Mini Apple Pies.

I've always loved apple pie. I think it's probably part genetics (my dad FROTHS apple pie), part environmental (due to dad's aforementioned love of apple p, my childhood was peppered with weekend jaunts to the bakery for a fresh pie) and part apple pie just being straight up tasty.

I've also always loved mini cakes and muffins because the concept of bite sized, single serve cakes is kinda really (objectively) great. So, naturally then it's only been a matter of time before I took apple pie and made it mini-sized!

These pies have been in the back of my mind for ages, and for reasons unknown I'd never acted on those subconscious apple pie dreams. But, this weekend after a few months hiatus from my kitchen and a few too many overripe apples in the fruit bowl I thought it might just have been time to act on my foodie dreams and make pie. So pie, or rather pies, did I make!

I've recently landed myself a full-time job which I'm very much enjoying though it doesn't leave me with a whole heap of time to be creative in the kitchen. I also, after nearly five years of making and creating, wanted a bit of a break from the constant pressure to make new food all day every day. It's been a very busy time, but nice to go back to making and eating food for taste and nourishment alone, rather than constantly stressing about having everything look good and Insta-worthy. Courtesy of my job being ongoing, I'm not sure if or when I'll go back to regularly making and photographing food, but, like this post and this recipe, from time to time, inspiration still strikes! I do thoroughly still enjoy making food and thinking of new ways to eat old things, and I think being craft in the kitchen will always be a part of who I am. I do however, apologise for dropping off the face of the earth! For the record, I'm definitely still here, making an honest living and every bit as much a foodie as I've always been!

Ingredients; (makes 9 pies)

5 sheets puff pastry (I use the brand 'Borg's, available from Woolworths because it's dairy free and vegan!)
4 apples
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp all-spice
2 tsp cornflower
1/2 cup water
Course sugar

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Peel the apples and remove the cores. Slice them in half and then slice each half into wedges approximately half a cm thick.
3. Add the apple wedges, brown sugar, cinnamon and all-spice to a large saucepan on medium heat.
4. Take the 1/2 cup of water and add the cornflower in. Mix well and then add the mix to the saucepan (mixing the cornflower in at this stage will prevent it from forming clumps in the mixture!)
5. Place a lid on the saucepan and simmer for approx. 15 minutes, stirring occassionally, until the apple is soft and the sugar has formed a thick caramel sauce.
6. Take a muffin tin and grease it (I use some vegan butter to do this).
7. Take a sheet of puff pastry and lay it over the tin, being generous on all sides. Gently press the pastry down into the muffin tin, creating shells for the apple filling to go in. Use a knife t cut away any excess pastry.
8. Spoon the apple filling into your pastry lined muffin tin.
9. Use a glass to cut circles in the remaining pastry sheets to use as lids for the mini pies (make sure you check the glass circumference against the muffin tin before doing this to ensure you cut the lids the right size!
10. Gently lay each circle of pastry over the top of your pies and use a fork to lightly press the lid against the shell to seal the pie. Cut a small nick in the top of each pie (for the steam - no one wants a piesplosion!) Sprinkle some course sugar on the top of each pie.
11. Bake for approx. 15 minutes or until the pastry is lightly golden. Remove from the oven when cooked, allow to cool slightly and serve with some icecream (I went with salted caramel and could not suggest this combination more - it was DELISH!). Enjoy!

Raspberry, Cardamon and Oat Slice.

I have many strange kitchen dreams, one of which was to create a triple layer slice kinda thing that was part cake, part berry and part crumble. That probably sounds kinda weirdly specific, but the stomach wants what the stomach wants, so make such a thing I would.

I first tried this triple layer slice thing out a few months ago and it was good, but like, it wasn't great and I dunno about you, but mediocre baked goods are very sad, so I kinda spent the following few months wallowing around at my semi-failed baking. This time was productive however, because I was simultaneously also thinking about how I was going to make the triple layer slice thing better. I'm proud to share that that thinking was fruitful (literally), because I gift unto the world today this Raspberry, Cardamon and Oat Slice that is VERY tasty and VERY much a baking success and I am VERY happy about it alright!!

As it turns out, my stomach was well and proper onto something when it decided this weird part cake, part berry and part crumble thing. It's kinda like, all the very best of those things rolled into this delicious slice that's embarrassingly easy to eat more than one slice of... The cake is light and fluffy and subtly yet very tastefully flavoured with vanilla and cardamon, the berries kinda stew and go all delightfully gooey in the oven which is mindblowingly goooooooood and then the crumble - well the crumble is literally oats, brown sugar and butter, need I say more?!

