Vegan Baking: attempt #2

I'll tell you now: Vegan Baking: attempt #2 is a success story. At last! The impending visit of Mama Hibbs brought out all the strongest elements of the hostess in me, so I not only cleaned the house, changed the sheets and did the laundry, but I made a 'meal plan', and I baked a cake. And oh, what a cake. One of my worries about mum's visit was that cooking for someone else whilst being a vegan would be pretty boring for the other person. As I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons I chose to do this while Tom was away, was because I felt I'd be 'inflicting' veganism on the other half. But this weekend demonstrated that it really doesn't have to be like that.

So - the cake. It was an unusual texture - very dense, and maybe a bit more like a very, very set chocolate mousse, or light brownie, than traditional cake. The ingredients required are pretty basic - I mean, generally speaking, soya milk is a little unusual, but for vegans, it's fairly straightforward stuff. We ended up eating it cool as a snack, or warmed with Swedish Glace (a lovely vegan ice cream) - a bit of warmed peanut butter also made a really nice sauce.



A few notes - make sure the oven isn't too hot. Mine was, for a while, and I was very confused as to why there was a crisp cake shell full of uncooked cake batter. I was on the phone to Tom at the time who, from the other side of the atlantic, managed to save the baking. Also, the mixture is much runnier than usual cake mix. I'm not sure why this is, but my guess is that it's because regular cake mix uses butter, which doesn't liquidise until it melts in the oven, whereas the vegan cake uses soya milk, which is (obviously) already runny. (recipe from cookingforvegans.co.uk)

250g/8oz plain flour
50g/2oz cocoa
250g/8oz caster sugar
125g/4oz vegan margarine
300ml/½ pint soya milk
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda


Preheat the oven to 170°C (possibly 180°C if not using a fan oven). Line the baking tin with greaseproof paper.
Sieve the flour and cocoa into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and mix together.
In a saucepan, melt the margarine and golden syrup and add most of the milk, keeping back about 4 tablespoons' worth.
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with the remaining milk and stir into the mixture. Place in the oven and bake for 35 minutes.
Topping suggestion: chocolate icing (mix icing sugar, cocoa and a small amount of water) and vegan chocolate sprinkles (e.g. Supercook).