Lentil Cashew Nut Loaf

Lentil Cashew Nut Loaf

Just a loaf recipe, roughly a bit similar to kotlety with the mushrooms and buckwheat, that I did for Christmas eve. Never made a loaf myself before so this was a fun Christmas time experiment.

Ingredients:

-1 pack of mushrooms

-1 pack cashew nuts

-3/4 cup buckwheat

-1 can/cup green lentils

-1/2 onion

-1/2 cup flour

-Spices/herbs, to taste: black pepper, garam masala, rosemary, thyme, paprika

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Boil buckwheat until cooked.

2. In the meanwhile, chop the onion and mushrooms, and soak the cashews in hot water.

3. Drain the lentils and put all ingredients together in a bowl. Blend using a hand blender or using a blender to slightly mush it but keeping it well chunky.

4. Pour the mixture into a greased loaf tin (with tinfoil/baking paper in first, unless using silicone) and cook in the oven for about an hour.

Enjoy!

We had it with roast vegetables and homemade paprika spiced wedges nom nom nom....

Spiced Rum Cake

Spiced Rum Cake

Just a simple little variation on a basic cake, (like the Coconut Coffee cake, Carrot cake, or the cake part of Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake Pie) but thought at this time of the year when all is happy and bubbley I’d just post it up! 

Ingredients:

1.5 cups flour (self raising)

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup soya milk (or other, or water. Coconut milk tastes amazing in it!)

1/2 cup oil

1-2 tsp rum essence (or use real rum and decrease milk/water used)

1-2tsp mixed spice

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Mix the wet ingredients (milk, oil, essence/rum). Add the sugar.

2. Add the mixed spice, then the flour. Mix.

3. Put in oven for 15-20minutes or until cooked through.

For a topping we mixed icing sugar, two tablespoons or so of water, one teaspoon rum essence and some mixed spice. Then topped it with dairy free chocolate sprinkles (which most chocolate sprinkles you’d buy commercially are!)

 This was a nice dessert to finish off our Maynooth Christmas dinner, which included a lovely Green curry potato bake

Savoury Winter nutty port crumble

Savoury Winter nutty port crumble

Finally since the college year began we got a chance to make something nice. Now that I’m on a rotation where I can feel full of Christmassy delight it’s all fluffy socks and slippers and cups upon cups of tea from here. And what nicer to finally make than something filling, warm and wintery with the sudden bone chilling weather that’s come about recently? 

Ingredients:

- 1.5 cups flour +3tbsp

- 2/3 cup dairy free butter + 1tbsp

- 1/2 cup oats

- 1 onion

- 5 sweet potatoes

- Pack of mushrooms

- 1 pepper

- 1/2 a broccoli

- 2 carrots

- 1 can mixed beans

- 3/4 cup soya milk

- 1 pack cashew nuts

- 2 tbsp port

- 3-4 cloves garlic, or to taste

- Spices/Herbs, to taste: thyme, pepper, rosemary, ginger

1. Put the cashews in enough soya milk to cover them and leave to soften.

2. Chop up all the vegetables, leaving half an onion, 5-6 mushrooms and the gloves of garlic to the side. Boil the sweet potatoes or cook by instructions on pack. Put the rest of the vegetables into a pan/wok to cook them with a little oil. Add mixed beans (or beans of your choice) and heat.

2. Make the sauce:  fry the onion, mushrooms and garlic lightly in a pot with 1tbsp butter. Add the cashew nuts and the rest of the soya milk and bring to medium/high heat.

Once cashews are softer (but still biteable) blend the mixture with a blender (hand held is easiest). Add the flour and spices/herbs and mix well. Mixture should not be as liquidy as soya milk, so boil off if needed. Add port.

3. Make the crumble topping: mix butter and flour together, first with a knife then with your fingertips, until a breadcrumb consistency. Add the oats and some rosemary.

4. Add chopped sweet potatoes to vegetable mix and then add in the sauce.

Put the mix into an oven dish and cover with the crumble mixture. Cook at ~200° for 20mins or until crumble top is browned.

