Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

"Reese" style with chocolate topping.

Well these are another great cupcake variant from 'Vegan Cupcakes take over the World'. I've never made a peanut butter frosting before but read of others raving about this recipe online. It's fantastic, tastes just like the filling of a Reese peanut butter cup...only better. Then I had some bananas in that perfect state for baking and had to put these together. In the cookbook this cupcake is known as 'The Elvis' - I presume due to his love of deep fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.... I then decided to follow the style of the chocolate mint cupcakes and top a couple with some chocolate ganache, the urge to make these as close to a peanut butter cup just too strong....and I'm thinking the chocolate topped ones are best.

Bramley Apple Pie Jam - Quick and Easy

Why this isn't a common jam flavour available in any grocery store is beyond me. I have been wanting to try this for months now but wanted to wait until autumn when English apples were in season, then of course left it so long I almost missed the season....thankfully I was able to get some in season English bramley apples (you want these as tart as can be) and finally got around to it. I have never made jam before but this was so easy. 

I made some changes to the recipe - mainly I've reduced it a lot to make just 1 good size jar of jam so that there is no need to do all the jar sterilizing and water baths and everything else associated with jam making. You simply chop apples, simmer everything for a few minutes then chill to let it set. Super simple!

It is absolutely delicious too, tastes really just like apple pie filling and is so good on toasted 'buttered' good quality white bakery bread like above, as well as toasted bagels but I can't wait to try it on pancakes and think I'll make some apple jam tarts with it as well.

Bramley Apple Pie Jam

Makes 1 good size jar of jam

2 cups chopped bramley apples - chop quite fine, they don't break down much at all
2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 cups jam sugar (sugar with added pectin)
1/2 cup light muscovado sugar (light brown sugar)
2 tsp vegan margarine

Place the chopped apples in a pyrex measuring cup and pour in water to fill the 2 cup line (with the apples in). Add to a medium saucepan with the margarine, spices and lemon juice. Bring to the boil, add sugars and bring back to a full rolling boil. Boil for 4 minutes stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir until no longer bubbly and slightly thickened.

Transfer to a jar or suitable sized bowl - anything that's not metal or plastic will do and leave to cool and set, giving it a stir a couple of times. When cool or room temperature transfer to the fridge. Jam should keep just fine for a week or two.

Source:  Based on this recipe.

Nutritional Information: per 100g

Calories: 291
Protein: 0.1g
Fibre: 0.6g
Carbs: 72.6g
Sugar: 71.2g
Fat: 1.2g
Sat Fat: 0.3g
Sodium: 13.9mg

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Barley Hotpot

I absolutely love barley and have no idea why I don't cook with it more often. This is a greatly adapted recipe from the latest tesco magazine. It's one of those recipes you can use whatever you like. Originally it called for all root veg like turnip parsnip and swede as well as spinach and peas. I replaced the peas with flageolet beans for added protein and the veg with just what I had in the house and felt like. I definitely would have added some baby spinach stirred in at the end until just wilted for colour and nutrients, but didn't have any.

The first time I made this I made the veg stock from 1 oxo cubes and kept the liquid fairly low so it was more stew like. The second time I used marigold vegan stock and added more water to make it more like a soup. Both are very good but I think I preferred it thicker and creamier. You could also cook it down even more and make an orzotto which is risotto made with barley. Any style it is equally delicious and so warming...

2013 Edit - Just made this again and forgot how good it is BUT I didn't realize just how unnecessarily complicated the instructions were for this post! In my defence I was just following the original recipe back then....I've updated it now to make it much easier :-)

Recipe notes 

• This time I used 1 Knorr Vegetable Stock Pot and feel it's the best but just use whatever cube or bouillon powder you like. 
• I have made this with both flageolet and red kidney and both work well as would any other mild flavoured bean. Flageolet is probably my favourite.
• I have used white onions, red onions and a combination of both.

Barley Hotpot 

serves 3 

• 150g pearl barley
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 120g onion, chopped (1 onion)
• 2 bay leaves
• 60g celery, sliced (2 stalks)
• 150g carrots, sliced and halved (1 large or 2 medium)
• 150g new potatoes, peeled and diced 
• 2 cloves of garlic, puréed
• 1 stock cube dissolved in 500 ml hot water
• 60g zucchini, sliced and quartered (1/2 a small)
• half a 400g tin flageolet or red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 Tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

Wash the barley really well and drain. Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil, add the barley give it a good stir, cover and reduce to a simmer for 1 hour. Give it a stir now and again.

