Category: Food

Vegan Halloween cookies

Fall is here and so is Halloween… the time for scary and (pretty disgusting) looking treats and endless baking afternoons to make enough for the neighborhood kids trick and treating affairs! These vegan Halloween inspired spooky cookies are the best to make with the kids and they are made with unrefined sugars and natural plant colours.

Last year we decorated the front of the house and we had a fair amount of fun doing it. Lots of kids passed by picking up sweets (little did they know that we would be giving them healthy cookies instead of sugar laden sweets! :))

I’d love to share our, I must admit, pretty basic cookie recipe for last year. We simply made gingerbread cookies with scary shapes using cookie cutters, as Ariana was still quite young and this was the best she could do at that time. But this year we are going to build on last year’s recipe using vegan buttercream made with aquafaba, my newest and most loved addition to the kitchen pantry (or fridge!) to decorate our scary looking cookies. This is the cookie cutter set we have bought.

The cookie recipe is a basic sugar cookie (made healthy of course!) but the most fun we have had decorating them.

Basic Sugar Cookie recipe:

Makes 12-14 cookies with Halloween inspired shapes:

2 cups of flour (I used this one)
1/2 cup unrefined caster cane sugar*
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 homemade aquafaba butter (recipe here or use any vegan butter)
1 tsp vanilla powder
2 tablespoons oat or cashew milk (thick milks work best!)
pinch of salt

First preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cream the aquafaba butter together with the caster cane sugar. Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl and slowly add into the aquafaba sugar paste mixing by hand. It will become kind of like a crumbly mixture, but if you add the milk it should create a dough ball, that keep together and that you can roll out. You can always add a bit more milk if it is not soft enough to roll without it falling apart.

Roll the dough until its about 0.5 cm thick and cut your shapes. Keep rolling the excess dough until you don’t have enough dough left! the last piece can just be made into little balls and press down with the rolling pin to the same thickness as the cookies. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden on top, let them cool down on a wire tray and decorate!

It is also nice to make these cookies with chocolate flavor by replacing 1/4 cup of the flour for raw chocolate powder.

For the decorations, you will need to have your aquafaba royal icing and natural food colouring ready.

* I make cane caster sugar by blending unrefined caster sugar until a very thin powder.

31 October, 2017
Winter spiced apple porridge

Breakfast today was this quick and easy winter spiced apple porridge. There is something very comforting about porridge and in cold crispy bright mornings we really enjoy having porridge for breakfast. This particular winter spiced apple porridge is easy, the spices we use are always available in our cupboard and we all like it, including the kids. (more…)

29 October, 2017
Vegan Sugar Cookies

This is my favorite vegan sugar cookies recipe- it super easy and effective for a quick healthy sugar fix. My kids love to make them because its a bit like playing with playdough- you roll the dough out and cut shapes with the cutters so its a great family activity and make great presents. (more…)

23 October, 2017
Bounty style coconut treats

On Friday afternoons, a group of local parents get together to let the children play and for us all to unwind as a community. For these events, when they are hosted in a private residence instead of the upstairs room at the local pub, I like to bring some healthy treats for the parents and the kids. For the first ever one we had, I made these quick and yummy bounty style coconut treats with Ariana’s help. They were all gone rather quickly and a few mums asked me to share the recipe with them as they were popular with the other kids, so here we are.

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21 October, 2017
Homemade Natural Food Colouring

In the last few months, since Ariana started to want to decorate our cakes, cupcakes and cookies with colours, I have been trying to find a brand that I could trust and had no dubious ingredients. I am not sure you are aware, but the commercial brands out there are full of not very nice (to not say nasty) ingredients, (more…)

21 October, 2017
Autumn baked apples with cinnamon & cashew cream

My mum is an excellent cook. She has pretty much, ‘veganised’ all her family cooking repertoire to adapt to our eating ways. I am pretty impressed of what a fabulous job she has done as some of these dishes are very much meat based. I truly think achieving such a spectacular flavor as she has done has a lot of merit! (thanks mum)

This recipe is not of those those, though, but it is a recipe my mum adores and we made together for dessert while I was visiting them. We used my mum’s favourite apples, the Reineta variety, but can be made using other apple types. Large apples seem to do a better job though. In the UK, Braeburn and Granny Smith are my favorites to use.

