This post is sponsored by Alpro

You read the title of the post right, this is a vegan recipe. For the last few years the demand for vegan recipes has skyrocketed and I have never really felt confident in developing recipes without eggs and dairy, it wasn’t what I knew. Over the last year I have quietly been playing around with vegan baking, trying to teach myself how to use vegan alternatives and create recipes that work and are delicious. To kick off a new occasional series of vegan baking I have also just been named as an ambassador for Alpro and todays recipe is the first recipe developed for our new partnership.

When it comes to vegan baking the idea a lot of people have (myself included at one point) is that you will need all manner of strange ingredients that you’ll need to find online on some random website. Thankfully so much vegan baking is making simple swaps and for this recipe, a lemon poppy seed pound cake, it couldn’t be easier. The cake is made with oil instead of butter and Alpro Plain No Sugars, a plant based alternative to yoghurt, (available from …) and the eggs, well there are no eggs. 

Eggs are a key building block of so much baking, they add fat, they help bind ingredients together and they also help with the rise of a cake. Without them cakes need lots of adjustments to make them work. This cake is thankfully incredibly simple, using the muffin method where the wet ingredients are added to the dry and everything is mixed together. Because this method adds no air through creaming and there are no eggs to help it along, all the leavening is chemical, in this case baking soda. The acid in this recipe, from the lemon juice, also helps the baking soda react and create a nicely textured cake, moist but with a tight tender crumb, the perfect vegan pound cake.

For a lemon cake I want the lemon flavour unadorned, simple. The olive oil used in the recipe adds a subtle flavour but doesn’t overpower the citrus and the Alpro Plain No Sugars adds a little tang, and helps keep the cake moist but because it is made without sugar it also helps keep the cake from becoming overly sweet. For those who are also trying to reduce their levels of saturated fat, because this cake is made with olive oil and Alpro Plain No Sugars it has lower levels of saturated fat than a cake made with butter and the dairy traditionally used in this sort of cake. 

Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cake

250g caster sugar
Zest of 3 lemons
4 tbsp poppy seeds
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
375g plain flour
350ml Alpro Plain No Sugars
150ml olive oil
125ml lemon juice

Lemon Soak
75ml lemon juice
75g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160ºC Fan) and grease a 10-cup capacity bundt pan.

Add the caster sugar and lemon zest to a large bowl and use your fingers to rub together until the sugar resembles wet sand. Rubbing the zest into the sugar helps to bring out the oils from the zest and makes for a more flavourful cake. Add the poppy seeds, baking soda, salt and flour and whisk together until evenly combined. 

Add the Alpro Plain No Sugars and olive oil and whisk together to combine. Juice the lemons and pour 125ml juice into the oil mixture and whisk to combine. Make a well in the dry goods and pour in the liquid ingredients and mix gently together until a thick, smooth cake batter is formed. Scrape the batter into the prepared bundt tin and spread into an even layer. 

Bake in the preheated oven for about 55-60 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Whilst the cake is baking make the soak by adding the lemon juice and sugar to a small saucepan and place over medium heat and cook just until the sugar has dissolved. 

Remove the cake from the oven and cool for 10 minutes before turning the cake out onto a wire rack to cool. When the cake is unmoulded, brush over the syrup until all has been used.  

You can make a glaze or a frosting if you want but I love a pound cake served as it is, served on its own with nothing but a big mug of tea to go with it.