This one isn’t GF (sorry, S!), nor is it vegan, but it is dairy-free. It also isn’t very good, so you aren’t missing out. I started with Heather Van Vorous’s Lemon-Glazed Sticky Bread recipe from Eating for IBS, and then heavily adapted it for my own purposes such that it is now an entirely new recipe. Because even when I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I still can’t resist experimenting. Whee!
3/4 c vanilla soy milk
4 egg whites (You can get a carton of just the whites! It’s brilliant!)
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 qt. home-canned peach slices in light syrup
2 c white flour
1 1/2 baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Glaze: juice of other 1/2 lemon
2 heaping T sugar
Preheat oven to 350.
Whisk together the first 3 ingredients. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Dump the wet ingredients into the dry, then add the can of peaches, juice and all. Stir quickly, just until it’s all combined.
Pour into a 9×5 loaf pan greased with a little Earth Balance fake butter. Bake for an hour, or until it’s done (toothpick in the middle comes out clean, you know the drill).
Whisk glaze ingredients together. When bread comes out of the oven, poke the top all over so the glaze will soak in, then pour it over the bread. (This would be better if I’d had more than one lemon in the house; oh well.)
It did rise (…ish), but it came out with a custardy, heavy texture; no crumb at all — maybe ’cause there’s almost no fat? I brought it to a last-day-of-school party for my 7th grade advisees, and it was generally deemed “weird” but with a good peachy flavor.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Meg // Jun 14, 2010 at 8:10 pm
You don’t have any good way of distributing air bubbles in your mixture – you’re not creaming flour or sugar with solid fat, or using yeast, or whipping the egg whites. You also have a very high ratio of wet ingredients to dry. Thus, custard.
If you want something light and non-fat and drier, I’d suggest whipping the egg whites, mixing a third of them into lighten the batter, then folding the rest into the batter very gently.
2 Sam // Jun 14, 2010 at 8:34 pm
This is exactly the kind of baking science I need! Thanks. :) Any more tips?
3 Meg // Jun 15, 2010 at 8:45 am
You might want to increase the amount of leavening as well. For two cups of flour, consider using two teaspoons of baking powder.
A small amount of baking soda (1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon) will offset the acid in the peaches/lemon juice and also enhance rising. I’m a little surprised the soy milk didn’t curdle with all that acid stuff, but what do I know?
Consider gently stirring in the peaches last, after you’ve combined the peach juice and other liquids with the flour and folding in the egg whites.
For technique, you might want to look up some recipes for nut tortes or flourless chocolate cakes, which also involve folding whipped egg whites into a heavy/uncreamed substance.
Have I mentioned that I really don’t know what kind of cooking experience you have? I apologize if any of this stuff if too basic.
Leave a Comment