Mediterranean risotto

This meal has become one of our favourites.  The chopped tomatoes really help to flavour the rice and the whole thing is just super yummy.

VEGAN AND GLUTEN FREE MEDITERRANEAN RISOTTO

350gm risotto rice
1.2 litres stock (vecon is a good vegan gluten free one)
1 aubergine
1 tin of chopped tomatoes 
100gm mushrooms 
150gm frozen peas
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
olive oil
pure spread
salt and pepper


-chop the aubergine into small chunks and lightly fry in a bit of olive oil. Take off the heat and keep to one side.  Alternatively slice thickly, cook them on a griddle then chop them up.
- fry the mushrooms in a tiny bit of oil or fry lite then set aside with the aubergine pieces.
- finely chop the onions and garlic and fry in about 25gm of pure spread until soft. 
- add the rice and stir well for about 1 minute
- add about a ladel full of the stock and simmer until mostly absorbed. Keep repeating until you have used about half of the stock.
- add the tin of chopped tomatoes and stir well.
- once the juice from the tomatoes has nearly absorbed start adding the rest of the stock a ladel full at a time, waiting for it to be almost all absorbed before adding more. Keep doing this until the rice is tender, you may not need to add all of the stock.
- add the aubergine, mushrooms and frozen peas to the rice mixture and keep stiring on a low heat for about 5 minutes.
- just before serving stir in another knob of pure spread. Top with grated cheezly

The almighty chocolate torte

Chocolate torte is no longer for the diary/egg eaters.  Imagine a lovely gooey chocolate torte, that has no flour and is vegan and gluten free?  Well here it is.

VEGAN AND GLUTEN FREE CHOCOLATE TORTE
Ingredients
200gm dairy free spread
200gm dairy free dark chocolate
150gm caster sugar
100gm ground almonds
1 tsp vanilla extract
50gm cocoa powder
5tbsp ground flax seed

- Grease a 10" round cake tin
- Mix the ground flax seed with 225ml boiling water, stir well and leave to cool
- Melt the chocolate and spread in the microwave then mix in the vanilla extract.
- Add the caster sugar to the flax/water mix and beat well.
- Add the sugar/flax mix to the chocolate mix and mix really well until combined
- fold in the cocoa powder and ground almonds
- pour into the cake tin and cook at 180c for 30 - 35 minutes
- When cool dust with icing sugar.
- serve with soya squirty cream and fresh fruit

I'm dreaming of an even healthier cookie

At the request of a friend who can't have too much oil in her diet, I adapted my healthy cookie recipe to be even healthier.  Still works really well and still yummy.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of fine oatmeal (finely grind up gluten free oats of you are sensitive)
• 1 cup chopped dates
• 1/4 cup chopped nuts
• 1/4 cup dairy free dark chocolate chips (I use these)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/3 cup soya/almond/rice milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 mashed bananas

This is really easy because you can just pop everything into a bowl and mix together.  No fancy instructions, just mix it really well. 
Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and drop cookie size blobs onto it and level out.  This recipe should make around 22 cookies depending on how big you make them.
Bake at 190c for 25 minutes.
Enjoy!!!

Ginger biscuits anyone?

Its been a while since my last post, I have been unwell, and although still not completely better, I am using cooking as my therapy (well that's my excuse anyway).  I really wanted to make some ginger biscuits, both me and hubby love a good ginger biscuit to dunk in a cup of tea but you can't find one vegan and gluten free.  I like playing around with ingredients to see what happens and this one came out great first time.

VEGAN AND GLUTEN FREE GINGER BISCUITS

50gm cornflour

75gm soft light brown sugar

75gm gram flour

75gm dairy free spread (I used pure sunflower)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tbsp water

Mix all the ingredients (except the water) together until it resembles breadcrumb consistency.  Add the water and mix to form a dough.  Knead well to make sure everything is mixed in.  This will result in a fairly wet dough but don't worry about that.

Use gram flour to flour your work surface and rolling pin and roll out the dough to about 1/2cm thick.  Use plenty of gram flour to stop it sticking.  Use a biscuit cutter (shape is up to you) to cut the dough into shapes or rounds and place on a well greased baking tray.  Be careful when you are doing this as the dough will still be fairly wet so I use a blunt knife to help it along.

Pop in the oven for 20 minutes at 160 degrees C.

Once cooked leave on the tray for a few minutes to cool, then remove and place on a cooling rack.

WARNING - these biscuits are very moreish.........you have been warned!!!!

