Yet more chocolate brownies!

Nyom nyom nyom...

I thought I'd found the best chocolate brownie recipe ever. However, I was wrong. My housemate Helene recently baked something even tastier. That was the good news. However, the bad news was that I was ill and couldn't eat any! Fortunately, though, the others saved me the last piece and in the mean time, they did smell amazing. I mean the brownies, rather than my housemates...

• Preheat the oven to 175°C/Gas Mark 4.5.
• In a large bowl, stir together 2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 3/4 cup cocoa powder, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt.
• Pour in 1 cup water, 1 cup vegetable oil and 1 tsp vanilla extract.
• Mix until well blended and spread evenly in a pre greased baking ti.
• Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is no longer shiny.
• Let to cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting into squares.
• Eat!

Recipe source: allrecipes.com

Smooth, creamy truffles and crunchy oat crumble

One of my housemates has been making lots of super tasty looking truffles recently which has been a really good test of my will power. But to help me resist, I decided I'd make some vegan ones. Here's the recipe I used...

Nyom nyom nyom...

Coconut truffles

• Melt 250g dark chocolate.
• Stir in 100ml soya cream, 100g creamed coconut and 50g desiccated coconut.
• Leave in the fridge over night.
• Roll into balls in icing sugar and desiccated coconut, then sprinkle with cocoa powder.
• I made 31, but it could easily do a few more.

Recipe source: 'Return of the Cake Scoffer'

If you're feeling that all that's just a little unhealthy, why not make a crumble? Crumbles are great. They're full of fruit so you can pretend that they're healthy... At Veggie Soc on Sunday, we made an apple and rhubarb one. It was really easy, and tasty too.

Oaty crumble topping

Apple and rhubarb crumble

• Pre-heat oven to around 180°C/Gas Mark 5.
• Boil enough apple and rhubarb to fill most of your dish until soft.
• Mix together equal amounts of sugar and flour in a bowl.
  Using your hands, rub in small amounts of sunflower spread at a time until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
• Add a handful of oats.
• Use mixture to cover fruit.
• Bake crumble until the top turns golden brown.
  Enjoy with soya cream, custard or ice cream. (Hey, it's fine; you're eating fruit...)

With custard

The exciting escapades of Veggie Soc

Today, we had a Veggie Soc stall at the union as part of a Transition University event, which is about making the uni greener. We had various yummy recipes and leaflets to hand out, including one for Meat Free Monday, which seems to me a good stepping stone between enjoying veggie food and "I couldn't possibly be veggie all the time so I won't do it at all!", though it did have an odd information/Paul McCartney photo ratio. But anyway, as if that wasn't exciting enough, we were also selling Swedish choco-balls for 10p, along with a little recipe card. We first made them for the international food tasting event last week and they proved so popular that we thought we'd do them again, and now you can too...

Unfortunately, I was too busy buying and eating them to take a photo...

Oops That's supposed to read 2 tbsp water OR coffee.

Of gnomes and various cakes

As well as baking cakes, we also painted a gnome

The bad news is that I keep forgetting to update my blog, but the good news is that my friends and I have been baking the occasional cake so I'm updating my blog now. Ooh, also, I turned vegan again. It was my new year's resolution and is going pretty well so far. In terms of resolutions, I tend to only go for things I was thinking of doing anyway, so I usually stick to them. It just gives me a kick into actually doing the thing I intended to do since I can take a while to get round to things sometimes... Anyhow, without further ado, on with the cakes!

Ginger and pineapple upside down cake

• Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 5.
• Melt 20g vegan margarine in a pan and add 4 tbsp syrup.
• Heat over a high heat until thickened.
• Pour into a greased baking tray and level out.
• Next add a layer of 2 grated pieces of stem ginger and 150g tinned pineapple, chopped.
• In a separate bowl, mix 250g self-raising flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp ground cinnamon and 115g sugar.
• Blend soya milk, oil, 300g tinned pineapple and banana until almost smooth.
• Add blended mixture to flour mixture, mix thoroughly and cover pineapple, ginger and syrup in tin.
• Bake for 45 minutes or until skewer/sharp knife comes out clean.
• Leave to cool, then place serving plate over tin and turn upside down. (The syrup should be on top of the cake.)
• Serve hot or cold with custard or soya cream.

