Vegan MoFo - Orange Marmalade Oat Bread

For O I made this bread, which has heaps of good reviews.  However, I found it quite bland as the marmalade flavour is very, very subtle.  I do like that it isn't super sweet and I think that it might make great french toast though so I will give that a go.

Vegan MoFo - French Toast

Is there anything better than french toast for breakfast?  I have tried making a few different french toast recipes in the past & when I was googling recipes for the best french toast I came across a few recipes that featured nutritional yeast which I found odd but I decided to go with it.  Luckily, you can't taste the nutritional yeast in the end result at all as I was not looking forward to cheesy toast!

I used slices of baguette & soaked them in the following mixture:

• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• decent shake of cinnamon

They were then pan fried in a frypan just lightly sprayed with some canola oil.  I served these with blueberries & some tofutti cream cheese mixed with maple syrup. 

This is an awesome meal.

Coconut & Strawberry Sandwiches

I made the Coconut & Raspberry Sandwiches from the Vegan Indulgence cookbook a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't have raspberry jam so subbed strawberry & also made some with marmalade.  These are quite nice, the biscuit dough is a lot easier to work with than the melting moment dough so they were easier to shape & made lots (I think I got 19) but weren't so shortbready.  I am a big fan of these sort of sandwiched biscuits so will probably make these again.

Biscuit
1/2 cup vegan margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup soy milk + 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup custard powder
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 cup shredded coconut

Filling
1/2 cup vegan margarine
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
3/4 cup shredded coconut
Raspberry jam (about 1/2 a jar) - I made some with strawberry & some with marmalade

Preheat oven to 160˚C/320˚F/Gas Mark 3. Line two biscuit trays with baking paper.

Biscuit
In a large bowl, beat margarine and sugar together until light and creamy. Carefully beat in vanilla soy milk.
In another bowl, sift flour and custard powder together. Fold into the margarine mixture until well combined.
Add coconut and mix through well. The mixture should be soft and slightly sticky, but you should be able to handle it without too much sticking to your hands.
Use two dessertspoons to form ovals of dough, about 5cm long. Place these on the baking tray, spaced out by about 5cm. Carefully flatten the ovals with the back of a flour-covered spoon to form a 1 cm thick slightly oval biscuit.
Bake for 30 minutes, until the biscuits begin to colour on their bases and are firm to the touch. Leave on the tray for another 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Filling
Beat margarine and icing sugar together until creamy and light. Fold in coconut until well combined. Chill in the fridge until the biscuits are cooled.

Putting it all together
Match up the biscuits to the most even pairs. Spread 1/2 teaspoon of coconut filling on all of the biscuits. Place 1/2 teaspoon of jam in the centre of the icing mixture on half of the biscuits. Carefully sandwich pairs together, using the edges of the coconut icing to join them together.
Keep in the fridge. These will keep for about a week.

Chocolate Melting Moments

So I am now on maternity leave which is why I actually have free time for the first time in a long time & can blog regularly.  The best things about maternity leave (besides the whole not working thing) are being able to catch up with people on weekdays who don't work regular Monday to Friday hours and having time to cook more.  My mum is a high school teacher but only works 3 days a week so she came over recently for afternoon tea so I baked the chocolate melting moment biscuits from the book 'Vegan Indulgence'.  The biscuit dough is very, very dry to the point that I really wanted to add some soy milk but didn't and I had some trouble rolling them so they ended up huge!  The recipe says that it makes 20 sandwiched biscuits, I made 10 enormous biscuits.  They are very yummy though but disappeared way too fast given how few I made.

Vegan Brunch Toasted Coconut & Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins

These are actually the Toasted Coconut and Mango Muffins, but I didn't have any dried mango so I subbed some chocolate chips.  We bought a mini muffin tray for the cupcake kebabs & have been using it all the time since, I didn't make a whole lot of muffins or cupcakes beforehand because they are often too big but the mini muffin pan makes them perfect size for eating with a cup of tea & it makes heaps so you can't really go wrong!

This recipe is super easy & the toasted coconut flavour is delicious, they also feel healthier than a normal muffin with the addition of wholemeal flour & they don't have huge amounts of sugar in them.

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!!

Baking for the Aduki Vegan Bake Off

Last weekend was the Aduki Vegan Bake Off,  I had no idea what to make & on the day before decided to make White Chocolate & Cherry Blondies to enter into the slice category & Brownie Bite Cookies to enter into the biscuit category.  I make both on the Saturday morning & was not super happy with either, they were fine, but not winners.

