Tuesday, 19 May 2009

Bryant Terry's Banana-Maple Pecan Cornbread Muffins



Well, you knew I couldn't stay away for long! Like I mentioned below I have been very eager to try things from my new cookbook, Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen. Naturally I was drawn to one of the sweet, bakery items in the book - these fantastic Banana-Maple Pecan Cornbread Muffins. Everything in this cookbook is very healthy, no white sugar or bad fats and a direction I could certainly start going down!

They turned out beautifully and while I am certainly used to my muffins being much sweeter than these I didn't miss it at all. They get their sweetness from just 2 Tbsp raw cane sugar and maple syrup plus the ripe banana - then you get a nice hit from the maple glazed pecans. Lovely. I'll post the recipe I used here, not exactly the cookbook version as I had to make a few changes. First I can't buy whole wheat pastry flour here, which it called for 1/4 cup, and second his pecans were 'double maple glazed' - first with maple syrup and then with maple sugar, a LOT of maple sugar. Now, the only place I can get maple sugar is in Brighton, it's a small bag and costs like 6 quid, meaning I treat that stuff like the granulated gold that it is. So... I used the maple glazed pecans recipe from Veganomicon's Smlove Pie that I posted earlier. Turned out just fine.


Muffins: (recipe was for 24 mini muffins but I don't have that size tin, these are 12 regular)
165g cornmeal
3 Tbsp unrefined corn oil
3/4 cup plain flour
2 Tbsp demerara sugar (raw cane)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
190g banana (about)
240ml rice milk (unflavoured)
2 Tbsp maple syrup

For the Maple Glazed Pecans:
110g raw pecans
2 tsp canola oil
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1/8 tsp salt

First make the maple glazed pecans. Set aside a sheet of baking paper. In a saucepan over medium heat lightly toast the pecans for a couple minutes. Stir constantly for a couple minutes more until lightly toasty -careful not to burn. Turn heat down and add the oil and salt, stir for about a minute more. Add the maple syrup and stir constantly - it will bubble up then get dry. Tip onto some baking paper and spread out with a spatula. Leave to cool, as it's cooling, break the pecans up with your hands. Set aside.

For the muffins, grease 12 muffin tin holes with some of the corn oil and set aside. Heat the oven to 220C. In a large bowl add all the dry ingredients and whisk well. In a blender add the banana, maple syrup, rice milk and remaining corn oil and blend until smooth. Place the tin in the oven for 5 minutes to get the oil really hot. When there is 1 minute remaining stir the wet into the dry gently - do not over mix, then fold in the nuts. Spoon batter into the tins 3/4 full and bake for 13 minutes or until golden on top and well risen.

He then states to serve immediately and they certainly are good fresh from the oven!

Thursday, 7 May 2009

Still here!!

Just wanted to let you all know I'm still around. I ended up in hospital for 2 weeks - I have lupus which is largely under control but now and again it flares up. So if I'm ever not blogging for long periods of time it's probably because I'm in hospital again enjoying the 'vegan' food. This time they gave me egg salad, cream of mushroom soup, a tuna fish sandwich and even offered me oxtail soup! The worst was when I asked for soy milk on my cereal, I could see it on the trolley and they gave me cows milk. For some reason (I blame the medication) I couldn't tell it was milk until I was near the end, then ended up so sick they had to inject anti nausea medication into my butt - nice.

Anyway, I did have some very good meals too, it wasn't all bad and I am on the mend but still very weak so it may be awhile before I'm blogging again. When I do be sure to expect lots of entries from the new vegan cookbook I got - Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African American Cuisine by Bryant Terry . It was featured on Heidi Swanson's blog and I had to get it right away. Can't wait to start trying things, it looks amazing and I think it will become a favorite. Love it when new vegan cookbooks come out!!

Monday, 13 April 2009

Coconut Rice Pudding with Caramelized Pineapple

coconut rice pudding with caramelized pineapple
(please excuse the bad lighting here, taking pics at night never works for me!)

vegan rice pudding

And this was dessert for Easter dinner... usually I blog entire menus together like with my Valentines, Anniversary, Christmas and Burn's night posts. However, I wouldn't really recommend this for dessert after lasagna and garlic bread. It would all be a bit starchy and heavy, even we had a 4 hour break between dinner and dessert!

