Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

I come from a long line of people obsessed with carrot cake. It's my favourite cake, it's my mum's favourite cake, it's even my grandma's favourite cake and while I never asked my great-grandma if it was also her favourite kind of cake, I'm going to go ahead and assume the trend is genetic and therefore she too would have been a carrot cake enthusiast.

So. Why the love? Well, carrot cake, the cake part of it at least, is delicious. I wouldn't have thought carrots would make for a good cake ingredient but alas they do and hot damn do they deliver. But, I'd be lying to you if I said that the very best, the preeminent if you will, part of the carrot cake is not the cream cheese frosting. My god. THE FROSTING. I froth that stuff, always have and always will. It's just so damn good! Like, give me jars of that stuff to spoon feed myself with for the rest of my life and I will be a lady most happy!

You might be wondering how in the world one's makes vegan cream cheese. Well, me too, and I don't actually know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that a lovely company called Tofutti have gone ahead and done exactly that and the great upshot of that is that now we can have vegan cream cheese frosting on our carrot cake and my god nothing has, or will, ever made me so happy in life. This icing will mess you up in all the good ways that you didn't know you could be messed. I ate it by the spoonful from the mixing bowl, and truth be told I'm surprised I had enough left to put on the actual carrot cake. Yah. It's THAT good.

In other relevant news, this cake is probably the best vegan cake I have ever made. The consistency is 10/10 and you genuinely would not know that it was missing any of the usual baking ingredients (ergo, eggs). It's light and fluffy, and decadently moist (ooooooooo yeah I went there) all at the same time and basically I consider this cake and this frosting my gift to the world. My work here is done. HAPPY DAYS!

Ingredients;

The Cake
2 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
2 carrots, grated
1 cup brown sugar (lightly packed)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 chia 'eggs' (2 tbsp chia seeds soaked in 1/3 cup water for 5 mins)
2 tbsp date syrup (available in the health foods isle at Woolworths in Australia)
1 cup soy milk
1 cup pecans/walnuts, roughly chopped

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (fan-forced).
2. In a small bowl, combine the chia seeds and 1/3 cup water and set aside.
3. Take a large mixing bowl. Add in the sifted flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.
4. Add the grated carrot into the dry mix along with the brown sugar, chia eggs, date syrup, olive oil and soy milk. Mix well using a spatula/wooden spoon (NOT an electric mixer!). The mixture should be relatively solid, though runny enough that it will pour (albeit slowly) if you tip the bowl to one side. If it's still a little sticky, add in a little extra soy milk.
5. Add in your roughly chopped nuts, then mix well.
6. Take a lined loaf tray (presumably a regular cake tray will also work if you want, but I'll confess I've not tested it, so no promises!!) and pour your carrot cake mixture in, using the spatula/wooden spoon to smooth over the top.
7. Place in the oven and bake for approximately 60 mins, or until the cake is firm to the touch (I find smell is often the best indicator of how cooked this cake is - your kitchen should start to smell utterly fantastic when it's nearing being finished!). A skewer inserted in the centre of the cake is also a good test - it should be clean when it comes out.
8. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling tray. Allow to fully cool before icing.

Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting
200gm vegan cream cheese (I used Tofutti, available at the Cruelty Free Store in Australia)
1/4 cup vegan butter (I used Nuttelex)
1 cup icing sugar

1. In a mixing bowl, combine the vegan cream cheese, butter and icing sugar. Mix together using an electric mixer for a few minutes until you have a completely smooth, mindblowingly delicious frosting.
2. If you can resist eating it straight out of the bowl (difficult task), scoop out onto your cooled carrot cake and spread evenly.

Voila! The words most delicious vegan carrot cake! Enjoy!

Broccoli, Bean and Snowpea Salad with Caramelised Pear and Feta.