I had some leftover blondies at home & were so much better the next day, oh well - we enjoyed them!  They are based on a recipe on taste.com.au but I did change it a bit, so my recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

• 100g nuttelex, chopped
• 180g Sweet William white chocolate, chopped
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• Egg replacer made up to the equivalent of 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 cup plain flour, sifted
• 1 cup (175g) pitted cherries (I used canned morello cherries)

 

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease an 18cm x 28cm (base) rectangular slice pan. Line base and sides with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang on all sides. Melt nuttelex and chocolate in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Remove from heat. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool.
2. Add sugar, made up egg replacer and flours to pan. Stir to combine. Spread into prepared pan. Press cherries into mixture. Bake for 30 minutes or until edges are firm and top golden. Cool in pan. Serve.
   
   
   

I wanted to make a really decadent biscuit so thought that the brownie bite cookies would be perfect - they are biscuits with chunks of brownie in them - genius!!  When these came out of the oven I thought that they were a disaster because they looked horrible, too big & they looked really dry, but they were deceptively delicious.

I used almost the exact recipe from Have Cake, Will Travel (that blog is amazing) but mine didn't look anywhere near as good as hers.

Ingredients

For the brownies:

• 1/3 cup (75 g) nondairy butter
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (120 g) brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons (30 g) vanilla soy or other nondairy yogurt
• 3/4 cup (90 g) light spelt or (94 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup (20 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

For the cookies:

• 1/4 cup (180 ml) canola oil
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 tablespoons (30 ml) pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (90 ml) plain soy or other nondairy milk
• 3 cups (360 g) whole wheat pastry flour (I used plain white flour)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Method

To make the brownies: Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C, or gas mark 4). Lightly coat an 8-inch (20-cm) square baking pan with non-stick cooking spray.
With an electric mixer, cream butter and Sucanat until light and fluffy.
Stir in vanilla and yogurt.
Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt on top of the wet ingredients.
Stir dry ingredients into wet.
Place and level batter into prepared loaf pan.
Bake for 10 minutes, or until the sides of the brownie start to pull away from the pan.
Let cool in pan, on top of a wire rack, and chill before slicing. Cut into medium to large chunks. Set aside.
To make the cookies: Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C, or gas mark 4). Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats, such as Silpat.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla, salt, and milk until combined.
Sift flour and baking powder on top of the wet ingredients.
Stir dry ingredients into wet.
Fold in brownie chunks, or use your hands to gently incorporate them.
Divide into 12 (about 1/4 cup each) portions of dough.
Flatten onto prepared cookie sheets: the cookies won’t spread much while baking, but leave 1 inch (2.5 cm) in between anyway.
Bake for 16 minutes. Wait a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: 12 cookies

French toast

I was stuck at home on Saturday morning waiting for some furniture to be delivered so decided to make myself a tasty breakfast of very simple french toast. 

I just whisked together some soy milk with a couple of teaspoons of egg replacer, a bit of vanilla extract, nutmeg & cinnamon, dipped some thickly sliced bread in it coating both sides well.  Then cooked it over medium heat in a non stick frypan with a little bit of melted nuttelex - I probably should have cooked it a bit longer but I tend to get impatient where breakfast is concerned!  I drizzled it with maple syrup & it was delicious!

Christmas Baking

I love mince pies & since I missed out last year I decided to make my own this year & they were yum. I based them on a recipe for orange mince pies from All Recipes.

The recipe is this, it did call for an egg wash before baking but I have left that out:

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups (255g) plain flour
• 1/4 cup icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 150g butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons grated orange rind
• 1/4 cup iced water
• 3/4 cup bottled fruit mince
• icing sugar for dusting

Preparation method

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.
2. Sift together the flour, sugar and cinnamon into a large bowl. Rub in the butter until mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Stir in the orange rind. Stir in enough iced water to make a soft dough. Knead dough on a flour surface for 1 minute or until smooth.
3. Roll out to 5mm thick. Cut out approximately 18 x 7cm diameter circles, and 18 x 5cm circles, rerolling dough as needed.
4. Line patty pan holes using the larger pastry circles. Fill each pastry cup with about 1 tablespoon of fruit mince. Top with smaller pastry circles, pinching circles together to seal the edges.
   
5. Bake pies about 15 to 20 minutes or until golden. Cool slightly on wire racks. Dust with icing sugar just before serving.

Easy & delicious.




I also decided to make the cookies & cream truffles from Fat Feminist Foodie to go in with a friends christmas present. I dipped mine in Sweet William white chocolate which worked really well. These are crazy easy & delicious, I gave my friend a bag of about 10 & she ate them all straight away!

Cherry & Vanilla Jam

I decided to make some cherry & vanilla jam last week, stupidly on a 38 degree day because I wanted to take some to my mum on christmas day. This jam is the best jam EVER! Jam is actually really easy to make (although I do panic a bit about sterilising jars) & I think it is one of those things that is really impressive if you make it yourself.