That being said, this was delicious!! I will definitely be making it again. The recipe comes from Waitrose and is one of the few naturally vegan recipes there. It uses coconut milk to replace regular milk, gently infused with cardamom and topped with sweet caramelized pineapple. Initially I was going to replace the cardamom with lime zest, simply as I love lime and of course it would go so nice with coconut and pineapple. However I am so glad I didn't as the cardamom added a really nice flavour to this, and it's not a spice I use that often.

As much as I loved this I keep thinking the flavour possibilities are endless here, like using lime zest I was also thinking of making a 'Pina Colada Rice Pudding' by adding some rum to this as well. Loads of options here but even this basic recipe is gorgeous!

Serves 2:
3 green cardamom pods
200ml light coconut milk (1/2 a can)
40g caster sugar
75g pudding rice (or arborio risotto rice)
125g fresh pineapple, cut into small chunks
13g light muscovado sugar (light brown sugar)
13 g chopped pistachios (I didn't have any so used sliced almonds, toasted - nice!)

Split the cardamom pods and remove the seeds discarding the pods. Crush the seeds into a coarse powder - I didn't have a mortal and pestle like called for but it worked fine with a blunt rounded object and bowl. Place the coconut milk and 200ml cold water in a pan with the cardamom powder and caster sugar. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves then bring to the boil. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer.

Add the rice to another pan on medium heat. Add a ladle full of milk stirring constantly until absorbed, then add more making sure each addition is absorbed. Check rice after all the milk is added as mine was nowhere near done at this point. I heated up some more water and just kept adding more water until the rice was cooked. It took maybe half an hour instead of the 20 min they say. Don't worry about watering it down, it evaporates and tasted just fine.

When that is nearly done toss the brown sugar with the pineapple and tip into a hot dry frying pan for 2-3 minutes so that the sugar begins to caramelize. Spoon the rice pudding into bowls and top with the pineapple. I toasted some sliced almonds and sprinkled these on top too. Serve warm.

Lasagne and Garlic Bread

vegan lasagnaLasagne layered with mushroom sauce, spinach, basil tofu 'ricotta' and topped with pine nut cream - most courtesy of Veganomicon.

vegan garlic breadMy usual garlic bread....

Decided to go for lasagne and garlic bread for Easter dinner. We haven't yet set on a 'traditional' meal for Easter so I tend to change it around every year. I have made several vegan lasagne's so far, I haven't blogged one yet as I've been waiting to find the perfect one. This one just may be it. Other's I have tried have used soya mince for a meat replacement and faux cheese sauce but loved this one the most - even the very picky boy loved it, so that's saying something!

My old favorite vegetarian lasagne was a spinach and mushroom one, it had a mushroom tomato sauce layered with noodles, spinach and a cheese sauce. I decided to use that mushroom sauce but replaced the cheese sauce with Veganomicon (and VWAV's) basil tofu ricotta, kept the spinach and then topped with their pine nut cream, as used in the potato eggplant moussaka . It's altogether a variation featured in the cookbook, and sorry as most recipes come from the book I can't post here, although I'm sure an internet search will find these for you!

As it has a lot of layers, each that need preparing, it can take awhile. However you can make almost all the layers in advance, even a day in advance, making the whole thing a lot easier. This fits one 8x11 inch pan.

Mushroom Sauce:
50g vegan margarine
2 onions, diced
450g mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, pureed
8 Tbsp tomato puree
800g can chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar

Melt margarine in a large saucepan and fry the onion until transparent. Add the garlic and fry a minute more. Add mushrooms and some pepper and fry until cooked and any liquid reabsorbs. Stir in puree, chopped tomatoes, soy sauce and sugar. Bring to the boil then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside.

1 x recipe Basil Tofu Ricotta
1 x recipe Almesan
1 x recipe Pine Nut Cream
Baby Spinach
Lasagna noodles - enough for 3 layers in your pan, I precook as I don't trust the ones that say you don't need to.

