Joy Cupcakes

Greg & I made a trip out to Doncaster shopping centre today as I had a pressing need to buy a Mimco headband.  Once I had accomplished my mission we were wandering around when we walked past a cupcake stand & Greg noticed that they had vegan cupcakes.  I was pretty excited about this so we bought some to take home.  They only have two flavours that they do vegan - black & white (which I think is chocolate & vanilla) and red velvet.  Black & white are available on Thursday, Friday & Saturday with red velvet being available on the other days.  Some of the other flavours that they have sound amazing like baklava, toffee apple & salted caramel so it is a bit disappointing that only the more boring flavours are available in vegan but it is still pretty exciting to be out at a suburban shopping centre & be able to buy a vegan cupcake.

Anyway the cupcakes themselves are quite nice - they are really moist with a rich chocolatey flavour , I wasn't a huge fan of the icing though because it didn't really taste like anything.  They are pretty expensive at $4 each but if you happen to be out shopping & need a sugar fix at least there is an available option.

Joy Cupcakes
Westfield Doncaster
619 Doncaster Road 
Doncaster 

Tempeh & Eggplant Pot Pies

After reading this post on The Tropical Vegan, I decided to make the Tempeh & Eggplant Pot Pies from The Vegan Table as I had some tempeh in my freezer & an eggplant in my fridge.  I followed the recipe exactly, although I left the celery out because I hate it & for the tomato sauce I used a can of diced tomatoes.  I really liked these, but next time I make them I will add tomato paste & red wine to the filling to give it a bit of extra flavour.  The biscuit topping is amazing!  I want to eat nothing but pot pies topped with that biscuit topping from now on.

Crepes with mushrooms & broccoli

There has been a lot of talk in my household about crepes recently, probably due to a recent & delicious visit to Coco Loco where we had savoury crepes.

I have never made crepes before because I thought they would be really difficult given how thin they are but they are surprisingly easy, although mine could have been a bit thinner & they weren't really very round.  I wanted to make a mushroom filling & I had some tofutti cream cheese & cheezly that I wanted to use up so made up a cheesey sauce to fill the crepes with.

Crepes (makes 5 smallish crepes)

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 3/4 cup soy milk
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• egg replacer made up to equal  1 egg
• pinch salt

METHOD

1. Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl & whisk well.
2. Heat a large frypan & lightly oil (I brushed mine lightly with canola oil)
3. Ladle mixture into the frypan, pick up frypan & swirl it so the batter coats the bottom of the pan
4. Flip the crepe over once it has dried on the top
5. Cook the other side & then remove from pan

Mushroom & Broccoli filling

INGREDIENTS

• About a cup of sliced mushrooms (I used 7 mushrooms)
• Half a head of broccoli cut into small pieces
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 4 tbsps of Tofutti better than cream cheese
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsps herb & garlic cheezly grated

METHOD

1. Heat olive oil in a frypan
2. Add mushrooms & garlic & cook through
3. Steam broccoli until cooked through
4. Remove the mushrooms from the frypan
5. Whisk together the cream cheese & soy milk in the frypan until the cream cheese has melted
6. Stir in the nutritional yeast & lemon juice until well combined & thickened
7. Add in the cheezly, mushrooms & broccoli & stir until the vegies have heated & the cheezley has melted
8. Serve the mixture rolled in the pre-made crepes

Soba noodles and salt & pepper tofu

I recently stumbled across the blog eat me, delicious & decided to make a couple of recipes from there for dinner which I thought would go together nicely.

The recipe for the noodles was right down my alley since soba noodles & edamame are two of my favourite foods.  This was really easy to make & the flavours were quite light & subtle & I really enjoyed it.

I really liked the salt & pepper tofu recipe & even though I had no garlic, chilli or spring onion it was still really good (if not the most photogenic meal) & I plan on making it again & again.

Pumpkin Ravioli with Pesto

For the last couple of months I kept buying pumpkins with the intentions of making this but only just got around to it last week & it was so easy & delicious that I should have made it sooner.  I would have liked a bit more texture though, so next time I make it I will toss through some whole pine nuts before serving.

Pumpkin Ravioli

INGREDIENTS

• 500gm pumpkin cut into smallish evenly sized pieces
• Half a packet of silken tofu
• Half tub of Tofutti better than cream cheese
• I packet of wonton/gow gee wrappers 

METHOD

1. Roast pumpkin until soft & starting to brown
2. In a food processor blend the tofu & cream cheese until smooth & well combined
3. Add the pumpkin to the food processor & blend into the tofu & cream cheese, add salt & pepper to taste
4. Put a teaspoon of the pumpkin mix into the centre of a wonton wrapper & press the edges together.  I used a dumpling press because I have one & because it seals the edges really, really well so when you are cooking the ravioli they don't open up.
5. Add the ravioli to a big pot of boiling salted water & remove & drain once it floats to the top.
6. Heat the pesto in a frypan & toss the drained ravioli in the the pesto.

Pesto

INGREDIENTS

• 1 bunch basil
• 1 tbsp miso paste
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tbsp pine nuts
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast

METHOD 

1. Toast the pine nuts in a dry fry pan until starting to brown
2. Blend all ingredients together in a food processor until well combined

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Cheesecake Slice

For my dessert to take to Carla's Winter Warmer Potluck at the last minute I decided to make a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake in slice form.

I based it on this recipe & de-glutened it by making the base from crushed Leda choculence biscuits mixed with melted nuttelex.  But then I stupidly used a soy milk that isn't gluten free in the cheesecake.  This was alright but it wasn't as amazing as I hoped it would be.

Gluten free vegan sausage rolls

For Carla's recent Winter Warmer potluck I decided to try de-glutening the famous Where's the Beef sausage rolls.  I actually just bought gluten free pastry & then went to make them & realised that there was quite a bit of gluten in the filling that needed to be changed as well.  Even with the changes that I made these turned out really well & I think they were just as good as the gluteny version.

This is the original recipe ingredients with my substitutions in red, the method can be found in the Where's the Beef post, but basically you just whack everything besides the last 3 ingredients in the food processor, roll in pastry & sprinkle sesame seeds on top then bake until golden brown - easy!

Vegan sausage rolls

125g pecans
stale bread to make ~1/2 cup breadcrumbs 1/2 cup Orgran corn crispy crumbs
1 onion
300g silken tofu
1 cup rolled oats 1 cup cooked quinoa
1 Massel beef-style stock cube
1 teaspoon garlic powder  Crushed garlic

3 tablespoons soy sauce 3 tablespoons tamari
ground pepper, to taste
3-4 frozen puff pastry sheets 3 Pastry Pantry GF pastry sheets
water ofor brushing pastry
sesame seeds

I have blogged about these previously here & some of the other lovely Melbourne bloggers  have blogged about them here, here & here.