilla extract. 
5. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
6. Alternately add the flour mixture and soy milk to the butter-sugar mixture, in three additions.(I did this mixing with hand) 
7. Pour the batter in the cake pan and shake so that the batter is evenly distributed.(As this recipe is originally for cup cake, the batter was quite thick)
8. Bake in the oven for around 25 minutes or until the a fork inserted at the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

Ingredients to make the icing 
Icing sugar: 2 cups (230 grams) 
Vegan butter at room temperature: 1/2 cup (113 grams) Vanilla extract/essence: 1 tsp 
Soy milk: 2 tbsp

Procedure
1. In an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, cream the butter until smooth and well blended. 
2. Add the vanilla extract. With the mixer on low speed, gradually beat in the sugar. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. 
3. Add the milk and beat on high speed until frosting is light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes). Add a little more milk or sugar, if needed. 

Once the cake is completely cooled, frost with icing.

Note: To make applesauce, peel the apple, cut into small pieces, put in a microwave safe bowl, add water until the apple is immersed and microwave for around 8 minutes. Allow it to cool. Remove the apple pieces and grind into a smooth mixture. I made the cake the previous day night and refrigerated it. After making the icing mixture, I kept it in the freezer for around 10 minutes for it to thicken. This way, it was easy to apply the icing on the cake.