Lightly butter your pan then add some of the mushroom sauce. Layer with noodles, half the ricotta, lots of baby spinach, mushroom sauce. Finish with a layer of noodles and top with more mushroom sauce. Cover with foil and bake in 190C oven for half an hour. Remove from oven, take off foil and top with the pine nut cream. Put back in oven for another 20 minutes or until topping cracks and looks dry. Remove from oven and sprinkle generously with the almesan. Let sit for 10 minutes then cut and serve. With the size of pan we used we got 6 servings out of this.

Garlic bread:
Recipe is the same as my old post here but I used a par bake baguette slicing it as you see in the pic.




Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Easter Cookies

vegan Easter cookies♥ aka - keeping the boy busy during half term! ♥
Easter cookies
So as I have the boy home for 2 weeks decided to make some Easter cookies. Nothing new here, it's the same recipe as my Christmas Cookies but cut out using Easter/Spring shapes and colours. We spent the day before making paper easter eggs (as we never have real eggs in the house!) which he really enjoyed and loved this even more, possibly as he got to eat treats whilst decorating :) I loved his idea of using sliced strawberry lances for buttons - clever boy he is!

♥

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

Vegan Hawaiian Pizza

vegan hawaiian pizza
vegan ham and pineapple pizza
Yes, I know, this is hardly original.... I wasn't going to blog it at all but then remembered why I started this blog - to have an on-line record of things I like to eat, and while this isn't groundbreaking in any way, it was yummy! Think I'll need a new category - 'I can't believe I'm blogging this'!

I would say my favorite vegan pizza's are still just a nice base loaded with veg, preferably oven roasted veg and no faux cheese at all, especially spread with homemade vegan pesto, like my first pizza post . However I wanted to try to recreate what was always my favorite pizza as a child, the bog common ham and pineapple, and see how it fared being veganized. I have recently discovered redwood foods ham style slices, which I think are fab, and of course I've been accustomed to their super melting cheeze for awhile now.

I have to say for someone who hasn't had a ham and pineapple pizza in about, god, 15 years??? It tasted just like I remember and I really, really enjoyed it.

Makes 1 good sized pizza:
112g strong white flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp active dry yeast (not easy blend)
75ml warm water
1/2 tsp olive oil

Toppings:
pizza sauce
ham style slices
pineapple
super melting mozza cheezly

Dissolve the sugar in the water and sprinkle on the yeast. Allow to get nice and foamy - about 10 minutes. Mix in the olive oil and stir well with a fork then stir into the flour and salt. Knead on a lightly floured surface for about 10 minutes. Place in a warm bowl greased with olive oil, cover with cling film and place in a warm place to rise, about an hour.

Punch down, knead a few times, cover and let rest 15 minutes. Now, roll out, stretching as you go to whatever size you want, thin and bigger or small and thicker - up to you! Top with pizza sauce (I just used some store bought sauce), ham style slices, pineapple and super melting mozza style cheeze (I used about 70g on this pizza).

Bake in a hot 220C oven for about 15 - 20 minutes, until cheeze is golden and melted and the dough is risen and golden at edges.

Friday, 27 March 2009

Sticky Lime and Chilli Tofu - two ways

sticky lime and chilli tofuOven grilled with broccoli rice.

Pan griddled with steamed broccoli and pad thai noodles.


Hurrah! After five posts of excessive sweets I finally post a savoury dish!! I really don't live off cake and cookies, I swear.... Saw this recipe on BBC Good Food ages ago, it was featured with chicken but I thought the flavours would suit tofu really well for a simple replacement. It's also dead easy, using bottled thai sweet chilli sauce, and easy is what I need right now as I am still, yes still, trying to get over this cold!

Initially I made it with the noodles and despite the recipe stating to oven grill, I pan griddled. As you can see it didn't get as 'sticky' as the oven grilled version and I really don't recommend it this way. It did go nice with the noodles but afterwards I realized it was all way too similar to a dish I've already posted .

So today I thought I would make it with rice and to oven grill the tofu. Again, oven grilling is the way to go (although you'll need to have a chair ready under your fire alarm!) As you can see it got better cooked and nice and sticky like it should be. For the rice, I intended to have nice bright green florets of broccoli stir fried in like with the noodles but decided to boil the broccoli with the rice and clearly over did it! At first I was disappointed as it wouldn't look as good but it was actually really yummy that way and I would do it again this way.

