Ground rice doesn’t often feature in cakes, but when it does it gives them a soft, grainy texture and a mild, creamy flavour that’s really special. In this easy vegan apple cake with ground rice, it’s used alongside a chopped apple, some ground almonds and a little cinnamon to create the perfect comfort food.
The top is drizzled with water icing (you could do something more artful than the messy decoration on the pictured loaf, of course). Even with the icing, this cake doesn’t contain a huge amount of added sugar – the apple and cinnamon both bring their own natural sweetness, which helps.
It’s also surprisingly low in added fat. In part, this is because ground almonds are relatively high in fat – around 50% – but they contain mainly the ‘good’ monounsaturated kind, and there are plenty of other health benefits from eating almonds.
I have used a red-skinned apple in the pictured cake, to give it a pretty colour, but any dessert apple will do. Apple skin softens well when baked in a cake, and it contains most of the apple’s nutrients, so it’s almost always better to leave it on.
Vegan apple cake with ground rice…
Ingredients
- one medium dessert apple (eg 140 g, whole weight)
- 120 ml oat (or other non-dairy) milk
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 30 g vegan margarine
- 80 g caster sugar
- 90 g plain flour
- 45 g ground rice
- 30 g ground almonds
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda
for the water icing
- 40 g icing (confectioner’s) sugar
method
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and line or lightly oil a standard loaf tin.
- Melt the margarine in a small bowl or jug in the microwave, then add the oat milk, vinegar and vanilla extract and whisk together.
- In a separate bowl, place the flour, ground rice, ground almonds, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Whisk to ensure everything is evenly distributed.
- Core the apple and chop it into small chunks (between a half and one centimetre across).
- Stir the apple into the dried ingredients, then pour in the liquid ingredients and stir gently until there are no pockets of flour remaining.
- Transfer the mixture to the tin. It should be sufficiently runny that you don’t need to level the top. If it seems too thick, add a spoonful more oat milk at the stirring stage.
- Bake for around 40 to 45 minutes, until the cake has risen and has a deep golden top. An inserted skewer should come out clean.
- While the cake is cooling, make the icing by adding a teaspoon of cold water to the icing sugar in a small bowl. Stir until you can see whether it is thin enough for drizzling. If necessary, add more water half a teaspoonful at a time.
- Once the cake has cooled a bit, drizzle the icing over the top using a teaspoon.
- Leave the cake to cool completely and the icing to set before slicing.
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