Vegan Lemon Almond Cake

Around this time of year I get calls from friends with lemon trees to announce that the lemons are ready and up for grabs. And most of the times I do accept this generous offer and get few off their hands (or tree). I use it by making lemon pickle, lemon curd, basic salad dressing and of course in staples like lemon rice. Few months ago I had these awesome vegan lemon almond cupcakes in cafe and immediately decided to ask for the recipe. I was hopeful to get a nice recipe from the chef but as of now I have not received any response. I waited for few days and then started searching for 'the' recipe as I wanted to make use of these amazingly flavorful Meyer Lemons I had sitting in my fruit basket. I love lemon flavored everything and wanted to try these lemon cupcakes. After searching furiously for few days, I came across this plain vanilla almond cupcakes recipe and I thought this is something I can easily modify to get what I want. And with my limited knowledge of baking, I had to make some SOS calls to confirm the substitutes I was planning to use. And to my surprise I was on right track! We had called few friends over for coffee and wanted to offer these along with it. I measured the ingredients carefully and started mixing up the batter in food processor. While I was doing that got a phone call from a friend of mine who got in touch with me after long time. I was mixing things in the food processor while happily chatting over the phone. After adding the flour realized that my batter was very thin and I got upset. Immediately I opened my laptop and checked the recipe again and it did say that the batter will be bit watery and its okay! Ahhh! sigh of relief! But then on a second thought I decided to add 1/4th cup of flour to the batter. All mixed in together and poured in the lined mini muffin pan! And realized that one minor detail I had forgotten! The recipe was for normal sized muffins and not for mini. So I decided to dump the remaining batter in a loaf pan and see if works out. And it turned out great too. As the remaining batter was a very small quantity I had to bake about the same time as the mini-muffins. By the time this drama was over, my friends had already arrived. With all these events, I had not even got time to cleanup my counter top which I did in few minutes and started chatting with them. While we were having coffee I very reluctantly offered them these cuties I baked. I did not even get a chance to do the taste test before offering. And the whole dozen was gone in matter of few minutes with oooh and aaahs, asking me for the recipe! Even though I added generous amount of lemon zest which gave enough flavor but was not as much as the cupcakes I had in the cafe. I think they might have used more zest or used lemon extract. I am not sure as I have yet to receive recipe from them.Then next time I decided to make it in a 8x8 inch pan. And as expected it came out great. Now after reading all my stories you must be wondering about the recipe so here it is -

Adapted from this recipe
2 tbsp lemon juice + soy milk = 1 cup milk
1.25 cup Flour
1/3 cup almond meal
3/4 tsp Baking Powder
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Sugar
1/3 cup Oil
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
3 tbsp Lemon Zest

Procedure -
Preheat oven at 375F. Grease and flour a baking pan.
Mix lemon juice and soy milk and set aside for few minutes to curdle.
Mix almond meal, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and keep it aside.
Add oil, sugar and lemon zest and vanilla extract to a food processor bowl and mix for few minutes.
Add curdled milk in three batches mixing it for a minute after each batch.
Add mixed dry ingredients at once and mix it well for couple of minutes.
Pour it in a greased pan and bake for 20 minutes or until the toothpick inserted comes out clean.
I poured some lemon glaze on top just to add some more lemon flavor.

Tips -

1. I always use whole wheat pastry flour to for baking. It gives very rustic flavor to the cakes. But I suppose you can use APF for this to get the delicate flavor
2. I made my own almond meal by grinding 1/3 cup almonds.
3. I am sure lemon extract and amaretto will give nice flavor to this but I did not have any.
4. I love flavor and aroma of Meyer Lemons and used these in this recipe too.