Not-honey jumbles and cats

I made some honey jumbles (sans honey) last weekend. For those who haven't hade them, honey jumbles are basically small bars of gingerbread with a heavy glaze-style icing. I suppose that they often contain honey, hence the name. However, my old Women's Weekly biscuit cookbook has a recipe that uses golden syrup as a sweetener and not honey. I had not had honey jumbles for years, though I used to make them often as a kid, from the same recipe book (25-odd years ago!).

So I decided to veganise my old favourite. You can find the original recipe here at Taste.com. I replaced butter with nuttelex, milk with soy milk and egg-white with No Egg (egg replacer). Here they are:


As the recipe says, they are best after a day or so, as they soften and intensify in flavour. They look a bit rough, but were very nice, just as I remembered. The cakey, slightly chewy ginger bread is delicious with the slight lemon tang of the sweet glaze. They take a while to make, with the cooling and re-baking, but they were worth it. The kids loved them. They took some to school and apparently their omni friends liked them too. Vegan baking for the win!

Caturday


Two cats snapped on Z's bunk bed. They have decided they like the high bunks (the boys have bunks and M has a bunk over desk bed). If they can't be found, they'll be fast asleep on someone's high bed.

Adventures with Pastry: Pics of the Baked Bean Sausage Rolls

As I said the other day, I made Theresa's baked bean sausage rolls. She didn't give a detailed recipe so I just made one up, based on her description, assuming that she probably had actual home made US-style baked beans instead of the canned ones I used. I agree with her assessment, they were some of the best vegan sausage rolls I have made. The kids loved them. They have also been popular cold in the children's lunch boxes. I pop a frozen one in before school and it defrosts by lunch time.

Anyway, here's a picture:


Baked Bean Sausage Rolls (a la Theresa)

Ingredients

2 tins of baked beans (1 drained and one with liquid)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups oats
1 cup Weetbix crumbs (or use bread crumbs if you wish)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon each paprika, salt and pepper
4 sheets vegan puff pastry (I used Borgs)

Method

1. Heat oven to 200°C.
2. Process everything but the pastry in the food processor until the mixture is almost smooth.
3. Cut each sheet of pastry into 4 squares.
4. Put 1/16th of the bean mixture in a line in the middle of each square of pastry.
5. Roll each sausage roll into a tube shape and seal edges of pastry, using a little water if necessary.
6. Bake until golden and pastry is puffed (35-45 minutes).

Can be eaten straight away, reheated for a few minutes in the microwave or frozen for later. For smaller cocktail-sized rolls, cut each roll into 3 before baking.

Caturday

Sister cats can be very satisfactory pillows:




As you can see, Berry and Switch are very fond of each other. They are litter mates who have lived together their whole life. As the weather gets colder, they love to sleep snuggled together.

Adventures with Pastry: Sausages rolls

Theresa at Tropical Vegan had these sausage rolls on her blog. They looked amazing, so I stole her idea. I processed a tin of baked beans with oats, soy sauce and herbs. I rolled them in Borg's puff pastry. Yum! Thanks Theresa!

Adventures with Pastry: Spring Rolls

My kids love spring rolls. We frequently by large packs of vegetable spring rolls (60 or 64) from the supermarket, because they are quick, easy and good for dinner or lunch boxes. I have often thought that they must be easy to make. My sister-in-law (hi Madonna!) told me a while back that she makes her own spring rolls and oven bakes them for a lower fat option. When I saw spring roll pastry on special at Woolworths, I decided to give her idea a go.

They worked out pretty well. We had half of them for dinner, with rice, tofu, greens and store bought vegan BBQ buns. The kids will have the leftovers for lunch at school. One advantage of no meat is that they are much less likely to spoil in a lunch box and the kids get a nice serve of vegetables.

Oven Baked Spring Rolls

Ingredients

1 tablespoon rice bran oil or other neutral cooking oil
1/4 wombok (Chinese cabbage) chopped well
1 large carrot, grated
1 onion, chopped finely
3 dried shiitake mushroom, reconstituted in water and chopped finely
100g rice or bean vermicelli
1 cup bean sprouts
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon each salt, white pepper and ginger
pinch star anise
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Packet of 20 spring roll wrappers (check ingredients to make sure there is no egg)
Cooking spray or a few tablespoons of extra oil

(you could also add chopped coriander and chilli for a Thai flavour)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Cover 2 cookie sheets with baking paper.
2. Cook noodles as per packet instructions. Chop into 2-3 cm lengths.
3. Heat skillet. Add oil.
4. Add cabbage, onion, carrot and mushroom. Fry over low medium heat until onion has softened.
   
