Orange Poppy Seed Cake

Many years ago I was living in the inner Sydney suburb of Enmore. On Enmore Road was a fantastic little cake shop - the sort that actually makes cakes on the premises instead of just selling glazed crap with fake cream and trans-fat oils.

Anyway, that was where I first had Orange Poppy Seed cake, which if I recall was A$15 for a double-decker 30cm diameter cake. So it was just obvious that we would need to re-create a vegan version of that if for no other reason than Enmore Road is now a 24 hour flight away.

Like the Chocolate Cake, this too has passed the vigorous "Non vegan visiting children" test with flying colours.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups plain flour (organic, stoneground, white flour - preferably NOT "strong" flour which is used primarily for bread making)
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 tspn baking powder
• ¼ tspn salt
• 1 ½ tabs poppy seeds
• ½ cup almond meal (or finely chopped almonds)
• ¾ cup soy milk
• 2 tspn orange extract
• Zest of 1 orange
• ¼ cup olive oil
• Egg replacer, equal to one egg (or use an egg if you eat them)

Method

• Preheat oven to moderate temperature (180˚C).
  
• In a bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, poppy seeds, and almonds.
  
• Add the soy milk, orange extract, zest, oil and egg replacer (or egg) and stir together gently until “just mixed”.
  
• Pour into a lightly oiled 8-inch cake pan
• Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
  
• Ice the cake with icing made with icing sugar and using only some juice from the orange as the liquid.