When there is 10 minutes left for the barley heat the olive oil in a large saucepan then add the onion, carrots, potatoes, celery, bay leaves and a few grinds of black pepper. Fry gently for 5 minutes.

Stir in the garlic then add the stock and stir well. Bring to a boil, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Drain the barley then add to the pot with the beans, zucchini and parsley. Bring back to the boil, cover and cook for 10 minutes, reducing to low heat with 5 minutes left. Give it a stir now and again. Check that the potatoes are now cooked, taste and season as need be.

Nutritional Information: per serving

Calories: 360
Protein: 10.4g
Fat: 6.6g
Sat Fat: 1.3g
Fibre: 13.8g
Carbs: 59.4g
Sugar: 7.1g
Sodium: 638mg (depending on brand of stock cube used)

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Chocolate Yule Log with Fondant Mushrooms

I've been wanting to make a yule log for Christmas for a long time now and figured it would be near impossible without eggs in the cake. They provide the much needed structure while rolling up without cracking or falling apart. I just used vegan cupcakes take over the worlds chocolate cupcake recipe here, cut in half and baked in a jelly roll pan. Now it did crack quite a bit but was still able to hold it's shape and as I was frosting the top was able to hide all the cracks and crevices! The filling was a test, using same cookbooks 'thick fudgy icing' and the top was frosted with their chocolate buttercream. All individual components taste great, I just hope I can slice it easily enough as the cake is quite delicate. The mushrooms were an idea I saw somewhere else where someone made meringue mushrooms to decorate their yule log. As meringue is definitely something that cannot be veganized I just shaped some out of ready made fondant frosting and dusted the tops with cocoa. As they are straight, thick fondant frosting I wouldn't recommend eating them, but they look the part!

Ravioli with Fresh Sage and Garlic Olive Oil

I miss filled pasta, why they are all made with eggs I don't know as this turned out beautifully. I wasn't feeling up to making some elaborate filling as I didn't know how the pasta would turn out so in this one I just crumbled up some sun dried tomato flavoured tofu that I had - which actually worked quite well. However it was just the pasta I wanted to try and as it turned out so well will start working on some fillings. Vegan with a Vengeance do a really nice basil tofu 'ricotta' so will try that, and am thinking a mushroom ravioli with tomato sauce would be fantastic. Loads of options to fill these with!


Ravioli Dough:

1 2/3 cups (200g) pasta flour *must be this type* I used Tesco's own label, it's really finely milled and silky soft.
1/2 cup (120ml) water
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil

Mix flour and salt together and stir olive oil into water. Pour the liquid into a well into the centre of the flour and mix together with a fork until a dough forms. Knead on a floured surface for 10 minutes, add more flour until it is no longer sticky. Cover and let rest 10 minutes. Cut into 4 sections and roll out very, very thin. Place desired filling according to size of ravioli wanted, wet around the edges and place another sheet of dough over top. Seal around edges well and place on a floured plate. Continue with remaining dough. Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil, add a little olive oil and cook the ravioli for about 5 minutes.

For the 'sauce' just finely chop some fresh garlic and sage and heat up with some olive oil gently, turn off heat and let sit briefly. Spoon over cooked pasta and season with smoked sea salt and lots of black pepper.

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Butternut Squash, Mushroom and Sage Pasta

This was very good, I haven't actually used squash or pumpkin that much except in sweet dishes or soup so wanted to try this. It's going on the regular dinner rotation for sure. Recipe come from BBC Good Food and I followed it as is except instead of frying the squash in water I used veg stock to add more flavour as it never called for salt at any stage.

1 Tbsp olive oil
300g prepared weight butternut squash
2 large cloves garlic
5 small sage leaves, roughly chopped
150g mushrooms, sliced
175g pasta, any shape you like
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 pint veg stock made with 1 tsp marigold vegan granules

Heat oil in a non stick pan then fry the squash, garlic, sage and lots of freshly ground black pepper for a few minutes until beginning to brown (mine never did!) Add some stock then cook fiercely for 15 minutes adding more stock as needed. When the squash is tender and it looks more dry add the mushrooms and fry for 5 minutes, stirring now and again until everything begins to caramelise. Meanwhile cook the pasta, drain then add to the squash mixture adding more stock if too dry. Stir well and serve with more pepper on top and some smoked sea salt to taste.

