Piroshki/пирожки (stuffed baked pastries)

Piroshki/пирожки (stuffed baked pastries)

I’ve been wanting for years to make some piroshki. My dad is quite the master at them and I must admit in comparison this recipe needs practise! Here are some with the usual fillings we used to have them with - potato filled ones and apple filled ones.

Piroshki are lovely tokens of my childhood. Eating them reminds me of all those times there’d be a day of baking where I would help by using our little red piroshki pressing mould thing to make them into their identical shapes. This was followed by an evening of sitting under a blanket, eating warm freshly baked piroshki with minted tea, and watching the Alien trilogy in the dark.

This post is in with others in the nostalgia thing - the pryaniki and gribnie kotlety.

Ingredients:

- 2.5 cups flour

- ½ cup warm water (or dairy free milk)

- 1 packet/1 tbsp yeast

- 2-3 tbsp oil/melted butter

Fillings:

- 3 small potatoes, peeled

- 1-2 tbsp butter

- 1/3 dairy free milk

- 1 small onion

- Herbs & Spices (to taste); parsley, pepper, thyme, coriander, salt

or

- 1 apple, finely chopped

- 1 tbsp butter

- 1/3 cup sugar (or to taste)

- Cinnamon

1. To make the dough: dissolve yeast in warm water (or milk). Let stand until frothy and bubbley. Add flour and oil to this and mix. The dough should be very soft but not sticky - let stand then for 1-2hours or until about double in size.

2. Make the potato filling if using - boil potatoes until very soft. Mash them and add the rest of potato filling ingredients in. For apple filling mix the finely chopped apples with the rest of ingredients.

3. Once dough has risen, roll it out into a long snake shape. Divide into balls approximately 2 handfuls big (or smaller if preferred).

4. Roll each ball into an oval/round shape. Place stuffing in middle and fold in half, making sure they’re closed at the sides - you can use a press thing here if you have one.

5. Brush each pastry with dairy free milk for that golden shine. Put in oven at 180˚ for 20mins or until golden.

Enjoy with some tea on the sofa : )

Broccoli Potato Fritters and Corn Fritters

Broccoli Potato Fritters and Corn Fritters

So we went to Ikea yesterday (always a fun day!) and they were selling these potato fritters in the food section. They were cheap enough but I got thinking surely with such simple ingredients we could make our own…

When making the potato ones of course though, we were reminded of some corn fritters we’d had years ago at some festival in Dun Laoghaire and thought to try those too.

Ingredients for Broccoli Potato Fritters:

- 5 small potatoes, peeled

- 1 section of broccoli

- 2 spring onions

- 1 cup flour

- ½ cup water

- Herbs and spices (to taste); coriander, parsley, rosemary, pepper, garlic

1. Grate the peeled potatoes into a bowl. Add finely chopped broccoli and spring onion, along with spices.

2. Add flour and water and mix. Mixture should be wet but mouldable enough to make flat patties of about a handful or so of the mix each.

3. Place these patties onto a pan and fry on a medium heat until browned. Make sure to check the underside before flipping over – if not cooked enough it will just break.

Ingredients for Corn Fritters:

- 1 can sweetcorn

- ¾ cup flour

- ¼ cup water

- Herbs and spices (to taste): basil, coriander, black pepper

- 2 sundried tomatos (optional)

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Make patties and fry as described above.

Simple Carrot Cake

Simple Carrot Cake

I believe cakes should be simple... They should be something you can make up in a jiffy but that still taste amazing. Particularly this is true for vegan cakes, which are generally so quick to make.

Or should be. I’m always irritated when looking for a certain cake recipe or other (like carrot cake) to find how some people over complicate it. They start adding ingredients to make their recipe sounds more impressive, or use mad things like agar syrup. Seriously, agar syrup? I live in Ireland and am a student, how can I go find this never-heard-of-before ingredient, and cheaply?

More so, I feel doing such things makes vegan baking seem so much less accessible and is so discouraging to vegans and non vegans alike. The message should be that you don’t need any complicated ingredients to do some vegan baking - it’s simple, quick, cheap and anyone can do it.

So after giving up with complicated recipes, here’s a lovely little carrot cake :)

Ingredients:

- 1 ¾ cups flour (I used white self raising, but can use brown and add baking powder)

- 1 cup sugar

- 1/2 cup oil

- 1/3 cup water (can use milk, or orange juice)

- 3/4 cups grated carrot

- 1 tbsp vinegar

- Spices: Cinnamon, Mixed Spice (about 1 tbsp, or to taste)

Raisins, walnuts etc are optional

1. Mix the dry ingredients. Add the carrot and mix. Add the oil and water and mix. Add any extra ingredients like raisins if using.

2. Add in vinegar and pour straight into a greased oven container. Bake at 180˚for 30mins, or until toothpick comes out clean. You can then cover it with a icing sugar-water-lil bitta (dairy free) butter topping and sprinkle with walnuts etc.

Light and little effort - perfect for a warm day like today.