I'm not too sure what quantities to give here, when I made it with noodles I made a lot (too much for me although I did shamefully manage to eat it all). With the rice I cut everything in half and found that to be a much nicer amount. I'll give the smaller amount here, just double as your appetite desires! Serves 1:

Rice version: (my preferred)
63g firm fresh tofu (that's 1/4 pack of cauldron tofu for those in uk)
50g thai rice (raw weight)
50g broccoli florets
1/4 tsp soy sauce
1/2 Tbsp thai sweet chilli sauce
1/2 lime, zest and juice (you want about 10ml juice)
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp peanut oil

After pressing your tofu and cutting into 4 thin triangles, mix together the 1/4 tsp soy sauce, lime zest, thai sweet chilli sauce and half the lime juice. Pour over the tofu and marinade, turning over now and again. I didn't time this, 15 - 30 minutes I guess. Put some salted water on for the rice and cook according to package directions. When there is 5 minutes left add the broccoli, add this later if you want them whole, but I did like it cooked down like in the picture. Meanwhile, lightly grease a baking sheet with some extra peanut oil and place the tofu on. Grill under a hot grill until golden and charred around the edges, flip over, brush with more marinade and grill again.

When rice is done, drain and add back to the pot with the other half of lime juice, 1/2 tsp soy sauce and the peanut oil. Stir gently over low heat till well mixed. Tip this onto a plate then top with the grilled tofu, brushing a bit more marinade over top.

Noodle version:

I would follow the steps for the tofu above as it was much better grilled, then just replace the rice with 100g straight to wok noodles of your choice, still tossing them with the lime, soy and peanut oil mixture.

** Just a note, if you do have a big appetite and double this, 1 serving gives you 428.6mg of calcium, 31g of protein and 6.4g of fibre!**

Based on the recipe here .

Friday, 20 March 2009

Veggie Burger Cake!!!

veggie burger cake
♥
burger cake
♥

♥

So it was Finn's 7th birthday on Wednesday and what does a veggie kid ask for his birthday cake? Well, a burger cake of course!! Naturally I had to make ours a 'veggie' burger cake, and I am so pleased how it turned out, as was Finn. I didn't think I would be able to make it at all considering I woke up the day before his birthday battling flu and a very bad sinus infection. But he was sooo looking forward to this cake so I drugged myself up and slowly went to work on it (the other mom's out there will understand!)

I decided to just use the good old wacky cake recipe for all of this. I have made the chocolate wacky cake many times and it always turns out well but I haven't tried it plain which I needed for the bun layers. I just omitted the cocoa and added a bit more flour, increased the vanilla and added some almond extract. It tastes great but the texture isn't as nice as the chocolate for some reason. Then I just made the regular chocolate wacky cake for the soy patty!

The 'mayo' is vanilla buttercream as is the mustard with yellow food colouring. The lettuce, tomato and cheese are made from ready coloured ready to roll fondant and the onion rings from plain fondant. Then I iced the bun in vegan cupcakes take over the world's peanut butter frosting - perfect colour and the taste goes very well with this.

Makes 1 mahoosive burger cake!

Bun Layers:
436g (3 1/2cups) plain flour
300g caster sugar (1 1/2 cups)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
160ml (2/3 cups) vegetable oil
2 Tbsp white vinegar
475ml (2 cups) cold water

Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Grease and line one 8" cake pan with baking paper on the bottom. You will also need a bowl that looks like a bun that will fit whatever size cake pan you use. I was very lucky in that my pasta bowls which are oven safe fit over the cake pan with the sides coming down like a bun so used that. Whatever you use grease and flour it as it will be too awkward a shape to line with paper.

Combine all dry ingredients and wet ingredients and keep separate. Make a well into the dry and add the wet stirring until just combined. Pour into the prepared pans making as even as possible.
Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool in pans on rack. When time to remove, first cut off any domes with a serrated knife and then run a knife along the edges and turn out onto rack. Remove any paper.

Soy Patty Layer:
188g (1 1/2 cups) plain flour
150g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
30g (1/4 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
80ml (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1 cup cold water

Grease and line the bottom of another 8" cake pan then follow the directions for the bun layers.

