Gluten-Free Vegan Fruit Cake is an easy no soak plum quick plum cake recipe for bakers. A dense flavourful vegan cake to celebrate Christmas.
Generally, as Christmas nears, we tend to make preparations for the cake by soaking the fruits in alcohol. Sometimes, it would be fruit juice. But what should a beginner do? When you are so new to baking, every thing can feel intimidating. On top of that, if you have some dietary restrictions, then it can get quite scary. You might feel left out. Don’t worry at all.
If you are following a gluten free and vegan diet, then this cake recipe is just for you. The flour used is a combination of millet flours and starches and gum, the milk used is cashew milk and fat is oil. This is definitely not low in calorie, but perfect if you have the dietary restrictions.
If you are using any other brand of gf flour or you are making your own, make sure that there is gum in the recipe. When it comes to gluten free flour, xanthan gum makes an amazing difference in bakes. Without the gum, the cakes are generally crumbly. The nutty yogi flour comes with added gum, so I didn’t add any.
For vegan milk, you have number of choices. You can either make plant based milk yourselves with the use of cashew, almonds, oats or rice or you can get it ready made. If getting packed milk, look out for non flavoured, non sweetened milk. You don’t want the flavour of the milk affecting your fruit cake. Or the added sugar increasing the sweetness of the cake.
The method is no soak one and so it gets ready in a day. No elaborate techniques when it comes to baking the cake. Usually I allow my Christmas cakes to mature at least for a day, but this cake just needs two hours. You can slice and taste it on the same day.
You can use any dry fruits you like. I have added cranberries, golden raisins, black raisins, Prunes, tutty frutti, dried cherries. You can also add figs, apricots, blueberries or any other. Adding candied orange zest is very important as it is what gives the Christmas kind of smell and taste to the fruit cake. The colour also depends on the sugar used. So use dark brown sugar to get that deep shade.
The cake takes a long time to bake because of the added fruits. So be patient. If you feel that the cake is browning fast, place an aluminium foil on top to reduce the browning. Lining the cake tin with parchment will help you to easily lift the cake off the tin. Once the cake cools down completely, wrap it in foil and set it aside for a minimum of two hours. IF you can leave it overnight, then it would be really fantastic.
As usual I made a short video for Insta reels. Check it out if you like to learn visually.
Use a sharp knife to gently slice the cake. Even with maida, fruit cakes tend to crumble because of the coarse fruits. So be gentle and firm with slicing. Enjoy a slice and you can thank me later!
Gluten-Free Vegan Fruit Cake
Ingredients
- 125 gm GF flour
- 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 75 gm Brown Sugar
- 50 ml Refined Oil
- 125 ml Cashew Milk
- 1/2 tsp Vinegar
- Vanilla – A few drops
- 10 gm Candied Orange Peel
- 150 gm Dry Fruits Mix raisins, prunes, cherries, tutti frutti
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 160C.
- Line, grease and dust a 5" square cake tin.
- Cut the dry fruits and mix with a tsp of gf flour and set aside.
- In a bowl, mix together gf flour, cinnamon, baking soda and brown sugar.
- Mix cashew milk, vanilla, oil and vinegar. Add it to the dry ingredients.
- Mix well to form a thick batter.
- Add the dry fruits mix and fold them into the batter.
- Transfer to the prepared tin and bake in preheated oven for 45-50 minutes.
- Remove from oven, check with a tester and if it comes out clean, the cake is ready.
- Allow it to cool for ten minutes in the pan.
- Transfer cake to wire rack and let it cool completely.
- You can slice it as soon as it is cool, or let the cake mature overnight, by wrapping it in aluminium foil and setting on counter.
- Slice it up and Enjoy!
Hi Gayatri…just wanna know did you use any specific gf flour mix or any gf flour like jowar or rice flour wil do?
For using in cakes, it is better to go for flours which are a combination of starches like potato or arrowroot along with binding agent like xanthan gum. The cake will hold shape better and won’t dry out and crumble.
What is xanthan gum,where to buy from nd plz link
You can get it from Amazon. It is a binder. https://amzn.to/3zIFifD