I realise this and the Coconut Coffee cake persay don’t qualify to be in this blog, as they’re both cakes and I’ve made many cakes before... (And this blog is all about things we've not tried before) But they’re so simple I thought I’d add them in.

Пряники/Pryaniki (Russian spiced cakey biscuit buns)

Пряники/Pryaniki (Russian spiced cakey biscuit buns)

One of the things I’ve been delighted I can still eat as a vegan is pryaniki, as luckily most Russian and Eastern European shops in Dublin stock ones that are vegan friendly. As there is such ample supply of pryaniki in Dublin, I never much considered trying to make my own until now. To describe what pryaniki are to someone who’s not had one before is a bit difficult, as I have never found quite a similar western comparison. It’s kind of a cross between a cake and a biscuit, crumbly but soft.

Pryaniki come in many flavours and each region in Russia and other places do their own versions of them, often you see them stamped with designs in shops. This version here is kind of a veganised version of Медовые Пряники (honey pryaniki), but with golden syrup used instead of the honey. Adding some mint essence, some treacle, liquor, jam/marmalade or even putting some jam in the centre are all also popular versions to make.

Ingredients:

- 3.5 cups self raising flour

- 3/4 cup sugar

- 1/2 cup golden syrup

- 1/2 cup dairy free butter (or oil even)

- 1/3 cup soya milk (or other milk, or water)

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- Spices: 4-5 tsp cinnamon, 4-5 tsp mixed spice, 1-2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp cocoa powder (optional)              

- A little icing sugar (for glaze)

1. Mix the flour with the spices in a bowl.

2. Put the rest of the ingredients in a pot and cook on a low heat until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. Add to the flour mix and mix until a mouldable dough.

3. At this point take hand chunks out and roll them into balls, flattening them down on a greased tray. You can also roll the dough out and cut out shapes, moons and stars are particular popular ones.

4. Once put out, glaze with a little soya milk. Cook at 180⁰ for about 12-15mins

5. Once done, mix some icing sugar with water to make a watery but white glaze and spread over the pryaniki. Dust with some icing sugar as well if you like.

I used to love dipping them into tea as a kid, and tea really is the perfect accompaniment to them. This version turned out amazingly the perfect texture and crumbliness and I'll be making it again and again I'd say to try out different flavours.

Also, another version we recently tried out: Mint, chocolate and almond Pryaniki/Пряники

Pizza Pie

Pizza Pie

‘When the moon hits you eye like a big pizza pie
That's amore
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine
That's amore’

Apparently the ‘pizza pie’ here is probably referring to a calzone Conor says, but that didn’t stop us making this yummy pizza pie! (like the Cake Pie)

Ingredients:

Dough:

- 3 cups flour

- 1 cup warm water with 2 packs yeast dissolved into it

- A wee drop of olive oil

Filling (though you can use whatever you like):

- 1/2 cup hummus

- 2 tbsp tomato puree

- 2 tomatoes

- 1/3 courgette

- 1/3 pepper

- 2 mushrooms

- 3 sundried tomatoes

- 2 spring onions

- 1/3 cup sweetcorn

- Herbs (to taste); oregano, basil, black pepper, garlic (about 3-4cloves)

1. Make the dough my adding the warm water with dissolved yeast to the flour. Form a ball, drizzle with olive oil so it doesn’t dry out and leave to rise.

2. Once risen, take 1/3 off the dough (to use as the top crust – roll out circularly). Roll the rest out circularly and place in a pie dish or similar to use as the bottom crust.

3. Blend the tomato puree, one tomato and garlic to give a thickish paste. Smooth this over the bottom crust. Next cover with a layer of hummus (you can make this very easily yourself too!).

4. Chop all vegetables and arrange as you would a pizza. Then wet the top sides of the bottom crust and cover with the other layer of dough. Using a fork, go around the edges to connect the two parts.

5. Poke a small few holes with the fork in the crust and decorate as you like. Then put in an oven at 180⁰ for 20-30mins or until lightly brown.

This is probably the best form to have pizza in I feel, the hummus making it so creamy... Why don't people put hummus on pizza more often? The pizza, lacking cheese, is now no longer something really 'unhealthy' (as pizza is often perceived to be). Besides, one of the most delicious combinations on pizza I've ever eaten was hummus and carrot pizza (seriously, so good!)

Coconut Coffee Cake

Coconut Coffee Cake

Still in the mood for coconut and what better to make then an uplifting combination of coffee and coconut in yummy cake form? This is just your basic vegan cake recipe with coffee and coconut added, but worth putting up I thought as, like most vegan cake recipes, it’s so quick and easy to make!

Ingredients:

- 1½ cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

- ¾ cup water, can use dairy free milk (with 2tbsp instant coffee dissolved in it)

- ½ cup oil

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- 1 tbsp vinegar

- 1/2 cup dessicated coconut

1. Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients. Mix the two sets of ingredients together.

2. Put in an oven at 180⁰ for about 20-30mins or until very lightly brown and cooked inside.

Enjoy!