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Angel food cake has always been a favorite dessert of mine, so I decided to make a vegan angel food cake version! This cake is all you have dreamed about and even more. I prepare this on every occasion I get.
Notes
An angel food cake is challenging enough to prepare, however, a vegan one is an even larger challenge. To ensure that this version turns great for you, I suggest that you read the whole article. It’s best to spare 10 minutes extra than to waste every penny and second make something that fails.
Is This Vegan Angel Food Cake Worth Your Time and Energy?
If you are on the hunt for a plant-based alternative to this divine sweet cake, this recipe is totally worth it. Similar to its original counterpart it has:
-A greatly fluffy texture and fine taste
-Lower calories compared to the real thing
-Lower fat-one 1g of fat/slice
You also need only 20 minutes to prepare it, despite the several steps involved in making it.
Ingredients for Making Vegan Angel Food Cake:
This recipe requires only six ingredients and therefore it’s best to measure these with caution and do not use any replacements if possible. Follow the recipe to a T!
- Aquafaba: a liquid leftover from cooked chickpeas that is a great replacement for egg whites. If you whip it up, it will become the best vegan “meringue”.
- Cream of tartar: this an acid substance that helps set aquafaba when beaten.
- Ground sugar: beat the regular sugar granules in a food processor or blender until finely dissolved into fine powder.
- Vanilla extract: for extra aroma and flavor
- Chickpea flour: a typical vegan egg replacer that helps set the meringue.
- All-purpose flour: use just one cup and tbsp of all-purpose flour passed through a sifter.
Ingredients:
-¾ cup aquafaba (the liquid leftover from a can of chickpeas)
-1 tbsp vanilla extract
-1 cup & 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
-1 cup granulated sugar
-1 tbsp chickpea flour
1 ½ tsp cream of tartar
Instructions:
- Preheat your oven at 330F/165C.
- Beat the granulated sugar into fine sugar in a blender or food processor.
- Place ¾ cup of aquafaba liquid into a big mixing bowl with vanilla extract and cream of tartar. Whip for 6 minutes minimum with a hand mixer initially on low and then slowly at higher speed.
- Incorporate the powdered sugar gradually in several parts while beating up the meringue on high speed for a couple of minutes.
- Once you have beaten the aquafaba for 8 minutes at least, grab a tbsp of the chickpea flour and beat for an extra minute or so.
- In three increments, gradually sift the flour combo into the egg mix through a mesh strainer, while carefully folding in with a rubber spatula after every part. To prevent any shrinking and loss of cake volume, don’t add the flour mixture in one part. Add gradually in multiple increments.
- Place and spread the batter into an unprepared 9X10” cake tubular pan. Shake the pan on a flat surface to even out the bottom.
- Bake your vegan angel cake until you add a toothpick and it turns out clean, for approx. 45-50 minutes.
- Take off the oven and let cool (while it’s still in the pan) for 2-3 hours.
- Once it’s cooled down, pass a small knife around the edges to gently detach the cake from the pan.
- If you wish, sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar. Serve with fresh berries on top and a small part of vegan whipping cream.
See Also: Vegan Jamaican Ginger Cake
Conclusion
Hope you liked my vegan angel food cake recipe and enjoyed the cake as much as I have and my family & friends.
Please let me know in the comments how this cake turned out for you, I will be happy to answer it!
Can you just use store bought powdered sugar instead of trying to grind the granulated sugar? I tried to grind my sugar in the blender, but it never turned to powder.
Thanks.
You can also buy it at the store instead of making it yourself, if you want to stick closer to the original recipe, and most likely have more success. It should be under the label ‘superfine sugar’, ‘castor sugar’, ‘bar sugar’, or ‘ultra fine sugar.’
Hope this helps 😊
Sorry meant ‘caster’ not ‘castor’ 😑
Thank you. So it should still be a “fine grind” of sugar as opposed to powdered? Maybe what I’m doing would be good enough then. The sugar did grind down some, but didn’t get the consistency of powdered, which is what I thought it needed to be.
Powdered sugar and super fine sugar are different… Powdered jerk contains cornstarch so I’m not sure if the recipe is miss speaking when it says powdered sugar opposed to the super fine sugar
Yes it would be good to get some clarification here. Both on the sugar and on the inverting the cake.
Sorry, that should say powdered sugar not jerk… I also have a question, most angel food cakes you invert as they are cooling so they don’t deflate, are you not doing that with this recipe?
