sweet potato, kale and black-eye bean stew

this blog has seen too much sweet stuff... I concocted this yesterday, and it looked pretty and tasted nice. Eat as is or serve over quinoa or brown rice.

1-2 leeks, sliced not too thinly
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, diced
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into chunks
1 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp ajwain seeds
1-2 tsp dried thyme
one bag kale, chopped coarsely, thick stems removed
1 can black-eyed beans

Heat the oil. Sautée the leeks for a little, add garlic, ajwain and thyme. When they start to become fragrant, add the carrots, stir briefly, then add 750ml water or veg stock and salt to taste. Bring to a boil. Add sweet potatoes. Boil until veggies start to soften, then throw in kale. When kale is wilting, add beans (drained and rinsed if you prefer). Heat through. Season with freshly ground black pepper.

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.

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.

vegan apple-cinnamon teacake

veganizing… :-)

100g margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup soy yoghurt
1/2 cup soy milk
grated zest of one lemon
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup plain wholemeal flour
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup raisins or currants
1 medium cooking apple, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
apricot jam for glazing (optional)
cinnamon sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.
Cream the margarine and brown sugar very well. Mix in yoghurt, then milk. Grate in lemon zest.
Sift flours, cinnamon and baking powder together.
Mix dry and wet ingredients together. Fold in raisins.
Pour into a greased 20 cm diameter spring form tin. Arrange apple wedges on top.
Bake for 55-60 mins.
Glaze with jam while warm, sprinkle when cooled.

Buckwheat heather cakes (vegan and gluten-free)

We are avoiding wheat at the moment (in addition to me doing Vegan Month for November), and as I had bought some buckwheat flour recently, I remembered the buckwheat tortes a particular German region of heather moorlands is famous for. They are basically buckwheat sponge cakes with a cream and cranberry jam filling. I made these little cupcakes to get a feel for the baking properties of buckwheat flour. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the nutty taste of buckwheat works in a cake, and how nice a texture it turned out. Expect the cakes to be slightly crumbly, but lovely spongy and moist, with a beautiful crust. These should be topped with a little (vegan) whipped cream or some vegan buttercream and additional cranberry jam. I will make these as a sponge cake one of these days with a layer of buttercream and jam in between. If you absolutely cannot find or do not like cranberry jam, use raspberry, blueberry or currant.

1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup oil
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 tbsp ground flax seed
1 1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup ground hazelnuts or almonds (or increase the flour by this amount to make nut-free)
cranberry or other red jam

Line a muffin pan with liners. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.
In a large bowl, whisk together soy milk, oil, sugar and extracts. Beat in the flax seeds.
Sift in the flour, baking powder and soda and salt. Mix to combine, folding in the hazelnuts or almonds.
Spoon mix into muffin liners. Drop a generous teaspoon full of jam into the centre of each cake.
Bake for about 20 mins. Allow to cool completely if frosting.

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.