Baked apples, are delicious this time time of the year, with apples bought at the Farmers Market or picked from the garden (or in my case, from the neighbors garden). They also pair well with coconut yogurt, banana ice cream, oat cream… you name it!

These are topped with homemade cashew cream and they were super delicious and filling.

You will need:

1 large apple per person
1 tablespoon coconut oil per apple, melted
1 1/2 tablespoon coconut sugar per apple
1/4 tsp cinnamon per apple
1/8 tsp vanilla powder per apple

Heat the oven to 160/180 degrees. In a bowl mix the melted coconut oil, cinnamon, vanilla & coconut sugar. Remove the core of each apple without taken the bottom off so you create like a little container inside the apple. Place the apples into an oven safe tray and fill the holes with the coconut oil and spices mixture. We also like to put a cinnamon stick inside the apples, looks fabulous! Bake for around 15minutes until the sugar start to caramelize. To serve, you can add some coconut yogurt, cashew cream or similar over the top. Best eaten while warm but they are also pretty amazing cold 🙂

19 October, 2017
Aquafaba Butter

The day I discovered aquafaba butter, my baking changed for the best! For a long time I relied in using either coconut oil or vegetable spreads in my cooking, but no more! I started experimenting to make vegan butter with aquafaba and oils a while ago and I am happy to report that this recipe works in all my baking, the same way as dairy butter would. I am amazed at how well it works, really. And its quick to make and stores well in the fridge- bonus!

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16 October, 2017
Vegan Meringues- yes they exist and are super easy to make!

I must say that I have never been a fan of meringues. The fact that they are made with egg whites has always been off-putting, even when I was still consuming meat and dairy products like there was not tomorrow 😉 but I have now re discover them through the upcoming trend of aquafaba.

‘What is aquafaba’ you might wonder. Well, you would probably be surprised to know that is the liquid you (most likely) throw down the drain every single time you open a can of beans such as chickpeas, butter beans, pinto beans… It’s the by product of boiling chickpeas, the water left over from the boiling process that contains all the starches, proteins, and other soluble plant solids released by the grains or beans. It has pretty amazing properties as an emulsifying, foaming, binding, gelatinizing and thickening agent in cooking recipes. It’s kind of like egg whites and it is a natural replacement for these.

Since I discovered aquafaba (which actually means, literally, bean water) I have been experimenting replacing eggs in recipes instead of using chia or flax. it kind of works, but I find that the recipes usually need something else to bind properly. For example, cookies are a bit too crumbly for my liking if I don’t add some flax meal as well.

So, back to the meringues- these are sooooo easy to make. They only negative is that you have to wait until they are baked (or dehydrated!) and it can take a fair bit. To make sure the meringues don;t deflate, you’ll need to use the oven at a maximum temperature of 100 celsius. It is very important that you have an extra thermometer in your oven like the one here to make sure the temperature does not get higher than that. The dehydrator is a great and safe alternative to the oven if you have one (and the patience to wait for them to be ready!).

Without further adue, here there is the recipe that Ariana and me have made work every single time we have made them:

Aquafaba Meringues

1/2 cup liquid aquafaba
1/2 unrefined cane caster sugar*
1/2 tsp white vinegar

In a deep bowl or container or a mixer bowl if you have a proper baker mixer, put the quafaba liquid and beat it until it becomes creamy and forms soft peaks (meaning it starts to make shapes while being beaten). Start adding the sugar, one tablespoon at the time and beat until the peaks are not dropping once you lift the mixture up. the proof of fire is to turn the bowl over. If your mixture is still inside the bowl and not all over your counter, you are ready to pipe those meringues 😉

I say pipe, but you can also choose to simply drop dollops of the mixture into an oven safe tray covered in greaseproof paper. I do own a piping bag and Ariana seems to love to make a mess while using it, so we gave it a go. I forgot to say that ours are slightly pink because it is Ariana’s favourite colour. I saw online that you could use food colouring in part of the mixture but we don’t use that, so we went for beetroot powder mixed with a bit of water. The next time we are planning to use turmeric for yellow, matcha blue for blue colour and spirulina for green to make rainbow meringues.

