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Hope Mdakane's Chickpea Sponge

Who can enjoy their tea or coffee without a pillowy soft and moist sponge cake? This delicious chickpea sponge is from Hope Mdakane's winning vegan entremet recipe from The Festive Plant Powered Show and SA Young Chefs Plant-Based competition.

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Course Dessert, High Tea

Ingredients

60 g Silken Tofu (firm)
5 g Lemon Juice
20 g Almond Milk
30 g Coconut Oil
250 g Apple Sauce
35 g Blackstrap Molasses
100 g Chickpea Flour
20 g Cornflour

Instructions

Mix tofu, lemon juice and almond milk in a blender and blend until smooth to create a crème fraiche.
Melt the coconut oil over a bain-marie and add in the crème fraiche.
In a mixer, whisk the apple sauce and molasses until completely combined.
Fold in the sieved flour and cornflour.
Fold in the crème fraiche.
Bake at 160 ̊C for about 20 to 25 minutes or until golden-brown on top and set aside. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Video

Notes

Tips:

Don’t open the oven too soon or too much during baking.
Alternate the milk and flour mixtures as you’re combining your cake mix. This helps to avoid the mixture splitting and leaving you with a dense cake at the end.
Make sure you beat your sponge batter long enough so it’s fluffy and full of air. This is an essential step to ensuring your vegan cake is pillowy soft.
To make this a chocolate sponge, just replace 50g of flour with cocoa powder and add in ½ tsp of espresso powder.
For a citrus cake, just add in the zest of 2 fruits right at the beginning stage.
…or dot in a few fresh raspberries and flaked almonds into the cake mixture before baking!

Keywords chickpea sponge cake, entremet recipe, Hope Mdakane, plant based cake, Saxon Hotel, sponge cake, sponge cake recipe, vegan bakes, vegan cake

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