5. Add remaining ingredients to skillet. Cook until bean sprouts soften slightly.
6. Separate spring roll wrappers.
7. For each spring roll, put a few tablespoons of filling (1/20th of the mix) above one corner. Fold up the corner. Fold ends in. Roll up. Seal with water.
8. Spray oven trays and rolls with cooking spray or brush with oil.
9. Bake rolls until golden, turning over after 20 minutes. It will take 30-40 minutes.
10. Serve with dipping sauce of choice. We like sweet chilli sauce.
    

Enjoy!

Adventures with Pastry: Croissants

I will admit up front that I don't have a great history with pastry. I think I overwork it. However, I buy a mean puff pastry (Borg's - it says "Vegan" on the packet!"). After visiting Vegan Dad's excellent blog and seeing his croissants, and in spite of my pastry history, I decided to give them a go for Mother's Day. M asked if she could help. I used this recipe from Jennifer of Vegan Lunch box fame.

First step was to mix the simple yeast dough and let it rise. That bit was easy enough. We then punched it and M rolled it out:


After that, we added a layer of margarine (Nuttelex):


I tried rolling and freezing the margarine as Jennifer directed, but the Nuttelex did not freeze hard. Instead, I just spread it around.

After that, we folded it as directed:




We then refrigerate, re-rolled and refrigerated the folded dough several times as directed.

Finally, we shaped them:


And here is one the next morning on my breakfast tray, as arranged by M, who made me breakfast in bed:


(By the way, the tray was made by J, who gave it to me for a present last year. He is very talented at woodwork and is toying with carpentry for a career idea.)

How were the croissants? The flavour was excellent and they rose well. The whole double batch was eaten by our family on Mother's Day. However, they were a bit more bread-like than flaky inside. That's probably done to the Nuttelex not cooling hard and me over-enthusiastically rolling it. However, I need to give another recipe a go to see if it's the recipe or me. (I'm guessing me!)

Caturday

Berry's Box: Enter at Own Risk

Our cats love boxes and hiding places, so we grabbed a box the other day from a pile at the shops. Berry commandeered it, though Switch frequently sniffed it, interested in smells that we couldn't detect. We realised why it was so popular once we actually read the details on the front of the box!

Lemon Muffins

I have a few fruit trees in pots. One is a lemon tree. A bit over a month ago, I harvested a couple of lemons. Here is the first one:


If life gives you a lemon, make Lemon Muffins!



These were made using the lemon poppy seed muffin recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance. I didn't have any poppy seeds, so I left them out. They were pretty good. M and I are big fans of lemon baked goods, though the guys of the house aren't so keen. More for me!

Caturday on Sunday:


Miss Switch accepting scratches from both Z and J. She was purring like mad and rolling on her side and back to encourage tummy scratches.

Cinnamon Buns

Another Vegan Brunch recipe. This time it's cinnamon buns.

On Boxing Day, we drove 2 1/2 hours west to my sister's place at Dalby. We stayed overnight, as did my brother and his family from Monto (about 6 hours north of Brisbane). To help feed so many people, we all pitched in and made food, which led to several delicious feasts over the weekend. One thing that I took was a big tray of these buns.

Here are the extras that we ate fresh at our place:


They are sweet, light and cinnamon-y. I like the inclusion of cinnamon in the dough for an extra flavour lift.

The ones that we took to Dalby were delicious even though they were 1 1/2 days old. We heated them for around 15 minutes in a 170 Celsius oven. Everyone, including all the omnis, liked them. A few people asked for the recipe. Several of the children (not just mine!) asked for seconds.

Cinnamon buns FTW!

Xmas Cookies

I am not particularly religious, but I do enjoy the family closeness and celebrations of the silly season. We went to a large party with Mr BrisVegan's extended family yesterday. We don't really give gifts to adults in that family (no-one does), but I wanted to give a little something. So, like many a food-obsessed vegan, I baked for the holidays. Here are the cookies that I made into little gifts for the family:

(Clockwise from back left: Ginger Sparkle from Vegan with a Vengeance, Snickerdoodles from La Dolce Vegan, Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance and Cranberry Walnut Biscotti from Veganomnicon.)