Ginger and pineapple goodness

Recipe source: 'The Vegan Cookbook' by Nicola Graimes

Chestnut and chocolate mousse

• Heat 75g of sugar in a pan with a few tbsp water and bring to boil.
• Simmer until the caramel becomes runnier, then pour over the bottom of a greased oven dish.
• Mix together 420g unsweetened chestnut purée and 175g sugar in a pan.
• Add 350ml soya milk a bit at a time.
• Whisk over a moderate heat until mixture comes to the boil; simmer until it thickens slightly.
• Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then whisk in 200g broken pieces of dark chocolate until they melt.
• Pour mixture over caramel and leave in fridge for 6 hours or more.
• Enjoy!

Chestnutty goodness

Recipe source: Vegan Perv-Nerds

Apricot and brazil nut flapjack
Preheat the oven to 160°C/Gas Mark 3.
Over a low heat, melt 175g dairy free margarine in a pan with 150g sugar and 2 tbsp golden syrup.
Add 100g dried apricots (cut into pieces) and brazil nuts, 125g muesli and 125g oats and mix thoroughly.
Spread the mixture into a greased baking tin.
Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.
Leave to cool for 15 minutes.
Cut into squares and leave to cool completely, or enjoy warm.

Flapjacky goodness

Recipe source: 'Beyond Baked Beans Green' by Fiona Beckett
(This is a great vegetarian cook book with little 'v's for all the vegan recipes, as well as estimates for how long each recipe will take.)

More chocolate brownies

I've tried various recipes for chocolate brownies, and thought I'd try another. These ones were sadly less exciting than the last ones we made but they were still pretty good.

• Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/170°C.
• Mash two bananas in a mixing bowl (it generally helps if they're quite ripe).
  Mix in 170g flour and 2tbsp cocoa and 115 sugar.
• Dissolve 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda in 140ml water, then add to the mix with 140ml vegetable oil. The mixture will be pretty runny, but don't worry about that.
• At this point, we added a handful of walnuts and I reckon chocolate chips would be a good addition too.
• Pour the mixture into a pre-greased tin and bake for 40 minutes.
• If you made it in a round tin, cut off the edges and eat them. After all, brownies are meant to be square, right?

Brownies and berries

Recipe source: The Vegan Society

Kim and Tim make brownies

Best birthday cake ever

A little while ago, me and my housemates made chocolate orange ginger hazelnut brownies. Well, I say "we" made them, but I seem to remember that Tim and Kim, two friends of ours, made them whilst I gave them instructions. Not that I'm bossy at all, or taking advantage of the little competition between the two of them to get them to make my cake... Anyway, we had a couchsurfer called Renato staying with us that night and as it happened to be his birthday, we presented this to him as a birthday cake. We all really enjoyed it, so here's the recipe...

• Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 5/180°C.
• Cream together 250ml sugar, 240g soya/sunflower spread and 1tsp salt (if you have a blender you could use it now, but we didn't).
• Add 3 tbsp cocoa powder and 125g self raising flour (if you don't have self raising flour, just add baking powder to plain flour, about 3tsp for every 225g).
• Stir in 100g melted chocolate (be careful not to burn it), 120ml orange juice and a handful of chocolate chips/nuts/crystalised ginger/anything else you want to add. Be careful not to over-mix it!
• Line a square tin with greaseproof paper and pour in the mix.
• Bake for 25 minutes. It should still look a bit squishy, but cools harder.
• Enjoy! It's possibly one of the best brownies I've ever tasted...

Recipe source: Return of the Cake Scoffer

Veggie Soc makes chocolate/chilli cake

I've not been seeming to find as much time to bake cakes recently, but we did make a particularly yummy one at Veggie Soc (the vegetarian food society at the university) fairly recently. We were cooking food along a Tex/Mex (the Texan version of Mexican food) theme and thought a chilli cake would go well. In all the excitement of eating the cake, I forgot to take a photo, but here's the recipe...

• Pre-heat the oven to 165°C/Gas Mark 3.
• Mix together 185g flour, 200g sugar, 90g cocoa powder, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, 1/4 tsp chilli powder and 1/4 tsp salt.
• Add 250ml cold water, 65ml vegetable oil, 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar and 1 tbsp vanilla extract and stir in until smooth.
• Pour into a pre-greased cake tin and bake for about 30 minutes.
• It won't be long before the cake goes stale, so eat it quickly!

What our cake would have looked like if we'd added strawberries

Recipe source: www.realsimple.com

Becky, Rachel and Emma try out a new recipe

Yum yum!

