Vegan in Germany - Coconut and Jam Slice

Adapted from This Recipe by vegan about town. All material in "" marks belongs to her.

ingredients/Zutaten:

• 300g flour (Weizenmehl). Self-raising flour if you've got any. If not then add about 3 teaspoons of baking powder (Backpulver) to your flour and mix it in gently.
  
• 220g sugar (Refinierte Zucker)
• 100g vegan margerine - i use 'Homa Gold'
• "3 chinese soup spoons of apple sauce" (Apfelmas) - i've made one chinese soup spoon mean 2 1/2 heaped tablespoons.
• 130g desiccated coconut (Kokosraspeln)
• 20g crushed oats (optional)
• heaps of jam (In Germany there are a lot of different definitions of 'jam', with fruit bits, without and so on. The one you wanna use here is called Konfitüre) - I wasn't sure which flavour to use as i love all the jams here, so i went with Strawberry (Erdbeere) on one half and Mixed Wild Berries (Waldfrucht) on the other. The jams I used are called 'Konfitüre Extra', which means they're extra stuffed with fruit. There seem to be various brands of this type so try stuff and see what you think.

you will also need:

• two hands - clean ones! you'll be getting them stuck in :)
  
• a large bowl
• a cake pan - in vegan about town's recipe she's suggested an A4 tin. But I didn't have one of those. What I did have was some tins my american friend Sarah left here when she went back home in the summer. They're made of 100% Recycled Aluminium and are 20cm square. You can find their official website here. But anything that you can find will do fine as long as it's not too deep; you want it to be about 4cm deep.
• An oven
• Some sort of scales (mine are digital) so you can measure out your stuff.
  

method:

1. Grease and line your cake tray/tin with your margerine and some grease-proof/baking paper and set it to one side.
   In your bowl combine the flour with 180g of the sugar - you can do this with your hands - then rub in 90g of the margerine until you have a bowl full of crumbles. Continue using your hands to combine two chinese soup spoons of apple sauce, then about 100g of the desiccated coconut. It should become a slightly sticky dough.
   
   
2. Press the dough evenly into the tray, making sure it fills up every space, then smear the jam over it. I made my jam about a centimeter in height, but it's pretty much up to you. Make sure it's spread all the way across to the edges and is even.
   
3. In the same bowl you used to mix your dough, crumble together your oats, the remaining sugar, coconut and applesauce.
   If you ate all your applesauce because yumyumyum (like i did) use margerine instead and it'll still make a nice topping. Spread/sprinkle over the cake carefully, trying not to leave gaps in the jam.
   
   
4. Put it on top of another sheet of baking paper (to catch the jam) and bake at 170C (not fanforced) for about 30 minutes. I left mine in for 40 or so. "The top will be quite golden and crunchy. Don't put the tray on the top rack - you want it to cook kind of slowly, so keep it closer to the bottom/in the cooler part of your oven, if it has one. "

EAT. Holy crap, this is delicious.

Own recipe: Potatoes in a thyme Scheese sauce.

You will need:

• potatoes
• spinach or another vegetable/vegetables of your choice
• oat milk
• thyme
• salt ( i use rock)
• corn flour (preferably wholemeal)
• vegan margerine/ vegan butter
  
• milled/ground/whole flaxseed (also known as linseed)
• vegan scheese if you want. i use Cheezly Soy free. it's nommable because of the lack of Soy, which can give you thyroid problems.
  

Don't worry about the quantities. You can pretty much do what you like with this.

Also:

• Saucepan
• colander/way of draining
• wooden spoon (or utensil of some kind)
• sharp knife
  
• bowl

Method:

1. remove roots from and chop the potatoes into moderatly small chunks so that they'll cook quickly and grab your spinach/veg out of the freezer/pantry. I use frozen cubes of spinach 'cause it's readily available where i'm staying right now.
   
2. put the potatoes and your veg together in the pan then pour water onto it from the tap/kettle until it goes just over everything. Then set it cooking on a hob.
3. You'll need to poke the potatoes with a knife periodically to see if they're cooked. if they're sliding off the blade when lifted a little above the pan then they're edible. I always leave them until i can gently push the blade through the potato using the side of the pan as support. When they're cooked however much you want, whop 'em in the colander and leave them draining.
4. Now for the sauce. The sauce is made of 3 main ingrediants: butter, corn flour and milk. The butter gives it the taste, the corn flour the texture/thickness and the milk gives you the quantity. Swipe a nobs of butter into the pan and wipe it around the bottom so it gets melting. Then add a table spoon of corn flour in and a splash of oat milk so nothing burns.
   
5. Take your wooden spoon and stir the 3 ingredients together. then leave it briefly. if you've got it on a very hot heat (which you don't need - medium'll do) then you'll see the liquid start to bubble and froth quite quickly - that means it's starting to boil which you don't want as it will start to burn if all the liquid goes out of it, so turn down the heat and keep stirring it with your spoon 'til it calms a little.
   
6. now while the corn flour's doing its work and thickening the sauce you can grab your finely chopped thyme and your rock salt and shake a little bit in. you don't want to detract from the flavours of the oat milk and the corn flour too much, but keep licking your spoon (careful not to burn your tongue) to taste whether it needs more salt or anything.
7. keep stirring and tasting until it's at the consistancy and flavour you want, at which point you can grab your colander and spoon your drained veggies into your saucepan.
   
