Vegan Apple Cake Easy 7 Ingredients

There are many ways to make vegan apple cake, and each country has its style and recipe. Here, we make one inspired by our favorite Italian apple cake. It’s a family recipe and one of our favorite apple desserts.You can enjoy this apple cake for breakfast (that’s what Italians do), as an afternoon snack, as a dessert, with ice cream, or drizzled with our vegan custard.The cake is easy to put together, soft, moist, and made with fresh apple chunks. It’ll take you 10 minutes to prepare. The thing is, you won’t need fancy vegan ingredients to make this cake taste delicious. Instead, we developed it so that you can make it with a few everyday pantry staples.We add a layer of apple slices on top to prevent the moisture from escaping the cake while it bakes. The apples on top look beautiful and taste delicious.We love this apple cake so much that we even made a version filled with our vegan custard for extra moisture and deliciousness. And for the more health-conscious, we prepared one with whole-wheat flour, which tastes wholesome and delicious too.

Ingredients

Instructions

Variations

Storage

Tips

More vegan cake recipes

More Italian Desserts

Flour

The first time you make this vegan apple cake recipe, we recommend using all-purpose flour. The cake turns out light, moist, soft, and irresistible.However, we tested the recipe with wholewheat flour, spelt flour, and even 50% all-purpose and 50% wholewheat. In all cases, the cake turned out delicious. You can also make it with a gluten-free flour mix for cakes.

Sugar

White or brown sugar, both work. You can even use coconut sugar, although that’s slightly less sweet, and you’ll need about 25% more to achieve the same sweetness.

Non-dairy milk

We used unsweetened soy milk. You can substitute almond milk, oat milk, cashew, and other milk from nuts for soy milk.

Oil

For the best-tasting apple cake, we recommend using a neutral vegetable oil such as canola or sunflower oils. Refined oils are best for cakes because you can’t taste them.
You can substitute water, unsweetened applesauce, vegan butter, vegan yogurt, or vegan buttermilk for oil.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is optional. We think it tastes delicious with apples, however, it does color the cake brown a bit. If you prefer to make an apple cake that is not brown, but sandy colored, then substitute a tablespoon of vanilla extract for cinnamon. Other spices that work well with apple cake are grated nutmeg and ground ginger, although these will make the recipe less Italian.

Baking powder

Baking powder makes the cake rise and keeps it light and airy.

Powdered sugar

Powdered sugar or icing sugar is an optional ingredient. My grandma used to sprinkle it on top of the cake before serving it to make it look pretty, so I still do that. But that’s entirely optional. If you have a different size pan check out the chapter below, “how to scale this recipe.” As a first step, oil the sides of your pan and dust them with flour. Next, line the bottom with parchment paper. It will prevent the cake from sticking. Then preheat the oven to 360°F or 180°C. To a medium bowl, add the wet ingredients: plant milk, oil, and sugar. Whisk till the ingredients are well mixed. Next, with a fine mesh sieve, sift in the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, cinnamon (optional), and a pinch of salt. Cinnamon note: cinnamon will make your apple cake brown. If you don’t want that, substitute one tablespoon of vanilla extract for the cinnamon. Tip: sifting the flours is a simple step that helps you make the cake lighter. Whisk with a hand mixer for a few seconds till you have a smooth and thick cake batter. Do not over-mix, or the cake will turn out gummy.You can also stir the batter with a whisk or a silicon spatula. Add small apple pieces from 2 apples (about 11 ounces or 300 grams). Apples should be cored and seeds removed. You can keep the peel on. Fold in with a spatula until the apple pieces are well incorporated into the batter, then pour it into the cake tin. Cover the top of the cake with thin apple slices in a circular pattern, overlapping the slices a bit. Finally, sprinkle the apples with 2 tbsp of sugar. Bake the cake at 360°F or 180°C for 55 minutes to 1 hour on the center rack of the oven. Take out of the oven and let cool down for about 1 hour. Then sprinkle with some powdered sugar if you want. Tip: bake on a baking rack, not on a baking tray, because the tray will get too hot and might overcook the base of the cake.

Apple Cake with Custard Filling

You get all the comfort of a traditional apple cake and the surprise effect of a delicious custard filling.First, make the custard following our recipe for vegan custard. Then after you pour the cake batter into the cake pan, pour 3/4 of the custard you get from our vegan curstard recipe. With a knife or a skewer, swirl the custard around the batter. Don’t mix it too much. Then cover the top of the cake with thin apple slices in a circular pattern, overlapping the slices a bit. Sprinkle the apples with 2 tbsp of sugar, and bake the cake at 360°F or 180°C for 55 minutes to 1 hour. If you want to reheat the cake, you can do so in a preheated oven for 5-7 minutes to make it softer. Even after several days, when you reheat the cake, it will still be as soft and warm as when you prepared it.

How to scale this recipe

How to scale the ingredients

Easy! We calculated the scaling number for you. First, pick the pan size you want to use for your cake, then multiply all the ingredients in our recipe box at the bottom of the page by the scaling number in this table.

How do I know if my cake is fully baked?

Depending on the type of oven, type of milk, and type of flour, your cake will take more or less time to cook than ours. For this reason, when baking any cake, you should always check the cake’s core with a clean toothpick or skewer before you take your cake out of the oven.To do that, insert the toothpick or the skewer into the center of the cake. If the toothpick comes out clean and dry, your cake is ready. If the toothpick comes out wet, bake for a few more minutes, then check again.

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Or check out our sweet recipes list for more plant-based cake and sweet ideas.

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