Hazelnut praline (vanilla) cake

Hazelnut praline (vanilla) cake

So, currently for the last four weeks I’ve been living out of a B&B in Navan for this rotation (except weekends, which is how I finally made this!). Recently enough, we were sitting around in the B&B and this Rachel Allen baking show came on, starting off with a demonstration of how to make hazelnut praline cake.

Watching this all I could think was how dreadfully complicated it looked and how many ingredients it needed… Who would want to make that cake after seeing such hassle?

Anyways, I decided that I could make a much simpler (which is particularly important for students!) and vegan version. Cake should always be simple – the more this is true, the more cake there is going around!

This cake is very rich and indulgent though – when we made it us and friends could only manage one slice each (after a vegan lasagne dinner though).

 

Ingredients: Cake: 3 cups flour (self raising) 2 cups sugar for cake 1.5 cup soya milk (or other, or water) 1 cup oil 1 tsp vanilla essence (or butterscotch essence) Icing sugar for icing Custard (or just make icing instead!: water + icing sugar): 3tbsp Sugar, vanilla essence 1.5tbsp Cornflour 3/4 cup soya milk

Praline: 1 pack hazelnuts (whole, but chopped would be easier I’d guess) 1 cup sugar (I went with normal brown sugar as I feel brown=caramelize, but it doesn’t matter which type much) 1 tbsp dairy free butter (or use oil)

Preheat oven to 180°

1. -For cake: As always, for the cake: mix the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients. Mix the two sets together.

-Split mix into two greased sponge trays and bake in oven for 15-20mins (until browned)

-Once cooked: cut the top off one of them (to be flat, so the other can go atop it!)

2. -Make custard: Put custard ingredients in a pot, boil off on medium heat until thickens to custard consistency.

3. -For praline: Put 1tbsp dairy free butter (or oil) in pot and add sugar. Cook at low heat until it starts caramelising, then add the hazelnuts (reserve some whole ones for decorating if wanted). Continue cooking until caramelises (see pics) and let cool to harden.

-Once hardened, put in a blender/hand blend (can also crush with rolling pin I think) until fine crumbly consistency. 

4. Mix some of the praline crumble with the custard mix (about half), and reserve the rest for decorating (if desired). Spread onto the sponge cake that is to be the bottom one, and put the other one on top. Decorate as wanted (I just iced it (icing sugar + water) and sprinkled the rest of the praline on top).

You can make this a chocolate hazelnut praline cake easily – just add 2-3tbsp cocoa powder.

We ran out of icing sugar so couldn’t do the ‘stiff peak pointy effect’ that the Rachel Allen cake has… But this is easily achievable I’m sure with icing made to be more mouldable (less water basically).

May be making this again in two weeks so we’ll see!

Conor didn’t like the ‘running over the edge’ thing I did with the icing, whereas I thought it made it look more indulgent (like it’s ready to burst with nom nom nom )

P.S. We had extra praline left over, so we added it to this: (just use soya milk/dairy free butter/oil to make vegan): artofdessert.blogspot.ie/2010/11/quick-fix-microwave-brownie.html

Mint, chocolate and almond Pryaniki/Пряники

Mint, chocolate and almond Pryaniki/Пряники

 

 Usually we wouldn’t put up variations on our recipes, mostly because this blog is really meant to be new things we try and we consider variations not to be a ‘new type of thing’ to make. However, it being Christmassy time and these being yummy, we thought we should! This is of course a variation of Пряники/Pryaniki, which I feel are such a Christmassy thing too with all the spices! 

Also, we proudly found out that if you google ‘vegan pryaniki’ this blog is the first search result! :) We felt we should surely add up this version so. This recipe is along the same lines, but we made half the amount (as we were baking other things too!)

Ingredients:

- 3/4 cups self raising flour

- 1/3 cup sugar

- 1/4 cup golden syrup

- 1/4 cup dairy free butter (or oil even)

- 1/6 cup soya milk (or other milk, or water)

- 2 tbsp treacle

- 2 tbsp cocoa powder

- 1/2 cup ground almonds

- 1 tsp peppermint essence

- Spices: 4-5 tsp cinnamon, 4-5 tsp mixed spice, 1-2 tsp ginger

- A little icing sugar (for glaze)

1. Mix the flour, spices, cocoa powder and ground almonds in a bowl.

2. Put sugar, butter, treacle, golden syrup and essence (the rest of the ingredients) in a pot and cook on a low heat until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves.

3. Add the mixture in the pot to the flour mix and mix until a mouldable dough.

3. At this point take hand chunks out and roll them into balls, or roll out the dough and cut out shapes, or press on it for designs.

5. Place on a greased tray and 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.

Lovely to sit down and eat with some chai tea… (and yummy for dipping)

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