Cacao & Orange Balls

Last week when I was at work I was after a snack so headed to the supermarket conveniently located next door & spotted the Emma & Tom's Life Bars.  I have never seen these before but was intrigued so bought the cacao & orange flavour.  This was so good, like a healthy chocolate bar!  It also doesn't have any scary ingredients either, they are - dates, raw cashews, raisins, cacao powder & cold pressed orange oil.

But they are a bit on the pricey side at $2.60 each so I decided to try making my own version to take to work for snacks this week.  I used figs rather than raisins because that is what I bought at the supermarket & used a tiny bit of orange rind because I only had a quarter of an orange.  The orange flavour is not very strong at all but obviously if you use more rind it would be better.  I also decided to make balls rather than bars.  These turned out well, they are just slightly chocolately & I think they will be perfect afternoon snacks at work.

Ingredients(makes 8 balls)

• 1/2 cup raw cashews
• 7 pitted dates
• 4 figs
• 1 1/2 tsp cacao powder
• orange rind to taste

Method

1. Throw everything into the food processor & wizz until finely chopped
2. Roll into balls & refigerate

Vegan MoFo - Lasagne

I had this recipe bookmarked for awhile & finally made it last night.  It is not your traditional lasagne as it uses slices of zucchini for the pasta & I am a big pan of using zucchini in place in pasta & it worked really well here, as did the quinoa which was delicious.  The flavour was very strong, which may have been from the pasta sauce that I used, but I loved it & I am very happy to have lots of leftovers.

Where's The Beef Week - Day 4 - Cheesy Tofu Fritters

Day 4, I made the Cheesy Tofu Fritters which are a veganised gluten free version of goats cheese fritters.  These are so, so good!  I followed the recipe exactly, but also added in a little bit of grated mozzarella cheezly into the mix & I only cooked them in a tiny bit of oil.  I served these with a simple & delicious cranberry gravy just made from cranberry sauce, massel chicken stock & flour, I reduced the gravy too much though & didn't make nearly enough.
This meal is going on regular rotation.

Breakfast after dark

I am a big fan of what my friend Anthony calls "breakfast after dark" which is breakfasty foods eaten for dinner.  This version of breakfast after dark featured scrambled tofu, roasted tomato, mushrooms & an awesome hash brown.  The hash brown was by far the highlight of the meal & was based on a recipe I found on food.com.  These hash browns are really good & there is a possibility that I ate 3 of them.

Hash Browns
INGREDIENTS

• 1/2cup water (approximately)
• 1/4 cup raw cashews
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 clove crushed garlic
• 1 tsp massel chicken stock powder
• 1/2 small onion, finely diced (I whizzed mine up in the food processor so it was really fine)
• 2 large potatoes peeled

METHOD

1.  Boil potatoes until just cooked through & set aside until cool enough to handle
2. Blend cashews and water with garlic, stock powder & onion powder until smooth - I started with about 1/4 cup water & just added more until it was really smooth
3. Grate the potatoes into a bowl & add the onion to it
4. Pour the cashew mixture into the potato & onion & mix together well, add salt & pepper if you like
5. Shape the potato mix into 4 flattish balls & place on a greased or lined tray
6. Turn the oven on to 200degrees & bake the hash browns for about 30 minutes or until well browned

Mini Crustless Tofu Quiches

Johanna made a version of these for a potluck ages ago & I didn't try them but bookmarked the recipe intending on making them one day.  Well, fast forward 8ish months & that day finally came.  I really liked these.  I followed the recipe from FatFreeVegan Kitchen but used corn instead of mushrooms.  Like Johanna, I also found them very moist but I was possibly impatient & didn't cook them for long enough, but they still tasted good!  I had them both hot & cold & both were good.

Gluten Free Zucchini Pancakes

I found this recipe while searching for yet more ways to use chickpeas & stumbled across these which contain chickpea flour.  I made these last week, they are really easy & they are pretty good.  I didn't use the herbs or the zucchini flowers because I didn't have them but they were still tasty.  I had them with chutney & some vegies.  The recipe says that it serves 2 but I made 4 smaller pancakes & 1 pancake each was plenty.  They were also good reheated for lunch the next day.

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.

Cupcake kebabs

When Greg & I decided to host a potluck (blogged about by Kristy here), he decided that we should make cupcake kebabs which I thought was the best idea ever!  I decided to make them completely gluten free & thread cupcakes, mini donuts, biscuits & lollies on the skewers.  I had a disaster with the first lot of cupcakes I made, so ended up making some mini choc chip muffins instead using this recipe:

Ingredients

• 340 grams self raising gluten free flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 120 grams caster sugar
• 120 grams nuttelex
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar 
• soy milk, to mix
• vegan chocolate chips - about 3/4 cup

Method

1. Rub the dry ingredients in with the nuttelex.
2. Add the wet ingredients, adding a little milk at a time to get a soft dropping consistency.
3. Beat the mixture well to combine & stir through the chocolate chips.
4. Add paper liners to the muffin tin and fill with the mixture.
5. Bake at about 190 degrees Celsius until cooked through & brown (about 10-15 minutes for the mini muffins)

