Here’s absolutely delicious gluten-free vegan gingerbread cake recipe – right on spot for the holiday season.
How to make gingerbread cake?
It’s easy really – you start with gingerbread cookie recipe and leave the batter moister. However, I wanted something quite different from my previous gingerbread recipes and decided to go for a rather unconventional ingredient that you usually don’t associate with Christmas sweet treats – chickpeas! Indeed, the wet mixture of my easy gingerbread cake recipe consists of chickpeas, tahini and plant milk blended together. To give you an idea – usually it’s oil or butter and some kind of syrup and/or molasses. What do you think, which version is healthier?
What’s so great about my vegan gluten-free gingerbread cake?
- Well, it’s gluten-free and vegan ?
- It’s also oil-free and doesn’t use any refined ingredients.
- Perfect for those looking for diabetic gingerbread cake recipe.
- It’s super easy to make.
- Requires only 9 ingredients (not counting salt, sweetener and baking powder).
- It’s a sugar-free gingerbread cake without molasses (not so common).
Vegan Gingerbread Cake with Icing
Ingredients
- 1 can (240g, 8.5oz) chickpeas (with no added salt)
- 75g (2.6oz) additive-free tahini (sesame seed butter)
- ½ cup (120g, 4.2oz) almond milk
- 4-5 tbsps. birch xylitol [see tip under Frosting, use date sugar for Plantricious version]
Instructions
First, make the wet mixture: rinse and drain
chickpeas well and blend them with tahini, almond milk and xylitol into
homogeneous batter. Set aside.
Then, in a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients and pour
the wet mixture over. Mix with spatula until you have homogeneous
batter. Let it sit for 10 minutes (it’ll thicken as the chia seeds
absorb liquid).
Next, line the bottom of a cake pan with parchment paper and grease the sides with coconut oil or avocado oil.
Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F) and bake the gingerbread cake for
45-50 minutes. It’s ready when toothpick inserted into the cake comes
out almost clean. The smaller the cake pan, the longer it’ll take. I
used 15cm (5.9inch) round cake tin and baked it for 50 minutes on the
lower rack (my cake was 2.5cm, 1inch thick). You may also use loaf pan
for gingerbread loaf. Let the cake cool before slicing and/or frosting.
Tips on my vegan gingerbread cake:
- My gingerbread cake is quite moist. Should you prefer drier version, use 4 tablespoons of oat flour. On the other hand, I suggest using 3 tablespoons of flour, if you know that the cake is going to last for several days.
- You might need to add a bit more plan milk (about a few tablespoons), if you use home-cooked chickpeas. It’s because in my experience, canned chickpeas tend to be a lot moister than home-cooked ones.
- Instead of tahini, you may use any other additive-free nut or seed butter.
- Almond milk can be substituted with any other additive-free plant milk: oat milk, rice milk, cashew milk, hemp milk, or soy milk etc. Should you use naturally sweet plant milk (oat and rice), add about 1 tablespoon LESS of xylitol.
- Feel free to use liquid stevia instead of xylitol: 1 tablespoon of xylitol equals about 12 drops of stevia.
Finally, please let me know what you think of my vegan gingerbread cake! I’d love to hear from you – also in case you have any questions or comments!