This light, fluffy one-bowl vegan blueberry cake is about to become your new go-to recipe. Scattered with juicy blueberries and finished with a drizzle of vegan white chocolate, this recipe is so easy to make, uses just eight main ingredients, and is ready in just over an hour.

This vegan cake recipe is perfect for spring and summer when fresh blueberries are at their best, and it can easily be customized with other fruit, chocolate, and toppings to make it your own. If you want more vegan baking inspiration, you might also love these other vegan cake recipes: blueberry, lemon, and poppyseed cake or vegan raspberry crumble bars or vegan Belgian buns.

Ingredients list

One of the best things about this recipe is that you need just one large bowl to put it together, so you won’t make a mess of your kitchen in its construction! This is one of the easier ever vegan blueberry cake recipes I’ve ever made. You’ll need the following ingredients.

Dry ingredients

• All-purpose flour: Any all-purpose plain flour will do for this recipe.
• Caster sugar: This makes the cake deliciously sweet and fluffy. You could swap in granulated sugar if that’s all you have.
• Baking powder: To help the cake rise, this is a must!
• A pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients

• Olive oil: I love the texture olive oil adds to my cakes, but you could also swap in coconut oil or another vegetable oil.
• Plant-based milk: I used almond milk for my blueberry cake, but you could also use soy milk or oat milk.
• Vanilla essence: This adds a wonderful flavor to the cake
• Apple cider vinegar: This helps to add to that beautiful light and fluffy texture.

Finally, of course, you’ll need fresh blueberries to stir into your cake and scatter over the top. 

Note – you’ll want enough blueberries to add to your cake batter and to reserve to scatter over the top of the cake. This will not only make your cake look beautiful, but will avoid your sponge at the bottom of the cake from getting too soggy.

For the top of the cake, you could either go with a vegan white chocolate drizzle (as pictured) or you could make a lemon glaze.

Other fruity cake recipes you might like include this absolutely beautiful vegan strawberry cake (which can also be turned into strawberry cupcakes!) or this lemon, blueberry, and poppyseed cake.

How to make the cake

This is a one-bowl cake, which means you just need one large mixing bowl to whip up your batter and bake. To make your cake:

• Add all your dry ingredients to the mixing bowl and stir to combine.
• Make a well in the centre of your cake and then add the wet ingredients
• Gently stir to just about combine the wet and dry ingredients into a smooth batter
• Pour in about two-thirds of your blueberries and fold in.
• Pour the cake batter into a lined loaf tin, smooth out the surface of the cake, and scatter over your remaining blueberries. 
• Bake for about an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake.
• Wait for the cake to cool, then top your cake layer with your glaze/topping of choice

Baking time

This cake will take around an hour to bake in the oven. However, I would advise setting a timer for after around 45-50 minutes to check on your cake.

If the center is still not cooked when you insert a skewer, you may want to cover the top of the cake with some foil to prevent it from burning while the middle of the cake continues to cook. You may also want to turn down the oven slightly if the top and sides of the cake are cooked but the middle is still gooey.

Cake topping options

White chocolate topping

To make the white chocolate drizzle, you simply need some vegan white chocolate (vegan white chocolate chips always melt quite well).

Melt the chocolate slowly in a microwave-safe baking dish or in a Ban Marie, and if the melted chocolate is too thick, add a teaspoon or so of warm plant-based milk. Once your cake is at room temperature, drizzle the chocolate over your cake and enjoy!

Lemon glaze

If you’d prefer a lemon glaze for a vegan blueberry lemon cake, you’ll need:

• Powdered sugar
• Fresh lemon juice
• Lemon zest
• Plant-based milk

Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and 2 tablespoons of plant-based milk to 100g of powdered sugar and the zest of 1 lemon, and stir to combine. You may need to add a little more liquid to get your desired consistency.

Storing your cake

Once your cake has cooled on a wire rack, I’d recommend either wrapping it in parchment paper or storing it in an airtight container. Make sure you let your cake cool fully before wrapping it in parchment paper to avoid it going soggy.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make this cake free from refined sugar?

You could experiment with swapping out the caster sugar for coconut sugar, but be aware that this will change the texture and flavor of the cake completely.

How to make this into a vegan lemon blueberry cake?

If you want to add a taste of lemon to the cake itself, simply stir in some lemon zest into the cake batter. You could also grate some lemon zest over the top of the cake once cooled!

Can I use maple syrup instead of caster sugar?

I wouldn’t recommend swapping the caster sugar with maple syrup, as this would make the batter far too wet and the cake probably won’t turn out well! You could use brown sugar, but again, this will give your cake more of a caramel flavor profile.

How to make a gluten-free vegan blueberry cake?

To make your vegan cakes gluten-free, you can simply use gluten-free plain flour instead.

Do I have to use a loaf pan for this cake?

No, you could use a round cake pan instead for this recipe, especially if you want to make it into a layer cake. Note that the texture of this cake is quite fine and fluffy, so it may not be texturally sound enough for a large multi-layer cake.

You could also use a muffin tin to make vegan blueberry muffins or cupcakes with vegan frosting.

Can I use vegan yogurt in this recipe?

Yes, you could swap out the plant-based milk for all or some vegan yogurt, I think this would work great although I haven’t tested it myself.

Happy baking!