Vegan Lemon (Or Vanilla) Pound Cake
Vegan lemon pound cake – this delicious lemon loaf cake is soft, moist and lemony with the classic dense, melt-in-the-mouth texture of a perfect pound cake. You can also use this recipe to make a vegan vanilla pound cake if you prefer!
Servings 8 people
Ingredients
Vegan Lemon Pound Cake:
- 260 g (2 cups + 2 Tbsp) self-raising flour
- ¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 120 g (4 ¼ oz) silken tofu
- 120 ml (½ cup) unsweetened non-dairy milk (soy is best) room temperature
- 2 tablespoon lemon juice
- finely grated zest of 2 lemons (optional)
- 1 tablespoon sunflower oil (or another flavourless oil)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 120 g (½ cup) vegan block butter (NOT the spreadable kind. I use Naturli Vegan Block) softened
- 250 g (1 ¼ cups) caster (superfine) sugar
Lemon Glaze:
- 140 g (1 cup + 2 Tbsp) icing (powdered) sugar sifted
- juice of ½ - 1 lemon (or use 1 ½ - 2 tablespoon milk plus ½ teaspoon vanilla extract)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4. Grease an approx 11.5 x 21.5 cm / 4.5 x 8.5 in 2lb loaf tin and line with baking parchment.
- Sift together the self-raising flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Set aside.
- Place the silken tofu, non-dairy milk, lemon juice, sunflower oil, lemon zest and vanilla extract in a blender and blend until completely smooth. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the softened vegan block butter and caster sugar with an electric mixer until well combined.
- Add half of the wet ingredients to the butter sugar mixture and whisk until smooth, the mixture will look a bit split but that’s ok.
- Add half of the dry ingredients and whisk to combine then whisk in the rest of the wet followed by the rest of the dry. Once you have added all of the flour be careful not to over-beat the batter as that can make the cake tough. Just whisk it until it is smooth then stop.
- Pour the batter into a greased and lined loaf tin and spread it level. Bake the cake for 50-60 minutes until golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. The cake will be flat rather than domed on top.
- Leave it to cool in the tin for ten minutes then carefully turn it out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
- To make the glaze simply stir enough lemon juice into the sifted icing sugar to create a thick but pourable consistency then drizzle it over the top of the cooled cake.
Notes
- For the best results make sure that you follow the recipe closely. As always, I highly recommend weighing your ingredients using the gram measurements (with a digital scale), rather than the cup conversions. Cup measurements are simply not accurate enough for baking and I cannot guarantee the best results if you use them.
- For the best textured cake it is important to use a vegan block butter/margarine to make this cake – the kind that comes in a foil wrapped block, NOT the spreadable kind in a tub which has too high a water content for baking. I use Naturli Vegan Block but Stork, Vitalite or Tormor blocks are also fine (not the tub versions).
- You need to use firm silken tofu, which is the shelf-stable kind, not the fridge kind. In the UK it can usually be found either in the ‘Asian’ section of the supermarket (by the soy sauce), or next to the tinned beans.
- All of your ingredients should be at room temperature, so make sure to take the butter and milk out of the fridge a couple of hours before baking.