Never fear, faithful readers/unfaithful readers/confused person who stumbled across this page by accident, I have returned! I've still been making cakes, but I keep forgetting to write about them... I've been fairly busy, heading back to Leeds, starting uni again, eating lots of cake (obviously). But excuses aside, it's time to get back to cake recipes. Before I came back to uni, I met up with my old friends Becky and Rachel to bake an exciting new cake. It's a chocolate brownie/peanut butter taste sensation...

Brownie

• Pre-heat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5.
• Mix together 95g plain flour, 20g cocoa powder, 150g sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 3/4 tsp baking soda and 1/3 tsp baking powder.
• Add 180ml soya milk and an optional tbsp of agave (fruit syrup).
• Pour into a pre-greased baking tray and bake for 40 minutes.
• While it's baking, make the toppings.

 Peanut butter filling
(if someone was allergic to nuts, the brownie and sauce would still be really good even without the peanut butter)

• Combine 250g peanut butter and 5 tbsp vegetable spread.
• Add 190g icing sugar a bit at a time.
• Add a tbsp of soya milk to smooth out the mixture.
• Once the cake's cool, add the filling.

Chocolate sauce

• Heat up 120ml soya milk and 60g vegetable spread until the spread melts.
• Break up 200g dark chocolate and add a bit at a time to melt it.
• Pour the sauce over the cake.
• When it's cool, leave to set in the fridge for a couple of hours/overnight.
• Enjoy in very small quantities!

Recipe source: The Gluttonous Vegan (thanks to Michael for recommending it!)

Emma and Genevieve try out old and new recipes

Banana loaf and slightly grilled cookies (oops...)

This afternoon, Genevieve, a friend from the Lishi (tai chi) class at the university came over to listen to Beatles records, have a tour of our new house and meet some of the resident spiders. Oh yes, and most importantly of all, to bake cake! First, we made a banana loaf which a friendly cake baker called Melina recommended to me through a vegetarian/vegan couchsurfing group. Melina says that this one is her favourite, plus, cakes are a great way to use up very ripe bananas. And the end result was yummylicious! Genevieve and I also made some coconut and cashew cookies. These are from a recipe which contains egg, and up til now I've just cheated and used egg replacer because I was scared of messing up the cookies... Today, though, we used flaxseed (a great source of Omega 3 which can be added to anything you may be cooking) and my fears turned out to be unfounded; the cookies taste great! Anyhow, without further ado, on with the recipes... :)

Melina's banana cake

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.
• Mix together the following ingredients: 225g soya/vegetable spread, 250g sugar or agave syrup, 2-3 very ripe bananas, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp baking powder.
• Next stir in 250g flour (Melina recommends a mix of dinkel and amaranth flour).
• Finally, stir in (optional) 50g crushed walnuts and 25g chocolate pieces (we used cacao nibs and came to the conclusion that whilst slightly odd on their own, they're not so bad in cake).
• Pour into loaf/cake tins.
• As a finishing touch, Melina adds a few clove heads, spread evenly across the top.

Coconut and cashew cookies

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.
• Cream together 150g vegetable/soya spread with 135g sugar.
• Mix 1 tbsp ground flaxseed with 3 tbsp water (This is roughly equivalent to 1 egg. There are various other ways of replacing egg, like with banana for example. If in doubt, Google it!) and add to the sugar mix.
• Stir in 150g self raising flour (if you don't have self raising, just add 1 tsp baking powder for every 75g).
• Next, add 100g dessicated or grated creamed coconut (either works well, it just depends what kind of texture you want), 2 tsp ground ginger (optional) and 200g cashews.
• Add small balls of mixture (it'll be fairly sticky) to a greased baking tray and bake for around 15 minutes.
• Eat!

Recipe source for banana loaf: Melina (Thanks!)
Recipe source for cookies: Vegetarian Nosh 4 Students (This book has some really great recipes, although a lot of them do contain quite a bit of cheese.)

Emma and Harpreet make lamingtons and a mess, but mostly a mess

What a lamington is supposed to look like

After all the excitement of moving house in Leeds, I've been back to Nottingham briefly in order to catch up with friends, family and, of course, Robin Hood. Last night, me and Harpreet (one of my oldest friends, who I've known since I was 4) decided to attempt to make lamingtons, a cake generally found in Australia and New Zealand. Being half Australian, I'd made this cake when I was little, so I thought it would work quite well. Unfortunately, we were far too eager to eat the cake as soon as it came out of the oven, so we didn't leave it to cool. This resulted in a big mess. But a tasty mess all the same! Here is the recipe we used...