Tuscan Bean and Pasta Soup

This recipe comes from Delia's Vegetarian Cookbook and just happened to be vegan. I made a couple changes as she called for using dried borlotti beans* but I could only find tinned, I also used veg stock to cook it in to add more flavour. It's very simple but very, very good, will definitely be making this again. Original recipe here. My slightly different version, here:

1 tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed
90g dried ditali rigati pasta, or other small soup pasta shape
1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, or 2 small, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, pureed
2 1/2 Tbsp tomato puree (paste)
1 1/2 pints veg stock made with 2 tsp marigold vegan granules

Heat oil, add onion and cook gently for 10 minutes without colouring. Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Add puree and rosemary, stir 1 minute then add beans and half the stock. Bring to the boil then simmer for 5 minutes. Puree half of the soup and return to the pan. Add pasta and remaining stock and simmer until pasta is cooked. This may take longer than expected! Add more water if it gets too thick then season with salt and pepper if needed. Serves 3.

* she uses borlotti beans in the cookbook but for some reason uses cannellini beans online, both would work well.

Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

So I still had some pumpkin puree leftover from thanksgiving which considering I have to buy it specially wasn't going to let it go to waste, and saw this cheesecake on the fat free vegan blog. It's definitely not fat free but is of course very good. It only took a cup of pumpkin in the top layer so is not strong in the pumpkin taste. I didn't have any rum so added 1/2 tsp rum extract which gave this a definite egg noggy taste to it which is nice, although I may add 1/4 tsp next time. It called for a premade graham cracker crust, as you can't buy those here I made a ginger nut crust, the flavour of ginger going perfect with this. My crust got a little bit singed on top due to my inabilty to wrap some foil around the edges - seriously, can anyone do that??

Ginger Nut Crust:
1 tube ginger nuts (300g) crushed through food processor till very crumbly
70g dairy free margarine, melted
50g caster sugar

Mix the crumbs and sugar together, stir in margarine until mixture is moist. Press into pie plate until even. Chill until ready to fill and bake.

Recipe for cheesecake available from above link.

Delia's Mashed Black Eyed Beancakes with Ginger Onion Marmalade

This recipe comes from Delia's Vegetarian Cookbook, I never noticed it before, perhaps as it didn't come with a photo but it is one of the few naturally vegan recipes in the book. Very glad I saw it as it's fantastic, we will be making this often. The 'marmalade' went so well with the beancakes which have great flavour on their own.

As this is from a cookbook I'll just post a link to Delia's page with the recipes as I didn't change anything, however, a few notes on some things:

She just says to add 'salt' to the beancakes, I added 1/2 tsp. You will need to cook the beans and lentils in way more water than she says, it doesn't matter as nothing gets 'watered' down, you can just drain away if you have too much at the end. It's more important that they don't go dry, I also cooked mine for about half an hour longer. Also the marmalade was supposed to simmer for 1 hr 25 minutes, but with such a tiny amount of liquid it was all absorbed and soft after about half an hour, I would have liked more time to get the onions even softer but it was still very, very good. I served these with some mashed potatoes and wanted some veg so used up the brussel sprouts I had left from Thanksgiving.

Click here for the recipe :-)

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Thanksgiving Dinner!

Almond and sesame nut roast, mushroom gravy, sage and onion stuffing, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts and petite pois with lemon hazelnut butter and oven roasted carrots and parsnips.

also had dinner rolls and cranberry sauce which went really well with the nut roast, amazingly my first time trying it, bought tesco's finest sauce - really nice.

Pumpkin Pie with soya whipped cream

Well it's Thanksgiving day in Canada today and made the big feast yesterday. While I've made quite a few vegetarian this was my first time as a vegan. Was debating what type of main dish to do as my standard nut roast had both eggs and cheese in it. Decided in the end to just adapt it and I'm glad I did, tasted fantastic, held up well and I couldn't even tell the difference. Everything else was easy to adapt, just used vegan margarine in place of all the butter and we used these great mashing potatoes that mash so creamily they only need a bit or margarine in them - no milk.

The pie was more of a challenge. There seems to be 2 types of recipes out there for vegan pumpkin pie, one using silken tofu and the other relying on cornstarch/cornflour to thicken and set. I used a recipe using the latter and it did turn out well. The texture was different but still good and you can see the colour is darker as it has no evaporated milk in it, but it still tasted just like pumpkin pie! The cream is just a store bought soy whipped cream out of a spray can, not nice on it's own but tasted just like cream when you had it with the pie.

