By Genevieve
In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to make a couple of recipes featuring fresh local blueberries that I picked up at the market. After adding some of my blueberries to a fruity kale salad, I wanted to use the rest in some kind of baked treat.
When trying to choose a recipe, I went through some of my old saved bookmarks and came across a couple different recipes for peach cakes that I had wanted to make last summer but never got around to. I decided that peaches and blueberries would make a great combination in a cake, so I combined two recipes from different blogs and added my own variations to come up with this vegan peach and blueberry cornmeal cake!
Each of the recipes called for adding a fresh herb to the cake - one used rosemary and the other used basil. I liked the idea of adding another layer of flavour with fresh herbs, and since I had some mint leftover from my salad, I decided to use mint leaves in my cake.
I was nervous that the cake would turn out to be a disaster, but thankfully it turned out just as I was hoping! The cake itself was dense and moist, with a bit of crunchiness from the cornmeal that I really liked. Pretty much every bite was filled with juicy fruit, and I loved the combination of the sweet peaches with the blueberries.
I thought the mint added an interesting dimension too, but if you're not a fan of mint, you could easily leave it out and the cake would be just as delicious! Or you could try substituting the mint with another herb like basil.
If you like cornbread, I think you would love this cake - it's basically like a big piece of cornbread studded with summer fruits that you can eat as a dessert or even as a breakfast cake. I did reduce the amount of sugar because I figured with all the fresh fruit, I wouldn't want the cake itself to be too sweet, but if you have more of a sweet tooth, you might want to increase the sugar to make this more like a dessert.
Hopefully I'll be able to fit in a couple more peach and blueberry recipes before their season ends!
Vegan Peach, Blueberry & Mint Cornmeal Cake
Adapted from Bella Eats and deli-cute-essen
Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups non-dairy milk (I used unsweetened coconut milk beverage)
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 cup light spelt flour
- 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
- 3/4 cup organic cornmeal
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup cane sugar (could use 3/4-1 cup for a slightly sweeter cake)
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup peeled and diced ripe peaches
- 1 cup blueberries
- 1/3 cup fresh mint, julienned (optional)
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350°F and spray a 9 inch cake pan with cooking spray.
Stir together the non-dairy milk and apple cider vinegar and let sit for at least 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk together the dry ingredients (flours through to sugar) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the olive oil, vanilla extract, and the milk-vinegar mixture.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently stir just until the dry ingredients are incorporated. Fold in the peaches, blueberries and mint.
Pour batter into prepared cake pan and bake in the preheated oven for 40-50 minutes, until the top is slightly firm, the edges are starting to pull away from the pan, and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out dry.
Let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and cool completely before slicing.
Makes one 9" cake.
*Note: I stored mine loosely covered in a large cake pan and it stayed good at room temperature for 2-3 days. I don't recommend covering it with saran wrap as the cake will get very mushy.
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