Hi Amie,
Thanks. Sorry for the late reply. I hadn’t tried the recipe till yesterday, and sadly it didn’t turn out well. I did end up getting a grinder and grinding the sugar to a fine consistency, almost to powder. The blender just wasn’t doing the job. No, I didn’t invert the pan when it was cooling. I didn’t know you were supposed to do that. I’m not much of a baker. This was my first try making an angel food cake. I’ve made other kinds of cakes, but not angel food.
Use a coffee grinder to get granulated sugar powder
What you buy at the store as powdered sugar is just granulated sugar & corn starch (1 TBSP cornstarch + 1 C granulated sugar; It’s best to make the granulated sugar into a powder first & then add the corn starch to it later. ) A dedicated coffee grinder for this works great, one that you aren’t using for coffee beans).
Just an FYI, “pure cane sugar” that is very white is bleached using a bone char filter to get it that way. Though the sugar processed in this way doesn’t add any particulates from the bone char filter, depending on who you ask, it may not be considered vegan because the process uses animal derived components. If you aren’t concerned with this or cross contamination or the ethics of this, that’s up to you. However, granulated white sugar is typically derived from sugar beets and are processed in an entirely different way and doesn’t use a bone char filter. The other option is to use a “blonde” cane sugar, like evaporated cane juice crystals/Sugar In The Raw or similar. It’s sugar cane with just the water removed. It’s not pure white so might affect the aesthetics of the coloration of your cake, but shouldn’t affect the final outcome in the end.
Do you think this would work with a sugar alternative, like stevia? I’ll use regular sugar if it’s essential to how it ends up baking overall for sure, but thought I’d check! This looks and sounds divine 😍
Does this need to be cooled upside down like traditional angel food?
If you start with castor instead of regular sugar, would you use more castor sugar and if so, how much? If you start with regular sugar and grind it smaller I pretty sure you’ll end up with more than one cup of sugar. Thanks for your response!
Hi Dale,
That’s what happened to me. I measured out the 1 cup of regular sugar and after I got it ground up, it was much more than 1 cup.
The taste was great but it didn’t raise hardly at all it was quite dense. Did I do something wrong?
Hi Jill, have you added flour gradually?
I wonder if using cake flour would help. Cake flour tends to make cakes fluffier.
Must the chickpea flour be chickpea flour, or can it be another common sub like EnerG or Bob’s Red Mill, which are both potato starch based? I’ll get/make chickpea flour if need be. Just trying to use what I have. (I have dried chickpeas, but already-made is so much easier!)
Hey Cindy, I’m glad you’ve decided to try this recipe! Yes, you can use the flours you’ve mentioned, however, I’m not sure you know Bob’s Red Mill has chickpea flour also.
For the 1 TBSP chickpea flour, I wold probably use something ike Bob’s Red Mill 1-to 1 GF flour that has all sorts of flours in it. Straight up chickpea flour has an unpleasant aftertaste, which doesn’t happen with the 1 to 1 flour. (Also doesn’t happen when making other things with chickpeas-just the flour).
Something I’ve discovered about using GF flour like Bob’s, there is a gritty texture that comes along with it that is very detectable (I have a sensitivity to subtle things no one else seems to notice, but texture is everything. Something might taste ok, but if the texture is off in any way it could be a deal breaker, enough to not consume foods that just don’t go do it for me). To overcome this, I spin the dry flour around in my food processor and sift it through a metal sieve with smal holes to sift it through, then back into the food processor. I repeat this a few times to get a super soft fine texture that you don’t get that gritty consistency.
The gritty texture is from the rice flour. Just don’t get gf flour that has rice flour. I just made some gf cupcakes my own mix, using chickpea flour, but no one knew it was gf. It didn’t have that weird chickpea flour aftertaste either. I realize now that gritty texture from gf baked goods is from the rice flour.
Well, I finally tried to make the cake yesterday, for my birthday. I followed the recipe exactly, but wasn’t sure about a couple things about the measurements for the sugar and flour.
Do you sift the flour before you measure it out or measure first and then sift it into the mixture? Same for the sugar… measure first and then grind it or grind sugar first and then measure out the 1 cup? I had more sugar and flour after I measured them out and then ground the sugar and sifted the flour, so I don’t know if that affected my cake or not.