I'm dreaming of a healthy cookie

No such thing as a healthy cookie I hear you say?  Wrong.  My delightful little creation is gluten free, vegan, sugar free, butter free and packed full of nutritional goodness.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of fine oatmeal (finely grind up gluten free oats of you are sensitive)
• 1 cup chopped dates
• 1/4 cup chopped nuts
• 1/4 cup dairy free dark chocolate chips (I use these)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/3 cup sunflower oil
• 10 glace cherries (washed and cut into quarters)
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 of a 360gm jar of organic apple puree 

This is really easy because you can just pop everything into a bowl and mix together.  No fancy instructions, just mix it really well.
Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and drop cookie size blobs onto it and level out.  This recipe should make around 22 cookies depending on how big you make them.
Bake at 190c for 25 minutes.
Enjoy!!!

Easter yum yums

Well this was my first easter being vegan and I have to say it breezed past.  I used to love tucking into cadburys easter eggs and dreaded what would happen this year but thanks to some fabulous shop brought dairy free eggs and making lots of goodies myself I can honestly say I LOVE BEING VEGAN

Now hubby wanted to make some eggs at home but we wanted something a bit more special than just shells, so thanks to a slightly adapted caramel recipe in the cake angels book, our caramel eggs were born, and my god were they good.  A little bit fiddly to make but they were so yummy they didn't hang around for long.  I also made some with marzipan in the middle but forgot to take photos.

VEGAN GLUTEN FREE CARAMEL EGGS

Make the shells first.  Use whatever vegan dark chocolate you prefer.  I used tesco 74% dark chocolate as it has a really nice flavour.  To make 10 whole eggs you will need 2 egg trays that will make 10 half eggs.  I used the sainsbugs silicon ones although I am sure plastic ones would work just aswell.  You will need about 200gm - 300gm of chocolate depending on how thick you want your eggs.  Melt 1/3 of the chocolate in the microwave and use a pastry brush to paint it into the moulds.  Chill for 20 minutes, and repeat twice more so your egg shells are 3 layers thick.  Once you have done this leave them in the moulds in the fridge while you make the caramel.

Caramel
- Melt 1oz of dairy free spread in the microwave then pour into a food processor.
- Add 55ml of boiling water, almost 3oz of caster sugar and just over 2oz of dried soya milk powder.
- Blend until all ingredients are combined, transfer into a container and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

- Melt just over 2oz of dairy free spread in a saucepan on a low heat.
- Add just over 2oz of caster sugar, 1oz of agave syrup and your chilled mix.
- Turn up the heat and bring to the boil.  Make sure you keep stirring continuously.  This will take around 10 minutes
- Simmer for around 5 - 10 minutes still stirring continuously until the mixture goes nice and thick.  (if you take off the heat too early it won't set properly)

Let the caramel cool for a few minutes then pour into your egg moulds.  Pop back into the fridge to set.

Once the caramel has set, carefully remove your chocolate egg halves from their moulds and use a little bit of melted chocolate to stick them together.

Last but not least..........ENJOY!!!

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Now I also had one of those moments when I raided my cupboard to find the coconut sugar I purchased a few weeks ago.  Coconut sugar is much better for you than regular sugar and having not used it before I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.  It has a caramel type taste and colour so these little delights were born.

VEGAN GLUTEN FREE EASTER MUFFINS

Ingredients

- 100gm gluten free self raising flour

- 100gm dairy free spread

- 100gm coconut sugar

- 2tbsp fine milled flax seed

- 1tsp of baking powder

- a splash of soya milk

- a couple of handfulls of raisins 

- some marzipan

Method

- Mix the flax seed with 6 tbsp of boiling water and leave to cool.

- Cream the spread and sugar until soft and fluffy

- Add the flax mix a bit at a time and mix thoroughly 

- Add the baking powder to the flour and gently fold into the mixture.

- Fold in the raisins and a splash of soya milk

- Divide the mix between 6 muffin cases 

- roll some marzipan into 6 little balls and push into the muffins.

- Bake at 180 degrees c for around 15 minutes or until they look cooked

Happy Easter

Well it has been a while since I last posted but I have been busy so I am sure you can forgive me.  Since my last post I have now officially become vegan.  Its something I had been thinking about for such a long time and I have finally taken the leap.  As I can tolerate some wheat now, being a vegan has been made that bit easier, however I do still only bake with gluten free and vegan ingredients.
Now onto my easter baking challenge.  Hubby said to me "can you make a simnel cake for easter.........pleeeeeeaaaaaaassssseeeee!!!!!"  How could I refuse?  Now for the tricky bit, making it vegan AND gluten free.  I used the fruit cake recipe in my cake angels book and made a few tweeks, like swapping honey for agave syrup etc to make it vegan too.  Here are the results, and although we haven't tried it yet (leaving that pleasure for easter Sunday) it looks and smells amazing.

I also had a recipe emailed to me for gluten free and vegan easter biscuits, which were also yummy too but as the ganets in the family devoured them before I could take a picture you will have to wait until I make another batch for that recipe.

Happy Easter everyone !!!!