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 : )

Conor’s mother’s chocolate biscuit cake (with hazelnuts)

Conor’s mother’s chocolate biscuit cake (with hazelnuts)

Recently Conor’s mother made some chocolate biscuit cake for his brother’s birthday. She passed on the recipe to me and, as our oven in our new place doesn’t really work, we decided to remake it as we were having a dinner.

It is super simple and so so rich!

Ingredients

-2.5 bars of dark chocolate

-100g dairy free butter

-1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

-1/4 pack digestive biscuits

-1/4 pack oat biscuits

-1/3 cup raisins

-3 tablespoons golden syrup

1. Chop up 2 bars of chocolate into bits and put with butter in a bowl in the microwave until melted.

2. Crunch biscuits into bits (but not crumbs) and put in a bowl with raisins, golden syrup, hazelnuts. Add melted chocolate/butter.

3. Put in a cake tin or other container. Put in freezer (if you want it quicker) or in fridge until it cools.

4. Once chocolate cake is cooled, melt the other ½ bar chocolate in the microwave and cover top of cake to smooth it. Eat! : )

Spiced pumpkin cake

Spiced pumpkin cake

It’s the one time of year when you can get a pumpkin and I love pumpkin based desserts!

Ingredients

1&2/3 cups flour

1 cup sugar

¾ cup pureed pumpkin innards (½ for cake, ¼ for icing)

1/2 cup dairy free milk

1/3 cup oil

1 teaspoon vinegar

1 tsp vanilla essence

Spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, mixed spice

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Scoop out the innards of the pumpkin. Blend innards until a smoothie like consistency.

2. Mix sugar, flour and spices together. Add soya milk, oil, vanilla essence and ½ cup of the blended pumpkin.

3. Add vinegar and mix well. Pour into cake pan and bake for 30-40mins or until toothpick comes out clean.

For the icing we mixed 1/5-1/4 cup pumpkin puree with icing sugar enough to be stiff.

We roasted the pumpkin seeds, and Conor made a robot pumpkin to put in the window. 

Blackberry chocolate cake with blackberry icing

Blackberry chocolate cake with blackberry icing

Finally an excuse to bake! I’m in final med and it’s been I haven’t had much time for the joys of cooking/baking. It’s my friend Jen’s birthday and apparently her favourite types of cake are chocolate or berry cakes, so I thought I’d combine the two!

-1½ cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

-1/2 cup soya milk

- 1 small pot blackberry soya yogurt (eg Alpro)

- ½ cup oil

- 3 tbsp cocoa powder

- 1 tsp vanilla essence

- 1 tbsp vinegar

Icing: 1 cup (~350g) Icing sugar, ½ pot blackberry soya yogurt, 1 tsp butter, dairy free chocolate clusters.

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa powder.

2. Mix the soya milk, yogurt, oil and vanilla essence. Add to the dry mix above.

3. Add vinegar and bake for about 20-30mins or until a toothpick comes out clean.

4. Mix the icing ingredients together and decorate the top.

Lovely and quick! But oh so very filling!

Was eaten fairly quick too.