This yummy vegan ginger loaf is a real winner because it’s super moist. It’s always great to come across a recipe that just needs a bit of improvement to make it really good. I find that generally recipes, vegan ones too, are nearly always too sweet or made exclusively with white flour. Whilst a bit of a sweet hit is good – it’s better to incorporate whole grains to keep it reasonably healthy, This recipe achieves that by reducing the sugar content, and subsituting more than half the white flour with wholemeal.
Molasses has a lot of extra nutrients and chia and flax boosts omega 3’s. Adding in a good percentage of wholemeal flour plus aqua faba makes this pretty healthy, without compromising at all on taste.
A bonus is there’s no really fiddly techniques to master. It’s just weigh it and mix it, pour it, cook it!
I find that most recipes are a bit timid with the quantities of spices. As in this case I nearly always end up increasing them.
This yummy vegan ginger loaf can also be served warmed up with vegan vanilla ice-cream. I like Swedish Glace the best. Or even a bit of Alpro soya cream. Vegan mascarponi would be a hit too.
Vegan Ginger Loaf
Equipment
- 1 2 lb standard loaf tin
- 1 set of digital scales
- 1 electric hand whisk you can use a hand whisk but electric is much easier.
- 1 set of measuring spoons
- 1 wire cooling tray
- 1 spatula
Ingredients
- 100 g white self-raising flour
- 130 g wholemeal self-raising flour
- 15 g flax seeds ground
- 15 g chia seeds ground
- 1 teasp bicarbonate of soda baking soda
- 3 ½ teasps ground ginger
- 1 teasp cinnamon
- 1 teasp mixed spice
- ÂĽ teasp nutmeg
- ⅛ teasp ground star anise – approx. one whole star anise
- a pinch salt
- 125 g chopped stem or candied ginger - optional
- 100 g vegan block butter
- 100 g golden syrup
- 100 g treacle/molasses
- 100 g dark brown soft sugar
- 220 g unsweetened oat/non-dairy milk
- 30 g soya cream
- 50 g aqua faba
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan.
- Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line the bottom with greaseproof paper.
- Weigh out the chia and flax seeds into your grinder
- Finely mill the chia and flax seeds.
- Mix together the flours, ground chia & flax seeds, bicarbonate of soda, ginger, cinnamon, mixed spice, nutmeg, star anise and salt in a large bowl.
- Melt your aqua faba if it’s frozen – and then whip well until it’s 10 times the volume and has stiffish white peaks – set to one side.
- If the ginger is not already chopped, chop finely
- If you are adding the crystallised or stem ginger, stir two-thirds of it into the dry ingredients, saving the rest to sprinkle over the top of the cake. It helps to keep it separate if you dust the ginger with some of the flour mixture.
- Place the vegan butter, golden syrup, treacle/molasses and brown sugar in a saucepan
- put over a very low heat, stirring until melted then whisk in the milk.
- Pour the butter mixture into the dry ingredients begin mixing with the electric whisk on a lowish speed.
- After a bit of mixing add in the whipped aqua faba and continue mixing. until no dry lumps remain.
- The batter will be quite liquid.
- Pour the batter into the loaf tin and scatter over the rest of the ginger.
- Bake for about 60 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin for about 30 minutes then carefully turn it out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
