Hooray for perfectly simple joys, like apple season! This easily gluten-free, vegan cinnamon apple coffee cake with psyllium is a true apple-tastic celebration—while being a beautifully wholesome breakfast or brunch.

You don’t need to purchase expensive flours to make this wholesome treat--all you need is oats! Homemade oat flour can be grainier than store-bought, even when processed fine, but somehow the texture works just right in this rustic recipe. It saves money, and doesn’t take much time. Just place 3 Cups oats in your food processor. Whizz on high, pausing to scrape sides several times, until you’ve achieved a fine flour. (Honestly, you can even leave out the scraping!)

Typically, oat flour does best in baking when mixed with almond or other bulkier flours, but in this vegan coffee cake, the medley of ingredients offer plenty of bulk. Psyllium’s unique binding properties, alongside unsweetened applesauce, and a little olive oil make a hardy team. You can sub in other flours, such as whole wheat or white whole wheat, but this will affect the density and the bake time somewhat. However you go, this recipe is a great one for making ahead. In fact, I think the flavors shine all the more given a day to merrily meld.

Plump Medjool dates are a perfect pairing with fall’s harbinger fruit for this cake’s delectable natural sweetness, enhanced all the more with a liberal dose of cinnamon. Topped with delightful nutty, crumbly topping, this moist apple cake is nutritiously delectable. I’ve used Organic India’s Cinnamon Spice Psyllium Pre & Probiotic fiber in both the cake and the topping, but you can certainly swap in Whole Husk Psyllium with Ceylon Cinnamon for the cake, or even eliminate altogether. Just see my notes in the recipe to adjust the quantities if using Whole Husk. For the topping, feel free to substitute Cinnamon for the psyllium product; that said, adding psyllium is an excellent fiber boost.

Psyllium: baking buddy and digestive support

Psyllium is a natural ally for your gut. Organic India’s Cinnamon Spice Psyllium Pre & Probiotic Fiber and other psyllium powder products go even further: this super powder also adds extra soluble and insoluble fiber for optimal gut health and digestion. These potent powders not not only combine the natural prebiotic of organic Psyllium with soil-based probiotic Bacillus coagulans, they further include the classic Ayurvedic tri-herb formula Triphala to aid in digestive rejuvenation.

The first time I made this cake was in 2020, and it became a sincere celebration cake in our house, twice in one month. Chef F had turned seven that year. We couldn’t have a party, at least not a typical “kid party” (because, pandemic), and I ruined his birthday cake…sort of.

There was an exceptional amount of juggling to do that year, needless to say. On Chef F’s birthday week, I multi-tasked to a dizzying degree. Overloaded and overhwlemed, I tried to quick bake Chef F’s requested carrot layer cake. If there’s one thing everyone learns eventually, it’s that we can’t cheat time. Pulled from the oven, the cake looked beautiful. But given my hurried state of mind, I didn’t toothpick test, or even carefully observe. I let the cake sit on the counter, covered, for two days. Birthday day was so fun-filled and busy (in a quiet, pandemic, Lego-loaded sort of way) that I didn’t even get down to frosting until just before I intended to serve…

Sadly, “Happy Birthday” singing was delayed. When I tipped the lovely looking carrot cake out of its tin, it revealed itself for the soggy, less than half-baked, already slightly moldy disaster it really was. And that’s when I got to see one an unexpected, beautiful side of turning seven: rather than dissolve in tears, Chef F smiled, laughed it off, and appreciated my scrambling like crazy to bake another cake— a meant-to-be-quick little mug cake with chocolate frosting.

The next day, I made this lovely cinamon apple coffee cake, hoping the additional cake would feel like a birthday extension. Success! Chef F even declared it the “best cake of the birthday weekend”! And yet, this was a cake that could have passed as simply breakfast. And that is definitely icing on the cake.

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Vegan Cinnamon Apple Coffee Cake with Psyllium

Yield: 8-10

Author: Wendy McMillan

Tender, moist, and naturally sweetened, this easily gluten-free, vegan cinnamon apple coffee cake with psyllium fiber is a true apple-tastic celebration—while being a beautifully wholesome breakfast or brunch.

Ingredients

For the cake

1 Cup pitted Medjool dates, soaked in warm water for ten minutes (or warm the plant milk, below, for soaking)
1 ½ Cups unsweetened plant milk of choice
2 Teaspoons lemon juice
1 Teaspoon vanilla
⅓ Cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
¼ Cup unsweetened applesauce
2 ¼ Cups oat flour (or approximately 3 Cups oats, processed)
2 ½ teaspoons ORGANIC INDIA Cinnamon Spice Pre & Probiotic Fiber (see note)
1 Teaspoon baking powder
½ Teaspoon baking soda
1 ¾ Cups chopped apple, peeled (about 2 large)

Instructions

For thetopping

½ Cup chopped walnuts (swap in ½ Cup quick oats and/or extra flour for nut-free)
¼ Cup flour of choice (rice, oat, whole wheat, gluten-free)
⅓ Cup coconut sugar
2 Tablespoon ORGANIC INDIA Cinnamon Spice Pre & Probiotic Fiber (see note)
3 Tablespoons olive oil

Notes

In place of the Cinnamon Spice Psyllium Pre & Probiotic fiber, feel free to use 1 Tablespoon Whole Husk Psyllium in the cake plus 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon. Substitute with an equal amount of Ceylon Cinnamon in the topping, or to taste.

You can omit Psyllium fiber altogether for this recipe.

Nutrition Facts

Calories

291

Fat

12 g

Sat. Fat

2 g

Carbs

42 g

Fiber

5 g

Net carbs

37 g

Sugar

17 g

Protein

6 g

Sodium

129 mg

Cholesterol

0 mg

Cinnamon apple psyllium cake