Vegan Gluten Free Christmas Cake
Although I do not celebrate Christmas, I found myself making a last minute decision to use whatever ingredients were already in the kitchen to bake this gluten-free, vegan cake. I thought I'd share the recipe since I like the results and will definitely repeat this recipe because the taste is comparable with that of the original version of the traditional West Indian fruit cake, used for Caribbean weddings and Christmas gatherings.
Things you need to make vegan gluten-free Christmas cake
- 3/4 cups fruit. I only had raisins on hand and came up with the idea for 2 other 'fruity' ingredients. I chopped up the rind of a few organic tangerines I had bought locally. I crudely grated about 1/2 cup of partly cooked beet root.
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- 1/4 cup rum. Aged brown rum is ideal because it imparts flavor and character. However, I only had left over white rum that I had bought for a tincture. Surprisingly, it worked fine but still not my first choice.
- 1/2 cup fat. I use oil, preferably virgin coconut oil if it is available and suits you health wise. Coconut oil is very healthful in most cases. However, I used sunflower oil because, this unplanned baking session caught me without coconut oil. Besides, one companion who will eat the cake has blood type B (for which coconut oil is not advisable).
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup nuts or nutty ingredients. I used the crunchy version of Smucker's natural crunchy peanut butter. I mix peanut or any other type of butter with the wet ingredients. When I want to avoid nuts as a consideration for people with nut allergies, I use roast and crudely chop sunflower seeds. They actually taste like peanuts. I mix the sunflower seeds with the dry ingredients.
- Egg substitute equivalent to 2 eggs. I nickname this ingredient 'vegg'. I used my flaxseed recipe. However, this time, I chose not to strain off the whole flaxseeds. It just so happened that I baked yesterday and after straining off the cooked flaxseeds I used for making a thick gel, I placed the seeds in the refrigerator. To my pleasant surprise, the seeds are chewable with a nice crunch. So I've decided to re-use those flaxseeds to make a new batch of egg substitute along with the whole seeds for their crunchy texture.
- 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup oatmeal as a gluten-free substitute for wheat flour
- 1/4 cup rum. This is additional rum to pour over the cake after it has cooled from the oven. If you have a limited amount of good aged rum, reserve it for post-baking
- baking pan
- 6 tbsp browning
- baking pan. I doubled this recipe and found a square 8 by 2 inch pan worked perfectly
Steps for making vegan gluten-free Christmas cake
- Soak the fruit in the 1st of the 2 batches of rum for at least 24 hours.
- Preheat the oven to roughly 300 degrees F
- Grease the baking pan
- Combine the fat, sugar, vegg and other wet ingredients
- Combine the dry ingredients as homogenuously as possible
- Bake in the preheated over for roughly 45 minutes
- Allow to cool
- Spread the balance of the rum over the cake
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