8. Stir your veg and the scheese sauce all about so that every veg is covered in it then scrape it all into your bowl.
   
9. as a finishing touch add a sprinkle of flaxseed onto the top.

enjoy

V. x

banana sandwich with twist (in ViSpeak)

BANANA SAMMICH WIVVA TWITCH >B

You will need:

• Banana
• Homous
• Bread (omnomnom go for Granary!)

Makings:

1. Gerra slice of bread, innit.
2. Chop that there banan' til it's good and sliced.
3. Swipe a loada homous on ya bread wir' niphe or summin
   
4. Put your 'nana on there too.
5. Squish 'em all good wivva nother slice of bread
   
   
   
6. OMNOMNOM

Vi xx

s(c)heesey pitta snack

stuff you'll need:

• a toaster
• a knife

ingrediants:

• wholemeal pitta breads ( i get mine from CoOperative supermarket)
• pretend cheese (scheese) of your choice (i get the soy free stuff from Holland&Barret)
• some thyme ( i use dried - i suppose fresh would work but i think it would taste different)
• OPTIONAL Jalapeno peppers, sliced. If you're getting them ready sliced in a jar then just 2-3 slices'll do, but it's really up to you how much you want. If you use too many, remember, the jalapenos will drown out all other tastes.
• OPTIONAL Homous. OMNOMNOM. use it for dipping or shoves some in with the cheese.

what you do:

1. Cut a hole at the top of your pitta bread and try to carefully hollow the bread with your knife. if you make a hole that isn't along the top or the top edge then don't worry - whop it in the toaster and (assuming you have a dual-or-larger toast toaster, or are using the grill) try again with another pitta. The object is to have a little pocket to put your scheese in.
2. If you were successful in your pocket making, slice a slice of scheese and pop it in the pitta, then add some thyme in there. Use as much as you want.
   If you were unsuccessful then toast your pitta, and when it's done, put a bit of cheese and thyme on the bottom half of it and fold it over for a sandwich type thing.
3. In both cases, once you're done toasting you can add your Jalapenos or your homous - i haven't tried toasting my jalapenos in there yet but i assume it would work. i use my homous still in the pot as a dip.
4. Make as many as you want and scoff 'em or use them as appertisers maybe.

Enjoy :3

OMNOMNANA 'Shake

[Best light i could get was in my bathroom]



Really quick Banana Oat Milkshake - a recipe my cake over at Happiness is Toast told me. This is mega easy and quick to make:

• Blender (i used a jug one rather than a hand one)
• banana (preferably really over-ripe)
• oat milk/vegan milk of your choice (Oat milk ftw)
• a small amount of sugar to taste (i used unrefined Demerera sugar)

Put your banana in your blender in moderate sized chunks - if you're using a really ripe one then it wont matter as much about how big the bits are.
Then pour in however much milk you want - in otherwords how much milkshake do you wanna drink? a glass? half a glass? a jug - you might be greedy/sharing? Now is the time to decide.
Then put however much sugar you'd like in there. I only used like a quarter of a tea-spoon of sugar cause i knew it was gonna be mega sweet anyway.
Now blend it up til you can't see chunks of banana - it shouldn't take more than 20 seconds.
numnums.

I'm thinking next time i'll make it extra healthy by adding flaxseed to the mix or maybe try flavouring it with vanilla extract or some cinammon.

Have fun :)


V.

Ultra-Chocolate Birthday Cake

Cake Recipe: http://www.instructables.com/id/The-BEST-chococlate-cake-ever...that-happens-to-be/

Filling Recipe: http://www.easy-cake-ideas.com/chocolate-ganache.html (scroll down to ingredients for the start of the recipe)


It was my birthday the other day and i wanted to make cake so i did :D. This recipe is a little irritating in that it's in american measurements which i'm not used to. But it works and it saves having to find and dust the scales.
Once i'd made my cakes and they were sat in the oven.. (i decided to make it a sandwich cake rather than have it have no filling and risk it not being moist), I looked up vegan cake fillings without much luck and decided to adapt a non-vegan one by using Alpro Soya cream and unsweetened cocoa powder instead of milk chocolate and double dairy cream.
The Ganache needed putting in the freezer and checking every 10 minutes until it got a bit thicker and would be less likely to run off the cakes, but i didn't leave it in the cold long enough and it did so anyway. luckily i'd made enough for the liquid to be at the right level while the entire cake cooled in the fridge overnight.
I forgot to use baking paper so i had some trouble moving the sandwiches on top of one another, until i decided to forgoe perfection (sob) and cut the one layer in half and move it that way.
Tasting it, I felt the cake needed more sugar than the recipe asked for because it left an oddly sour taste in my mouth. But it was perfectly moist and buoyant.


V xx

'Death by Apple Pie'

Recipe: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=19319.0

Made this last Saturday.

I think in future i will use less sugar as it totally ruined the taste of the apples. I also plan on mashing the apples in puree so that the texture is nicer and perhaps using Jus Rol for the top pastry and i didn't really like the sugary topping. My plan is to try making mini-pies the next time i try this. Then i can have them as snacks rather than just as pudding.

V.