Veganising some trickier cakes: this week Bakewell Tart

Over the last ten weeks I’ve successfully veganised (or found great vegan recipes for) eight of the main ‘big cakes’ that I usually make for Twilight fundraising events. Victoria sponge, Coffee and Walnut cake, Lemon drizzle cake, Ginger cake (two versions), luscious Chocolate cake, Spiced Apple cake, a rich Fruit cake and that old favourite Carrot cake. The two other cakes in my repertoire are Orange (or Lemon) Madeira cake, which can simply be made by adapting a Victoria sponge recipe or leaving the topping off a Lemon Drizzle cake, and Marble cake, which looks impressive but is only a mix of vanilla sponge and chocolate sponge in the same tin. So, it was time to find some other cakes to try out or go on a diet!

First on the list was Bakewell Tart. Not the industrial version topped with a thick layer of gloopey sugar topping, complete with machine-precision squiggles. I was looking for a traditional Bakewell tart, with a crisp pastry base, a juicy layer of jam and an almond frangipane light sponge topping. Apparently, Bakewell tart did not actually originate in the Derbyshire town of Bakewell, although its predecessor the Bakewell Pudding, from which it is derived, did, in around the mid-1800s.

Pastry is easy to make vegan. You can either use a vegan butter or spread, or vegetable oil. The principal question was how to make the almond frangipane, and indeed where does that originate? A frangipane is a sweet filling made from almonds or almond flavour. The term comes from the Italian frangere il pane ‘the breaks the bread’. Dating its origin is more difficult, ranging from its first recorded spelling in French in 1732 to a sweet reputed to have been given to St Francis of Assi in 1226. It certainly does have a French connection though, and crops up in almond croissants, jesuites and the Christmas Galette de Rois.

As usual I checked out my favourite vegan baker, Vegan Richa, who offered “a simple soft spongy cake” but it was gluten free and I didn’t really want a trip to buy out any special flours. Another new blog discovery, Buddhist Chef (love the name) looked promising and I’m sure the recipe would work, but I was a bit concerned about the high liquid quantity. I’ll be visiting the website again though, to try out some great looking recipes. In the course of my research I also came across a vegan recipe for the traditional Tarta de Santiago (Spanish Almond Cake), which Mr VV had eaten whilst walking the Camino. Another recipe I will return to, as it used aquafaba as the egg substitute, something I’d like to work on.

Eventually, I found a recipe that looked exactly like the traditional Bakewell Tart that I remembered from my childhood. Unfortunately, the blog walkstalkseats is great but hasn’t been updated for six months. Just a few tweaks were necessary to adapt to French ingredients. For example, I’ve found that if a recipe calls for vegan butter this can successfully be replaced with vegan spread like Fruit d’Or, but it is best to reduce the quantity as it has quite a high water content. At the last minute I realised that I didn’t have any powdered sugar (icing sugar/sucre glace), but I quickly whizzed up some white sugar in the nut grinder and hey presto, icing sugar. We tried the first slices warm out of the oven, but it does improve on cooling, not that it lasted long!

Vegan Bakewell Tart

Pastry:

210g T55 flour

100g vegan spread

15g sucre glace

2 tbsp chilled water

Frangipane: 

150g vegetable oil (grams - weigh in bowl)

150g white sugar

150g ground almonds

100g T55 flour

1 sachet levure chimique

100ml soy milk

1 tsp cider vinegar

Method:

●     First, make the pastry, chill for 30 minutes, then roll out, line greased pie dish and blind bake for 15 minutes or so.

●   When pastry case cooled, spread three or four tablespoons of raspberry jam over the base, then make the frangipane

●     Add cider vinegar to soy milk and set aside to curdle

●  Weigh oil into large bowl, then add ground almonds, flour and levure chimique, mixing well each time

●     Add the milk, mix well to a thick batter

●  Spread the frangipane over the jam, making sure all covered. Sprinkle top with slivered almonds

●     Bake at 190c for 20 minutes, then cover top with foil to stop almonds burning,then cook for a further 20 to 30 minutes until top firm

●     Cool in the tin