• Preheat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5.
• Mix together 200g self raising flour, 3 tsp baking powder, 115g sugar, 125ml vegetable oil, 325ml cold water and 2 tsp vanilla essence.
• Add the mixture into greased cake tins and bake for 30 minutes.
• Leave to cool! This one is very important!
• Slice cake in half horizontally and sandwich back together with jam.
• Mix together 30g cocoa and 120g icing sugar with a few drops of water at a time until it reaches a good consistency (you may need to make more icing later).
• Slice the cake into squares and coat in chocolate icing. 
• Roll lamingtons in dessicated coconut.
• Eat after the (veggie?) barbeque on the beach, but beware the surfing kangaroos; they will try to steal your cake.

 Vanilla sponge recipe source: The Vegan Society

Anna, Egle and Emma make an End-of-an-Era cake.

Chocolate and banana cake with smoothie

Today's cake was a very special one, both in taste (this is currently my favourite cake recipe) and in what it represents. Like all good things (such as picnics, summer holidays and even, sadly, cake), our time in halls is coming to an end. In just a couple of days, we'll all be going our separate ways and leaving halls, most probably forever. As much as I'll miss living with my flat mates, we will all still see each other. If truth be told, it'll be the place we'll miss the most, and its soul-stirring symphony of sounds. Ah, the poignant harmonies of the drunken mob in the early hours of the morning, the persistant melody of the buzzer (almost always people depositing flyers) and the recurring motif of the night time fire alarm, with the occassional burst of opera blaring out from Anna's room. And so it was with tears in our eyes, and icing sugar on our faces, that we made our farewell cake, drowned our tears in homemade raspberry smoothie and said goodbye to our old flat and its stale, musty, homely scent.


Raspberry smoothie

• Cover frozen berries with apple juice and blend.
• Blend in a banana and optional soya yoghurt.
• Serve with banana chips and a sprinkling of icing sugar.

Chocolate banana cake

• Pre-heat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5.
• Sift together 285g plain flour, 3 tsp baking powder, 50g cocoa and 225g sugar.
• Mix in 10floz water (or 8floz water and 2floz soya milk) and 1 cup vegetable oil.
• Mash 1 banana and add to the mix.
• Pour mixture into 2 greased 8" tins and bake for 40 minutes.
• Leave to cool, then smother in chocolate fudge icing and banana chips.
• Serve with soya custard.

Chocolate fudge icing

• Melt 50g soya/sunflower/vegetable spread.
• Stir in 3 tbsp water, 200g icing sugar, 50g cocoa and 1 tsp vanilla essence.
• Try not to eat it all before it reaches the cake...!

Recipe source: The Cake Scoffer
Sound track: 'Banana Pancakes' by Jack Johnson (hey, it nearly fits!)

Anna beats Emma to it and bakes the first cake

Chocolate, banana and beetroot brownie

So I got home this evening and was greeted by the most wonderful smell coming from the kitchen... Anna had been baking beetroot brownies! She made half of them with egg and butter, and the other half with banana and soya spread. And guess what... Both Anna and Egle agreed that the vegan brownies tasted better! Apparently the banana gives a better texture. Anyhoo, here is the recipe, so you too can make these fabulous cakes...

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.
• Peel and chop 400g of beetroots (not the kind in vinegar).
• Put the beets in a bowl with a dash of water, cover with pierced cling film and heat in the microwave for 12 minutes on full power (don't use non-PVC cling film or it'll melt).
• Drain the beets and add 200g of dark chocolate and 100g of soya spread. The heat from the beets will melt the chocolate; blend until smooth.
• Mash up 2 bananas in a bowl with 250g of sugar until the mixture is the consistency of thick cream.
• Add the banana and sugar to the beet mix with 1 tsp of vanilla essence.
• Mix in 100g of plain flour and 25g of cocoa powder.
• Pour mixture into pre-greased tray and bake for 25 minutes.
• Leave to cool, then slice and serve.
• Bask in the warm, sunshiney praise of your friends and family, with the sweet taste of chocolate brownie in your mouth.

Recipe source: Anna's Googling skills and her imagination