Ingredients;

125gm vegan butter
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 chia 'egg' (1 tbsp chia seeds soaked in 3 tbsp plant milk for 5 mins)
2 tsp cardamon
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 cup plant milk (I used oat milk)
1 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp vegan butter

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a square cake tin with parchment paper/baking paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, place the 125gm vegan butter, white sugar and vanilla. Using an electric mixer, combine those three ingredients on high speed until they're all mixed together, thick and deliciously creamy.
3. Add in your chia egg, cardamon, plain flour, baking soda, bicarb soda and plant milk, then mix together using the electric mixer until you have a completely smooth cake batter.
4. Place the cake mix to the side for a moment to prepare the oat crumble that goes on top. In a smaller mixing bowl, add the rolled oats, brown sugar and 2 tbsp vegan butter. Use your hands to mix the crumble together, kinda of like, rolling the butter together in your fingers to break it up and mix it through the oats and sugar. You should end up with a mixture that would roll into a ball and hold it's shape if you were to try (but like, don't try that because we don't want oat balls, we want oat crumble)!
5. Take your lined cake tin and pour the cake batter into the bottom, spreading it over the dish evenly. Then add the 2 cups of raspberries over the top, making sure they're spread relatively evenly over the cake batter. Finally, sprinkle the oat crumble over the top - you should still be able to see some of the raspberries through the crumble, we are going for a rustic vibe here after all!
6. Place the triple layer (!!!) slice in the oven and allow to bake for 45 minutes. By that stage the crumble should be fairly well browned, so cover with some foil and then return to the oven for a further 30 minutes of baking away (this last 30 minutes is basically to cook the centre of the slice).
7. After an hour and 15 mins (approx.), the slice should be cooked, so remove it from the oven and allow to cool.
8. When the cake is cooled, cut it into slices and then eat your damn heart out on this bad boy. Happy days!!

Blueberry Cheesecake Popsicles.

We've been having a VERY hot summer in Australia, which is kinda nice to be honest because hot weather is also ice cream/popsicle weather, and lemme tell you - I LOVE ICE CREAM!

A few weeks ago I made my first proper cheesecake - one that has vegan cream cheese as the base ingredient and as it so turns out, that cheesecake was/is/will always be the BOMB.COM because hot damn does it taste good. I must confess however, that until fairly recently, I didn't realise that the crucial ingredient to that magical cheesecake, vegan cream cheese, was a thing. Delightfully, it is most definitely a thing and it's every bit as creamy and delicious as you might imagine. The best news though, is that it's available across Australia in most regular supermarkets. It's super satisfying/great/WOW to see veganism and vegan products become more widely available and not just some random weird diet and lifestyle that people choose to follow. It's even better however, that I myself can now easily obtain such vegan products because it means I get to make things like actual cheesecake and have really yum things in my life!

While inspired by the cheesecake I created a few weeks back these Blueberry Cheesecake Popsicles are also distinctly unique courtesy of the blueberries. Aside from making them a decadent purple colour, the blueberries add a really fun berry flavour to the magical cheesecake mixture and long story short, you end up with some major deliciousness! Sprinkled with some granola, these popsicles have quickly become my summertime go-to dessert and yeah look I guess you probably could say that you need some in your life too!

Ingredients;
225gm vegan cream cheese (I used 'Sheese' Cream Cheese, Tofutti would also work well!)
1 cup raw cashews
1 cup coconut cream
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp pure maple syrup
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1/2 cup coconut yoghurt
1/2 cup granola

1. Take a small bowl and put your cashews in there. Cover them with boiling water and allow to soak for an hour or two. Afterwards, drain them and rinse with cold water.
2. Place the cream cheese, soaked cashews, coconut cream, vanilla, maple syrup and blueberries in a blender. Blend on medium-high speed until you have a completely smooth mixture (no grittiness from the cashews is the key thing to look out for!).
3. Split half the blueberry mixture into a small bowl and add in the coconut yoghurt. Swirl them through gently, not quite fulling mixing them together - they'll look particularly cool if they are two-toned when you pull them out of the moulds.
4. Take some popsicle moulds and scoop some of the plain blueberry mixture in, the some of the mixture with the coconut yoghurt, plus a little granola. Repeat until you've filled up all the moulds.
5. Before putting them in the freezer, sprinkle some granola over the bottoms and put in a popsicle stick.
6. Place in the freezer overnight and the following day, enjoy the fruits of your handiwork!!!

Vegan New York Cheesecake.

Okay so here's the sitch; I have made many vegan 'cheesecakes' in my life, some of which feature on this very blog, and while I like to think they've all generally been fairly tasty, I've also been lying to myself for they were not real cheesecakes. What then makes a cheesecake real? Well, cheese.

