Luca's torta alle mandorle or vegan almond cake

2 Feb 2017

My friend Luca is from Italy and loves cooking. So when he sent me a picture of his Italian almond cake I just had to make a vegan version of it! With only 6 ingredients that can all be found in your local supermarket baking this cake couldn't have been easier. And preparations take only 10 minutes!

The traditional Italian version calls for three eggs but that obviously was not an option. But there are so many replacements for eggs in vegan baking. For this recipe I used 3 mashed bananas instead. This gave the cake a nice banana taste. If you don't like it you can also replace one egg with 1/4 cup of applesauce. Check out the method below, it's all explained there.

This is a cake that's perfect for breakfast (we like to start early spoiling ourselves in Austria ) or for a coffee or tea break in the afternoon.

Lucas torta alla mandorle or vegan almond cake

INGREDIENTS:

Dry ingredients:

250g self raising (wholemeal) flour
250g ground almond flour
1 tsp baking powder

Wet ingredients:

250g melted margarine
3 ripe mashed bananas
or 3/4 cups of apple sauce
250g of brown sugar

Optional ingredients:

Icing sugar
Flaked and toasted almonds

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METHOD:

Preheat your oven to 180C (360F).

Mix all dry ingredients together. I used wholemeal but you can also use white self-raising flour.

Melt the margarine (I put it into the microwave for half a minute or so), peel and chop up the banana and put into a food processor. Pour the melted butter into it as well and add the brown sugar. Blend together well. If you don't have a food processor just mash the bananas by hand and then combine it with all other wet ingredients in a bowl.

If you are using apple sauce instead add the apples to the food processor first to make 3/4 cups of apple sauce and then add the rest of the wet ingredients and combine together.

Now mix together the dry and the wet ingredients and mix well to create a nice smooth cake mixture.

Line the base of a cake tin with parchment paper (or grease with margarine - only if you have no parchment paper) and grease the sides with margarine. Pour the cake mixture into the tin.

Bake for 40 minutes. If you used old baking powder (like me by accident unfortunately) you might have to let it bake for longer - baking powder looses it's properties quickly when it gets old. Do a toothpick test to check whether it's baked properly (if you stick the toothpick into the cake and it comes out without anything sticking to it then it should be fine).

Let cool down and sprinkle the optional icing sugar and toasted flaked almonds on top. Serve with coffee or a nice cup to tea. Enjoy!

If you like easy cake recipe you might also like my easy vegan carrot cake recipe.