Vegan November 2020: Sweet and Simple Buns

November 13, 2020 by Cathy

As November is traditionally Vegan Month I thought a traditional recipe from Bavaria might go down well. These are simple buns, made with a yeast dough, sweetened slightly and served dusted with sugar/icing sugar.

They have various names here, depending on where you live, but my Man of Many Talents knows them as ‘Rohrnudeln’ – oven noodles! His Grandmother used to make them and they were a filling treat for hungry boys.

Here is my vegan recipe for them.

Sweet Buns

300g strong flour (2 1/2 cups)
100g plain flour (3/4 cup). (or all plain)
50 g (raw cane) sugar (1/5 cup)
1 packet instant yeast (7g or 2 1/4 tsps)
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
150 ml lukewarm water (5 oz)
150 ml lukewarm soya (or other non-dairy) milk (5 oz)
A little soya milk or cream and melted vegan butter/margarine for brushing
Extra sugar (caster sugar or icing sugar) for sprinkling

Sift the flour, salt and sugar into a bowl and add the yeast. Stir in the water and soya milk. Mix and then knead briefly until it is a soft ball of dough. Place in a clean bowl, brush all over with a little vegetable oil, cover and leave in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F)

Punch down the dough and roll out into a long sausage shape. Cut into twelve equal pieces and roll each piece into a ball. Place close together into a greased ovenproof dish (my dish is about 24 x 20 cm … 9×8 inches?) and leave to rest another 15 minutes. Then brush with milk/melted butter or margarine and bake for 25 – 30 minutes.

When golden brown, remove from the oven and brush with milk and butter again, and immediately sprinkle caster sugar over them. Leave to cool a little before serving, dusted with more sugar/icing sugar as desired.

They remind me a bit of doughnuts. 😃 They are best eaten fresh, and taste very good with custard, but on the next day try slicing them and spreading jam over them! 😉

Enjoy! 😃

Zucchini (Courgette) Soup

August 1, 2020 by Cathy

I am waiting for the second wave.

No, not that one.

The second wave of zucchini!

Yes, it is that time of year where many gardeners find themselves inundated with zucchini. My first wave hit at the end of June. And continued until early July.

Since then a steady stream of smaller ones have made it more pleasurable and less stressful! I made large quantities of soup. Twice. With some in the freezer too. And stuffed zucchini is also a regular at the moment.

My soup has been a big hit. I think the key to adding flavour is plenty of garlic. I will have to try growing my own garlic one day as we consume an awful lot of it. 😉 A good vegetable stock, a potato and some (surprising?) seasoning make it delicious. Here is the recipe. I wrote it down the first time I made it and liked it so much that I have been using it since:

Zucchini soup

1.25 kg (2.75 lbs) zucchini, roughly chopped into cubes
2 onions, chopped
1 potato, chopped
5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
a little olive oil
1 tsp dried coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp dried mustard
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
Freshly ground black pepper
500 ml vegetable stock
250 ml almond milk

In a large pot, heat the olive oil and sautée the onion until soft. Add the garlic, zucchini, potato, all the herbs and spices and the stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer on a low heat until the zucchini and potato are soft. It will only take a few minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little. Add the almond milk and then blend until smooth and creamy. 😃

(And if you like garlic as much as we do, this tastes great with garlic bread. 😉)

Zucchini Soup

Oh dear, now I am hungry!

Are you enjoying vegetables from your own garden this summer?

xxx

Store Cupboard Recipe 5: Jam Tarts

May 14, 2020 by Cathy

As restrictions are slowly in the process of being removed in most parts of the world, this will be the last of my vegan store cupboard recipe series for a while. It has been an interesting exercise in seeing how long I can eat a varied diet without popping to the shops regularly. However, I do hope we will all be able to return to our usual routines soon!

The ingredients for these tarts are bound to be in anyone‘s store cupboard or refrigerator. And when that craving for something sweet grabs you, why not whisk up a batch of these! They are very quick and easy, and go beautifully with a cup of tea. Just in case you have never made these before, here is the recipe.

Jam Tarts

For approx. 18 tarts you will need:

Some muffin or patty tins, greased, and a cookie cutter
250 g (2 cups) plain flour
125 g (1 stick and 1tbsp) very cold margarine or vegan butter, cut into small chunks
a little cold water
Jam of your choice

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F)

Make shortcrust pastry by rubbing the margarine into the flour with fingertips until fine and crumbly. Add just enough cold water to bring the dough together into a ball. (Tip: shortcrust pastry freezes really well – I only made 12 tarts and froze the remaining pastry for a rainy day. 😃)

Roll out on a floured surface to about 3mm (about 1/8 inch) and, using a cookie cutter that fits your patty tins, cut out shapes and place in the tins. Add a heaped teaspoon of jam to each. I used several different jams – strawberry, apricot and blackcurrant.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until the pastry starts turning golden and the jam is bubbling. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely before removing from the tins.