I know what you're thinking - if it's cheese that a cheesecake needs then I can take my resolutely vegan self elsewhere because cheese-containing cheesecake the vegans cannot have (for obvious reasons). WRONG. The world is (sometimes) a good place, and there exists vegan cream cheese and it is hands down the greatest thing that has, or will, happen to humanity. By itself, I must confess I don't much fancy this vegan cream cheese, but add a few things, click your fingers three times, be visited in the middle of the night by the elves of Narnia, and you too can take this vegan cream cheese and turn it into the holy grail of decadent vegan desserts - the mighty New York Cheesecake!

I'm just kidding, you don't need to bother with the clicking your fingers three times nonsense or the elves (however fun and interesting it would be if cooking did indeed happen that way!). All you need is a blender, a few ingredients that you can source at most good grocery stores and you'll have yourself a slice - nay, a WHOLE DAMN CAKE - worth of the most delicious dessert on earth.

Let's talk about the details here. New York Cheesecake - what's that, why is it New York? Well, my researching of the interwebs reliably informs me that amongst cheesecake enthusiasts (*puts hand up*), New York Cheesecake is the preeminent kind of cheesecake. It originates from, as you might have guessed, the city of New York in the big old United States of America and the thing that sets it apart from all other kinds of cheesecake is its reliance on cream cheese. You can make a cheesecake with many things, but in the words of the ever reliable Wikipedia, "...the typical New York Cheesecake is rich and has a dense, smooth and creamy consistency [because] it relies heavily upon...cream cheese." Alright Wikipedia, challenge accepted.

Using this magic vegan cream cheese wizardry that I found in my local supermarket, along with some old favourites from the pantry, I created the most rich, the most dense, the most smooth and the most creamy cheesecake EVER. Jazzed up with some zesty lemon, served with fresh summer berry compote and devoured in mere seconds by yours truly, I think it's probably up there with the best things to ever come out of my kitchen. The moral of the story? Vegans can have cheesecake (as in actual cheesecake) and eat it too and you need this wildly tasty New York Cheesecake in your life!

Ingredients;
The Pastry
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
125gm vegan butter (I used Nuttelex)

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees celsius.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, icing sugar and vegan butter.
3. Using clean hands, rub the vegan butter through the flour and icing sugar. It takes a bit of mixing, but eventually you should start to see things begin to form a dough-like mixture. Keep at it, mixing things through with your hands and working the butter and vanilla into the dry ingredients. Eventually you should end up with a big ball of yellow dough that you can roll around in your hands without it sticking to you. If things are still sticky, add in a bit more flour.
4. Clean down a table top and sprinkle it with some flour. Take a rolling pin (I like to wrap mine in cling-film/gladwrap) to prevent sticking, otherwise more flour also works) and plonk your dough down in the middle. Gently roll it out into a large circle big enough to fit a round cake tin (I use a 20cm diameter tin, but you can work with whatever size you have).
5. Use some coconut oil to grease up the insides of the cake tin so that your pastry won't stick.
6. Likely with some difficulty (apologies, not all things are easy in life), carefully lift the rolled out dough off the table top and transfer it into the tin. If the dough splits or tears, fret not, you can use leftover bits to fix things up. Alternatively you can skip the rolling part and just manually push the dough into the tin, but I like to roll it so I get a more even coverage. Make sure you have a fairly even thickness on the base and sides of the tin, then cut off any excess you have.
7. Use a fork to gently score the bottom of the tart - don't score the whole way through because you don't want holes! Basically you're trying to create a bit of texture on the base to give the filling something extra to stick to rather than a totally smooth surface!
8. Cover the unbaked tart with some baking paper and then put some baking weights into the tin so the dough doesn't rise in the middle. You can get fancy ball things from baking shops for this, but being the inventive student that I am, I just use some rice.
9. Bake the tart shell for approx. 20 minutes, or until the sides start to lightly brown. At that point, remove the baking weights and allow the tart to cook uncovered for a further 5-10 or so minutes.
10. Remove the tart shell from the oven when its lightly brown and the base of the tart is cooked, and not dough-ey to touch. Allow to cool before putting the filling in!

The Filling
225gm vegan cream cheese (I used 'Sheese' Cream Cheese, Tofutti would also work well!)
1 cup raw cashews
1 cup coconut cream
2 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp pure maple syrup
Juice and zest of 1 lemon

1. Take a small bowl and put your cashews in there. Cover them with boiling water and allow to soak for an hour or two. Afterwards, drain them and rinse with cold water.
2. Place the cream cheese, soaked cashews, coconut cream, vanilla, maple syrup, lemon zest and juice into a blender. Blend on medium-high speed for several minutes. I like to taste test after at this stage, and depending on my tastes that day might add some extra lemon zest for tartness or some more maple syrup for sweetness. Blend for a few more minutes until you have a completely smooth mixture (no grittiness from the cashews is the key thing to look out for!).
3. Pour the filling into your cooled pastry shell, then cover and put in the fridge overnight to firm up.

