



Lemon bread which tastes like cake

When I look back at my life, one thing I regret is there was a period of time I ate egg products, not eggs itself. In Taiwan, vegetarian doesn’t include meat, fish, alliums plants, eggs and egg products. It’s easy to follow this principle when I was still living there. But after I moved to Belgium I broke this principle by eating egg products. Well, it was 2009 when I decided not to eat any products containing eggs. (And now I am a vegan) I am glad that I did this move. Shortly after this I met my husband who enjoys cooking and making stuff in the kitchen for me. He felt bad that I can’t eat cake, so he’s always looking for recipes / cafés / restaurants / cake shops to satisfy my belly.





I love this lemon cake, and I can eat one piece every day. But before we made this one, we kept on failing. We checked Jamie Oliver’s recipe, but it didn’t work well with our attempt. We went from Belgium to a vegan cake shop in Rotterdam just to eat vegan cakes. But it also didn’t taste right. It tasted like very sweet bread. We flew back to Taiwan, hoping to find some secret there. Nope, the vegan cake doesn’t taste like the one we were expecting for. We asked the chef from a buffet restaurant if he could enlighten us a bit about making vegan cakes since we have good relationship with that owner. We only got a false promise. We never got the answer.





It seems to us that this vegan cake just doesn’t exist in this world. But suddenly we found one which wasn’t called ‘cake’ but ‘bread’, and this vegan lemon ‘bread’ tastes just like original cake. It reminds me of my childhood eating one little sponge cake every day in the school. I am happy it’s as if I found the memory of my childhood back.

So here's the recipe for the lemon ‘bread’:





For this recipe, you'll need two bowls to prepare ingredients in separately, before combining them.





First of all (and don't skip this, it's really important) - heat up your oven to about 170 °. One of the most common causes for failed cakes is that people underestimate how long it takes for an oven to really warm up (especially an electronic one). A great kitchen tool is an oven thermometer. You don't need to always use it, but it will show you how slow your oven really is. It may surprise you! Cakes need a warm oven.

in one bowl, combine these ingredients with a spoon: 2 cups of flour 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or sugar 3/4 teaspoon salt

in another bowl, combine with a spoon until smooth: juice from one lemon zest from the same lemon 3/4 cup milk (I used soy milk) 1/4 cup oil (I used sunflower oil) 1/2 cup yoghurt (I used Alpro no-added-sugar soy yoghurt)

Combine the above mixes into one bowl, with a spoon until it's a smooth mix. Have a taste with your finger :-)





Vegan lemon loaf





Now put this batter in preferably a silicone cake shape (for easier separating later).

Now put the shape with the batter in the middle of your pre-heated oven and bake it for 50 minutes. Pretty soon, it should start smelling great in your kitchen! Take the cake out and let it cool off completely before taking it out of the silicone shape.

When it's cooled off, add frosting: For this you can use half a cup of powdered sugar with 1 tablespoon of soy milk. Be careful - too much milk and it will be too runny. If that is the case, just add more powdered sugar (I never said this was healthy, did I?) until it has the proper consistency.















