This vegan pear and almond cake has simple, clean flavours, and is an antidote to the excess of rich food consumed over Christmas, while still being cake!
It has a very soft texture and is based on French and Italian style apple and pear cakes, which are just as good for breakfast, morning coffee or dessert. For the latter, you could dress it up with vegan vanilla ice cream or fresh fruit such as raspberries, or even sprinkle over some almond liqueur and let it soak in before dusting with icing sugar.
This is a very easy cake to make, which also makes it a good Veganuary option for anyone looking for quick and uncomplicated recipes. You don’t need to peel the pear, and it’s really a case of mixing up the wet ingredients, adding the dry ingredients, and stirring in the fruit.
Sprinkling flaked almonds across the top before baking is optional, but it adds texture and looks pretty.
Vegan Pear and Almond Cake…
Ingredients
- 320 g pear, chopped into roughly 1cm pieces
- 3 tbsp ground golden flaxseed
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 120 ml soya (or other non-dairy) milk
- 60 ml light olive (or other mild tasting) oil
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 200 g sugar (white or a mix of white and brown/light muscovado)
- 100 g ground almonds
- 230 g plain flour
- 2.5 tsp baking powder
- handful of flaked almonds (optional)
- icing sugar to sprinkle (optional)
Method
- Stir 6 tbsp of water into the ground flaxseed and set aside.
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and lightly oil and line the base of a large cake tin or deep flan dish – 10″/26cm is ideal.
- If the pear is very firm, soften the pieces a little first by cooking them in a pan for a few minutes with a tablespoon or two of water and the lemon juice. Otherwise, simply sprinkle the lemon juice over the pear pieces and set aside. They should ideally be quite firm but not turnip-like.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flaxseed mixture, oil, soya milk, and almond and vanilla extracts.
- Add the sugar and whisk until well combined.
- In a separate bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together before adding the flour, with the ground almonds, to the liquid mixture. Stir to combine.
- Lastly, stir through the chopped pear. It will look as if there is more pear than cake mix at this stage – it’s supposed to!
- Transfer the mixture to the baking tin and level it a little. If you are using flaked almonds, sprinkle these across the top.
- Bake for around 45 minutes. The cake should have a deep golden crust with little bumps or gaps where the chunks of pear show through.
- Leave to cool before removing from the tin and sprinkling liberally with icing sugar, if using.
If you would like to receive e-mail alerts when new recipes are published, please see my contact page.
