Chocolate coated Palmiers

Chocolate coated Palmiers

Myself and Conor celebrated 6 year anniversary together yesterday. So we made some chocolate coated palmiers and snuggled up watching Paris, je t’aime (a lovely film by the way).

Ingredients

- 1 pack puff pastry (I know, I know: you can make your own I guess. But it’s so cheap and widely available here you might as well. Otherwise follow same recipe except with your own homemade)

- ½ bar chocolate

- Cinnamon (1-2tsp)

- 2 tbsp Icing sugar (or normal sugar I guess)

- Soya milk (to glaze)

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Roll out the puff pastry. On one side, sprinkle half the icing sugar all over it. Flip the pastry over.

Sprinkle the rest of the icing sugar and the cinnamon on this side.

2. Going from each opposite sides, roll the pastry inwards towards the centre (or, basically, roll one edge until you reach the middle. Then roll the other edge.). Cut about 0.5cm chunks off the roll to make the biscuits. 

3. Glaze with some soya milk. Put in oven. Bake for about 20mins or until slightly browned.

4. Once done, melt some chocolate in a bowl. Dip the bottom half of each palmeur (or alternatively, get a spoon and coat the bottom half) with the chocolate and leave to cool. (I find a few mins in the freezer does this nice and quick personally). 

 This here is probably my favourite short film of the ones featured in Paris, je t'aime:

Christmas Seitan Log

Christmas Seitan Log

We were having a Christmas get-together with some friends and I thought to do something special for dinner. Upon talking to my mother about Christmas dinner, I thought it’d be funny to have a dinner themed to  Seitan (pronounced Satan) for Christmas.
Anyway, seitan is yummy and it’s fun to try different ways of making it :)

Ingredients:

1 kg flour

1 cube vegetable stock

Oil

Spices: pepper, cumin, garlic powder (2tsp), curry powder (1 tbsp), oregano, chilli flakes

(to taste, but be liberal)

1. Make seitan as per our recipe here: http://vegannyomnom.blogspot.ie/2012/06/broccoli-seitan-stir-fry-in-ginger.html up to the stage where you’ve it in a ball and ready to be boiled.

2. Cut in two (optional – but only if you’ve got a big enough pot!). We flattened it here somewhat and made it log shaped. You can make it into any shape you want here.  Microwave them for 2mins to remove some water.  Preheat oven to 200°

3. Boil in a pot with 1 cube vegetable stock and the above spices.

4. Put on a baking tray and cover with some oil (enough to cover the top and the bottom of the plate, sprinkle some flour on top of the logs, then the spices. Put in oven for about 1 hour or until browned.

They were lovely! We were trying to figure out how to incorporate stuffing into the recipe, which is hard to do as the shape sets when you boil them and if you try stuff pre boiling…

A challenge for later it seems : )