Vegan & GF Christmas Cake

As you can see I haven’t been very active on the blog front lately.  It feels like our December has very quickly disappeared in between weekends away with themselves, catching up with friends and doing jobs around here preparing for visitors to stay.

The candy cane tree

That hasn’t stopped themselves though getting super excited about Christmas!  They have been writing loads of Christmas letter, making presents and wrapping up a storm.  They have even had a bit of animal tending thrown in as they found a baby bunny and a baby bird abandoned in the backyard.  However with all the cleaning, weeding, creating, caring, wrapping and writing I haven’t thought much about Christmas kai at all let alone a Christmas Cake! So here is a bit of a repeat recipe from last year (that we are going to make again tomorrow) to get your chops around 🙂

Feeding baby bird just before we put it outside (after it called its parents and they replied) where its parents came and continued to feed it until it got up the strength to fly away.

Sadly, I can’t remember which book I got the recipe from all those years ago and I have altered it quite a bit over the couple of times I have baked it so if you recognize it please let me know so I can credit the original correctly 🙂  I have halved the recipe so that it fitted into my bread loaf tin which also meant that it was consumed in a timely manner.  As with many GF vegan recipes the sooner the munching is completed the better … we stretched it to three days with success although day three wasn’t as yum as day one and two’s munching 🙂

As you’ll know if you’ve been reading my blogs for a while I like simple and quick recipes. This one is a little out of the norm for me as it required cooking and mashing some kumara prior to mixing everything in one pot …. thankfully I survived the ordeal as it wasn’t quite as daunting as it seemed when I first read it 😉  I figure one extra dish for some yummy Christmas cake was worth the effort ….. at least once a year that is.  The almond essence and decoration definitely gave it that Christmassy look and taste while using the vanilla essence instead, and flagging the decoration, produced a good fruit cake for any occasion.

So here is it for you to play around with and enjoy over this festive season and beyond ….

A Merry Vegan Christmas Cake

1 Tb maple syrup

250 gm of raisins or sultanas

1 Cup of water

1 small apple (peeled and grated)

62 gms chopped almonds – or in my case bashed almonds 😉

1/2 cup of mashed kumara (doesn’t matter if it is cold or warm)

1.5 Tb olive oil

1 tsp almond essence (vanilla also works fine if you just want a fruit cake)

3/4 Cup rice flour

3/4 Cup buckwheat flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp mixed spice

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp cinnamon

extra almonds to decorate – optional

• Bring maple syrup, fruit and water to the boil in a large pot then remove from the heat.
• Add apple, bashed almonds, kumara, essence along with oil and mix well.
• Sift in the dry ingredients and mix well again.
• Pour into a baking paper lined tin and gently press in extra almonds to decorate.
• Bake at 160 C for 45 mins and then leave to cool in the oven for the next 15-20 mins before placing on a cooling rack.
• Store in an airtight container and enjoy.

Hope this finds you surrounded by those you love and who love you, enjoying each other.

Arohanui

Y

www.becominghealthy.co.nz