VIVA LA VITA

Have you ever made a vegan cake?

Seems like cooking without eggs and butter is almost impossible. Today I took the challenge to make one myself, for the first time. As you would expect, things didn’t go according to plan.

I saw a simple recipe online and I thought it could use a little bit of colour and extra flavour. So I came up with my own version of this basic bundt recipe.

As I started enthusiastically and everything looked pretty and colorful, it all went downhill as I cut the cake. My aim to make a marble pattern failed spectacularly, but I had a good laugh. Some of the old impressionist artist would be probably impressed with my color failure.

I made the cake in a hurry while my little boy slept. Little did I know he will decide to wake up early and cruise around the kitchen like a Boeing 737 landing in Heathrow, trying to catch a smell of the cake from the oven. As soon as it came out he wanted to cut it and spent the next 30 minutes poking the cake in each side. I think I invented possibly 15 new ways to say “you have to wait” in various degrees of irritation.

We had our happy ending at last. The cake was cut, eaten and it was damn delicious. It’s a brilliant recipe you can whip up in 15 minutes and all you need is milk, flour, oil, baking powder and some flavouring. You can easily add vanilla essence instead of amaretto.

After our baking ventures we ended up at a little birthday gathering, topping up our sugar levels and heading home.

Cheers to Sundays high on sugar!

Red Velvet Vegan Bundt Cake with Amaretto

• 1 cup of vegetable milk (I used rice milk)
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 2 tsp of pudding powder
• 1.5 or 2 cups of flour
• red food colouring
• 5 tbs amaretto liqueur
• 3 tbs icing sugar
• 2 tbs coconut oil
• blueberries (optional)

(note: this recipe refers to cups, but not as in american measurement. I actually used a regular coffee cup to measure everything. You will be find with standard size coffee cup if you use the same amounts as directed above)

Mix your rice milk (or any other) with oil, add baking powder, pudding powder, amaretto liquer and mix well. Slowly add the flour, until you reach a smooth consistency.

I separated the batter into three bowls and added different amounts of red colouring to each, hoping to create a little marble effect, which is not very visible due to the nature of the dough. So you can skip this step completely and use the colour for the whole cake, or leave it out completely.

Throw in your blueberries and pour into an oiled bundt form. Pop it into oven for 30 minutes at 180C and keep checking to make sure it doesn’t burn.

Once cooled off, you can flip it down and make your glaze. Melt coconut oil, add sugar and food colouring (I added a bit of amaretto here too). Add more sugar if needed to make it less runny. Spread at the top of your cake.

Decorate as you please, I used just dark chocolate shavings.

Enjoy!

Other Recipes

Healthy Banana Bread

Braided Nutella Star Cake

Honey Baked Peaches with Amaretto

Nutella Cheesecake

Spring Salad with Exotic Fruits