Banana Nut Bread (vegan)

November is Vegan Month. And veganizing is so easy! This turned out really nicely. It is really light, but so moist that it´s still very satisfying.

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp oil
1/3 cup soy milk
1/3 cup soy yoghurt
1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts are classic)
2-3 medium-sized bananas (if using 2, you may have to add more soy milk to make a cake batter)

Mash the bananas in a large bowl. Mix in oil, soy milk, yoghurt and sugar. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt. Beat for 30 seconds. Fold in nuts. Bake in a greased loaf tin for 50-60 mins at 200 degrees.

vegan Sachertorte

One of my contribution´s to the Stuff of Life backyard café (The Rose, Saffron and Marqueta café) was this creation of a vegan Sachertorte. Apparently it was really nice, but it was gone before I had a chance to taste it.
This makes one small springform cake tin of chocolate cake.

1 cup soy milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup rapeseed oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp chocolate extract (optional)
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cocoa
3/4 cup baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 jar apricot jam
2 tbsp lemon juice
200g dark cooking chocolate

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. Lightly grease your cake tin.
Whisk together soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, set aside to curdle.
Add sugar, oil, vanilla and other extracts. Beat well.
Sift in flour, cocoa powder and salt. Mix until well combined.
Pour into cake tin and bake for about 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Allow to cool completely.

When cake has cooled, take a long sharp knife and cut the cake in half horizontally, creating two layers of chocolate cake.
Put apricot jam in a small pan, stir in lemon juice and heat gently till soft. If your jam has large fruit pieces and you'd rather not have them between your layers, push jam through a sieve. Otherwise, just spread jam generously on the bottom layer of the cake, replace top layer and spread that generously as well.
Melt the dark cooking chocolate gently over a bain marie and cover cake top and sides with chocolate.

This cake improves when it has a chance to sit overnight or even for a day or two, tightly wrapped in foil.

Klöben Hamburger Art (Sweet Bread from Hamburg)

This is one of my maternal Grandmother's recipes. It won me the Adult Prize at the breadmaking competition during our community's annual Stuff of Life festival. A bow to my Grandmother!

This is the original recipe. Will veganize soon.

1 kg plain flour
50 g fresh or 4 tsp dried fast-action yeast
150g sugar
475ml lukewarm milk or a mix of milk and water
125g softened butter
1 pinch salt
1 egg, beaten
100g raisins or sultanas
100g candied peel

Mix the flour, yeast and sugar. Add milk, butter, salt and egg and knead into a dough. Work in raisins and peel. Allow to rise, covered, in a warm place, until doubled in size.
Shape into a loaf and put on a greased or lined baking sheet. Allow to rise again.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Bake for about an hour.
You could divide the dough into two loaves to reduce baking time.

vegan coconut pandan cupcakes

makes 9. Looking for a nice frosting to go with this!

1 1/3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup oil
3 tsp pandan extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup desiccated coconut (optional)

Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
Mix coconut milk, oil, extracts and sugar. Pour wet into dry ingredients and mix for a few minutes until well combined.
Pour into cupcake liners and bake for 20-25 mins.

easy veg with almond sauce

I've been living like a student for the past two weeks, quite a change from my usual routine as mother of 2. I've been working like crazy and needed quick and grounding food. And made this almond sauce with pasta twice (= 4 meals)! Very nice with whole grain spirelli or spaghetti. Might also go well with rice or other grain.
This is enough for about 2 people.

1 tsp oil
1 small onion
1 punnet mushrooms, or a handful of carrots, a small head of cauliflower or broccoli, some beans...
2 tsp mixed dried herbs
salt, pepper
2 tbsp almond butter (the unsalted variety made from roasted almonds in their skins)

Soften the onion in the oil. Saute the vegetable of choice for a while.
If using mushrooms, add the rest of the ingredients. Mix the almond butter with a cup of warm water, add to the veg, heat through, add more water if you want more sauce, serve.
If using other veg, add some water and the seasonings, cover and cook till veg is soft. Mix the almond butter with a little warm water and stir into the pan.

veganized it! chocolate banana cupcakes

I wanted to make a simple cakey thing for the weekend. And we had two really ripe bananas. But I didn't want to make the same banana cupcakes I've been making a few times (and which dd loves) yet again, so I went to the recipe bookshelf and found a recipe that sounded good. Except that it needed veganizing. And improving here and there. The book wants to sell these as muffins, but they have more oil and sugar than I like to put in my muffins, so I'd call them cupcakes. They should be nice with a chocolate ganache on top. Oh, and because they were kind of meant to be muffins, they either make more than 12 or 12 biggish cupcakes. Right, here goes.

125 ml soy milk
2 tsp cider vinegar
100 ml oil
3 tbsp soy yoghurt
175g brown sugar

175g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 tbsp cocoa powder

2 ripe mashed bananas

Mix the soy milk with the vinegar and allow to curdle. Mix in oil, yoghurt and sugar. Sift in flour, baking powder and soda, cinnamon and cocoa powder. Mix until everything is wet. Fold in mashed bananas. Pour into lined muffin pan and bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees for about 25 mins.

curried chickpea and cashew spread/dip

1/2 can chickpeas, drained
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp curry powder
2 tbsp oil (flaxseed oil is nice)
2 tbsp ground chashews, or a handful whole ones
1 tbsp yeast flakes (optional)
1 tbsp agave nectar or other sweetener
salt to taste

Blend everything in a mixer or with a hand-held blender. Nice on wholemeal pitta.