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Saturday, September 7, 2013

Vegan MoFo Day 7 - Sweet Saturdays - Raspberry yoghurt cake

There was a time in my life when the majority of the cookbooks I owned were a selection of Woman's Weekly cookbooks, which had been impulse purchases during shopping trips to the supermarket. In the midst of a clean out a few years back I gave all but one of these cookbooks away to charity as the pile was so large and I hadn't been using them for ages anyway. I held onto one for nostalgic reasons as it contained a recipe for a lentil cottage pie which was the first vegetarian meal I ever cooked for my family.


When Jes from Eating Appalachia posted about a lemon blueberry yoghurt cake this week, I had an instant flashback to a raspberry yoghurt cake my husband used to bake years ago. I knew that this recipe came from one of those Woman's Weekly cookbooks and immediately went searching for the one I had retained to see if the cake we used to love was in this book. After I scanned the index and found the raspberry yoghurt cake my other baking plans for Sweet Saturdays were put on hold as I was compelled to veganise this cake that used to be such a household favourite.

It was never a complicated cake to put together and this vegan version also proved to be pretty straight forward. The cake can be made with whatever berries you have kicking around in freezer, at times we used to make it with a mixture of berries or blueberries. It's a lovely moist cake and not overly sweet which is a good thing in my book. When it comes to sweet treats I've been making slices mores than anything recently but now that this recipe has been rediscovered I'm sure it will be appearing often at home.



Raspberry yoghurt cake with cream cheese frosting (Adapted from Woman's Weekly Low-fat food for life) 

½ cup (125g) dairy-free margarine
¾ cup (165g) firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
6 tablespoons water
1¼ cups (200g) self-raising flour
½ cup (140g) soy (or other non-dairy) yoghurt
100g frozen raspberries

Cream-cheese frosting
60g tofutti cream cheese
20 g soy yoghurt
½ cup (55g) icing sugar
1 teaspoon lemon or lime juice

Preheat over to 180C. Grease a 14 x 21cm loaf pan and line it with baking paper.

Beat the margarine and sugar together with a hand held mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Stir the ground flaxseeds with the water in a small bowl and pour this into the bowl containing the butter and sugar mixture. Beat until just combined.

Using a wooden spoon, stir through the flour, yoghurt and raspberries until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined. Spread the mixture into the loaf pan.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour. Test for readiness with a skewer after this time, if it comes out clean the cake is ready. If not, bake for an extra 5-10 minutes.

Allow the cake to stand in the tin for 10 minutes then turn it out onto a wire rack and allow it to cool down before icing.

Whisk together the tofutti cream cheese, soy yoghurt, icing sugar and lemon/lime juice and spread over the cake.

As the icing contains tofutti cream cheese I prefer to store the cake in the refrigerator.

18 comments:

  1. This is my sort of cake - i made a similar cake a year or so ago and I don't think I even iced it because it was so delicious. Glad it has been rediscovered - I am sure that will make you very popular

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    1. Thanks Johanna, I could definitely enjoy this one without the icing although I'm sure the rest of the house would overrule me on that! I'm glad to have rediscovered this too.

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  2. Yum! And this is brilliant because last year sometime my mum, sister and I combined to throw out all those WW cookbooks ($10 at the supermarket, if I remember correctly) but beforehand I flipped through the pages and some of the recipes and photography were so terrible (like my blog, ha ha...). I think my mum caved in and kept one that she hasn't looked at (ever).

    I always see these cookbooks in op shops ;)

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    1. Thanks veganopoulous, you are spot on with the price if my memory serves me right! Sounds like many of us have given them away to charity. The op shops must be full of them, at least I'll know where to look if I need to repurchase one. ;)

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  3. haha yep I previously had a similar pile of WW cookbooks prior to donating them!
    This cake sounds delicious - and nice and easy - just the way I like it :D

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    1. Thanks Sandy, I'm glad I wasn't the only one with a stack of WW cookbooks. Nice and easy is always great!

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  4. This is exactly my sort of cake Mel - spot on! In fact, it makes me think of my own WW recipe book that includes raspberry and white chocolate muffins. I'd like this with the yoghurt and cream cheese icing more though :)

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    1. Thanks Kari, berry and/or fruit cakes hold more appeal for me too. I wish muffins were popular around here - raspberry and white chocolate sounds like a lovely combination.

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  5. The first sentence of that post cracked me up - I think it's obligatory that everyone in the world has at least one (million) woman's weekly cookbook in the cupboard! I think the best uses for raspberries is putting them in a cake - delicious. You were totally right to recreate this one!

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    1. Thanks Joey, I'm glad to have given you a laugh as you have provided me with so many giggles from your posts and comments. I actually wasn't sure if the WW cookbooks were specific to Australia.

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  6. This looks SO delicious. I wish I had some cake right now.

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    1. Thanks Jojo, I wish I had some more of this cake too as this one disappeared in a couple of days.

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  7. Oh Yum!!!! It looks so moist and sweet!
    What soy yoghurt do you use? I can never find un-flavoured non dairy yoghurt anywhere.

    x
    Rhi
    http://rhiannonveganmelbourne.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/caramel-slice.html

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    1. Thanks Rhi, I buy Kingland plain soy yoghurt from my local health food store in the SE suburbs (Sunnybrook in Ormond). I only use soy yoghurt for baking, Indian marinades and making vegan cheeses and don't eat it straight up - it doesn't have the nicest flavour and I've never been that much of a yoghurt fan anyway. Plain coconut yoghurt is also available at some health food stores but it's about 3 times the price of soy yoghurt, I believe it's nicer for eating plain though.

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  8. Raspberries are some of my favorite berries--and I love that in this recipe the berries are throughout the cake. Super delicious looking!

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    1. Thanks Jes, blueberries are my favourite berries for eating straight up so I'm keen to give your lovely cake a try too. Raspberries are wonderful in cake though!

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