It's only the very start of October but because I'm deep in the throws of procrastinating, I'm already thinking ahead to Christmas, specifically the food for the Christmas table. I'm the only vegan in my family, which generally means that we don't do a giant special meal just for me, rather we make lots of different plates of food, kind of like side dishes, but also hearty and wholesome enough to be meals in their own right, and I make a mixed plate from those. I quite like this approach because inevitably it means lots of variety for me and I also really like that it means the vegan 'side dishes' are plates that everyone shares, which keeps the social aspect of the Christmas table alive and well. It's not a whole heap of fun to be the singular person eating the weird, different dish, so the fact that I can make plates of food that everyone has some of is something that personally makes me really happy!

Taking this approach typically leaves me responsible for salads, because I think everyone kind of just assumes that vegans eat lots of vegetables (which is true, when we're being good healthy vegans). I do enjoy salads, but only when they're not boring. Ain't no body got time for some semi-wilted lettuce and a few quartered tomatoes round here. Instead I'm all about flavourful salads full of contrasting tastes. I typically like putting unconventional things in my salads, partly because it's just kind of inherently fun to stretch the boundaries, but also putting fun things in salads makes the salad itself more fun and we love a fun salad!!! 

Using fruit is one of my favourite approaches, which is precisely what I've done here. I wanted to make a 'salad' with mixed green vegetables - specifically broccoli, beans and snowpeas, for no other reason than it seemed like a cool idea. Alone, those three vegetables are very average, so it was obviously necessary to spice things up a bit! I wanted to add some sweetness in, which pear alone would do but to make things extra special I roasted it in a light coating of brown sugar. I then added in some pecans for texture, but the star of the show here is definitely the crumbled vegan feta. It's a new product available at my local supermarket here in Aus and quite frankly, it's the real deal and absolutely takes this salad from slightly above average to EXCEPTIONAL. A very quick and easy drizzle of balsamic vinegar and low and behold, we have ourselves a fun, vegetable filled salad that's perfect for any occasion, including the Christmas lunch table!! 

Ingredients;

1 head broccoli, cut into bit-size florets

2 handfuls green beans, the ends cut off

1 handful snowpeas, ends cut off

1 pear

2 tbsp brown sugar

Drizzle olive oil (x2)

1/2 cup pecan nuts 

100gm vegan feta cheese (I used Bio Cheese Feta available at Woolworths supermarkets across Aus)

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar 

1. Preheat an oven to 180 degrees Celsius (fan-forced). 

2. Take the pear and cut it into thin wedges. The easiest way to do this is to halve it, repeat and keep repeating until you have a collection of wedges that are about 1cm wide.

3. In a small bowl, combine the pear wedges with 1tbsp brown sugar and a light drizzle of olive oil. Mix through well so that all the pear pieces are coated well. 

4. Place the pear wedges on a lined baking tray, then cook them in the oven for approx. 15 mins. They should be lightly golden and the ends may just start to brown a little deeper. Keep an eye on them though - depending on how thick you cut them they may cook a little faster!

5. While the pear is cooking, place the pecan nuts in the same spare bowl you used previously along with 1 tbsp brown sugar and a light drizzle of olive oil. Mix through well, and just as you did with the pear wedges, place the pecans on a lined baking tray.

6. When the pears have cooked, remove them from the oven and place to one side to allow to cool. Place the pecans in the oven, and cook just as you did with the pears, for approx. 10 mins. The easiest way to judge whether the nuts are lightly roasted enough is smell - if you open the oven and it smells delicious and nutty, then they'll be done! When cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool. 

7. Bring a large pot of water to the boil.

8. When the water has boiled, put your broccoli florets, beans and snowpeas in and cook them all together for approx. 4-5 minutes. I prefer some crunch in my vegetables, so I drain them when they're just shy of being fully cooked, though this is just personal preference!

9. When cooked, drain and rinse the vegetables.

10. Place your cooked veggies in a large bowl along with the wedges of cooked pear. Roughly chop the cooked pecans and add those in too. Crumble some of your vegan feta in then mix through well. Add in the balsamic, again mix through well and then serve!