Orange & Almond Cake {Vegan, Gluten & Dairy Free}
I'm sitting here rubbing my hands together because I cannot wait to post about this vegan, gluten & dairy free Orange & Almond Cake. It's the bomb ya'll. Now I sound like a rapper and trust me I am anything but. When I asked on my Facebook & Instagram pages with what types of cake you would like for me to make in an allergy-friendly version I got a few put their hands up and ask for an Orange & Almond Cake. An orange and almond cake is traditionally moist and slightly dense made with whole oranges cooked down and blended to a pulp and mixed into a batter of flours, almond meal and a whole lot of eggs which have been whipped into a creamy batter.
The tartness of the orange permeates the cake which gives this Orange & Almond Cake it's distinctive flavour. It's downright delicious and I found it hard to stop at a little sliver of a piece when I was taste testing it. I had to set rules for myself when I came to the decision to bake 30 cakes. One was that I only had one taste of the cake and the second was that no cakes went to waste. I mean I could go all out and eat each cake till my heart's content but my pants are not going to thank me for it at the end of the month. No siree. So I make sure I have enough that I can fully appreciate the texture and flavour of the cake and leave it at that. Secondly, I am going to try and palm a lot of these cakes off to friends and family because I will freeze some for ourselves but I am not sure how quick we are going to get through 30 cakes.
With my allergy-friendly version of an Orange & Almond Cake, I made a few changes to the original recipe to help make this friendly for those who cannot eat egg, gluten and dairy. I didn't get round to testing a nut-free version as I just didn't have the time but I would love to know if anyone makes a version using sunflower seed flour (ground sunflowers) in place of the almond meal. It would be great to know. The main swap for the cake is the eggs which I ended up using Aquafaba for. If you are scratching your head with confusion about what the heck I am talking about let me break it down for you. (There I go with the rap references again).
Aquafaba is the cooking liquid that comes from cooking bean, chickpeas and legumes. It is the leftover liquid if you cook them yourself or the liquid in the canned beans, chickpeas etc you buy from the supermarket. Don't throw this amazing liquid down the drain. Make sure you save it and follow the instructions I did on the Black Food Bloggers Club of reducing the aquafaba down slightly to better mimic eggs. I found the liquid from my cans of chickpeas to be quite runny and this affected the result of my baked goods (looking at you vegan sponge) too much to put up with. So I stumbled across the Black Food Bloggers post about reducing the aquafaba liquid to help it mimic a egg replacement better. This magix liquid can make merigues and pavlova just like egg whites. Amazing.
Once I had solved the problem of what yo use as an egg replacement in this cake it was fairly straight forward from there with adjusting the other ingredients for a allergy friendly version. I ended making a smaller version of this cake which I baked in a 15cm cake tin as opposed to a 20cm cake tin. The extra mixture that I had leftover I made into muffins which the kids enjoyed. If you don't have a 15cm cake tin then I would wholly reccommend using a 20cm cake tin and forgoing the muffins. It was just somthing I wanted to play around with in the size side of things. No other reason than that.
** Please note: Follow the instructions here on making Aquafaba from a can to replicate eggs.
