What Yogurt Can I Use For The Vegan Lemon Polenta Cake?

Our answer

Nigella's Vegan Lemon Polenta Cake (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) is a vegan version of her popular Lemon Polenta Cake. In the recipe Nigella uses almond-milk plain soy yogurt. This is a plant-based yogurt that uses a combination of soy and almond milks. Nigella found that this type of yogurt gave a better result than most of the purer plant-based yogurts, possibly as it has a more neutral flavour and moderate fat content.

It seems that Alpro brand is the easiest to find in the UK and Europe. Labelling of products does evolve and at time of writing the yogurt appears to be sold as "plain with almond" or "natural with almond". And in some places it could be labelled as a "fermented plant-based product" or an "alternative to yogurt". You need a plain or natural yogurt rather than a flavoured one and unsweetened as otherwise the cake could taste too sweet. Whilst this would be our preference, if you can't get hold of this particular yogurt then you can use your favourite unflavoured, unsweetened plant-based yogurt. Try to use one with a 2-3% fat content as some of the yogurts (such as coconut-milk yogurt) tend to be much higher in fat and could make the cake a little heavier.