Freitag, 28. Dezember 2012

christmas baking

Just as i´m gearing up for the busiest baking season, my oven breaks down. But we managed to have a really nice communal gingerbread-house-making and buttercookie-cutting session on Saturday. For the first Advent weekend, I made some Stollen buns, oh so lovely. Find the recipe here:
http://www.suburbanyogini.com/2010/12/01/a-very-vegan-christmas-stollen/


I didn´t give them a marzipan filling, but the marzipan stars look cute, don´t they?


We made Gabelplätzchen (fork
biscuits; recipe will follow, maybe, hopefully), and Spitzbuben ("rascals"- jam filled butter biscuits).
Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars, well, cameos).


Spiced apple loaves today – skinning about 250g of almonds, what fun.
Our Yulebread. Find the recipe here:
http://katrinskitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/stuff-of-life-sweet-bread-sunwheel.html
I reduced the sugar to 3 tbsp, which was plenty. It still is a very rich bread. For a sweet breakfast bread, I have come to prefer Vegan Dad's challah:
http://vegandad.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/vegan-challah.html
I use soy yoghurt and find that when halving the recipe, you don't need the flax seed, everything holds nicely together. It is soft and satisfying and much more moist than those overly butterly recipes for "Zopf" I used to make.

Samstag, 1. Dezember 2012

Mjuk Pepparkaka - Swedish soft spice cake (vegan)

Another veganized recipe… The original came from some dear friends of mine who used to treat me to a lot of lovely Scandinavian baked goods and even more tender loving care on the Danish side of the Flensburg fjord.

2 tbsp ground flaxseed
3 tbsp boiling water
50g margarine, soft
3 tbsp cranberry preserve (optional)
150 ml soy yoghurt
450 ml plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.
Mix the flaxseed with the boiling water and put aside.
Cream the margarine, till white and fluffy. Cream in the sugar. Add the flaxseed-mix and continue beating. Mix in the cranberry preserve and yoghurt
Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into a bowl. Add the wet ingredients and combine well. If batter appears too stiff, add a splash of soy milk or yoghurt. What you want is a normal cake batter consistency, something that drops somewhat heavily from the spoon (I remember that German maxime for this kind of cake batter: schwer reißend vom Löffel fallen…).
Pour into greased cake tin and bake for 35-40 mins.