Vanilla Buttercream (for the mayo):
1/2 cup vegetable fat (shortening)
1/2 cup vegan margarine
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp - 4 Tbsp rice milk (or other)

Beat the fats together then slowly add the icing sugar and vanilla, add some milk as needed to get a good spreadable frosting. You won't need all of this, it makes extra for the mustard and if you wanted to add ketchup too.

Peanut Buttercream:
1/4 cup vegan margarine
2 Tbsp vegetable fat (shortening)
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter (not the natural type, sorry!)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups icing sugar
1 - 2 Tbsp rice milk (or other)

Beat the fats together until smooth then slowly start adding the icing sugar and vanilla. Add milk as needed till you get a smooth spreadable frosting.

Assembly:

ready coloured fondant
**2010 Edit - I went to go buy this again to make Finn another 'fun' cake for his 8th birthday and the brand here in the UK has now changed companies and is not only no longer vegan friendly but not even vegetarian! You can still make this vegan though by buying read made white fondant and colouring it yourself with vegan colours.

-risotto rice
-toothpick

When the cakes are cool and you have sliced the domes off, take the bottom bun layer and place on a serving plate. Top with a generous amount of vanilla buttercream for the mayo. Top this with the chocolate cake.

For the 'cheese' I kneaded together some yellow and red coloured fondant then rolled out thin. I didn't want the fondant to cover the whole cake as it would be too much so I rolled it out to a square then cut that into 4 even sized triangles. I then placed these over the cake to look like it's just melting.

For the lettuce, I just rolled out some green already coloured fondant, cut it into strips then placed it along the edges folding it as I went.

For the tomatoes, I rolled out some red already coloured fondant and cut out circles with a cookie cutter, placed them over the lettuce, again, just along the edges.

For the onion rings, I just made them out of plain fondant and placed them over the tomatoes.

Now, as all of this is just along the edge it will be higher than the centre so I filled this with more vanilla buttercream until it's even:


Next, I added quite a lot of yellow food colouring to the remaining buttercream, you'll need to add more icing sugar to thicken it up, put it into a piping bag with a small plain tip and pipe your mustard along the edges. Now, the bun goes on top, spread it with the peanut butter frosting and I topped the bun with raw risotto rice. Real sesame seeds would have been too small and these gave the shape and look of sesame seeds but at a size better suited to the bun! Just make sure of course you remove them before eating. Although I was thinking pine nuts would have a similar shape too, although maybe a bit too big. I also made a little pickle with some leftover green fondant and placed that on top with a toothpick.

Then it's ready to serve! As it's so big you'll get a ton of servings out of this, I haven't even counted, it's so high though make sure you cut the slices pretty thin or else it'll be sugar overload ;-)

♥

Thursday, 12 March 2009

Chocolate Chip Cookies

vegan chocolate chip cookies

My absolute favourite basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, these always turn out wonderful and can even take a lot of substitutions. I have often made these with 140g or 2/3 cups golden caster sugar in place of the white and brown sugar and have even just used full granulated sugar - they still turn out fantastic. I have also made these with about 4 different brands of vegan butters and they will yield different results, some give you thinner and crisper cookies like in the photo, others thicker, soft and fluffier cookies. They all taste fantastic though :-)

Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes about 18

180g vegan margarine (3/4 cup)
70g caster sugar (1/3 cup)
70g light muscovado sugar (1/3 cup)
1 tsp vanilla
200g plain flour (1 1/2 level cups)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
100g dark chocolate chips or chopped (2/3 cups)

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the margarine, sugars and vanilla until light and fluffy. Mix flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together in a separate bowl. Stir dry into the sugar mixture with a wooden spoon, until well blended then stir in chocolate chips. Drop with a tablespoon onto baking paper lined baking sheets and bake for 12- 15 minutes. They should be golden, particularly along the edges. Let cool on sheets for a few minutes to firm up then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool. Now get the coffee on....

Source: Loosely based on a Canadian Living recipe.

