Vegan Ginger Loaf Cake

Okay, here's the story...

I was at a food festival in Sutton Coldfield looking at the different foods. I'm not going to lie to you but me being at a food festival is about as useful as a bicycle is the a fish. I have this thing about trying foods that are laid out on plates like that with little toothpics in them. I physically cannot bring myself to eat them so I will either have to buy the whole thing and take it home to try or, better yet, take someone with me whom I trust to tell me how something tastes.

My mother tasted this vegan ginger cake. I noticed it had a strangely crumbly texture and was quite browned for a cake. It wasn't a normal cake and so, I would need to do some work in thinking about what went into the cake without being too obvious that I was trying to recreate it. I would've tagged the original company but I am so sorry that I genuinely cannot remember who they were.

But, be that as it may, I think I got it right!

Let's take a look at how it was made...

Vegan Ginger Loaf Cake

Ingredients:

• 150g Light Brown Sugar
• 50g Dark Brown Muscovado Sugar
• 200g Vegan Butter
• 2x Tbsp Powdered Ginger
• 1x Tsp Cinnamon
• 2x Tsp Vanilla Essence
• 25g Golden Syrup
• 2x Tbsp Apple Sauce
• 1x Tsp Baking Powder
• 200g Self Raising Flour

How To:

1. Preheat your oven to 150/C and line a loaf tin with baking paper - alternatively you can use some of your vegan butter to grease it up, because of the way this dough is going to go there won't be much chance of the sides sticking to the tin
2. Cream together the butter and both sugars to begin with until they are fully combined
3. Then add the vanilla, ginger and cinnamon and mix again until combined
4. Add in the apple sauce and the syrup and mix it one more time until you have a sludgy kind of mixture. I would recommend setting your electric mixer on a high setting so that you don't end up with lumps of apple or syrup (or both) in your batter
5. Add the flour and the baking powder and mix again - this should now form a mixture that is thicker than a usual cake batter. It'll look a bit stodgy but I assure you, this is what you want
6. Now, put your batter in the loaf tin and even it out from both sides so that everything is nice and level
7. Poke a couple of holes in the top to let air out
8. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes, checking as you go to make sure the inside of the cake is firming up properly. Remember, this is a low heat for a long time
9. When you've got it out of the oven leave it to cool and firm up, then transfer it to a plate - don't you dare put this cake in the fridge it will go solid and gross
10. You now have a really nicely spiced, moist and crumbly ginger loaf cake!

Conclusion

Working out how to make this cake took me longer than I'd like to admit and it almost didn't work. It's a bit of a mess because everything gets sticky because of the syrup. If you want to make it non-vegan then you can swap out the apple sauce for eggs and the syrup for honey. Do I have my doubts that the cake at the stall was actually vegan? Yes I do. Honey is not vegan and there is a clear difference when using honey and when using syrup. Syrup will produce a tighter texture, you need less syrup than honey. Honey will produce a texture akin more to gingerbread - it will harden up faster. I have my doubts but I am going to keep that to myself.

Slicing up the loaf cake is quite difficult though so you want to make sure it's completely cooled before you do that. You are probably now going to ask me how I know and that's because I didn't wait for it to fully cool. It was halfway there and well, it's crumbly so yeah...it crumbled.

Thanks for reading!