Altogether a success, will probably try a different pie recipe next time just to give them all a go, but think this will be the tradition from now on.

Almond and sesame nut roast:

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, chopped finely

60grams/ 1/4 cup risotto rice

300ml/1 1/4 cups vegetable stock made with 1 veg oxo cube

1 large carrot, grated

1 large leek, trimmed and chopped finely (only use white part)

2 tsp sesame seeds, toasted

90 grams/ 3/4 cup chopped almonds

60 grams/ 1/2 cup ground almonds

90 grams finely chopped mushrooms

40g egg replacer
60ml water

1 tsp dried mixed herbs

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180C/350F

Toast the chopped almonds and sesame seeds in a dry non stick frying pan until golden and fragrant. Set aside. Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the onion and mushrooms gently for 2-3 minutes. Add the rice and cook gently for 5-6 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add the stock, bring to the boil and then simmer, uncovered, for about 15 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Add a little extra water if necessary. Remove from the heat and transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Add the carrot, leek, sesame seeds, almonds, egg replacer and herbs to the mixture. Mix well then stir in the water and season with salt and pepper. Transfer the mixture to a 500gram/ 1 pound loaf tin. I lined this completely in parchment paper so that it overhung the edges (so that I could just lift the roast out later). Level the surface and fold over the overhanging parchment paper. Bake in a preheated oven for about 1 hour, until set and firm. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes.

Mushroom Gravy:

30 grams/ 2 Tbsp vegan margarine

1 small onion, chopped finely

125 gram/ 1 1/4 cup mushrooms, chopped finely

30 grams/ 1/4 cup plain flour

300 ml/ 1/ 1/2 cups vegetable stock made with 2 veg oxo cubes

Melt the margarine in a small saucepan and fry the onion until dark golden brown. Add the mushrooms and cook for a further 2 minutes. Stir in the flour, cook gently for 1 minute and then gradually add the stock. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly, until thickened and blended. Add more water if too thick.

Turn out the nut roast, slice and serve with the gravy. Recipe says it serves 4 but we get 8 servings out of the roast as they are still good size slices and quite hearty.

Source: here

Stuffing:

4 Tbsp vegan margarine

1 large onion, chopped

1/2 pound white bakery bread - make breadcrumbs. (I dry mine out in the oven then put through the food processor coarsley - you want some 'chunks'.

2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1/2 tsp dried sage

1/2 tsp dried mixed herbs

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup vegetable stock made with 2 oxo cubes

Melt the margarine, add onions and cook until golden, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a bowl, mix in everything but the stock. Gradually add the stock until stuffing is moistened but not soggy. Amount will depend on how dry the crumbs are. Place in a buttered oven proof dish and drizzle a little more stock on. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and cook for a further 10 minutes to brown.

Brussel Sprouts with Lemon Hazelnut 'Butter':
170 grams raw brussels sprouts, washed, trimmed and halved
2 tsp vegan margarine
1/4 tsp lemon zest (about 1 lemon)
1 Tbsp chopped hazelnuts, toasted
40 grams frozen petite pois (the smaller sweeter peas)

First toast the chopped hazelnuts by dry frying them until golden and fragrant, set aside. In large saucepan of boiling salted water, cover and cook the prepared sprouts until tender-crisp, about 6 minutes. Drain and plunge into ice water, when cool drain and pat dry then place them in a bowl in the fridge. When ready to cook, melt the margarine in a frying pan (use the same pan you toasted the nuts in, unwashed) then add the sprouts, lemon zest, peas and some generous grinds of salt and pepper. Fry on low to medium heat until heated though and peas cooked, tossing gently with rubber spatula for about 6 minutes. At the end toss in the hazelnuts and serve. Serves 2, about 90 calories a serving.

Sources: here and here

Pumpkin Pie:
400ml pumpkin puree
1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup light muscovado sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp vanilla
ready rolled vegan shortcrust pastry

Preheat the oven to 190C. Line a pie dish with the pastry. In a blender add all ingredients and blend till smooth. Pour into prepared pie dish. Bake 40 - 45 minutes (although I had to go up to 60). It will look wobbly in centre but sets when cool. Chill in fridge after cooling fully and serve with soya whipping cream.

Original vegetarian versions of these are on my old blog here and here .