Enjoy!

Store cupboard recipes 3 and 4

April 22, 2020 by Cathy

I have been craving sweet stuff recently and made myself some flapjacks. After all, you only need sugar, margarine and oats! If you have golden syrup even better. Mine were bit crumbly, but this recipe I am linking to uses half sugar and half syrup, so give yourself a treat and give it a go!

BBC website Flapjacks recipe

Of course, mine were vegan, using margarine instead of butter. And I added a little maple syrup. Other options for spicing them up would be adding a teaspoon of cinnamon or cardamom. Or a handful of dried cranberries.

The second recipe is one I have been meaning to post for years! It is an old favourite for a quick and tasty dinner when there are no fresh veggies left in the fridge. I think it was originally a rice salad that ‘evolved’ into a hot dish. I call it simply ‘Curry rice’. 😃

Curry Rice

All you need for two to three portions is:

200g basmati rice
About 2 tbsps margarine
1-2 tbsps curry powder (depending on how hot your curry powder is!)
200g (frozen) green beans
200g tin of sweetcorn
Salt and black pepper

Warm a large serving dish in the oven. Cook your rice and your green beans separately, according to the instructions on the packets. When the beans are cooked, turn off the heat, add the sweetcorn and leave for a couple of minutes to warm through. Then drain.

Mix the rice, beans and corn, the margarine and the seasoning thoroughly and place in your warm serving dish.

We like this with homemade naan bread or spicy fried tofu cubes. You could in fact serve it as a side dish but we like a big portion, so it is a main meal in our house!

Hope you too are eating well during lockdown. 😉

P.S. Here are a few more recipes that can be made with minimum ingredients:

Falafel

Cannellini and Tomato Bake

Vegan Milchreis

Store cupboard recipe 1: Vegan (garlic) mayonnaise

March 27, 2020 by Cathy

One of the first things we did when we became vegan a few years ago was to invest in a powerful mixer. We chose a German one – ‘bianco di puro’ – developed with a vegan lifestyle in mind. In fact the company promotes veganism with their product at fairs and exhibitions nationwide.

It was a fabulous investment, and we use it several times a week. I make my cashew sauce with it, but the best thing I use it for is our mayonnaise. Finding a tasty egg-free mayo is not easy in Germany, so a few years ago I started experimenting. It took several attempts to get it right and it has been fine-tuned over time as well. I would like to share this ‘recipe’ with you today as all the ingredients are probably in your pantry. But do bear in mind that differing ingredients and mixers may produce different results and patience is required until it turns out perfectly!

You will need:

100ml soya milk
1 1/2 tsps white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried mustard
1 clove of garlic (optional)
150 ml vegetable oil (I use about 100 ml rapeseed oil and 50 ml sunflower oil, but you can experiment to find what you like best)

Mix all of the ingredients except the oil in your mixer at high speed for about 20 seconds.

Set the speed to low and now gradually add the oil with the motor running. When all the oil is added, switch to high speed for about ten seconds. Your mixture should now be creamy and have a thick mayonnaise consistency. Refrigerate until using and eat within 24 hours. (It may start to separate if kept longer.)

I do hope you will try this if you have a high-speed mixer. It does work in a normal mixer too, but my experience was that it did not thicken up as much. It tastes fantastic just with bread and salad, and is ideal (without the garlic) for homemade coleslaw too. 😃

Seasonal Tip: adding a leaf or two of wild garlic instead of using normal garlic gives it a delicate garlic flavour and a beautiful green tinge. 😃

Thanks for reading!

Homemade Potato Soup and Life in January

January 18, 2020 by Cathy

It tends to go a bit quiet here in January at Words and Herbs, with frosty days and chill winds keeping the gardener indoors. But inside it is warm and my kitchen is welcoming.

And with January also becoming known as Veganuary in the UK (and anywhere else?) I simply can‘t let the month pass without posting a recipe or two.

😃

If you haven‘t heard of Veganuary, it is basically a month of vegan eating to get the new year off to a healthy start – and to promote a vegan lifestyle. Magazines are full of ideas for new vegans or for people who simply want to try out a plant-based diet. For old vegans like me I find the magazines rather repetitive and full of time-consuming recipes using trendy ingredients that are either unavailable in our part of the world or out of season or horribly expensive!

