Vegan Sticky Ginger Cake

These bouncy squares of sticky ginger cake are packed full of flavour without the need for any milk, butter or eggs. Get the recipe below.

Vegan baking

After my foray into veganism earlier this year I've been spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen trying to perfect vegan baking methods. Milk, butter and eggs are pretty standard ingredients in cakes which makes turning my usual cake recipes vegan a little tricky. Sure there are plenty of cows milk substitutes out there and lots of dairy free spreads, but eggs are a little harder to replace.

I'd also thought that yogurt and buttermilk would also be difficult to replace but since I've discovered that you can turn plant milks into buttermilk its opened up a whole new world of vegan baking recipes - this sticky ginger cake is one of them.

To make vegan buttermilk you simply add vinegar or lemon juice to your chosen plant milk and let it sit for a few minutes until it has curdled. Some plant milks do curdle better than others (soy is particularly good) but I've done it with almond and hemp milk too. In this cake I replaced regular butter with a non-dairy spread rather than vegetable oil just because it gives a richer flavour.

Eggs are often used in cake recipes to add air bubbles giving it a light, bouncy texture. This recipe uses bicarbonate soda which reacts with the vegan buttermilk to help the cake rise. Just one tip - do NOT open the oven too soon. If you let the temperature of the oven drop, so will the centre of your cake!

If you want to find out more about vegan baking, check out my big vegan baking guide which walks you through every substitute you could need from butter to milk and even cream and yogurt.

Sweet and spicy

Now that we've got the technical part of the cake covered lets talk about the flavour! There are 3 heaped teaspoons of ground ginger in this recipe. As much as I love fresh root ginger and crystalised stem ginger I wanted to bake a cake that used ingredients you didn't need to make a special trip to the shops for. It also uses mixed spice and cinnamon to provide extra warmth.

To balance out the heat of the spices I've used not one but three types of sugar. In the sponge you'll find treacle and dark muscovado sugar. It gives a really deep sweetness making this sticky ginger cake perfect with a cup of coffee or a glug of custard. To finish it off I dust each square with a little icing sugar.

The high sugar content does mean that the cake can catch quite easily so make sure you don't turn the oven up too high. If you do find the edges are a little caramelised you can always trim these off - they are what I call chef's perks! It also means that the cake stays quite sticky and moist. No one likes a dry piece of cake and there's certainly no risk of that here.

The recipe

What if I need to scale this cake up (or down)?

Whether you find yourself with the wrong sized cake tins, or more guests than expected, sometimes you need to adjust a recipe. With the help of my hand guide, find out how to scale any cake recipe both up and down.

More vegan cakes and bakes

Check out the full vegan recipe archives

If you want to see more plant based recipes, check out my vegan recipe archive. For help switching to a plant based diet, check out my Go Vegan! page.