♥


Wednesday, 4 March 2009

French Fancies - Revisited

vegan french fancies
The pink ones are plain, the yellow (which I should have added more colour too) are lemon flavoured and the chocolate ones are, well, chocolate of course!

vegan french fanciesThese 6 are thinly covered in marzipan for a smoother finish.

vegan french fanciesThese 6 have no marzipan underneath, the fondant was poured right over the icing blob and cake. (edit - these were actually the best!)

I know I have blogged these before but I wanted to try them again doing more or less everything from scratch. Last time I used a cake mix and ready rolled fondant, they tasted great but the fondant wasn't right, too soft as I didn't use a 'pourable' fondant. I wanted to completely make my own but the recipe I wanted to use requires a candy thermometer which I am having trouble finding. So for these I made my own cake, kept the buttercream and jam the same but bought a box of fondant icing sugar that you add water to until 'pourable' with whatever flavours and colours you like.

They turned out very good, the cake for some reason came out quite dark, it looks like I used wholemeal flour but I assured you I didn't - still tastes good. For some of the fancies I covered in very thinly rolled out marzipan, then poured the fondant over just to get a smoother finish (plus the marzipan tasted great in these, sort of french fancies meet battenburg!) For the rest I just poured the fondant straight over the icing blob and cake, these ones got a crisper fondant which is more accurate but don't look as pretty.

Makes about 20 fancies depending on how you cut them.

**Edit - I have now, finally, made a white sponge cake I am more than happy with. Recipe is in my White Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake post. I haven't used it yet to make these but I have no doubt it would turn out best as it actually comes out looking white! That being said, I'll leave this cake recipe up as well.**

Sponge Cake:
250ml rice or soy milk
1 tsp apple cyder vinegar
30g vegan margarine
140g caster sugar
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180C and line an 11 x 7.5 x 1" jelly roll pan with baking paper - set aside. Combine the cyder vinegar and rice milk and set aside to get a little curdly. Beat together the margarine and sugar then add the oil and vanilla and beat well. In another bowl add all the dry ingredients and set aside. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk into the margarine mixture, stirring well after each addition but be careful not to overmix. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 18 - 20 minutes or until golden all over and feels firm to touch. Let cool fully in pan then carefully turn out and remove the paper.

Cut the cake slab in half, spread raspberry jam over one side then place the other half on top. Cut this into squares, however many or size you want.

Vanilla Buttercream:
2 Tbsp vegetable fat (shortening)
2 Tbsp vegan margarine
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp icing sugar
1/4 plus 1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Prepare the buttercream by simply whisking all the ingredients together until smooth, it will be slightly stiffer than the recipe for cupcakes as you want it to hold it's shape when the fondant goes on. Place frosting into a piping bag with a large straight circle tip and pipe little blobs on top of each cake. My previous post on these has step by step photos here .

Now, if you are going to add marzipan, I just very thinly rolled out some marzipan and placed over the whole cake, adding some more jam to the outside edges to help it stick. Also make sure you dust your surface and rolling pin with some icing sugar as it can be sticky. If you are not going to add it, some almond extract added to the pink fondant is very nice.

Fondant:
375g fondant icing sugar
6 Tbsp hot water
1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder
lemon juice
red food colour - check vegan
yellow food colour - check vegan
1/16 vanilla extract


For the fondant I mixed 125g fondant icing sugar with about 2 Tbsp hot water for each colour. The pink ones had some red food colouring added, the yellow ones had yellow colour and fresh lemon juice and the chocolate had 1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder and 1/16 vanilla extract added. Add more hot water or fondant icing sugar to get a spoonable, fairly thick frosting. Then, it's pretty messy, because of the icing blob on top I couldn't really dip these so I placed them on some baking paper and spooned over the fondant, making sure all the sides got covered. With some as I had the fondant too thin I had to cover 2 -3 times. When they are uniformly covered carefully lift off the paper with a butter knife and place on a plate and refrigerate until fully set.

The squiggles on top are more buttercream thinned out for the pink ones and just melted dark chocolate for the yellow and chocolate ones.

I definitely prefer this fondant to the last one, but strangely enough prefer the cake mix of last time to this one. I think all the chemicals in it make it more like the Mr. Kipling ones...oh the shame.... Anyway, they are very good and so cute - great for presenting if you have guests over.