* caster cane sugar can be easily made at home by simply blending unrefined cane sugar into a more powdery texture.

25 December, 2016
Moist vegan banana cake

Making vegan banana cake is one of those things that I pretty much let the kids do by themselves (minus the weighing and putting into the oven part). A few simple ingredients and voila! a delicious, moist and filling afternoon treat is sorted.

A while back we made this vegan banana cake for our Friday Family Neighborhood Meet Up and it disappeared in a very short time. Both adults and kids liked it because it wasn’t overly sweet but the moisture on it from the liquid sweetener and the very ripe bananas really worked well. Ripe bananas is a high in demand in my household as we use them for so many things- smoothies, cakes, ice cream… you can get an idea of the amount of ripe bananas needed here! I keep a big stash in the freezer and some in the counter at all times.

I like using wholegrain flours and other grains to make them more nutritious. If you haven’t used quinoa flakes before, you are in for a treat. They are naturally gluten free and they bring a very nutty taste to the table. I’m currently in love with them 🙂

1 1/2 cups of mashed ripe bananas (4-5 bananas)
1/2 cup oat milk (use cashew or almond for gluten free)
2 tablespoons chia powder (or flax seed powder)
1/4 cup organic coconut oil, melted
2 tablespoons rice syrup*
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup quinoa flakes
1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder
1/4 teaspoon of Himalayan salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder
Vegan chocolate chips- I made these myself as it is more cost effective, but there are also available online and in health food shops

Mash the ripe bananas in a bowl and add the rest of the wet ingredients to make a paste, then add the dry ingredients (except chocolate chips) adding the chia powder last. Fold in chocolate chips and pour into a loaf tin (previously greased with coconut oil) and bake for 45-55 minutes in the middle of the oven. I usually turn off the oven at 45 minutes but let the cake cool down for another 15 minutes. When you press the top and it bounces back it is perfectly cooked. At that time you can take it out of the mould and place it in a wire rack to prevent it from getting soggy.

Serve warm or cool- this vegan banana cake its equally delicious either way 🙂

*you can use any liquid sweetener you like or have handy. I use this one because is cost effective in this recipe.

25 December, 2016
Easy and quick one bowl vegan chocolate chip cookies

Ariana is a big fan of chocolate chip cookies (or should I say of chocolate?) and so is Oliver nowadays, so this recipe has been in development for the last few years. We can always make it with the ingredients available in our pantry, so there are many substitutions possible!

3 cups oats, made into flour in a blender
1 cup coconut oil, no need to wait for it to melt
2 flax eggs (5 tablespoons water mixed with 2 tablespoons flax meal)
1/2 cup unrefined cane caster sugar*
1/4 cup coconut sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup (or more) chocolate chips, chunks or desired shape chocolate pieces

Add all ingredients except the chocolate chips, into a mixer or into a bowl and mix by hand until well incorporated. Then add the chocolate chips (recipe for the homemade ones we use is available on the recipe section) or buy them- we have used these before and we liked them.

We sometimes substitute the oats for quinoa flakes, the coconut sugar for unrefined cane sugar, sometimes we don’t use cinnamon, or we use dried fruit instead of chocolate chips and we have even used aquafaba butter (recipe available on archives) instead of the coconut oil with good results. These type of recipes, where ingredients are easily swapped are, in my opinion, the best recipes as you can never find an excuse not to make them! 😉

25 December, 2016