This vegan and gluten free loaf is a celebration of lemon. Dense, moist and tart, it’s perfect with a morning cup of tea (or, let’s face it, as breakfast alongside a stiff cup of coffee).
1teaspoonbaking powder, check label if gluten free
½teaspoonbaking soda, check label if gluten free
½teaspoonsalt
Zest of a lemon
Wet ingredients:
2flax eggs, (1 tablespoon ground flax seed and 2½ tablespoon water for each flax egg)
½cupcoconut oil, melted if solid
¾cupapple sauce, (store bought or stew some apples and puree them yourself)
½cuplemon juice
½cupsoy milk, (or milk of your choice)
¼cupmaple syrup
1teaspoonvanilla paste or extract
2medjool dates, (or 4 regular dried dates soaked in a little boiling water first to soften them up)
Syrup:
½cuplemon juice
1tablespoonmaple syrup
Instructions
Preheat oven to 190°C fanbake, and grease and line a loaf tin.
Make your flax eggs by mixing 2 tablespoon of ground flaxseed with 5 tablespoon water in a small dish. Leave it to sit for about 10 minutes while you’re getting everything else organised. The ground flaxseed will swell and its texture will become jellyish.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
Melt the coconut oil if solid, and set aside.
Add the remaining liquid ingredients, including dates, to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. This isn’t exactly essential but I wanted the dates incorporated as sweetener, rather than chopped. Though a bit of both would be quite nice too.
Add blended liquid ingredients, flax eggs and melted coconut oil to the dry ingredients and stir to combine.
Pour mixture into your greased and lined loaf tin and bake for 40 minutes or until dark and cooked through – a skewer will come out fairly clean. Don’t be concerned by the dark colour of this loaf, it’s not burned, buckwheat flour goes very dark when cooked.
Remove from the oven and poke holes in the loaf with a skewer. Mix together the lemon juice and maple syrup and pour evenly over the loaf. It will all soak in. Leave to cool in the tin, then remove to an airtight container. Just like all baking this tastes amazing hot, but because it’s egg and gluten free this one is quite fragile until it’s cooled down. So cool your jets and wait.