Over the past weekend, we took a jaunt up to lovely Beacon, NY to visit our friends Heidi and Jeff. Last fall, they threw off the confines of the modern city for good, moving from their apartment on the upper west side to a charmingly GIGANTIC home just east of the Hudson. Aside from engaging in a major crunch session for last night’s premier of Lost’s final season, we also partook in a superb country-style vegan brunch, thanks to Heidi. Not being the types to show up empty-handed, we brought up our vegan buttermilk biscuits (recipe on our friend Joshua’s site, here). Not to be confused with Heidi and Jeff’s cat, also named Biscuit, also slightly buttery and flakey. The travel didn’t treat them too kindly—maybe we should have used a cat carrier—but they weren’t too much worse for the wear when everything was said and done. In addition to our contribution, the table was graced with garlic kale, a sweet potato-carrot hash, grilled tempeh strips, a very nice tofu-based quiche, and an excellent vegan coffee cake (pictured). Nice, right? I’ve always been a fan of the sweet-but-not-too-sweet desserts like carrot cake and spice cake and coffee cake, so I was understandably excited when Heidi mentioned she’d found the recipe online on a nice little cooking blog called From Scratch. Seems it’s a deft veganization of a Martha Stewart recipe (Note: Kiandra, proprietor of said blog, seems to have another nice blog on quilting and crafting and such). So Heidi passed a slightly altered version of the recipe on to us and we thought it was so good, we’d go ahead and post it. Enjoy!
Coffee Cake Recipe
Crumb Topping
1 c. melted vegan margarine
1 c. packed light brown sugar
2 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
Cake
3 c. unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 c. granulated sugar
5 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. egg replacer
4 tbl. warm water
1 c. soy milk
1 tbl + 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 c. canola oil
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Oil and flour a standard round spring form pan, set aside.
2. Prepare the crumb topping by first melting the margarine and then setting it aside to cool. In a medium bowl, mix brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon until throughly combined. Once combined, pour the margarine into the bowl and combine ingredients until sugar mixture is moist and large crumbs form. Set aside.
3. To prepare the cake, mix together your egg replacer in a bowl with the warm water. Blend until throughly thick and lightly foamy. Set aside. In a large bowl sift together (3 c.) flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Whisk together to throughly mix all ingredients. Set aside. In a second smaller bowl, whisk egg replacer, soy milk, canola oil, and vanilla together. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour wet ingredients into the well. Then stir everything together until just combined, being careful not to over-mix.
4. Pour the batter into the pan, spreading it evenly around pan. Top with the crumb mixture, evenly and gently spreading it over the cake batter.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes checking with a toothpick after 50 minutes.
6. Have with coffee. Talk amongst yourselves: “Why the hell is the island underwater now?!”
Below, Biscuit (the cat) about to be attacked by tiny dinosaurs.
