Vegan Pumpkin Spice Latte Cake
Vegan pumpkin spice latte cake – this easy vegan pumpkin sheet cake topped with fluffy coffee buttercream is dreamily soft, moist and delicious. It is full of warming Fall flavours and is a perfect cake for celebrations.
Servings 16 people
Ingredients
Cake:
- 370 g (3 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
- 175 g (1 cup) light brown soft sugar
- 130 g (⅔ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
- 2 ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 3 ½ teaspoon pumpkin spice (see post above for instructions to make your own)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 425 g (one 15 oz can) pumpkin puree (see post above for instructions to make your own)
- 160 ml (⅔ cup) neutral oil (I use sunflower)
- 135 ml (½ cup + 1 Tbsp) unsweetened non-dairy milk
- 1 ½ teaspoon cider or white wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Buttercream:
- 175 g (¾ cup) vegan block butter (NOT the spreadable kind. I use Naturli Vegan Block) softened
- 2 tablespoon instant espresso powder
- 250 g (2 cups) icing (powdered) sugar sifted (plus extra if needed)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/160° fan/350°F/gas mark 4. Grease a 23 x 33 cm / 9 x 13 inch rectangular cake tin and line it with baking parchment.
- Whisk together the plain flour, light brown soft sugar, caster sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, pumpkin spice and salt in a large mixing bowl.
- Add the pumpkin puree, sunflower oil, non-dairy milk, vinegar and vanilla extract and whisk gently until no dry lumps remain but be careful not to over-mix.
- Transfer the batter to the prepared tin and spread it level. Bake for about 25 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs but no wet batter.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then carefully lift it out onto a wire rack and leave it to cool completely before icing it.
- To make the coffee buttercream, place the softened vegan block butter and instant espresso powder in a bowl and whisk until smooth.
- Add the sifted icing sugar and vanilla extract and whisk on a high speed for a good few minutes until the buttercream is very light and fluffy and the espresso powder has dissolved.
- If it is too thick you can whisk in a little non-dairy milk, ½ teaspoon at a time. And if it is too soft you can either whisk in more sifted icing sugar or pop it in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up a bit.
- Spread the buttercream over the cake, decorate as you like and serve.
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.
- If you are using tinned/canned pumpkin puree, make sure that it is 100% pumpkin, NOT pumpkin pie filling.
- The buttercream is quite soft and may get a bit melty if it is warm out. If you want to make a more stable buttercream you can swap 50g of the vegan butter for vegetable shortening (such as Trex).
- For the buttercream, if you don’t have any instant espresso powder you can use instant coffee granules instead, but you will need to mix them with 2 teaspoon non-dairy milk to dissolve them before adding to the butter.