
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved baking. I never made anything terribly complicated but I used to love making scones and biscuits with my mum when I was younger and trying recipes on my own as I got older. Unfortunately the transition to vegan baking hasn’t been so easy.
Even though my mum doesn't follow a plant based diet, she has taken on the
challenge of mastering vegan baking on my behalf and is doing really well. She’s
made some amazing cakes over the last few years from several different recipes
to figure out which works best because there are so many different ones to choose from. That’s another thing about vegan baking,
whereas most normal cake recipes include flour, butter, sugar, and eggs,
with vegan baking it sometimes feels like you can throw any combination of
ingredients into a bowl and somehow come out with a cake.
Because vegans don't eat butter or eggs, people much
smarter than me have figured out a seemingly endless list of alternatives to
use in recipes. Unfortunately this often changes the whole composition of the
recipe so you end up having to buy eleven ingredients to bake instead of four. Off
the top of my head, some of the ingredients I’ve bought in the past as
alternatives that I never needed for traditional baking have included apple
sauce (I didn’t even know this was a thing), golden syrup, agave syrup,
sunflower oil, and even diet coke.
Don’t get me wrong, when you follow these recipes
accurately, nine times out of ten you end up with amazing food. For a charity
bake sale last year a friend and I baked the most incredible gluten free vegan
peanut butter brownies which were nicer than any brownies I'd ever has with the
traditional ingredients. However the downside was that it did cost us about a tenner
to make enough brownie mix to barely even fill the tin.
So I have cheated and adapted a really simple cake recipe to make an even simpler vegan cake recipe. They're not fancy but it's a perfect go to recipe if you want a quick pick me up with ingredients you probably already have in the house.
Ingredients
Cakes
100g dairy free margarine
100g caster sugar
75g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
1 tsp of baking powder
½ cup of mashed banana
Butter Icing
75g icing sugar
25g cocoa powder
75g dairy free margarine
Raspberries for decoration
Butter Icing
75g icing sugar
25g cocoa powder
75g dairy free margarine
Raspberries for decoration
1. Cream
the margarine and sugar together in a mixing bowl until combined.
2. Mix the dry ingredients and then add half to the mixing bowl with half of the mashed banana and whisk.
2. Mix the dry ingredients and then add half to the mixing bowl with half of the mashed banana and whisk.
3. Repeat
this step for the other half of the banana and dry ingredients.
4. Spoon
the mixture into 12 cupcake cases and cook at 180c for 20-25 minutes.

In terms of icing the cakes, there are a few options depending on how lazy you want to be. You can whisk icing sugar and cocoa powder with dairy free margarine to make butter icing and and pipe it onto the cakes, which is what I chose to do this time with a raspberry on top for a bit more aesthetic appeal. However, usually I just buy a tub of Betty Crocker's chocolate fudge icing and smother them haphazardly with that
instead. The one bad thing about that method is that you’re then left with a
pretty full tub of icing and if you’re anything like me you’ll use that as an
excuse to make cakes every four days for the next two weeks. But at least you
will always have cake!
these look amazing!! I need to try these! ��
ReplyDeleteYou definitely should! They're so easy and they taste amazing
DeleteSo, I am super obsessed with vegan desserts and you have me sold on these! Normally I use black beans or avocados in my recipes but I don't think I've used banana as a substitute before. I definitely want to try them but let's be honest, I just want to eat all the yummy icing!
ReplyDelete-GG
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Oooh I've never tried black beans of avocado so I'll have to try those out, amazes me how many things you can use as substitutes in vegan baking!
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