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.

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.

Vegan Sweet Potato Pie

Taken from 3/8/10 post on my creative blog, the Rouse.

"Made some Vegan Sweet Potato Pie today. My first proper Vegan dish instead of using frozen nut cutlets or bean burgers. It's really yummy :D. But i left out the corn flour so it didn't set as well as it might've."

Edits to original recipe:

• Didn't add cornflour (wanted to see what it did - it apparently makes it glue together better)
  
• Didn't use Vanilla extract ('cause i didn't have any)
• The 'Vegan pie dish' i used was in fact some Shortcrust Jus Rol Pastry (from Asda - it'll be in the frozen section of most supermarkets and it's a well known product in the UK so it shouldn't be too hard to find/ask for) which is Vegan.
• Used some Alpro Soya cream to finish it. But i'm trying to find a way of avoiding soya altogether (perhaps making my own oat milk cream?) because Soya is a major cause of deforestation.
  

Violette xxx