I then made mini donuts using my donut maker, yes I have a donut maker which I have now used a total of two times.  I used this recipe from the Sunbeam website which worked really well:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups gluten-free plain flour
• ½ cup caster sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
• 125g butter, melted
• ¾ cup milk
• 1 egg, lightly beaten (I used egg replacer)

Method

1. Preheat Doughnut machine. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre. Whisk in the butter, milk and egg until mixture forms a smooth batter. Transfer to a jug.
2. Spray machine with cooking oil. Pour batter into preheated doughnut rings. Close lid and cook for 6 minutes or until doughnuts are golden and cooked. Use a non-stick spatula to transfer doughnuts to a wire rack. Repeat with remaining batter to make 10 doughnuts in total.

I then added halved Leda choculence biscuits & topped each skewer with Organic by Nature Cheery Bear lollies (these lollies are so good!!)  I think my gluten free baking still needs A LOT of work but the kebabs turned out ok & looked very impressive!!

Gluten free cheese & spinach rolls - gluten free picnic part 2!

There was so much deliciousness at this picnic, I got nowhere near trying everything.  My highlights were Craig's potato cakes of deep fried amazingness & caramel slice - I have no idea who made this but it was so good!  I used to love caramel slice & haven't eaten it for a very long time, now I definitely want to try making it myself.

I changed my mind so many times when trying to work out what my savoury food was going to be for the picnic.  I had originally planned to make a layered mexican dip with one of the layers being a cheesey queso, then changed my mind to cheese & pesto scrolls & then at the last minute decided on cheese & spinach sausage roll type things.  Bec had previously mentioned that you can buy a gluten free, vegan frozen pastry & even though it is really expensive (3 sheets for $10) it is super easy so I found some at Coles in Coburg & used this.

For the filling I pretty much made it up as I was going but the approximate recipe is:

• 2 boxes frozen spinach (thawed & drained)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 packet silken firm tofu
• 3/4 tub tofutti cream cheese
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 cup grated mozzarella cheezly
• 2 sheets Pastry Pantry pastry

Preheat oven to 220 degrees 

Defrost pastry sheets

In a food processor blend the cream cheese, tofu & nutritional yeast

Transfer to a mixing bowl & add spinach, garlic, cheezly - mix well & season well

Cut each pastry sheet in half, add filling & roll up

Place on oven tray & cook until browned - I think mine took about 20 minutes

Gluten free carrot cupcakes for a gluten free picnic

Friday night was a gluten free potluck picnic (Steph has blogged here) which was originally cheese themed so I decided to make my food gluten free & cheesy.  For my savoury food I changed my mind heaps of times when trying to decide what to make but right from the start I thought that for my sweet food I wanted to make gluten free carrot cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

The first batch of cupcakes I made were these from A Gluten Free Day.  I made them earlier in the week before the picnic planning to freeze them since I like to be organised.  When they were freshly baked they were beautifully light & fluffy but because they don't actually have grated carrot in them (which I didn't realise until I started making them) they were not what I wanted.  So I left them for us to eat but they were incredibly stale by the next day.

 

So it was the night before the picnic & I started worrying about how I was going to have time to prepare anything, especially given that Thursday nights are a struggle for me because I go to prenatal pilates in the evening.  But for some reason I managed to have an amazingly productive thursday the day before the picnic - worked a completely hectic 10 hour day, did 2 days worth of dishes, got dinner ready & made a new batch of cupcakes all before I went to pilates. I was hoping that these cupcakes would work because I really did not want to be making a second batch later that evening & luckily they did!  These were really nice - full of chunky bits due to the walnuts & raisins & really tasty.  Unfortunately they had started to go a bit stale by the next night but apparently that is just the way it seems to be with gluten free baking.  I based these cakes on a recipe from recipezaar which is apparetly from Gluten Free Goddess but I did change quite a few things so my recipe is below.

Ingredients

Carrot Cupcakes

• Orgran egg replacer equivalent to 3 eggs)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup apple sauce
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 cups orgran self raising gluten free flour
• 3/4 cup dessicated coconut
• 1 1/2 cups carrots, shredded (about 4)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup walnuts

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees
2. Prepare cupcake liners or grease a muffin tray
3. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg replacer & oil and beat; add the brown sugar and beat until smooth.
4. Beat in the apple sauce, vanilla, cinnamon and spice.
5. Add in the flour and beat until combined. (The batter should be a bit thicker than wheat flour batter.).
6. Add in the coconut, carrots, raisins, and nuts; stir with a wooden spoon to combine.
7. Put the batter evenly in the cupcake liners or muffin tray and place the pan in the center of a pre-heated oven.
8. Bake until the cakes are firm, and a wooden pick inserted into the center emerges clean, about 15-20 minutes (or longer if necessary).
9. Cool on a wire rack and frost with cream cheese icing.
10. For cream cheese icing, beat tofutti cream cheese with icing sugar