Secretly Vegan Carrot and Plum Cake- Eggless and Dairy free

 

All is quiet, the little one is fast asleep, snug between his two cousins, and dreaming of Santa. I am writing this post quickly just to share with you a quick and super easy recipe for a plum cake that happens to be vegan. But you really shouldn't label it a vegan cake and it's not really a traditional Christmas cake. It's just a really good moist cake that happens to be vegan- mahed bananas replace the eggs and most of the fat, with grated carrots and enough chopped dried plums to make it Christmassy

After complaining about my dislike for fruitcake in my guest post for Shulie, you must be wondering why I am here with a fruit cake recipe right? Well I do want to give fruit cake one more try, and also wanted my little one to get a taste of some Christmas-time traditions that his mom grew up with! Since he is allergice to dairy and eggs, I just adapted his favourite banana cake into something more Christmassy and quite healthy yet delicious too!
You can soak the fruits in brandy or rum and spices as in traditional fruitcake if you like, but as I have mentioned (repeatedly here ), I am not a fan, so I just soaked the plums in warm water to soften it and it really did the trick, making them plump and moist.

Merry Christmas!

Carrot Banana Plum Cake

Ingredients ( The order in which these ingredients are added is important):

• 4 medium very ripe bananas peeled and mashed well till no lumps remain ( the riper the bananas the stronger the banana flavour.) 
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 cup sugar ( I have  halved this amount too and it works- just made the cake a little drier)
• 2 cups flour
• 3 TBSP water, 3 TBSP oil, 2 tsp baking powder (all mixed together in that order and kept aside for about 5 minutes prior, not much more ahead else it may lose some of the fizz require to make the cake rise)
• 1/4 tsp, baking soda
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence ( optional) 
• 1 cup chopped dried plums or prunes ( soak the fruits in warm water or just put them in a bowl of water and heat in the microwave for 15 secons to make them moist) 
• 1 cup grated carrots 

Method:
Preheat oven to 350 F degrees or 325 F if using a glass pyrex dish 

Grease and flour a 9X5 inch loaf pan, or a pyrex bowl as I used in the photos above, to give it a traditional Christmas pudding look ( I used vegetable oil to grease the pan and didn't flour it, but lined the bottom with parchment paper, cutting the paper where it bent and creased and overlapping it to make it as smooth as possible to fit the curved shape of the bowl)

In large mixing bowl, mix all ingredients in order given ( if you don't follow the order, things may not work so its VERY IMPORTANT!). Pour into pan and bake 40 to 50 minutes. 

Let it cool in the pan for about 10-15 mins. Then run a knife around the sides of the pan.
Invert it onto a plate or cooling rack and let cool completely

You can also bake this in muffin or cup cake tins and it would be perfect for breakfast

Am sending this cake over to Simone of Junglefrog Cooking who is hosting the Monthly Mingle as well as a sparkling photo challenge