Who can enjoy their tea or coffee without a pillowy soft and moist sponge cake? This delicious chickpea sponge is from Hope Mdakane’s winning vegan entremet recipe from The Festive Vegan & Plant Powered Show and SA Young Chefs Plant-Based competition.
What You’ll Need:
- 60 g Silken Tofu (firm)
- 5 g Lemon Juice
- 20 g Almond Milk
- 30 g Coconut Oil
- 250 g Apple Sauce
- 35 g Blackstrap Molasses
- 100 g Chickpea Flour
- 20 g Cornflour
How to Make:
- Mix tofu, lemon juice and almond milk in a blender and blend until smooth to create a crème fraiche.
- Melt the coconut oil over a bain-marie and add in the crème fraiche.
- In a mixer, whisk the apple sauce and molasses until completely combined.
- Fold in the sieved flour and cornflour.
- Fold in the crème fraiche.
- Bake at 160 ̊C for about 20 to 25 minutes or until golden-brown on top and set aside. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
Tips:
- Don’t open the oven too soon or too much during baking.
- Alternate the milk and flour mixtures as you’re combining your cake mix. This helps to avoid the mixture splitting and leaving you with a dense cake at the end.
- Make sure you beat your sponge batter long enough so it’s fluffy and full of air. This is an essential step to ensuring your vegan cake is pillowy soft.
- To make this a chocolate sponge, just replace 50g of flour with cocoa powder and add in ½ tsp of espresso powder.
- For a citrus cake, just add in the zest of 2 fruits right at the beginning stage.
- …or dot in a few fresh raspberries and flaked almonds into the cake mixture before baking!
To watch Hope demo his winning recipe from the show: Vegan dark chocolate entremets with honeycomb, peach and chocolate mint compote and salted caramel ice cream – click here!
