It was a Vegan emergency – that is our daughter, a long time vegan, surprised us by arriving home for her birthday. Now, as her birthday always falls on the first day of school or so, she has not been home from University for her birthday for YEARS……

The first week of school at University is not to be missed, unless of course we are in a pandemic, in which case, school is all online. So we needed a birthday cake…… and not to mention she’s never liked cake…. so we put together a quick “Vegan Apple Dump”.

Is a vegan dessert any healthier than a non-vegan dessert you may ask? Well no, probably not, but eating one piece of Vegan Apple Dump Cake is probably healthier than eating two.

I first came across this concept, when looking up “what to do with leftover apples” – we used to have a small orchard, and I could only make so much apple pie, pear crisp and cider. So I will just let you know, this is the easiest recipe ever, and nobody needs to know that. It has only 3 ingredients – apples, cake mix and melted butter or margarine. Easy Peasy…….

This recipe appears in various forms all over the internet, and that’s the beauty of it – you can add to it if you like – cinnamon, raisins, nuts – but you don’t need to. It’s the simplicity that works.

To make the recipe vegan – just use a vegan labelled margarine, and make sure the cake mix has no dairy, animal fat or egg ingredients. You don’t have to look for a vegan labelled mix, just read the ingredients carefully, looking out for ingredients hiding in the small print. I used a Duncan Hines White cake mix, (it had a really vanilla flavour to it) or you could use a golden or carrot cake mix.— Again no one needs to know – What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen.

Ingredients:

One white, golden or carrot cake mix (free of eggs, or dairy)

3 large apples – sliced

3/4 cup vegan margarine – melted

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Spray bottom of 8 by 12 casserole dish with non-stick coating

Arrange apples on the bottom of the dish

Pour cake mix over the apples – spread and press down evenly

Pour melted margarine all over the top of the cake mix – you can tilt the dish a little to get it to spread evenly – it sticks to the cake mix if you try to spread it with a spatula

Place in the oven for 45-50 minutes (50 minutes worked for me), until the “cake” is light golden brown and the apples bubble a little around the edges.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (Vegan of course!)

This dessert was easy – and went quickly. Everyone asked me about the cinnamon and brown sugar – What? There wasn’t any – but they’ll never know.