After visiting Vancouver for the second time in August 2018 for a friend’s wedding, I was inspired by the plant-based food scene that Vancouver offers and was particularly impressed with a place near my hotel called the Juice Truck. It was a little cafe, and without even realizing it when I walked it, was 100 percent plant-based. I ordered a toasted chickpea Caesar salad (which I still think about to this day because it was that well put together and delicious) and a slice of their vegan lemon coconut loaf, made by a vegan food company owned by Erin Ireland, a vegan chef in the area. With one bite of that loaf, I was completely in love and shocked that there were zero eggs and no butter in it. It was packed with flavor, super moist, and just delicious all around.

Erin Ireland doesn’t make her recipes publicly known, so based on the ingredients list on the packet, I took a photo of it to remember what she used and was determined to recreate a version of this at home. Well, a year and a half later, I finally tried this out today, and I’m proud to say that I’ve come quite close to replicating it. The crumb is not as firm as I’d like, but I hope it will firm up overnight, but the flavor is almost what I remember it to be. Plant-based cooking and baking definitely requires a bit more thought, but it has lots of promise when you have fresh, vibrant ingredients like fresh lemons, coconut milk, coconut oil, millet, and poppy seeds.