My cake didn’t turn out looking anything like the picture. Mine was very heavy, and didn’t raise more than about 1″ tall. It tasted okay, but was very “chewy”. I was really careful adding the flour slowly and folding it in. I don’t know what I did wrong, unless it was the measuring of the flour and sugar. I measured them both out first and then sifted the flour and ground the sugar, which gave me more than the recipe called for. They both kind of “puffed up” to be more than the 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup and 1 tblsp of flour.
I want to try again, but am not sure what I did wrong.
Same thing happened to me. The aquafaba got fluffy and stiff, then when the flour was added it kinda sunk and never raised while baking
I read the entire page and followed the instructions carefully. I recently made aquafaba meringues so I thought this would work. However, when I added the chickpea flour (bit by bit) it collapsed and would not come back.
Yea this is what happened to mine. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the chickpea flour but now that you are saying it, now I am sure it was the chickpea flour that did it. I’ll have to try this again maybe wo or maybe try to fold in almond flour instead. I think I’ll mix it in though with the flour mixture.
This is exactly what happened to mine and I didn’t even bother baking it. Should you skip the chickpea flour? Fold it in with the regular flour?
FELL FLAT did not hold the peaks when the flour was folded into the mix.. stuck to my nonstick pan.
Similar results. I’m not sure if I did something wrong. I did fold in the flour. I also inverted the pan. It was gummy as well. Sadly I threw it out. I wonder if cake flour would work better. This does seem like it is impossible to make a vegan Angel food cake. Oh well…
I’m making this now because Angel food cake wo eggs is impossible! So I’m curious to see how this formula works. That being said I really don’t think this is going to work. I will invert since that is really what you are suppose to do with Angel food cake. If my cake makes it that far. I’ll be shocked if this even works. Also the mixing time wasn’t clear for me. I’m probably just over thinking it, but does it mix for 6 min then another 8 min? Or does it get mixed for another 2 min after the sugar is added? Also now that I’m seeing the comments is the consistency of the sugar suppose to be similar to powder sugar? That sugar ended up being like powder sugar once blended in the blender. So many questions. But shall see if this even works. I have very low expectations though 😂 as this always has been impossible to make a light and fluffy Angel food cake wo egg whites aka vegan. But have you figured it out finally!? That would be amazing! Shall see. Best
I was so hopeful. I love angel food cake, but have developed an intolerance to eggs.
I followed the recipe did everything as listed. The cake basically melted in my pan in the oven during cooking. 🙁
What have I done wrong?
Hi April. The same thing happened to me on my first and second attempt. I made a few modifications and had a much better result. Start with a nonstick ring pan, makes a huge difference. Try reducing the aqua faba in a small pan and cool it to room temp, for a thicker consistency.Start with more than you need and reduce it to 3/4 cup. I also added the TBSP of chickpea flour to 1 cup +1TBSP of cake flour, not AP flour. I did not add it directly to the whipped aqua faba. I used xylitol, ground fine in a mill, instead of regular sugar and reduced the bake time by a few minutes. The cake does not rise as much as a standard non-vegan angel food cake, but it did have a nice crust on top and the sponge was tender.Hope this helps.
Kevin, Did you find it rising in the oven and falling or did it simply not rise too much?
I don’t understand the instructions where it says to grab a tablespoon of chickpea flour and then beat the mixture for another minute and then add in the flour combo. Wouldn’t the flour combo be the regular flour with the chickpea flour? But at this point I have already added the chickpea flour and continued mixing for another minute as instructed. Or, when you say to grab a tablespoon of the chickpea flour, is that just to grab it and have it nearby for the next step, and which case I’m not supposed to use the mixer after adding the chickpea flour? Please clarify.
I’ll try this, but it looks like Emily has gone missing since her last replies over a year ago. Krystin asked almost the same question that I have. Emily says to add the chickpea flour and continue beating. Ending with a total mixing time of eight minutes. THEN she says to add “the flour mixture”??? A mixture implies that two or more substances are added together. Just what is it that is supposed to be added to the 1 cup 1 tablespoon all purpose flour? And really? one cup and then an additional tablespoon of flour? I couldn’t possibly measure things that exactly! Does an additional tablespoon of flour really make any difference. And like was asked, but not answered – is it measured before or after sifting? Before I added the flour I had a super tall, super stiff meringue. I make lots of angel food cakes, but have never seen one just “almost disappear” as I added the flour! How about some clarification on some of these steps Emily?