Emphasis on the word ‘simple’.

This recipe was birthed from scarcity. No eggs or butter in the house, I turned to trusty old Pinterest to find a simple vegan cake recipe and was positively astounded at the difficulty of such a basic task. I didn’t need all the bells and whistles of processed vegan eggs or fake cream cheese. Reluctant to head to the supermarket, I threw what I had together and hoped for the best. Wish granted, this cake turned out miles better than I had expected. For a cake that will satisfy when you’re a pinch or skipping eggs or dairy: this does the trick.

Simple Vegan Lemon Vanilla Blueberry Cake originally written August 2020

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 1 and ½ cups of non-dairy milk (I used vanilla flavoured oat milk)
• ½ cup of lemon juice
• 3 cups of self-raising flour
• 1 and ½ cups of castor sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• ¾ cup vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp lemon zest

For the blueberry filling:

• 2 punnets of fresh or frozen blueberries (roughly 500g)
• ½ cup of castor sugar
• ¼ cup of lemon juice

Method:

1. Add the non-dairy milk and lemon juice to a small bowl, stir and let sit for 5 minutes whilst you measure out the dry ingredients.
2. Preheat the oven to 180 °C/350F and grease two 8-inch circular baking pans. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl and whisk to combine. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the vegetable oil, vanilla extract, lemon zest and non-dairy milk mixture and stir with a rubber spatula until just combined. Be careful not to overmix.
3. Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. Watch carefully as they get to the 20 minute mark, I find that it’s quite easy to burn these cakes if not careful. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before removing from pans. Let cool to room temperature whilst you make the blueberry filling.
4. Throw together the filling ingredients in a medium saucepan and let come to a boil before simmering until thickened and the mixture is the consistency of jam, about 20 minutes. WATCH CAREFULLY, I burnt the blueberries on my first few attempts.
5. To assemble the cake, lay one of the cakes upside-down on your serving platter and spread half of the blueberry mix in an even layer over the cake. Place the other cake upside-down on top of the blueberry layer. Top with the remaining blueberry mix, and any extra fresh fruit you have and you’re ready to go!