And here is one of the gifts:


They are all delicious, so I hope that everyone enjoys them. I will be taking some of each of them to various other Xmas parties with my family. I am also making rocky road, fudge, rumballs and mini-fruitcakes. Conversion by sweets for Christmas!

Picnic eats

No pics today due to lack of camera and forgetting to take the phone with the camera in it. We went to a picnic yesterday with a bunch of friends and everyone's kids. We went to Sherwood Forest Park at Sherwood here in Brisbane. It is a good park for groups, with a big covered table area, BBQ's and clean facilities. There are well shaded play areas within 10 metres of the covered tables on each side. There is a creek with ducks, but it is probably 150-200 metres from the play area, so it is easy to keep young children away from it.

We had a great time. The children had a ball climbing trees and playing on the playground. Though J feels he is getting a bit old for all of that, he was in the middle of it all, helping the younger children to climb and stay safe. It was a beautiful day.

I said yesterday that I would come back with an omni-friendliness review for the east coast coffee cake. I took it to the picnic yesterday, cut into small slice-like pieces. It went really well. Everyone had some and liked it. Many people had seconds.

I also took vegan snickerdoodles (from either How It All Vegan or La Dolce Vegan from memory), babaganouj with pita bread and spinach/Cheezely pastry. All were a hit with the omnis. In fact, my food was all gone, though there were still cake and shop bought biscuits left. The kids really loved the babaganouj and the spinach pastry. I have previously posted the babaganouj recipe. Here is the recipe for the spinach pastry:

Spinach and Cheese Picnic Pastry

Ingredients

3 squares frozen vegan puff pastry (I used Borgs)
1 packet frozen spinach (250g from memory)
1/2 log of Cheezely mozzarella (100g) or altenative vegan cheese
2 spring onions, chopped

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Centigrade.
   
2. Defrost puff pastry on a flat surface while making filling.
3. Defrost spinach in microwave or over low heat on your stove top. Drain very well.
4. Grate Cheezely.
5. Mix spinach, cheese and chopped spring onion.
6. Line a cookie tray with parchment paper. Put 1 and 1/2 pieces pastry on bottom of tray. Join any seams with a little water and press together well.
7. Spread spinach mixture over pastry, leaving a 1 cm edge. It should give you a thin layer of filling.
8. Cover with remaining pastry. Seal edges with a little water.
9. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden.
10. You can serve this hot now or allow to cool.
    
11. Cut into squares/triangles of desired size.

I served this cold the next day. It was very popular, especially with the children, who mostly wanted seconds.

I use the same filling for pie, with only 2 pieces of pastry and a thiner filling.

VB Coffee Cake and Caturday

I am addicted to Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. It's a great recipe book. My latest creation is the East Coast Coffee Cake:

(Sorry for the poor photo, my camera is being repaired and this was a dodgy phone pic.)

This is a piece made using the raspberry chocolate variation. It is both sweet and rich. The overall cake is very more-ish. The white base is a little softer and sweeter than a lot of Australian cakes, but a fruit layer and the crumb topping are an unusual and interesting addition. By the way, for other Aussies, there is no coffee in a coffee cake. It's a bit like a very light tea cake (in which there is no tea, for the non-Aussies) with a light crumble topping.

I have also made an apple and blueberry version. It wasn't in the book, but I just winged it. Here is the apple and blueberry layer recipe:

Apple and Blueberry option for VB Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Coffee cake and topping as per Vegan Brunch. If you prepare the apples first, they can simmer while you make the cake.

2 very large apples (3-4 smaller ones)
2 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons water
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (more if you like lots) left in freezer until ready to use

Method

• Peel and core apples. Chop apples by making thin slices and then cutting into 1/2 inch pieces.
• Place apple, water and sugar into saucepan. Bring to boil and reduce to gentle simmer.
• Simmer uncovered gently for 10-15 minutes until the apples are just tender. Add water if it gets dry. The aim is to end up with cooked apples and almost no liquid.
  
• Remove from heat.
  
• Make cake batter as per Vegan Brunch recipe. Spread apples over batter. Sprinkle frozen blueberries over apples.
• Add crumble topping.
• Bake cake as directed in Vegan Brunch.

Zach declared the raspberry chocolate coffee cake, "The best cake I have had." Mr BrisVegan and J both liked it. Morgan was not so keen. She found the top "sandy", though she had liked the crumble on the previous apple blueberry option. She has asked for me to make the apple blueberry again. I am taking some to a picnic today, cut into slice squares, so I will be able to give you an omni-friendliness review soon.

