Apfelkuchen from The Joy Of Vegan Baking

I have been flipping through all my cookbooks recently and have realised that I have not baked much from most of them. Like most humans tend to do, I find a few dishes I like first time cooking and keep making them, forgetting about all the other recipes. To circumvent this, I have decided to occasionally set aside a month were I bake recipes from predominately one book I have.

The upside of me doing this too is that if a particular vegan cookbook has captured your eye, but you want to know more about the sweet baked recipes, you can come here and have a look to see how I did. I find this valuable, especially when looking at other's blogs to see if a recipe from a book turned out the same way or wether I might have done something scarily wrong to produce a wonky result.

So, the cookbook I am focusing on in April is The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

Colleen's book is fantastic, especially for those new to vegan baking. She details different replacers for eggs, milk and butter, explaining how the replacements work and in which baked goods to use them in. The book is divided into sections (ie cakes; pies and tarts; quick breads; etc) and at the start of each section she has even more helpful information on how to bake the goods successfully. More small helpful tips are on the page of most individual recipes, with some having little 'food lore' blurbs with tidbits on the origins of the baked good. If the recipe requires a little more work than usual, she will label it as 'advanced preparation required'- helpful if you need to bake something fast.

As with Colleen's book, I have been guilty of only making and remaking two recipes from it- Cinnamon Rolls (MAKE THESE NOW) and the Holiday Nog (creamy, delicious and drool-worthy). So, the first non-cinnamonynoggy I have tried was the German Apple Cake (Apfelkuchen). This cake comprises of a cake base with a sugar and sliced apple topping. I chose it because we had some left over apples after making sauerkraut and dumplings for dinner. Delicious organic granny smith apples, the perfect amount for this recipe.

Recipe notes: This recipe didn't take long to make- the longest time was spent waiting for my damn oven to heat up to the right temperature and peeling + slicing the apples. Collen calls for ginger + cinnamon as spices- I did not have ginger, so I replaced it with allspice. For the cake itself, I reduced the amount of sugar to 1/3 c- I find most US recipes are just a tad too sweet for me. When I finally popped the cake in, I had to use the extended cooking time of 40min. My electric oven is a temperamental darling.

Review: This cake is delish! The cake part itself was perfect- not too moist or dry and a bit fluffy. The apples and topping went well together- the brown sugar slightly caramalised the apples. Together, it was the perfect balance of sweetness, flavour and texture. The cake itself is not pretty- sure I could have spent time laying out the apple slices perfectly, but uh, I was hungry.

Will I make this again?: Most assuredly! Now onto the next recipe!