Vegan Irish Apple Cake with Whisky Caramel Sauce

Social Distancing on St. Patrick’s Day

Welp. It is a weird St. Patricks Day! Many of us are home practicing “Social Distancing” instead of out at the bars to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The stores are wild and shelves empty.

Schools are closed.

No sports.

Gyms are closed.

No dining out.

It’s surreal and I still can’t believe what is happening! At first, I thought it was an overreaction and media blowing it up, but as more data has came out (especially from Italy) we now see it can get really bad, really fast. As we all know America doesn’t have a great healthcare system, over 30 million Americans are uninsured and access to primary care is limited. If COVID-19 hit the US, like it has Italy, we’d be worse off than them and we wouldn’t be able to treat all the potential high-risk patients rushing into the hospitals.

I work with a very vulnerable patient population and will still have to go into work the next couple weeks. Cancer, sadly doesn’t stop for Corona. I have decide to practice social distancing for my patients. I know COVID-19 poses little risk to myself, but the last thing I want is to unknowingly get it and pass it on to one of my patient’s who has no immune system.

How can I make baked goods when the stores are out of eggs and milk?

Go Vegan! I decided to make this recipe vegan to preserve our eggs for breakfast. I already had Bob’s Red Mill Vegan Egg Replacer on hand, but you should be able to still buy it at most stores or order it online! For a buttermilk substitute I had the juice of half a lemon to 3/4 cup almond milk. It actually works better with soy milk, but I only had almond milk on hand. I had vegan butter on hand for the whisky sauce, but if you don’t need the recipe to be vegan, feel free to use dairy butter for the sauce.

I have a vegan cookie recipe here and vegan brownies here and here (none of these three recipes use eggs or vegan eggs).

Irish Apple Cake with Whisky Butter Sauce

Servings: 8-10
Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: Medium
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Ingredients

Vegan Irish Apple Cake

1/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
2 vegan egg replacers
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup almond milk
juice of half a lemon
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking sode
2 apples

Whisky Caramel Sauce

4 Tbsp vegan butter
2 Tbsp light brown sugar
1 Tbsp Irish whisky
1 Tbsp Almond milk
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 9-in round cake pan and lightly coat in all purpose flour.
Prep the vegan egg replacer by whisking together 2 Tbsp with 4 Tbsp water. Add the lemon juice to 3/4 cup almond milk. Set aside. Peel and dice the apples.
In a large bowl, beat together the olive oil and sugars. Beat in the vegan eggs and vanilla. Add 1/3 of the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add in 1/3 the vegan buttermilk. Repeat 2 more times.
Lightly coat the apples with flour and fold them into the batter. Fold the batter into the 9-in round cake pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool.
For the Sauce: In a small frying pan, brown the butter. Once browned, whisk in the brown sugar. 30 seconds later, whisk in the whisky. The mixture will begin to bubble more. Let boil for 1 minute and remove from heat. Whisk in the almond milk and powdered sugar. Pour over the cake! Best serve warmed.