(Late) Caturday

Miss Switch in the great outdoors:


Here Switch is perched on my potted lemon tree. I think she was just about to jump on Berry.

I'm back!

Where have I been? Well, we have been a bit caught up with family, work and social stuff this last week.

Family update: Thanks to everyone who left their kind wishes after the last post. My brother in law is much better. By the time we visited him, he was largely recovered, though he still had some weakness in his right foot. He is much better now, though he got a scare.

Other family stuff (with bonus food): It was Z's birthday last weekend. Instead of a part, he asked if we could go camping. This was our first time to go camping as a family. M has a small tent that the children sometimes use in the back yard. In the past, I thought that I was not a camping kind of girl. However, at Z's urging, we borrowed another brother in law's 8 person tent and went to a Sunshine Coast camping and caravan park.

We had a ball. The camp-ground had lots of mod-cons and facilities, including a camper's kitchen, pool, games room, jumping pillow (20 m long!), mini golf and playground. The kids loved the leisure activities. I liked the fun, the price and the kitchen!

What did I cook? We had nachos and not-burgers for dinner. (Sorry, I didn't get a shot of them.) We had lovely mint-choc cupcakes instead of a birthday cake (the birthday boy's pick). They were from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I made the basic chocolate cupcakes, the mint frosting (1/3 of the recommended amount, no colouring, but with 2x the mint essence) and the quick melty ganache. They got a little knocked around on the way, but they still tasted great.



The next morning, we had apple muffins with a crumble topping, veganised and made by Z from one of his recipe books. Unfortunately, I did not get a shot of that either.

Z said that he had the best birthday ever, so mission achieved!

Bonus cat:

Berry does not approve of people who fail to meet their Caturday obligations.

French food dinner & Julie and Julia

A few weeks ago, I saw Julie and Julia, the moving about a blogger, Julie Powell, who decided to blog her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French of French Cooking. Julie made all 500+ recipes in the cookbook in one year, while blogging her progress. Her very successful blog was published as a book, which was the basis of her story in the movie. The movie also told Julia Child's story from her first cooking lessons in France through to her cookbook publication and eventual successful TV career. The Julia story was based on her autobiography.

The movie was a fairly light romp. Meryl Streep was excellent as Julia Child. I don't know how they made her look so tall, but she embodied Child well, awkward tallness, irritating voice, joie de vivre and all. The other actors were appealing and did well in their roles. The stories appealed to the feminist in me, showing two women engaging in what could have been seen as trivial women's occupations (cooking plus blogging for Julie) and turning it into wild successes. The story telling was kind to the protaganists, while avoiding the hyperbolic conventions of many success stories.

The down side of the movie was the amount of dead animal food discussed and handled. I don't find corpses fun, but realise that most of the rest of the cinema would have seen the very real dead bodies as no more than another prop or meal. I handled it by closing my eyes in a couple of spots.

The concentration of the moving on Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French of French Cooking, led to me checking it out from the library. In the movie, Julie raved about her mother making Boeuf Bouguignon. As a result I decided to give it a veganised try.

To go with my version, I decided to make a 3 course french meal.

First course, not pictured, was an omelette aux fines herbs, using the omelette recipe from Vegan Brunch, filled with fresh chopped herbs, rolled, sliced and served with a small green salad. I also served sliced french stick with it. This is an amazing omelette. I will blog it further soon.


It was followed by mushroom stick bourguignon, which was better than it looks in this photo. I substituted Lamyong vegan ham for the bacon in the original recipe, nuttelex for butter, Massel beef style stock for the stock and mushroom sticks for the beef. I made a 2/3 sized recipe, with only 300g of mushroom sticks in place of 1kg meat, as it appeared to be around that volume, though it was lighter. I frequently use mushroom sticks in the place of beef in any recipe where it calls for small chunks. Mr Brisvegan loves them, as do the children.

It worked really well. As you can see, I served it with baked potato, cauliflower gratin and baked asparagus. Everyone other than Z liked it. Z likes his mushroom sticks with a more subtle sauce apparently.


To follow, I made my first tarte tatin. It was as easy as it looks on TV cooking shows.

