Vegan Mandarin Poppy Seed Cake
As you may already know, I don’t bake all that often and when I do, I like to keep it as simple as possible. My mum is actually an amazing cook who is best at making desserts ( a little like me). She made almost all the desserts at our wedding and bought a few others and they were honestly everyone’s favourite part. Believe it or not, mum hates cooking. I find that so strange for someone that is so good at it, but she thinks its a huge chore and it does stress her. I think that is where my fear of baking comes from; watching mum stress over her pastries and cakes not rising enough or burning at the edges or just flopping all together. I am not a perfectionist by any means. I subscribe to the idea of “if it’s good enough, it’s fine” and I don’t obsess about the details. Baking to me seems like this highly elaborate task that needs precision and skill otherwise it will just all fall apart, totally why I will choose making a raw dessert over baking any day and also why my non perfectionist personality does not like baking. I know so many people find baking to be the easiest form of cooking there is, but to me… it’s scary! Having said all that I find vegan baking a little more forgiving and just easier in general. You don’t have to worry about your butter being the right temperature or about whisking your eggs to the perfect texture, you just sort of throw it all in together and hope for the best. Also I think most people don’t expect a vegan baked dessert to taste the same so the expectations are lower and that helps too!
This cake probably does not rise as much as a normal cake would but cooks perfectly well and tastes delicious. It is layered with a home made strawberry chia jam, the link for the recipe is here https://talidavoinea.au/strawberry-chia-jam/I also tried a really cool technique for the mandarin and it worked great! Its quite a small cake, so I wish I would have put in the effort to bake another one and make a double cake. It probably would have turned out more impressive looking, but at the same time, there is only the two of us to feed and when we don’t have friends to share my desserts with, I do sometimes end up with a few left overs that I don’t know what to do with. Feel free to double the recipe and create a double cake if you have more mouths to feed. It would look so good! I have recently been contemplating seeing if I can give some of my extra blogging food away to homeless soup kitchens or something when appropriate but we shall see!
Hope you enjoy the recipe!
| Vegan Mandarin Poppy Seed Cake | Print |
- 1¾ cup wholemeal spelt flour
- ½ cup coconut sugar
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 1½ TBSP poppy seeds
- 1 small - medium mandarin
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ cup + 1 TBSP grapeseed oil
- ⅓ cup almond milk
- Strawberry Chia Jam (recipe link in description)
- Coconut yogurt
- Mixed berries and mandarin slices as garnish
- Begin by boiling your whole mandarin in a pot of water for 45 minutes - 1 hour
- Sift your spelt flour, baking soda, baking powder, coconut sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl
- In a separate bowl mix together your almond milk, grapeseed oil and vanilla
- Once your mandarin is done boiling, place your mandarin in a blender and blend until it turns into a smooth paste - skin and all. Do not worry about mandarin seeds, they don't have an effect.
- Add your mandarin puree to your bowl with wet ingredients and mix together
- Pour your wet ingredients over your dry ingredients and mix until well incorporated
- Add your poppy seeds and mix through
- Pour your cake batter into a lightly greased small cake tin and bake at 175 C for 30 - 35 minutes
- Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool completely before slicing in half and spreading a thick layer of strawberry chia jam in between the two layers
- Top with coconut yogurt and garnish with mixed berries and mandarin slices to serve
