Vegan mofo 20 - Veganizing Eve's pudding

Veganising an old family recipe initially seemed to be a bit tricky - I don't remember my parents, or grandparents, ever writing down a recipe or passing one on. If they were using a recipe, chances are it came from a cookbook. Ironically enough for a vegan, my earliest cookbook memories are of my mum's well-used recipe from the milk marketing board, each and every recipe designed to get you to eat more dairy.

Ma liked making puddings (that's puddings in the UK sense, meaning desserts) when we were little, and occasionally I remember her making Eve's Pudding. Apparently, it's a 19th century dish that's fallen out of favour in more recent times.

I'm not a huge fan of apples in their unadulterated state, but there are few things - fruits or otherwise - that can't be improved by slathering them with a sponge cake and baking them in the oven.

It's a dish that bears rediscovering - when it's cold outside and you're cursing winter, a great big stodgy pudding is just what you need to buck you up again. The only thing that's wrong with Eve's Pudding is that it provokes a very long and tedious argument in our house about whether it's better served with custard or ice cream. (Hint: if you said ice cream, you're one wrong bunny.)

Anyway, there's no Flicking the Vs' family recipe to pass on. But I had a look at a few non-vegan Eve's Pudding recipes and veganised them at home. I even fed the result to my family, so in a few years' it'll be old, and then I can pretend it's an old family recipe, right?

Eve's pudding

Ingredients
Two bramley apples, peeled, cored, and cut into thick slices or small dice
75g brown sugar
75g sultanas
125g vegan spread (I used Vitalite)
125g self raising flour
125g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
1 flax egg, made with one tablespoon ground flax and three tablespoons water
Two tablespoons non-dairy milk

How you do it
Preheat the oven to 180C
Mix the brown sugar, sultanas, and apples in a pyrex dish
Next mix the flour, caster sugar, and salt together in a bowl and set to one side.
Melt the spread over a low heat. Once melted, take it off the heat, then add the flax egg and milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix thoroughly.
Pour the sponge mix over the apples and smooth the top down.
Put in the oven and cook for 35 to 40 minutes until cooked, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.