Apple Tarte Tatin

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Nuttelex
2 Tablespoons white sugar
pinch each cloves and cinnamon
3 - 4 apples, cored and sliced
1 sheet vegan puff pasty

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
   
2. Line a pie dish with non-stick baking paper. In the dish, melt the nuttelex. You can do this by popping it in the oven for a few minutes.
3. Sprinkle the sugar and spices over the sugar.
4. Add apples. Return to oven for 20 minutes or until apples are just tender.
5. Remove dish from oven. You can leave it to cool if you wish to serve the pie hot later in the day.
   
6. 30 minutes before you want to serve a hot tarte tatin, cover the apples with the puff pastry. Trim and tuck the edges around the apples.
7. Return to oven. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden.
8. Once the pasty is cooked, invert the tart onto a serving dish. Viola!

Everyone loved the tart. It was so simple and easy, I will be using this method again.

Z's chocolate pretzels

Last week, my children were on school holidays. Z decided that he wanted to bake. He checked out his cook books (my children all have several cookbooks of their own). In one called Cook for Kids by Jean Pare, he found some Chocolate Cookie Pretzels.

This is not a vegan cookbook, but Z is creative. He showed me the recipe and suggested that we could replace Nuttelex for butter, Tofutti cream cheese for cow cream cheese and dark chocolate for milk.

Here are his masterpieces:



Of course, the shape and consistency of the dough did lead an almost 10 year old boy to suggest some other shapes, that you can see lurking in this picture:


I laughed at them, because apparently I have the sense of humour of an 8 year old.

They were delicious and unusual. The use of a full tub of tofutti cream cheese meant that they were rich and delightfully soft and chewy, but not overly sweet. Very good baking from Z!

Z is watching me blog. He says to tell you "It was fun!"

Lamingtons

Lamingtons are claimed as an Australian invention, though apparently some New Zealanders would dispute that. According to Australian legend, these little chocolate coated cakes were created by a cook employed by Governor Lamington in Queensland at the end of the 19th century.

Lamingtons are a white cake (either sponge or butter cake) dipped in thin chocolate icing and then rolled in coconut. I have also seen strawberry versions where the chocolate icing is replaced by strawberry jelly (jello for the US readers).

I decided to bake on Saturday and Sunday, and made these lamingtons:


To make them, I used the recipe for Basic Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I made a 1 1/2 size batter. I reduced the vanilla by about 1/2. I poured the final batter into a lamington tray lined with baking paper. (For non-Australians, I think you would use a rectangular 12" x 18" brownie tray.) I then baked it for about 35-40 minutes.

I left the cake in the fridge, covered, overnight. Waiting overnight is important, as it stops the cake from crumbling when you cut it.

The next day, I cut it into 24 squares. With the assistance of M and my niece, I then dipped each square into thin chocolate icing and the shredded coconut. The icing was the lamington icing from an old copy of the Women's Weekly Original Cookbook. It was 500g (1lb) icing mixture (you could use icing sugar), 1/3 cup cocoa, 30g melted Nuttelex margarine (Earth Balance would work) and 1/2 cup soy milk (you could use whatever "milk" you like). These were then whisked until smooth.

Dipping was messy but fun. As the first lamintons that I have had in almost 3 years, they were pretty darn good. They were even better today, with the icing well soaked into the cake. They could easily be given to omnis as a great treat. You could also make cupcakes and just dip the top into the icing and coconut.

My niece helped because she and her brother stayed with us overnight, while her parents went to a wedding and then spent Sunday moving house. The girls asked to help while the boys were playing outside - I didn't make a sexist selection.

I gave lamingtons, scones and jam on a pretty platter to my sister's family as a housewarming present. Scone pictures will follow in the next few days.

Banana caramel walnut pudding

I am defining this as Australian, because I found the recipe on the Vegetarian Network Victoria site.

That site has some good resources, including a veg*n alcohol list.

My students have been taking turns bringing morning tea to work one day each week. I had been doing the usual vegan response to baked goods: “Does it contain dairy or eggs? No thanks, I’m vegan. Looks lovely, though. Very thoughtful.” However, one lovely person went searching for vegan recipes. She made this wonderful Banana Walnut Caramel Pudding from the recipe here.

It was really good. When I said so, she sent me the link to the recipe. I made some a few days after. It was intended to be for school lunches the next week, but we (with some visitors) ate the whole thing over the weekend.

For my effort, I doubled the recipe, swapped half of the flour for wholemeal and only used 1 ½ times the caramel for the top. I also kept the walnuts back and put them on top of half the loaf, because Z does not like nuts in baked goods. It was still very good, though not as luscious and sweet as the original.