The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England.

Don’t our hosts both have such great blog names? Both conjure up such delicious imagery for me. Thank you to our hosts for choosing something unique and for affording me the opportunity to try something different.

I completed this challenge just under the wire (again). The super hot and humid weather is not exactly conducive to spending time in front of a hot oven – yet I was determined to prevail.

I chose cherry jam as my filling. In order to veganize the original recipe (which you can find in full here) I used earth balance in place of butter (omitting the additional salt) and chose to replace all of the eggs with a flax meal and water combination. Normally flax is my favourite egg substitute.

If I were to make this recipe again however I would go a different route with my substitutions. For the crust, I would choose soy yogurt for at least part of the egg substitution – perhaps in tandem with flax meal. For the frangiapane I would go a different way altogether, probably using a starch such as arrowroot or cornstarch – something lighter than flax meal. Flax meal, while delicious, ended up being too heavy for this implementation – the frangiapane settled more than I would have liked and was somewhat gooey. Tasty, but gooey. Definitely not photogenic. Meh.

I could think of worse things than making more tarts to perfect the technique.

Be sure to check out the spectacular work of the the Daring Bakers at the Daring Kitchen.