Walnut Fruit Cake- no cane sugar

Walnut fruit cake

Fruit cake must be one of the easiest things to vegan-ise; it doesn't need much raising so as long as you add oil to bind and a raising agent like baking powder, the egg is obsolete. This recipe is an adaptation of "Prune and Brazil Nut Cake" from Cintia Stammers' "The Book of Egg Free Cakes", a real baking classic I've mentioned before. I've doubled the quantities, used coconut oil instead of sunflower oil, added orange juice and taken away the lemon peel, changed the clove powder to mixed spice, made the flour wholemeal, substituted the Brazil nuts for walnuts and replaced some of the prunes with vine fruits and apricots. The cooking method and oven temperature remains the same, though. Actually, on reflection, I think this recipe is far enough away from the original to be "inspired by" rather than just an adaptation of the original. Credit due to Cintia Stammers, though, for providing me with cake inspiration time and time again...

200g dried fruit- a mix of unsulphured apricots, pitted prunes and vine fruits

200ml orange juice

200ml hot water

400g plain wholemeal flour

6 tsps baking powder

200g roughly chopped walnut halves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground mixed spice

200g coconut sugar

150ml melted coconut oil

• Chop the apricots and prunes and soak with the vine fruits in the orange juice and water.
• Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180C.
• Prepare a tin/ silicone mould. I used a rectangular one which I filled to about 2"deep so it would cook through evenly.
• In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, spices and nuts.
• Drain the liquid from the dried fruits and add that to the coconut oil.
• Add this to the dry mixture with the fruit and beat for 1-2 minutes.
• Bake for about 50 minutes in the centre of the oven. Don't turn it out if the tin until it has cooled or it may crumble.

How far do you adapt a recipe before you feel you can call it your own? What do you think about stating your source of inspiration? Do you always do it?