Aside from NYC's recent transformation into the Arctic Tundra, life is pretty good! 8th Continent Soy Milk's Sara Lopez asked me to write a guest recipe post on her blog, 8cpassport.com. Check it out here or read below:

"Hey there! Savvy Soybean here, veggie food-lover and digester of all things yummy in NYC. I love baking vegan, so when dairy-free extraordinaire Lopez asked me to whip up my favorite recipe with 8th Continent Soy Milk, I knew just the thing.

You see, I’ve been a bit overzealous in my fruit purchases lately. Crates of tangerines, bunches of bananas, bogs of cranberries… I like to think it’s motivation. I also like to think I can eat it all. But 99% of the time I wait too long and end up with something even better: bananas mushy for banana bread, plums soft for muffins, and apples just a day too ripe for anything but Vegan Jewish Apple Cake...

That’s right, I just called vegan apple cake “Jewish.” My grandmother would patsch me over the head. Butter, bread, brisket: that’s Jewish cooking in a nutshell. But as Bob Dylan once sang, “the times, they are a-changin’,” and we need to smarten up about what we scarf down. I found this super healthy recipe on Vegan Verve, an animal rights blog, and toyed with it to my liking. I pulled back the sugar, cut the cinnamon in half (a little goes a long way) and, of course, used the delicious 8th Continent Soy Milk as my dairy-free alternative.


Ingredients

2 Tbsp flax meal
6 Tbsp water
3 medium red apples
1 1/3 cup sugar (I use the raw stuff)
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
¾ cup canola oil
¼ cup 8th Continent Soy Milk
2 Tbsp vanilla
2 Tbsp cinnamon
2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F.

2. Whisk together flax meal and water. This'll act as our nutritionally packed egg substitute.

3. Combine flax mixture, applesauce, soy milk, sugar, oil, and vanilla.

4. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients: cinnamon, flour, and baking powder.

5. Peel and slice 3 medium sweet apples. Slicing them now will save you from preserving them in lemon juice to prevent from browning, but that’s also an option if you’d like to get it out of the way first.

6. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Add the apple slices. Mix until the apple slices are evenly distributed.

7. Pour mixture into a generously greased loaf/ bundt/ cake pan and place in preheated oven. 

8. Cooking time varies depending on the depth of your pan. I baked mine in a deep oven-safe casserole dish, so the baking time was 1 hr 10 min. Check at about 40 minutes and do that toothpick test. This recipe generally takes 50 minutes to bake, and approximately 3 minutes to eat.  

The two beneficiaries of my baking, my roommate and boyfriend, exclaimed the highest praise I could receive: “It doesn’t taste vegan!” They loved the moist, cinnamon-y cake and chunks of warm apple. They were also delighted to hear the recipe wasn’t all that unhealthy. And you know what? If my Jewish grandma had a bite, she’d go mashugana… in a good way."

Oh, and because I love you all so much, here's a sweet coupon for $1.50 off 8th Continent Soy Milk. Enjoy!