Vegan Upside-down Pineapple Cake
I missed the deadline for this competition from @plantpoweronhive, but I had already bought the ingredients and experimented with the recipe, so I’ve posted it anyway. Haha, hope that’s okay?
As a cake, the pineapple upside-down cake is an easy choice, because it lends itself very well to vegan-conversion. I’ve adapted a household favorite by replacing the eggs with ground flax seeds mixed with water, the butter with margarine and milk with pineapple juice.
This cake is really flop-proof, so it’s great for anyone who is not a regular baker and wants to learn to make a vegan cake. Also, it’s soooo easy and it doesn’t require icing because it’s already decorated, to an extent at least as it comes out of the oven.
The cake works very well with the vegan adaptions and I was very pleased with the results. I decorated it with fresh fruit and whipped coconut cream. The coconut cream must be chilled overnight before whipping otherwise it won’t work, so remember to pop the tin in the fridge the night before.
I served the cake at breakfast with coffee, without saying a word about it being vegan - it was demolished pronto, so that just goes to show that nobody knew the difference. Win, win...
Ingredients
Cake
_ 1 ¼ cups of brown sugar
_ ½ cup margarine plus 2 extra tablespoons
_ 440g tin of pineapple rings
_ 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed plus 7 tablespoons of water
_ 2 cups of flour
_ 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
_ pinch of salt
Decoration
_ 1 tin coconut cream (chilled overnight in refrigerator )
_ ½ teaspoon vanilla essence
_ 1 tablespoon sugar
_ fruit for decoration (eg: strawberries, fresh pineapple)
Method
Add ¾ of a cup of sugar to a mixing bowl 🥣 along with 2 tablespoons of margarine. Use a hand blender or food processor to blend until creamy. Press this mixture into the base (and a little up the sides) of a ring mold (no need to grease the mold).
Place pineapple rings and bits of pineapple over the margarine mixture to cover the base of the mold completely.
Add ½ a cup of sugar and ½ cup of margarine to a mixing 🥣 bowl and blend with a hand blender until creamy.
Add 2 cups of flour, a pinch of salt and 2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder to this mixture. Fold the dry ingredients into the margarine mixture using a fork. The mixture should look like loose breadcrumbs. Add ¾ of a cup of pineapple juice from the tin to this mixture to form a loose batter.
Spread this batter over the pineapple rings.
Bake at 180% Celsius for 30 to 35 minutes (or until a skewer comes out clean)
Turn out onto a serving plate and allow to cool.
Whip the chilled coconut cream with sugar and vanilla essence until soft peaks form. Decorate the cake with fruit and pipe the coconut cream creatively on top.
Make coffee and enjoy a slice.
Happy Birthday Plantpoweronhive 🎉 🎂 🥳
All images are my own, shot with my iPad and manipulated using Art Studio
Non-vegan recipe from The South African Cookbook
The vegan version of this recipe was developed by me.