We don’t need a reason to bake up a vegan cake around here, it’s a celebration by itself. And this vegan Blueberry Buttermilk Cake is definitely an event to remember, with a light yet moist crumb, hints of lemon and purple streaks of gooey, baked blueberries. If you have someone in your family who loves blueberries, this is the perfect cake to bake for them. It showcases this incredibly healthy little fruit better than almost any other blueberry dessert I’ve ever made (and I’ve made a few). I love how the pockets of blueberry balance out the sweetness of the cake, so your dessert doesn’t feel annoyingly sweet and even a little healthy – maybe? Blueberry, as a flavor, dovetails nicely with lemon, and into this cake go both the zest and the juice of a lemon. The zest is really important, because it gives you those hints of citrusy flavor. Lemon juice, on the other hand, while adding a complexity, tends to always bake out of lemony desserts. When you want a cake that is truly lemony, you’d do well to add in layers of lemon at various stages of the process, the way I do with my Vegan Lemon Yogurt Bundt Cake. In this recipe, though, you really want the blueberry to be the star. There are a thousand, pretty little white flowers in the blueberry bush we planted a few years back, with the promise of berries to come. The bush has been producing berries for the last couple of years now, but we haven’t ever had a chance to taste one, because the birds always get to them before they can ripen. 🙂 It’s the same story with the raspberry bush, but who’s complaining? Not me. Let them eat the berries, I’d rather have the birds in my backyard. The buttermilk in the cake is a combination of a nondairy milk (I used almond milk, but use any other if you want to do this nut-free) and apple cider vinegar. You can make this a real vegan buttermilk, by mixing a quarter cup of a cultured cashew yogurt like this one with water to make a cup. Check to get new recipe updates by email.
This cake doesn’t need any vegan butter – use oil instead – but it has an incredibly buttery, smooth flavor, probably because of the vegan buttermilk. Needless to say, it went down rather quickly with our resident blueberry fan, Desi, and with the resident kid, Jay. I hope you’ll try it too, with blueberries coming into season right about now, and if you do, let me know in the comments below or by taking a photo of your cake and posting it to Instagram. Tag it @holycowvegan.
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