Vegan coffee walnut cake
It’s almost the weekend again, yay! I am looking forward to this one immensely given that the last one did not feel like a weekend at all. We put the final coat of paint on the guest bedroom’s walls last night and the room looks fantastic this morning. Once our guests leave, we will paint the skirting boards and the radiator (like the walls, it’s been also painted lilac!! by the previous owners) and then on to the fun stuff – picking a light, furniture, soft furnishings, maybe a couple of plants that will endure my gardening anti-talent 😉 .
After we are done with this room, we will take a bit of a breather and then move onto finishing the study. At the moment, only half of the wallpaper has been stripped off and the other half of that toxic stuff is still waiting for us. Meh, it’s easily one of the least enjoyable jobs, but it is easy to do, so we might as well do that and pay for jobs we are not able to take care ourselves – like our roof needs some TLC apparently! Oh well, that’s the trade-off for the Victorian charm.
I made mine a triple-layer because I like BIG cakes with lots of buttercream(!), but if you only have two tins you could either bake two cakes first then the third afterwards, or else make just 2 larger cakes and either use them as they are, or slice them in half to make 4 thinner layers, (oh the decadence!).
This is just the sort of showstopper to casually bring in to the office to share with anyone who has passed comment on your veganism recently, (“so do you just eat a lot of salad then?” – you know the ones!).
It was Duncan’s birthday earlier this month, but as it coincided with us moving house, I did not manage to bake him a cake – not that he is ever deprived of cakes in this house, mind you! So I’ve decided to put it right and made one of his favourites – vegan coffee and walnut cake.
It’s a small cake rather than a full-blown birthday layer cake as I am really busy today again getting the house ready for our guests, washing, cleaning and pottering. But he does not mind as we’ve been pigging out a bit lately and I also heard from my brother that my mom is sending us truckloads of vegan mazurek (traditional Polish Easter cake, which is essentially a shortbread base deep-filled with a variety of fillings) so there will be lots of sweet stuff to get through. What a chore 😛 !
PS: If you make my vegan coffee walnut cake, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram as @lazycatkitchen and use the #lazycatkitchen hashtag. I love seeing your takes on my recipes!
INGREDIENTS
FOR THE ICING
METHOD
After we are done with this room, we will take a bit of a breather and then move onto finishing the study. At the moment, only half of the wallpaper has been stripped off and the other half of that toxic stuff is still waiting for us. Meh, it’s easily one of the least enjoyable jobs, but it is easy to do, so we might as well do that and pay for jobs we are not able to take care ourselves – like our roof needs some TLC apparently! Oh well, that’s the trade-off for the Victorian charm.
I made mine a triple-layer because I like BIG cakes with lots of buttercream(!), but if you only have two tins you could either bake two cakes first then the third afterwards, or else make just 2 larger cakes and either use them as they are, or slice them in half to make 4 thinner layers, (oh the decadence!).
This is just the sort of showstopper to casually bring in to the office to share with anyone who has passed comment on your veganism recently, (“so do you just eat a lot of salad then?” – you know the ones!).
It was Duncan’s birthday earlier this month, but as it coincided with us moving house, I did not manage to bake him a cake – not that he is ever deprived of cakes in this house, mind you! So I’ve decided to put it right and made one of his favourites – vegan coffee and walnut cake.
It’s a small cake rather than a full-blown birthday layer cake as I am really busy today again getting the house ready for our guests, washing, cleaning and pottering. But he does not mind as we’ve been pigging out a bit lately and I also heard from my brother that my mom is sending us truckloads of vegan mazurek (traditional Polish Easter cake, which is essentially a shortbread base deep-filled with a variety of fillings) so there will be lots of sweet stuff to get through. What a chore 😛 !
PS: If you make my vegan coffee walnut cake, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram as @lazycatkitchen and use the #lazycatkitchen hashtag. I love seeing your takes on my recipes!
INGREDIENTS
- 140 ml soya (or other non-dairy) milk
- 1 tsp cider vinegar
- 2 tsp instant coffee granules
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 135 g light muscovado sugar
- 75 ml light olive (or other mild tasting) oil
- 1 tbsp ground flaxseed
- 150 g white self-raising flour
- 50 g wholemeal self-raising flour
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 120 g walnuts
FOR THE ICING
- 165 g icing sugar
- 1 tsp instant coffee granules
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 25 g vegan margarine
- 1 tsp soya (or other non-dairy) milk
METHOD
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and lighly oil or line suitable tin – for example, a standard 2 lb loaf tin.
- In a small bowl or cup, mix the ground flaxseed with 2 tbsp water. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk the vinegar into the soya milk. It will thicken as it curdles.
- Dissolve the coffee in 2 tsp boiling water and add this, with the vanilla extract, to the milk mixture.
- Then whisk into this mixture the light muscovado sugar, oil and flaxseed.
- Set aside around a quarter of the walnuts. Use a food processor or blender to grind the rest of the walnuts briefly so that you have a mixture of finely ground nuts and some bigger pieces. You can, of course, do this by hand but it will take longer.
- Mix the flours and baking soda together and sift these into the liquid mixture. Stir until combined, then add the roughly gound nuts and continue stirring until they are evenly distributed.
- Transfer the mixture to the cake tin. It will be quite runny, so you won’t need to even the top much if at all.
- Bake for at least 35 minutes (a shallower cake in a round or square tin may take slightly less time) until it is well risen and springs back when you press the surface.
- To make the icing, simply mix the margarine into the icing sugar with a fork. Dissolve the coffee in 1 tsp of boiling water. Add this along with the vanilla and beat until smooth. You may need to add slightly more or less than 1 tsp of milk to achieve a medium soft ‘buttercream’ icing that holds its shape.
- Once the cake is completely cool, spread the icing over the top and decorate with the remaining walnuts.
