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!

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.