VEGAN Teff Coffee Cake

This VEGAN Teff Coffee Cake, enriched with Maskal Teff® flour and topped with a walnut streusel topping is one you cannot simply refuse.

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by The Teff Company. All opinions, as always, are my own. Thank you for supporting brands that support Love is in my tummy.

I’ve been really enjoying incorporating Maskal Teff® into my usual recipes, taking full advantage of the excellent nutrition it provides. And when it replaces any part of all-purpose flour, it thrills me to no end, simply because the presence of Teff in anything I eat, cuts down the guilt associated with eating it, without diminishing any flavor. In fact, I’d argue that Teff makes it more flavorful.

And that’s how I came by making this VEGAN Teff Coffee Cake!

Since I got pregnant last October, my coffee addiction has taken a rather hard hit. I haven’t had coffee in so long, I’m beginning to worry if I’d loose my love of it. I shudder to think of a life without even the hope of coffee. 

Now that the baby is almost 6 months old, I began to start dreaming about coffee. Not a cup everyday, mind you, but just one cup, just to see if I still like it. But since it’d been so long, it felt like it needed a celebration to go with, what I kept calling ‘my homecoming’. I know, dramatic much? To take the guilt off the coffee, I decided to make a coffee cake to go with it, but the idea of cake to my post partum body made the guilt swell many times over. 

I had to cut the guilt, what better with, than Teff! With protein, calcium and so many micro nutrients, the idea of a coffee cake made with Teff was somehow, dare I say it, healthy??? Atleast without the needlessly decadent streusel topping, it definitely is quite harmless!

So I substituted part of the all-purpose flour in the recipe with Teff and Almond flour (almonds are a good lactation food!) and proceeded with making this coffee cake!

As the cake baked in the oven, I made myself a cup of coffee after nearly a whole year. To say that I heard the Hallelujah chorus in heavenly voices would be a gross understatement. I missed coffee, and coffee seemed to have missed me. 

With a hot slice of cake (I could wait for the thing to cool down), and an even hotter cup of coffee, I settled down into bliss. Well, bliss enough, because I still had to share my time with a baby that now demands my attention every single second of every day. 

Ah, bliss. Close enough.

Soft as a pillow cake. Sweet and crunchy streusel and the glorious embrace of coffee’s aroma. A match made in heaven! Go make yourself some, sans guilt! There’s Teff in this one!

And have another cup of coffee for me. I don’t know when I’d dare to taste another again.

But before you go, here are a few recipe pointers for you:

1. I used Oat milk here because that’s all I had at the time, but in vegan cakes, soy milk is always better, because of the high protein content. 
2. The vinegar in the recipe combines with the baking powder and creates a burst of carbon dioxide bubbles, which acts like a slightly more powerful raising agent as it bakes (I learnt that from watching an episode of the Great British Bake off! Ha!). So it is extremely important, that as soon as the wet and dry are mixed, the batter be poured into the cake tin and placed into the hot oven to bake, as we want most of this chemical reaction to take place inside the oven. If you don’t have Apple Cider Vinegar at hand, use any other type of vinegar you have (plain white distilled vinegar/rice vinegar, etc). Lemon juice, will curdle the milk effectively, but won’t create the ‘lift’ that vinegar will, and therefore, not a very good substitute here.
3. You can definitely make this cake gluten free (Teff is naturally gluten free!) by substituting the all-purpose flour with Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1:1 Baking flour. 
4. If you have a nut allergy, replace the walnuts with a handful of rolled oats, and the almond flour with teff flour.

When you make this VEGAN Teff Coffee Cake (which I really think you SHOULD!), be sure to SHARE YOUR PHOTOS with me through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. I’d love to see what you cook from here!

Tina Dawson

VEGAN Teff Coffee Cake

This VEGAN Teff Coffee Cake, enriched with Maskal Teff® flour and topped with a walnut streusel topping is one you cannot simply refuse.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Total Time 45 minutes mins

Course: Desserts

Cuisine: American

Calories: 561

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

For the cake

• 1 ¼ cups unsweetened non-dairy milk room temperature
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or any other vinegar you have *
• 1.5 c Ivory Maskal Teff® flour
• ½ cup Almond meal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour substitute Bobs Red Mill Gluten Free 1:1 Baking flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup olive oil
• ¾ cup dairy-free yogurt room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For the Streusel Topping

• ¼ cup Ivory Maskal Teff® flour
• 2 tablespoon packed brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• A handful of walnuts chopped (optional, substitute with GF quick rolled oats)
• 2 tablespoons dairy-free butter chilled and cut into pieces

Method

 

Prepare the Streusel topping: 

1. In a bowl, combine the Maskal Teff® flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, chopped walnuts and dairy-free butter. Using your fingers, crumble the butter with the flour until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Refrigerate it while you make the cake batter.

Make the cake batter: 

1. Line an 8” square cake tin with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350°F. Set oven rack to the middle position.
2. In a bowl, combine the non-dairy milk with apple cider vinegar. Let sit for a few minutes to curdle*.
3. In the meantime, in a medium mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients: Maskal Teff® flour, Almond meal, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, sugar. Stir well to distribute the ingredients well.
4. Make a well in the center and add the wet ingredients: olive oil, dairy-free yogurt, vanilla and the curdled milk. 
5. Quickly fold using a spatula until combined. Transfer the batter to the prepared cake tin. It’s important you work fast, because once the vinegar hits the baking powder, its starts to raise the batter, and you want most of the rising to happen inside the oven.
6. Top with the streusel mix and bake in the preheated oven at 350°F in the middle rack for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Transfer to a wire rack to cool in the tin, then remove cake from the tin and let cool completely on the wire rack. Slice and serve.
8. Leftovers keep well refrigerated in a clean, airtight container for upto a week.

Notes

1. Curdling: Curdling in non-dairy milks (especially oat milk) isn’t as clearly seen as it is in dairy milk, because of the low amount of milk solids. It will look gritty and grainy, as opposed to clumps. Combine your room temperature non-dairy milk with vinegar and let it sit while you measure out the other dry/wet ingredients into mixing bowls. By the time you’re ready to combine dry and wet, the milk should have curdled.
2. Vinegar: If you don’t have Apple Cider Vinegar at hand, use any other type of vinegar you have (plain white distilled vinegar/rice vinegar, etc). The vinegar in the recipe combines with the baking powder and creates a burst of carbon dioxide bubbles, which acts like a slightly more powerful raising agent as it bakes. So it is extremely important, that as soon as the wet and dry are mixed, the batter be poured into the cake tin and placed into the hot oven to bake, as we want most of this chemical reaction to take place inside the oven.