My Last Blog Post....

A very difficult decision, but yes, it is time for me to say goodbye. I’ve been blogging now since 2006 and 9 years is pretty good going but my heart just isn't in it anymore. This is down to a few reasons but mostly my health - the lupus keeps acting up and I find I just don’t have the energy or time. (Other food bloggers will know how much work goes into just one blog post!) As you can see from the above photo this isn’t down to a lack of ideas – those are all my recipes that were waiting to be blogged but I never got around to, shamefully just sitting in a pile!

I started this blog to simply share my recipes, hoping they would help out other vegans, new vegans and especially the vegan curious to show how easy and versatile a vegan diet is. I hope it did just that :-)

Mostly, I just want to thank all my readers for your kind words and support over the years. For those who took the time to email me or comment, to help promote the blog or a post etc…and all those who simply liked and followed. This blog wouldn't have taken off without you all so – THANK YOU!

As for me, I've been wanting to seriously scale back my ‘online’ time for a while now so will be doing just that. So, no more social media for me and I'll be spending much more time out in the garden and, when I am able to, working on the house….we built it 5 years ago and are nowhere near finished! The blog and all the recipes will of course remain up and I still kindly ask that the recipes are not reposted/reprinted but rather are just linked to instead.  

Lastly, who knows? If I miss blogging too much and feel better then I may start it up again but for now I’ll say goodbye.....

....but first, one more recipe! What, you didn't think I'd leave without one did you? ;-)

Mocha Cake • Coffee Buttercream • Chocolate Ganache

I actually made this back in May for my husbands birthday - see? I really can't get around to things anymore, lol....anyway, some of you might remember that we've been suspecting gluten is bothering him so I had to make a gluten free vegan cake for him. I had a good search online but in the end decided to "de-glutenize" my basic chocolate cake recipe (which is just the standard wacky cake recipe) with a lot of help from my friend Katie who is a great chef and has been cooking and baking gluten-free for many years now. Thanks Katie! 

Well, it turned out beautifully with great texture and flavour. My son remarked that "no one would guess this was gluten-free, it just tastes like regular chocolate cake" - which is just what I was after :-) Unfortunately I have used a product here that may be available only in the UK and Ireland but I'm sure alternative ones exist. To replace the flour I use a mixture of gluten-free oat flour, sorghum flour and Doves Farm's Gluten-Free white flour mix. - a mix of rice, potato, tapioca, maize and buckwheat. So hopefully you can find something similar if you can't buy that, but I'm sure any gluten-free white flour mix will work here :-) 

Gluten-Free Mocha Celebration Cake:

Chocolate Cake
240g Doves Farm's gluten-free white flour mix (see above for details)
70g sorghum flour
70g oat flour
300g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp xanthan gum
60g cocoa powder
3 tsp vanilla extract
160ml vegetable oil
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
480ml cold coffee 

Grease and line two 7 or 8 inch round cake pans - set aside. Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Combine all dry ingredients and whisk well. Combine all wet ingredients and whisk well. Pour the wet into the dry and using the mixer beat for 5 minutes, until really smooth. Pour evenly into the two pans, level them and place in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool but leave them in the pans, they will split while cooling if you remove them. When cool remove from the pans, wrap firmly in cling film (again to prevent splitting).

Frosting:
175g vegan margarine 
430g icing sugar
2 ½ tsp instant espresso powder
1 Tbsp hot water

Dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water and set aside. Beat the margarine until light then start adding the icing sugar, beat well each time. When it starts getting dry add some of the espresso mixture. Continue adding the icing sugar and espresso mix until it is all added. You should have a soft but firm buttercream, if you find it a bit runny simply add some more icing sugar. If it is too stiff add a drop of dairy free milk.

