PREPARATION TIME: 15 minutes

COOKING TIME: 30 minutes

Walnut milk is one of our favorite plant milk of the autumn-winter season. As well as being delicious, it is so energetic and helps to keep our immunity up.

The recipe to make any nut milk it’s easy and fast and the result is a delicious creamy plant milk. After making nut milk, we will get the remaining pulp. It could be an interesting ingredient for all type of vegan recipes.

The pulp lasts at least 3 days in the fridge. If we do not have time to cook, it can be frozen or added directly as an ingredient in a salad, soup, cream, pasta, muesli or yogurt. It’s important to make room for it on our diet, as it contains 40% of the seed’s nutrients, a really important fact.

Here we propose an easy nut pulp’s recycling idea for the winter season: use the nut pulp to make a sponge cake! Can you imagine the combination of warm nut milk and a sponge cake? Amazing moment!

I would like to remind you that nut milk, and any other plant milk, can be drunk warm without any problem. As they are heat-sensitive drinks, I recommend you take note on the tips are posted in the article “how to heat plant milk without stripping them from their nutrients”.

Cake Ingredients

We want to make a vegan cake, so we are going to substitute some ingredients such as eggs, yogurt or butter for other plant-based ones. In addition to the alternative ingredients, in our case, we are going to add the nut milk pulp.

Therefore, before we start with the recipe, we should take a break and review the basic information in order to handle these ingredients effectively.

Vegan alternatives to replace cake classic ingredients 

The egg,  yogurt or butter can be easily replaced with simple and inexpensive veggie options.

– VEGAN YOGURT:

Use plant-based yogurts, preferably soy yogurt. Beware of green industry and misleading advertising. Make sure that vegan yogurt is fermented and not a yogurt substitute. You can also make vegan yogurt at home.

– VEGAN BUTTER:

In this recipe, butter is used to grease the baking pan to prevent the dough from sticking. For something so simple, it can be replaced with a little oil.

– VEGAN EGG:

To make the sponge cake, the egg is separate. The egg white is beaten until stiff and the egg yolk is used into the dough. Let’s see how to substitute each part.

• EGG WHITE: it is replaced by aquafaba. Aquafaba is the water from cooking legumes (preferably chickpeas or white beans). It’s a revolution for people who are allergic to eggs and/or vegans. Aquafaba can be obtained from cooked pulses jars, simply by draining the liquid, but it can also be homemade. 2 tablespoons of aquafaba are equivalent to one egg white.
• EGG YOLK: there are many ways to substitute it. The most common and simple options are soy yoghurt, silken tofu, apple compote, mashed banana, chickpea flour or flax and chia seeds. In this recipe I will use flaxseed as it’s the most readily available and economical food for me.

– THE NUT PULP:

The pulp could be dried in the oven before using it, but to make the sponge cake it’s not necessary. In this recipe I’ve included the wet pulp, just as it is after pressing the milk.

Walnut Cake Vegan Recipe

I’ve used the walnut milk pulp to make this cake, but this pulp can easily be replaced by any other nut pulp (almond, hazelnut, cashew, etc.) or by an oily seed pulp such as sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

Ingredients

• 8 tbsp. of aquafaba
• 1 soy yogurt (100 g.)
• 3 tbsp. ground flax
• 100 g walnut pulp (wet)
• 100 g sifted brown sugar
• 150 g sifted wheat flour
• 50 g strong flour
• 50 g organic cocoa
• 1 tsp. cinnamon powder
• 150 ml. olive oil
• 1 sachet of yeast

Preparation 

1. On the one hand, prepare the vegan egg. Mix 3 tbsp. of ground flax with 9 tbsp. of water and let the mixture stand for at least 5 minutes. In the meantime, oil the cake tin so that when we put the dough in it does not stick and start the oven so that it rises to 180ºC. Meanwhile, in a tall, narrow glass, beat the aquafaba with the wire whisk until it reaches stiff peaks. The vegan egg, the stiff peaks, the oven and the tin are now ready.

2. Put the rest of the wet ingredients in a bowl and mix them little by little in this order: firstly the yogurt, then the vegan flax egg and finally the oil. In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients: the sifted flours and the sugar, the baking powder and finally the cocoa and the cinnamon.

3. Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well. Then add the walnut pulp and mix again. Finally, add the aquafaba, which is stiffened to stiff peaks, and beat again.

4. Place the dough in the tin and bake at 180ºC for approximately 30 minutes. Unmould the sponge cake and leave it to cool down on a slit so that it does not get wet underneath.

Serve a cup of hot walnut milk with a drop of coffee, tea or instant cereal drink powder and enjoy the moment with this delicious homemade sponge cake. Bon appétite!