Vegan Brown Betty

We had my sister’s American friend staying with us for a little while before she found a house in London, and she was not only lactose intolerant, but vegan as well. This was not a problem exactly, but it distresses me greatly when people can’t eat cake. Especially when there is so much of it around that she couldn’t eat. She had a vegan cookbook though, so I amalgamated a few recipes to make this pudding. It was pretty banging if I do say so myself, and with custard on (vegan or not) you could hardly notice that it didn’t have the usual large quantities of butter in it. The recipe is in cups which I apologise for; it’s some strange American thing, and quite possibly the least accurate way of measuring in the world. If you want to convert it, it can be quite confusing because it depends on what you’re weighing, but Delia has quite a good conversation table on her website.

Ingredients

1 2/3 cups self-raising flour

½ cup cocoa powder

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

1 ¼ cups caster sugar

½ cup vegan margarine

1 cup of soya milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Enough stewed apples to cover the bottom of a pie dish

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C and butter a decent sized dish.

Line the bottom with a generous layer of stewed apples. We happened to have these in the fridge because of all the apples coming from the garden, but it’s really easy to make it you don’t have any pre-prepared. Just cut the apples into chunks and simmer with some sugar and water until they are tender. Then keep them in the fridge for up to a month.

In a large mixing bowl cream together the sugar and vegan margarine. I used Pure sunflower marg.

Add the soya milk and vanilla. The mixture will look really disgusting at this point, but don’t worry, it will soon transform.

Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Mix until thoroughly combined. You’ll see how the texture of the batter is a little different, almost webby. I don’t know why this is, something to do with the soya. If someone could actually enlighten me on this, that would be cool.

Turn the mixture out into the dish, making sure to completely cover the apples. Bake for 45 minutes – 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the middles comes out clean.

Serve warm, with custard, cream or ice-cream. Vegan things don’t seem to have the same longevity because there are no eggs, so this is best eaten on the day.