Chocolate Ganache:
100g dark chocolate (70%), chopped
85ml soy cream
10g extra virgin coconut oil
½ Tbsp Kahlua 

Place the chocolate in a small bowl. In a small saucepan heat up the cream and fat until it melts and it all just comes to the boil. Quickly pour over the chocolate, leave it a few seconds then whisk it up until smooth and glossy. Whisk in the kahlua. Leave it out at room temperature, stirring now and again until it thickens up slightly. It will be too runny to pour over the cake right away, you want it pourable but thick enough that it will only slowly run down the sides. Don't be impatient here, it can take awhile to get thick enough to pour over.

Assembly:

Place 1 cake onto cake stand and spread with the frosting, fairly thickly. Add the other cake on top then frost the sides and top. When the ganache is ready spoon it over top and spread it out until it just starts to run down the sides of the cake. 

The crucial thing now is to get it into the fridge. I left mine out and my kitchen was very warm which eventually caused the ganache to separate from the frosting a bit. Once I got it in the fridge this was no longer a problem though, so make sure you get it in right away! 

Enjoy!

♥♥♥

Happy New Year!!

Well, no recipe for you today but I thought I better touch base as it's been so long since my last post :-) As you can see from the above picture I got a DSLR camera for Christmas!!!! I am so excited as I've wanted one for so long but dear God I have a lot to learn!! 

To be honest with you, I never actually learned how to use my point and shoot. I simply found a system that worked and stuck with it for every single photo I ever took. Seriously, every photo on this blog was taken with my point and shoot on "auto cuisine" mode. I never changed it. So I know nothing about f-stops or lenses or shutter stuff or anything.... see? I even called it "shutter stuff"... Sigh. 

I've got myself some good books though and I've spent most of my free time post Christmas here reading up on it all and hopefully I'll be able to take some acceptable photos for the blog soon. I have LOTS of recipes lined up to both blog and experiment with, my little notebook is crammed full of ideas but until I learn how to use this thing I will hold off so please bear with me :-)

Until then here are a few I took with it so far (just in auto as I don't know what I'm doing yet):

This was just a simple mushroom and spinach quesadilla I had for lunch, not something I was ever going to blog but just to try out the camera. Happy enough with this one, I even managed a little bit of depth of field there!

I then experimented with some "rullepolse buns" - I've taken the filling from my rullepolse and spread it on bread dough then rolled it up and sliced and baked. The raw dough photo here is ok, a little blurry though as I still don't have a tripod for this camera, my old one won't work with it.

Then I staged a photo hoping to get that coveted depth of field shot all nice and blurry in the background and the opposite happened! Well, I suppose the camera was more interested in the basket of rolls than the one on the plate ;-) Haha, anyway, I clearly still have a lot to learn! 

The buns were very good but not quite "bloggable good" so it didn't matter that these didn't turn out but I'll need to know what I'm doing for future posts, that's for sure.

Back to Christmas, we had a wonderful time! My brother-in-law (also vegan) and his girlfriend were over and I had 11 people for Christmas Eve dinner which featured:

• Puy Lentil Tourtiere
• Mushroom Gravy
• Sage and Onion Stuffing
• Roasted Carrots and Parsnips
• Brussel Sprouts and Petite Pois in Lemon Hazelnut 'Butter'
• Sweet Potato Rolls
• Mashed Potato

...and for dessert:

• Grand Marnier Chocolate Mousse Dome Cake (used chocolate cake this time and it was the best yet!)
• Pumpkin Pie with Gingernut Crust and Coconut Whipped Cream - I have finally got a pumpkin pie recipe I am happy with!

THEN for Christmas Day dinner I made another main dish of Mushroom Wellington (the same one I made for Thanksgiving this year) it's delicious!! We took that up to my in-laws for dinner there and she made all the sides vegan. For the record I use a slight variation on this recipe for the wellington. Everything turned out really well but I was pretty exhausted, hence the blog holiday!

Why do ipod's take such bad photos?!?! Anyway, you get the idea, it's stunning up there! This was the view from our guest house.