 

Enjoy!

Chocolate Covered Cream Cupcakes

Chocolate Covered Cream Cupcakes

Having made custard just shortly before, I remembered how I’ve always wanted to make a creamy filled cupcake thing, like the Boston cream pies you can buy. The coconut milk in these gives them an especially soft, delicious taste and these went so quickly when I made them I’d be tempted to put it into more cupcakes from now on…

Ingredients:

- Chocolate

Dough:

- 2 cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

- ½ cup coconut milk & ½ cup dairy free milk

- ½ cup oil

- 1-2 tsp vanilla

Custard filling:

- 1 cup dairy free milk

- ¼ - ⅓ cup sugar (to taste)

- 1-2 tsp vanilla

- 3 tsp cornstarch

1. Mix the wet ingredients. Add the sugar. Then add the flour and pour into cupcake moulds. Bake at 180  ̊for about 15-20mins or until lightly browned. Let the cupcakes cool.

2. Make the custard filling: mix the cornstarch into a small bit of the dairy free milk until no lumps. Add to the rest of the ingredients in a small pot. Cook on a medium-high heat until mixture becomes more viscous and to the consistency of custard.

3. Using cake decorating piping or other suitable equipment, poke a small hole in the cupcakes at the top in the middle and fill each cupcake with the custard mixture. Moving the funnel/piping around up/down/left/right inside will help fill them more.

4. Melt some chocolate and cover the top of each cupcake.

There’s been a lot of dessert entries recently over the last two months in this blog. A lot of this is due to me taking a break this (short) summer I had and therefore deciding on what to make/bake, while Conor was doing physics research. Being the one of the two who prefers baking to cooking the amount of desserts stuff well increased here!

Strawberry sherry trifle

Strawberry sherry trifle

We were working at this amazing festival recently called The Secret Garden Festival, run by Milk & Cookies. It was wonderful – storytelling around campfires, brilliant music bands and comedy, fairy lights, a see saw, hula hoops and of course we made far too many vegan cookies for it too! During it one girl we were working with told us all about her granny’s great sherry trifle. I had never tasted trifle before, but once she described it I wanted to give it a go.

Ingredients:

- Dairy free cream to be whipped (optional)

Jelly:

- 1 can strawberries (or equivalent fresh + water)

- 2 tbsp sugar

- 1 pack Veg Gel (Can be found in tesco) or equivalent (eg agar)

- 2 tbsp sherry or other liqueur

Sponge: Your basic sponge cake:

- 1½ cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

- ¾ cup soya milk/water

- ½ cup oil

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- 1 tbsp vinegar

Custard:

- ¾ cup dairy free milk (eg soya)

- ¼ cup sugar (or to taste)

- 1 tbsp cornflour

- 1-2 tsp vanilla essence

1. Make basic cake recipe: mix the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients. Mix two sets together. (or mix the wet, add the two dry ingredients in together then). Put in oven at 180 ⁰ for ~20mins or until golden brown.

2. Make the jelly; Blend the strawberries from the can, with the juice in it, until smooth (or equivalent if using fresh strawberries). Take off froth if any. Add sugar and put into saucepan on a low heat to dissolve sugar. Make up you Veg Gel or agar as on the packet (add to appropriate amount water said and heat). Add to mixture. Add sherry.

3. Cut the sponge cake into fingers or squares and place on the bottom of a bowel or other dish being used. Pour the jelly mix over the sponge cake bits and leave to set.

4. Make up the custard; Dissolve cornflour in about 1/3 cup milk until no lumps. Add this to the rest of the milk in a saucepan. Add sugar and vanilla essence and heat until consistency is creamy and more condensed. Leave to cool and pour over the jelly/sponge part once this has set.

5. Whip up cream if using and put on top. The trifle is now ready to serve!

Conor was really hesitant to have some as his past experiences with trifles weren’t so good he says. In the end though it was him that ate most of it!