I love a nice big piece of cake come Sunday tea time with a deliciously hot cup of coffee.

If I do not have that Sunday cake, then my whole entire week just goes off the rails.

With my mum being a vegetarian, sometimes making a cake that suits her dietary needs are harder than it seems, but thanks to a vegan website I came across, all my problems for now seemed to be gone.

Like most vegan recipes they tend to ask for ingredients that I wouldn’t normally keep in my fridge, but I don’t also go out and buy the exact ingredients… for example vegan margarine, I just use normal margarine, but I have opted to use the soy milk as the recipes always asks for.

This week Sunday I opted for a spice pumpkin cake and yes my family was always turning their noses up when I mentioned that it was a pumpkin cake, but let me just say, you do not even taste the pumpkin, it tastes like a carrot cake and smells like koeksisters while baking.

When I first read the ingredients I was scared, I won’t lie, because the recipe asked for pumpkin puree and I have never seen it anywhere in the local super markets, but thanks to my all time faithful good friend google, I discovered that I can make my own homemade puree, buy steaming pumpkin cubes in a little water till soft and then using a masher, mash till there are no lumps and hey presto I have homemade pumpkin puree.

Ingredients for the cake batter:

• 2 x cups cake flour.
• 1 x cup caramel brown sugar.
• ½ x cup castor sugar.
• 1 x tsp baking powder.
• 1 x tsp bicarbonate of soda.
• ½ x tsp salt.
• 2 x tsp cinnamon powder.
• ½ x tsp nutmeg powder.
• ½ x tsp ginger powder.
• ½ x tsp cloves powder.
• 337g x pumpkin puree.
• 1 x tsp vanilla essence.
• ¼ x cup vegetable oil.
• 1 x tbsp. white wine vinegar.
• 1 x flax egg.

Method:

• Make the flax egg ( 1 x tbsp. crushed linseed mixed with 3 x tbsp. boiling water and set aside).
• Sift the cake flour into a bowl.
• Add the spices and both sugars and give it a good stir.
• Add the pumpkin puree, vanilla essence, cooking oil, white wine vinegar and your flax egg.
• Whisk till well combined.
• Pour into a lightly greased 20cm cake pan.
• Tap to remove any bubbles.
• Pop into a preheated oven and bake at 180 degrees for 25 – 30 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean.

Ingredients for the butter cream icing:

• 450g x sifted icing sugar.
• 112g x rama margarine.
• 1 x tsp vanilla essence.
• 2 x tbsp. soy milk.
• 1 x tsp cinnamon powder.

Method:

• Cream the margarine, add a little icing sugar in at a time and whisk till it starts to resembles bread crumbs.
• Add the vanilla essence, soy milk and cinnamon powder.
• Whisk until well combined and the mixture comes together.

To assemble to cake:

• Cut the cake into two layers.
• Place one layer down on your cake board and generous layers the icing.
• Place the second layer of cake ontop of the icing.

• Generously ice the top layer of the cake and decorate with chopped walnuts.