This is the recipe I based my jam on from Not Quite Nigella:

Ingredients

• 1kg jar of pitted sour cherries, drained (I used the jars of morello cherries you buy at Aldi)
  
• 1/2 cup of sour cherry juice from the above jar
• 800g caster sugar (this freaked me out & given that the cherries I bought were slightly sweetened I only used about 380gm of sugar)
• 1 vanilla bean
• Juice, zest and 4-5 seeds of 1 lemon (you are supposed to wrap the zest and seeds in a muslin pouch but I d not have muslin pouches ever on hand so I just peeled off thick strips of the lemon peel & added this as it was easy to pull out later)
• 50 gram packet of Jamsetta
  

1. First of all, decide whether you like your jam to have whole fruit, pulverised fruit or a bit of both and treat the cherries accordingly. I like whole fruit only so I don’t do anything to the cherries but if you like a smoother jam, blend cherries in a blender (you can cut them up although it will be messy). Place cherries, juice, sugar, lemon juice and muslin wrapped seeds in a large, heavy based saucepan. Slit vanilla bean in half horizontally and scrape the seeds with a knife and place seeds in the saucepan along with the rest of the bean. Cook on medium to high heat for 30 minutes until it has reduced by about a quarter.
2. Add the sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes or until mixture reduces by a quarter. Meanwhile place 4 clean glass jars (I only got 2 jars out of this recipe) and the lids on a tray in a 200C/400F oven and bake for 10 minutes to sterlise them.

3. Remove the pouch of seeds and stir in the Jamsetta. Place a small saucer in the freezer. After 5-10 minutes take it out of the freezer and place a teaspoonful of the liquid onto the plate. Count to 30 seconds and then run your finger through the centre. If there is wrinkling or the line stays then it will set properly. If not, wash plate and place back in freezer and repeat every 3 minutes until the line holds.

4. Carefully ladle the jam (it will be very hot) into the jars. With rubber gloves screw the lid tightly and turn upside down for 5 minutes to create a seal. I also like to use the rubber gloves as you can wash down the sides of the jar if you’ve spilt a bit during the ladling process.

It looks good in the jar & tastes good straight from the jar


It is very tasty on toast



And it makes good jam drop biscuits!

East Coast Coffee Cake

This cake is goddamn delicious! I used the recipe from Vegan Brunch (man, I love this book) & added in fresh blueberries because I bought lots of punnets super cheap. I had massive issues with the cake batter though, it was incredibly runny - to the point that it was like pancake batter. I added in another half a cup of flour because I thought that the crumb mix would just sink straight in, it was still really runny but it worked out in the end. I think I slightly undercooked it but the cake was so good that we still quite happily ate it.

La Panella Apricot Bun

I had never tried the big fruit buns at La Panella because I thought they looked boring. Then one day I sent Greg off to get 2 pies & he came home with a bag FULL of La Panella goodies - I think he almost bought one of all the vegan foods, including & an apricot bun. The apricot bun is surprisingly good! The bread is kind of like brioche & it is really light & tasty. It is a good thing to
eat with a cup of tea.

Trippy Taco

I have had the BIGGEST craving for Trippy Taco since I saw this post on Easy as (Vegan) Pie. I work in West Melbourne & usually drive in on Fridays so thought it would be the perfect chance to do a Trippy Taco lunch run. One of my colleagues has recently become vegan & I have been telling her about all the amazing vegan food on offer in Melbourne so I got lunch for her too. I got the tofu asada tacos today & got my colleague the tofu asada burrito (which she really liked). The tacos were delish, I was starving & when the guy handed me my food I thought the tacos didn't look like much but they are really filling.


While I was waiting for the food I dropped into Las Vegan & picked up a muffin for Greg, I think it is chocolate, orange & hazlenut. I ate a little bit off the side while I was driving back to work - it was good!

Melindas White Choc Custard Biscuits

These biscuits are delicious. I know that I can make similar biscuits from scratch but when you arefeeling super lazy, they are really easy & really fast. I had some passionfruits in my fruit bowl so added the pulp of 3 passionfruits to the icing which sandwiches them together which makes them all the yummier.

Vegan Yum Yum Apple Strudel

I got the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook recently & immediately bookmarked the apple streudel recipe. Last week I was feeling like making dessert so decided to give it a go because I had all the ingredients on hand. This is really, really quick & easy & tastes delicious! I think it would be better with ice cream, but sadly I had none.

Melindas Passionfruit Slice

I love passionfruit so bought the Melindas passionfruit slice premix. It requires condensed milk in the topping but I thought I would just make a passionfruit icing to top it with. But when I started looking up recipes for vegan condensed milk it looked really easy & I had some soy milk powder in my cupboard so decided to give it a go. I used this recipe which I halved & it was the perfect amount & was really easy to make. This slice is very quick & easy & the passionfruity condensed milk topping makes it really delicious.