Blackboy Peaches & Ghazala Sahiba's Peach Cake

My friend Ghazala (who has been a vegan for over twenty years) recently
celebrated a birthday. I used my home-grown and bottled blackboy peaches, and our home-grown almonds and walnuts, to make a special cake for her. I think she liked it, because she had three slices.

Every home should and can have a blackboy peach tree. As well as being tasty and nutritious they are dead easy to grow from seed (just toss the pits into the garden in autumn and look for seedling trees in spring); they come true from seed; they are very healthy trees which do not get leaf curl or other
diseases; they grow fast and start fruiting early; and they have many
culinary uses. You don't often see them for sale in supermarkets. I am not
sure why this is, but perhaps it is because you can't 'cheat' with them the
way you can with other peaches, picking them a bit hard and letting them
soften (but not really ripen) in the packing, transport and sale process.
They need to ripen and soften on the tree to be prime fresh eating - otherwise they are a bit floury and tasteless. How fortunate, then, that it is so easy to grow one's own tree.

GHAZALA SAHIBA'S PEACH CAKE
(a delicious vegan dessert cake)

Ingredients

1 C rolled oats
1/4 C almonds, skins on, broken in half
1 C wholemeal flour
2/3 C brown sugar
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 C walnut pieces
3/4 C flavourless oil

blackboy or other peaches, around 250 g
If fresh, peeled and sliced;
if bottled, well-drained and sliced

3/4 C soy milk
1 T finely ground linseed beaten into 4 T water*
1 heaped t ground cinnamon


Method

Oil a 21-22 cm flan dish.
Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Put the oats and broken almonds into a food processor, and whizz them until
the almonds are blended with the oats.
Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to the oats and almonds, and
whizz them to combine well.
Tip the mixture into a large bowl, add the walnut pieces, and mix in the oil
until the whole mixture is moistened.
Press half the mixture into the bottom of the oiled flan dish, to make a firm
base.
Put the peach slices evenly on top of this layer.
Mix the soy milk, linseed and cinnamon into the remaining ingredients in the
bowl, and pour the mixture over the peaches.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean from the top layer.
Dust with icing sugar to serve.
Can be served warm as a pudding or cool as a cake.

* Linseed beaten into water can used as an egg substitute in vegan baking.
 It is best used in 'wholefood' cakes like this one, where its flavour fits in
with the other ingredients.