Biscuits and cakes with olive oil as the fat source

[FollicleSchmollicle]

Hello!

Does anyone have any good recipes for vegan cakes/biscuits which don't use margarine/butter substitute (or anything else "processed")? Trying bake for DH, who's gone vegan, and I really don't want to use processed stuff (and I'm a bit of a shite baker....).

Thank you in advance :)

Thank you so much for all the additional thoughts and ideas - I appreciate them hugely.

As for the questions about why I'm asking this and not DH - a few assumptions/some projection going on here, I suspect. As it happens, DH does ALL the cooking of main meals for all of us, taking into account all our whims and tastes. I do a bit of baking every couple of weeks as a treat. I think it would be a bit mean not to try to make it vegan, don't you?!

Some people just assume all men are useless and can't understand why you'd do something nice for your spouse!

Consuming oil is bad for you so I don't quite understand your husband's logic- saying goodbye to 'processed' only to say hello to another thing that's bad for you in its place. It makes no sense! Just buy flora plant butter and be done with it imo.

flora plant butter is palm oil based.

Consuming oil is not bad for you unless it's eaten to excess. We all need some fat in our diet to get the essential fatty acids which are vital to human nutrition. Best advice at the moment from doctors and nutritionists is to minimise saturated fat intake and go in preference for monounsaturated or polyunsaturated oils.

The difference between oil and vegetable spreads is that the spreads contain additives like emulsifiers and colourings, which many would say are best avoided.

I actually recently watched a documentary and the nutritionists were pointing out all the olive oil and coconut oil that people were adding to their supposedly healthy diets and it was actually making them quite unhealthy.

I'm not saying zero oil or no oil, I just find it bizarre / illiogical to add it to a cake. It's already a cake so it's going to not be brilliant for you as it is!

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/vegan-banana-bread

Nobody adds oil or other fat to a cake to make it healthy. It's an essential ingredient for most cake recipes because otherwise they're dry and don't keep for very long. Flour, sugar, fat and egg are the usual basics. Vegan cakes have to replace the egg. If you also eliminated fat you might as well not bother.

www.ambitiouskitchen.com/gluten-free-flourless-black-bean-brownie-muffins/

These are amazing - apparently you can replace the eggs with flax eggs to make vegan but I haven't tried it that way.

There's actually lots of vegan recipes on that fb page, all the dishes I've tried have been excellent.

Not any more they took the palm oil out (and now even the tub doesn’t spread) https://www.flora.com/en-gb/floraplant/our-products/flora-plant-salted

Naturli has no palm oil and spreads well and tastes lovely.

BBC good food has a whole orange cake made with almond flour and oil.

The Nigella cakes are amazing, and definitely don't taste of olive oil, even when I used extra virgin olive oil. My family love the chocolate one, made with cocoa powder. Obviously they have eggs, though. Not sure if there used to be an alternative there?

www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-olive-oil-cake

Also

belazu.com/recipe/olive-oil-biscuits

Or

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/vegan-shortbreads

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8396/chocolate-oil-cake/

I made this one last week - was delicious, if I say so myself!

I bake using olive oil and just add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. You can't taste the oil and even French butter biscuit, so plain, no chocolate, come out great.

You need Philip Khoury's A New Way of Baking. It's amazing and vegan. He's got some recipes on the Guardian.

Google Crazy Cake, or Wacky Cake. There are lots of flavours. Delicious!
It uses oil - I always use light olive oil.

I have done this because olive oil was all I had in the house I like the taste of olive oil even in sweet things. Am not remotely vegan.

My friend bakes with avocado instead of lard.

I'd recommend the book 'Simply Vegan Baking' my Freya Cox. She was on Bake Off a few years back.
Everything I've tried has worked really well and the banana bread is my go to now.

Lemon Polenta Olive oil loaf/cake is delicious.

This one is good, it has pistachios

www.emikodavies.com/pistachio-polenta-and-olive-oil-pound-cake/

Oops sorry. Forgot the vegan aspect. No idea without the eggs!

This is a conversion chart from butter/oil and vice versa I use when baking. We have a cafe, and cakes that have to refrigerated retain a much nicer texture when they're oil based rather than butter. Have used this conversion chart on a number of occasions and it works well!

The nigella chocolate olive oil cake works perfectly. Some carrot cake recipes also use oil.

Rick steins orange, almond and olive oil cake! It's incredible