Camy Shanghai Dumplings - non vegan vegetarian dumplings??

Well, my world has just been seriously rocked! Greg & I went to the show today & on the way home we thought that we would pop into Camy's to get some frozen dumplings to make for dinner tonight. I have not bought the frozen dumplings before & was surprised that they come in nice packaging & I actually said to Greg that I was interested to see what the ingredients would be since the staff are not so helpful in answering questions.

The mushroom & vegetable dumplings have CHICKEN BOOSTER in them!!!! What the hell is this & what is it doing in my dumplings????? I have googled it & seems to be like chicken stock. I eat these dumplings at least once a week & this has completely ruined my day. I am hoping that by some chance this chicken booster is not made from chicken but am guessing that it is :(

If anyone can shed any light on what this is it would be much appreciated because I am addicted to these dumplings!

Strawberry & Cream Cake

It was my friend Kathryn's birthday recently & she mentioned that it was not often that she got birthday cake or if she did it was cake that she didn't like. So, we decided that I should make her birthday cake & she said that she would like something with strawberries & maybe cream. I decided to make a double layered cake with fresh strawberries & cream sandwiched between the layers & on top.

For some reason I had a lot of trouble finding a suitable cake recipe, which is probably because recipes that call for separating eggs scare me off because I am not sure how to veganise that. My first cake attempt was a complete disaster, it looked liked damper & it tasted like a big scone. In actual fact we ate pieces of it with jam & soyatoo cream & it was alright, but definitely wasn't the cake that I was wanting to make.

My second attempt was better & at that stage I really didn't want to go for round 3 so decided it would do. It didn't rise as much as I would have liked, but I do have problems with cakes rising in my oven. I bought an oven thermometer in case that was the issue but the problem is still not solved.

I whipped up a carton of soyatoo & tossed some strawberries in sugar & the end result was pretty good! Soyatoo is the food of the gods! I was not expecting it to be anywhere near as good as it was!
Besides myself & my partner everyone that ate the cake were omni & everyone loved it - yay for yummy vegan food!!

Roasted vegetable stack

This was a very simple but very impressive looking meal.

Greg & I were at Aldi recently looking at the grow your own mushroom kits I spotted a rosti packet mix - it was basically just a packet of grated potato with spices but I bought it on a whim thinking I could do something with it.

I decided to use it as a base for a roasted vegetable stack & it was the goods! I cooked the rosti according to the instructions, but you were supposed to flip it halfway through to cook the top & I decided to put it under the grill to finish it off rather than tempt fate. As the rosti was cooking I grilled red capsicum, fried eggplant wich I had brushed with olive oil & cooked up some vegie sausages. I made one big rosti which I then cut into quarters & topped with baby spinach leaves, chopped artichoke which I had bought from the market, the grilled & peeled capsicum, eggplant & topped with sausages & a drizzling of balsamic glaze. It was actually a really light meal & really delicious - next time I will probably make the rosti from scratch though.

Biscuits!

My partner & I are a bit of an old married couple & every night after dinner he makes cups of tea which we drink with either a biscuit or a small piece of cake. The last couple of weekends I have made a batch of biscuits for the week. The first ones I made were chocolate cherry biscuits based on a recipe from vegsoc.org.au. I changed the recipe a little bit & they were nice, but tasted quite scone-like.

125g Nuttelex
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 'egg' (use No Egg replacer)
1 3/4 cup self raising flour
3/4 cup glace cherries (chopped in half)
50 gm sweet william chocolate chopped up
1/4 cup soy milk

1) Prepare the No Egg

2) Beat Nuttelex, sugars and egg until light and fluffy.

3) Stir in sifted flour, the cherries and then the choc bits.

4) Make into balls and place on lightly greased baking trays - leaving space in between. Flatten tops with a fork.

5) Bake for 15mins at 170 degrees.


The next week I made lime & white chocolate biscuits. I made these before at christmas & they were really good so I was looking forward to making them again & once again they were really delicious! The recipe is from "have cake, will travel" & can be found here. I copied the recipe exactly, except I used 50rams of chopped sweet william white chocolate instead of the choc chips - I think they would be really good with a bit of coconut added as well. I must try some more recipes from that blog because there are so many that look really good.