Vegan MoFo: I cooked. And baked!

I didn't blog yesterday because I didn't have much inspiration. I had leftovers for lunch and dinner and I wasn't sure anyone would a post on the genius of mushy peas - aside from me!

Today though I had a productive day. Cuz aside from watching half the first season of This Life*, I bought a few bits in the supermarket and HURRAH, brussels are available again! I had some roasted with butternut squash and red pepper, with some baked tofu and brown rice that I cooked with some stock and spices and threw some sweetcorn into as well. Yum.


And I made some muffins. I used my basic recipe as a start and added spices, a banana and walnuts to come up with this recipe. They are cooling as we speak and I'm looking forward to having one with a nice cold glass of soymilk.

*I forget how awesome This Life was. Seriously, thursday nights are still not the same and it's been off the air about 12 years! haha.

Oh and Charlotte Hatherley's latest album, New Worlds, came out this week. It is amazing, go buy it!!!

Laterz
xXx

Blondies have more fun

I had some more okara to use up (and no room in the freezer for anymore) so I figured if it worked well in brownies, why not blondies too! And it worked, they are yummy!!

I based it on the recipe for the brownies but I made them maple syrup & walnut flavour.

Low Fat Maple & Walnut Blondies
Dry Ingredients:
½ cup / 80g plain flour
½ cup / 80g wholewheat flour
½ cup (packed) / 90g light muscovado sugar
1/3 cup / 35g cornflour
1¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
½ cup / 50g walnuts (measured before breaking up)
Wet Ingredients:
½ cup /120g cup wet okara
½ cup /125ml unsweetened non-dairy milk
½ cup /125ml soya yoghurt
¼ cup /4 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp flavourless oil
1 tsp vinegar
1½ tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C / 350F.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Break up the walnuts into chunks and mix well to get them coated with the dry ingredients (and stop them from sinking)

Whisk together the wet ingredients together and pour into the dry. Mix well and pour into an 8x8 glass dish, lightly greased.

Bake for 25 minutes. A knife won't come out clean because 25 minutes won't cook these through. You can cook them for longer if you like a bit less squidge!

Leave them to cool in the dish for at least 10 minutes before you cut them. I cut them into 12, but you could do 16 if you want smaller ones.

I don't bother to turn them out, just keep them in the dish and cover it with clingfilm - they keep well in the fridge!

Fresh from the oven.....

Cooking to: Nickelback - Black Horse (been waiting for this album for ages!)

I'm now off to pack my slutty tops and frost my cupcakes (pix next time!) ready for Hard Rock Hell this weekend. YAY!

Have a great weekend everyone.

oh yeah, cakes & pies, cakes & pies, cakes & pies.

OK no pies, but one cake and a syrup sponge!

I have about a week’s worth of food pix that I’ve been too lazy to blog - I am sorry, here they are (and I also have a recipe for ya!)

Firstly the good (read fattening and sickly sweet) stuff – walnut cake. I suddenly had a hankering for the walnut cake that my nan used to buy when I was younger, so when mum and dad invited me for dinner and asked me to bring pudding, I had the perfect excuse for some experimentation.

For me, walnut cake absolutely HAS to be a rectangle. No circle walnut cakes allowed and none of this coffee icing bollocks either! This is my version:

OK so it's not the prettiest cake ever but it was damn tasty!

Wet ingredients:
180 ml / ¾ cup non dairy milk (I use light soya)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
180ml / ¾ cup sunflower oil (or other light, flavourless oil)
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp lemon extract (optional)
¼ tsp almond extract
Zest of a lemon
Dry ingredients:
175g / ¾ cup Sugar (I use golden caster)
125g / 1.5 cup plain flour
30g / 1/3 cup walnuts – pulsed in a food processor or smashed with a rolling pin till chunky – not powdered!
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

Icing Ingredients:
2 tbsp vegan margarine (I use Pure Soya)
2 tbsp vegetable shortening
4 tbsp / ¼ cup walnuts
250g / 2 cups icing sugar
2 tbsp ish non dairy milk
¼ tsp almond extract
A few extra nuts for decorating the top

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180°C / 350°F.

Line the bottom of a loaf tin with parchment paper and grease the sides with a little oil.

Mix together the milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk the rest of the wet ingredients into the milk mixture. Pour the wet into the dry and mix well to combine. Don’t overmix, as this will result in tough cake – a few lumps are ok!

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake until a cocktail stick / knife comes out clean. About 40 minutes.

Leave to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire cooling rack and leave till it is complete cold. When cold, slice the loaf through the middle so you have 2 halves to sandwich back together.

To make the icing, you need to blend the nuts to a paste. Unless you have a REALLY good blender, it will be difficult with such a small amount of nuts and you might want to use a pestle & mortar. But I don't have one, so I did this with a hand immersion blender, in the beaker that came with it. It also makes it much easier to grind down if you add the margarine at this point. Keep blending until the nuts are as fine as you can get them – a gritty paste.

Then put into a bowl and add the shortening. Mash together with a fork then add the icing sugar in two batches, mashing well after each addition. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Then get the electric hand beaters in there until creamy and smooth.

Slap a good dollop of the butter cream (about a third) on the bottom half of the cake and spread out. Sandwich the two pieces together then put the rest of the buttercream on top and level off with a palette knife or spatula. Break the remaining nuts into pieces and decorate the top of the cake.

I don’t have an inside shot as I took it to my parents’ house and never took any away with me.

Baking to: AC/DC - Powerage

Here are the rest of my stored up food pix!

These were some meatless chicken style dippers that I found at Tescos, with some homemade bbq sauce. Not great, but not bad in a pinch!

I was just excited that they actually labelled something vegan .... see:
VCON chickpea cutlets with a quick mushroomy sauce, potatoes and sauteed sugar snap peas.
My new favourite soup - creamy white bean & sweetcorn. I'm working on getting this 100% right and then I'll post it.
My only criteria for this meal was that it had to be fast, I was starving! I went for a burrito with pinto beans, tofu, kale, peppers and tomatoes and lots of spices! Oooh I made such a mess of myself eating this.

The leftover chickpea cutlets, with a stirfry of the only veg I had left in the fridge

Another quick meal - some cold noodles that I just added some peanut sauce (from THIS post) and toasted sesame seeds to. Then some quick stir-fried tofu that I added some bbq sauce to (from THIS post), thinned down with a bit of water and cooked until the sauce was almost completely reduced. Fast and not all that healthy - but tasty.

This is another recipe work in progress. I'm not much one for stodgy puddings but I just really fancied syrup sponge & custard, so I got to veganising one! It's not quite right yet, I'm not happy with the texture. But I will enjoy testing it till I get it right!!

Here it is smothered in custard (birds' custard powder is vegan! YAY)

And lastly, but not leastly, sunday's breakfast - pancakes! MMM.

Pfft, who says vegans live off twigs and berries!!