So here is a simple and delicious recipe using ingredients you probably have in your pantry already, created at the request of my Man of Many Talents who grew potatoes for the first time last year. (They were a big success – here is one of our harvests!)

I hoped to make the soup like his Mum used to, but I believe she must have used celeriac, which I have never tried – I substitute with a parsnip. 😉 If you see soup recipes in German they usually say ‚Suppengrün‘ which is typically pieces of vegetables like this, sold in our supermarkets in bunches:

My version comes pretty close to the original though. Please let me know what you think if you try it. It has become a favourite in our house!

German Potato Soup

You will need:

1 kg potatoes (any sort will do!), peeled and cut into large chunks
1 leek, thinly sliced
2 onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 parsnip, chopped
1 bunch of parsley
1 tsp mixed herbs (and 1tsp of marjoram if you have any)
1.5 litres vegetable stock
Freshly ground black pepper
A good glug of olive oil

Heat the oil in a very large saucepan and sauté the onions and leek until nice and soft. Add all the other vegetables and put the lid on for a few minutes. Add the stock and herbs (save the parsley for just before serving) and simmer gently until the vegetables are cooked through – about 20 or 25 minutes. Allow to cool a little. Now the important part!. We like whole pieces of vegetables in our soup, but with a creamy consistency too, so I take my hand blender and pulse very briefly to break down some of the larger chunks of potato.

Add the chopped parsley (and chives go well too) and stir through. Serve with crusty bread, pretzels, crisps or croûtons. 😜

Enjoy!

P.S. I usually make an extra large pot of this soup and freeze some for a rainy day. 😉

Lemon Drizzle Cake (Vegan)

November 14, 2018 by Cathy

I couldn’t let November pass by without posting a vegan recipe or two, could I… after all, it is World Vegan Month. What, you didn’t know?!

“World Vegan Month is celebrated around the world as a time to recognise how far the vegan movement has come, to highlight how accessible and beneficial a vegan lifestyle can be and to encourage the vegan-curious to adopt veganism by sharing advice, recipes and ideas.”

The Vegan Society website.

So today I am going to share a delicious lemon drizzle cake recipe which is based on my ultimate vegan victoria sponge. (You can find the victoria sponge recipe here).

It is a light and very lemony sponge cake with a lemon syrup poured over while still warm and then a tangy lemon icing drizzled over when it has cooled. So if you fancy something sweet, but fresh and zesty too, why not treat yourself! This cake has been served to non-vegans, vegetarians and vegans alike, with everyone agreeing it is extremely lemony and very tasty!

It is also incredibly easy to make.

🙂

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Preheat your oven to 190°C (375°F) and grease and flour a round 24cm (9 to 10 inch) springform cake tin.

For the cake mixture you will need to sieve together the following ingredients into a large mixing bowl:

350g (2 and 3/4 cups) self-raising flour
2tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt

Next, melt the following together in a saucepan and then allow to cool:

170g sugar and 1tbsp vanilla sugar (3/4 cup altogether) (or add 1tsp vanilla essence)
180g (1 and 1/2 sticks and 1 tbsp) vegan butter or margarine

You will also need:

1 veg egg (either 1tbsp flaxmeal mixed to a paste with 3tbsps water, or another egg replacer equivalent to one egg, both available in health food shops)
Zest of 2 large lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
330ml (1 and 1/3 cups) unsweetened soya yoghurt (available in most supermarkets these days)

Once the butter/sugar mixture has cooled down, add it and all the other ingredients to the flour mixture and gently fold in until all the flour is incorporated. Do not beat or overmix. You should see little bubbles in the mixture as the chemistry starts to work. 😃 Pour into the cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. Check after 30 minutes as ovens do vary. Insert a toothpick into the centre and if it comes out clean the cake is done – it should be golden brown on top and starting to shrink away from the sides of the cake pan.

While the cake is baking you can prepare the syrup to drizzle over it immediately after it comes out of the oven.

Lemon syrup:

In a saucepan, melt

1/2 cup of lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar

As soon as you remove the cake from the oven, prick little holes all over the surface with a toothpick and pour the syrup carefully and slowly over the cake so it can absorb it all. Wait until the cake has cooled a little before removing it from the tin and place it on a cake rack to cool completely.

The final stage is the icing.

Lemon icing:

1/3 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup icing sugar

Mix the lemon juice into the icing sugar slowly, making sure you don’t have any lumps. You can stop adding juice as soon as it reaches the right ‘drizzling’ consistency. Drizzle this over the cold cake and allow to set a little before serving.