“Thank you” Mixed Berry Cake
“Thank you” Mixed Berry Cake
This past Memorial Day, we were inspired in the kitchen and decided to whip up a colorful and delicious mixed berry cake. Our inspiration came from our friend Annie Markowitz at VegAnnie. We loved her Mixed Berry Cake recipe from her newest book “Whole Food Vegan Baking” and made a few modifications to reduce the refined sugar and make it Gluten Free! We named our final creation the THANK YOU Mixed Berry Cake. This is an easy (and healthy) recipe you can whip up anytime! This cake is super sweet and delicious without any frosting. But we decided to test it with our vanilla “buttercream” vegan frosting. 😋Enjoy!
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup white whole wheat flour (we used Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Gluten Free baking flour)
1 cup quick oats (we used traditional organic and gluten free rolled oats)
¾ cup coconut sugar (we replaced this with about 14 pitted dates for sweetness – but you could do as few as 10 dates and still have a VERY sweet cake!)
1 ½ tablespoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1/2 cup pure maple syrup (we used ¼ cup of syrup, but could have used less or even omitted!)
½ cup of water (to mix with the dates in the blender); ½ – ¾ cup of water to add to the final batter
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup mixed berries (we used chopped strawberries and blueberries)
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment paper.
- Combine the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a blender; blend into a fine powder.
- Transfer the contents of the blender to a large mixing bowl.
- Without washing the blender, add the pitted dates, maple syrup, applesauce, vanilla, and 1/2 cup of water to the blender and mix well (the mixture should be smooth – if you have a Vitamix this should only take about a minute at high speed)
- Add this date mixture to the flour mixture and add ½ cup of water. Mix well (but don’t over-mix!) If the batter is too thick, add an additional ¼ cup of water. The batter won’t be “runny’ but it should be thick (and not chunky).
- Fold in the berries.
- Transfer the batter to the prepared cake pan.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool for 30 minutes before flipping over onto a serving plate and slicing (or adding your frosting)!
Vanilla “Buttercream” Vegan Frosting Ingredients & Directions:
Freeze the mixing bowl and beater that you will use for about 5 minutes in the freezer.
Take the “frozen” mixing bowl out of the freezer and add 2-3 cups powdered sugar, 1/3 cup vegan butter. Mix on a low speed, then increase until the butter is incorporated into the sugar.
Add 2-3 tbsp almond milk (or soy or oat milk) and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla. Mix until a smooth frosting consistency.
If using 3 colors (red, white, and blue), divide the frosting into 3 even parts into 3 separate small bowls. Frost the part of the cake you want to be white, with the white frosting. Don’t worry, if you don’t have the time or don’t want the multiple colors, just frost the entire cake and sides with the white frosting!
To make your red color, just add a few cutup strawberries for red and put back in the mixing bowl and mix very well (there will still be some strawberry ‘chunks’ and the color will be a light red)
To make your blue color, just add 2-3 tbsp blueberries (smash them with your fingers before putting back into the mixing bowl). Mix well (there will still be some blueberry ‘chunks’ and the color will be a very light purplish-blue.)