We then all went up to beautiful Cornamona, Galway for a few days before New Year's Eve visiting loads of cousin-in-laws then drove back down on New Year's Eve to ring in the New Year at home. 

We had everyone over again and just ordered a load of vegan Chinese food from Aroma in Cork City - they have a dedicated vegan menu and it's always very good, especially when washed down with Champagne ;-)

So, that was my holidays! I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year's Eve and do stick around while I learn how to use this new camera, like I said, I have a LOT to blog this year :-)

I further want to take this time to thank you all for following, commenting, pinning and tweeting and a huge welcome to all my new followers. Here's to a delicious 2013!!

♥

Favorite Photograph Meme and Happy 101 Award

I know, I’ve been a bad blogger lately….those of you who have followed me for awhile here, or follow me on twitter will know I have lupus. It comes and goes and has been rather active lately meaning I’ve just had no energy for baking/cooking etc… I’m sure I’ll be back in the kitchen soon but until then I was asked by the super lovely Mangocheeks over at Allotment to Kitchen to participate in a Photo Meme. Like her I don’t usually do these as I like to keep my blog just recipes but as this one included a photo I just couldn’t resist! Plus, with me having nothing to blog about these days it was a perfect time!

So, which photo???? That was hard but my first reaction was something from my childhood. Now, living over here I don’t have many childhood pictures so called my parents who scanned and e-mailed a few over. I knew this was the one as soon as I opened it. I grew up on the west coast of Canada and every summer we would head up the coast in our boat, often staying over night in unbelievably gorgeous locations. I have the best memories from these trips, especially whenever we would stay in Refuge Cove , where that photo is taken. I’m on the boat there playing with ‘Toba’ - he was the resident dog there and would always come running up to our boat when we docked. I LOVED that dog, him and copious amounts of sweets from the little shop there what I looked forward to the most! My brother is in the background there fishing and I’m thinking I’m about 7 or 8 here, making this around 1980/1981? It was fun thinking of which photo to use and looking at old pics – thanks for thinking of me for this one Mangocheeks!!

I was also recently (or not too recently, eek!) selected by Stephanie over at Purple Frog to receive a Happy 101 award- thanks again!! Here are the rules:

"List 10 things that make you happy, try to do at least one of them today, and tag 10 bloggers that brighten your day. For those 10 bloggers who get the award, you must link back to my blog!"

So, better late than never ;) he is mine:

1. Going ‘home’ to Canada for holidays – last time was 3 years ago, don’t get to go often so it’s a treasure when we do!
2. Walking my son to school – it’s a half hour walk and just a nice quiet time with him to chat.
3. Reading new books by my favourite authors – Douglas Coupland, Banana Yoshimoto, Margaret Atwood, Wally Lamb, Miriam Toews
4. Cooking and Baking – obviously!!
5. A slice of cake and a cup of coffee – simply the best!
6. Being with friends.
7. Eating out in restaurants – either vegan or with fantastic vegan options.
8.Opening a nice bottle of red and staying in watching a movie with the husband.
9. Road Trips – still love them!
10. Photos – not taking them, something I consider a necessary evil being a food blogger, but looking at others photos, receiving them in e-mails etc… I love photos :)

So I hope you all didn't mind this slight distraction from recipes, I actually quite enjoyed it, and hope you all got to know me a bit better :) Thanks again to Mangocheeks, Stephanie and my folks for sending me the photos!! Back in a bit with my nominations :)

Quick and Easy Vegan Fudgsicle

This was just an idea I wanted to test out. I do miss fudgsicles, which you can't even buy here vegan or not. British readers might not know what I'm on about but they are basically a rich chocolate ice cream on a stick, but not ice cream, more fudge like.... Anyway, I got wondering if Alpro's dark chocolate soya pudding (my fav) would freeze well and it does! This wasn't exactly like fudgsicles but was a nice cool chocolaty treat - perfect in the heat. Oh and dead easy, just spoon the pudding into popsicle moulds and freeze :)