Lemon Drizzle Cake (vegan)

One of my initial worries about vegan cakes when I first ventured into vegan baking is that they would be really stodgy. This cake is not like that at all. It has a perfect, light, fluffy cake texture. My friends were surprised when I told them it was vegan. I guess it's the lemon juice and the baking powder reacting or something like that. Science.
The only comment I would make is that it wasn't really lemony enough?? So I added more lemon juice to the icing/drizzle.

Serves: 12

Ingredients:
100ml vegetable oil
200g Caster Sugar
275g Self Raising Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
Zest of 1 Lemon
170ml cold water
Juice of 1/2 Lemon

150g icing sugar
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
or
150g caster sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

Method:
Preheat oven to 200C

1. Mix together the vegetable oil and sugar.

2. Sieve (if you can be bothered) in the flour, add the baking powder and zest and stir until combined.

3. Add the water and lemon juice.

4. Cook for 30 minutes or until a skewer/knife comes out clean.


5. Mix together the icing sugar and lemon juice and cover cake when cool. Or: mix together caster sugar and lemon juice (and water if necessary - you don't want it too thin though) and drizzle over while cake is still warm.

Brownies (vegan)

Makes: 12 brownies
Ingredients:
170g self raising flour
3 teaspoons cocoa powder
180g golden caste sugar
1 vanilla pod
200g dairy free dark chocolate
5 tablespoons sunflower/rapeseed/vegetable oil
230ml soya milk

Method:
1) Grease and line a 20cm square baking tin. Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4

2) Melt 150g of the chocolate in whichever way you prefer (microwave stirring regularly/pan on low heat/bowl over simmering water). Leave to cool slightly once all melted

3) Mix/sieve flour and cocoa powder into a bowl. Stir in sugar (+ pinch of salt if you like). Halve the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out seeds. Stir in the oil, soya milk and melted chocolate until combined

4) Roughly chop the remaining chocolate and stir in. Pour mixture into tin and spread evenly. Cook for 20/25 minutes (we always seem to overcook our brownies - so don't put it in for too long!)

The orange is orange zest we had left over from the Jaffa Cakes

5) Leave to cool for five minutes. Turn out onto wire cooling rack and cut into slices. Yum :)

Jaffa Cakes

Louise and I have been trying to eat more/mainly vegan food + with that comes trying some interesting vegan baking recipes! I personally prefer the ones without things like flaxseeds, aquafaba (chickpea water etc) even though I know this is only because I'm not used to them. (Gradually I'll try them out!)

Anyway, here's a vegan Jaffa Cake recipe. They're not very sweet because of the dark chocolate and orange marmalade combination but they look adorable.

Makes: 12 Jaffa Cakes
Ingredients:
100g self-raising flour
80g caster sugar
100ml soya milk
50ml rapeseed/other light and flavourless oil
1tsp vanilla extract

150g dairy-free chocolate
50g dairy-free margarine
zest of 1/2 orange
orange marmalade

Method:
1. Grease a bun tray and heat oven to 180C/gas mark 4
2. Mix together flour and sugar. Add oil, milk and vanilla extract.

3. Drop a spoonful of the mixture into each of the holes in the tray and bake for 8 minutes.

4. Remove from oven and leave to cool for 2 minutes before removing from the tray and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack



5. Melt the chocolate and margarine in a pan on a low heat, stirring constantly. Turn off as soon as the chocolate is all melted (you can add the orange zest here but we forgot and instead sprinkled it on top, which I think looks nice)


6. Spoon a teaspoon of marmalade onto the top of each cooled cake. Cover with chocolate and then refrigerate until solid.