The following day, remove the cheesecake from the fridge. Overnight it should have cooled and now should be reasonably firm to the touch. I like to serve mine with a simple mixed berry compote (literally some mixed berries simmered with a tiny dash of water), but fresh berries or really any other fruit that takes your fancy would work well too! Serve straight from the fridge, and store the leftovers (ha! Not a thing that exists in my life personally), if you have any, covered in the fridge. Hypothetically it should last a few days, but I've not tested the longevity of the cheesecake out myself.

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!

Rainbow Funfetti Doughnuts.

Around a year ago, after around a year of hunting, I finally located and purchased a doughnut pan. It was a very exciting day and there was a whole lot of anticipation for my first homemade doughnuts. It's perhaps because of that anticipation that my first, and indeed second and third attempts at homemade doughnuts, were bitterly, heartbreakingly, traumatically, et al UPSETTING IN THE EXTREME. Those initial attempts at doughnut making were gross and definitely got filed under the 'recipes gone wrong' tab. If I'm being totally honest, I have many the kitchen failure and they can all be disheartening but the doughnut baking failures were particularly sad because lemme assure you, it is genuinely utterly TRAGIC to eat a bad-tasting doughnut. It even pains me now to think back on the bad-tastiness of those sub-par doughnuts. Let's just not talk about that anymore. 

A few weekends back though, the Feng Shui about doughnut making was giving off some majorly positive vibes. In all honesty, this is how and why I get the idea to try most things in the kitchen - I just have to wait till the right vibes, or Feng Shui if you will, comes along. I'm so proud to declare, largely thanks to the good doughnut-related Feng Shui, that I have finally succeeded in making making good homemade doughnuts. They're light, they're fluffy, they're tasty, they've got rainbow funfetti sprinkles in them AND on them, and my faith is now fully restored in the kitchen, baking and doughnuts in general. 

I should disclose, that technically these probably ought to be called 'cakenuts' because they're really a hybrid cupcake-doughnut but I think we can all unanimously agree that the name 'cakenut' is weird, it probably all makes us a bit uncomfortable inside and it can go on the list of words we shall avoid using alongside 'moist'.

Nonetheless, whether they technically be a cupcake-doughnut or not, these are delicious, Homer Simpson would 100% approve of them and you should make yourself some asap!

Ingredients;

The Doughnuts

1/4 cup aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas)

1/2 cup coconut sugar

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 tsp vanilla bean paste 

3 tbsp coconut oil (in it's liquid form)

1 1/2 cups plain flour (I use white spelt)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb soda

1/2 cup soy milk 

1/4 cup rainbow sprinkles/funfetti

The Icing

1 400ml can full-fat coconut cream

1/2 cup icing sugar

2 tbsp maple syrup

1/4 cup rainbow sprinkles/funfetti

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Before starting, I also grease my doughnut pan (so the doughnuts don't stick!) using some olive oil spray.

2. In a large mixing, combine the aquafaba, coconut sugar, maple syrup, vanilla bean paste and coconut oil using an electric mixer on high speed for a few minutes. You want things to be really well combined and for the mixture to become as light as possible (so don't be a lazy person and please actually do mix for several minutes otherwise your doughnuts won't be as good okay)!

3. When fully mixed, add in the flour, baking powder and bicarb soda, then fold the mixture through using a spatula/spoon until just combined.

4. Add in approx. half the soy milk, and continue to mix. Slowly add in the rest of the soy milk until the mixture is smooth and relatively runny like a regular cake mixture should be (you may not need all the soy milk!) and then give everything a final mix with the electric mixer.

5. Add in the rainbow spinkles/funfetti, then mix them through with the spatula/spoon.

6. Use a spoon to scoop out the mixture into your doughnut pan moulds. You should fill them approx. 3/4 full.

7. Place the filled doughnut pan into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until lightly golden and firm to the touch.

8. Flip the doughnuts out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool fully before icing.

9. To make the icing, take a small mixing bowl and scoop the solid part of the coconut cream out into the bowl (I suggest leaving the coco cream in the fridge overnight to best separate the liquid from the solid and to get the best icing consistency). Add in the icing sugar and maple syrup, then use an electric mixer on high speed to mix things for a solid few minutes. For best results, I recommend making the icing the day before the doughnuts and allowing it to sit in an airtight container in the fridge overnight.

10. When the icing is done and the doughnuts cooled, use a spoon/knife to ice each doughnut, then sprinkle each one with a generous amount of rainbow sprinkles/funfetti before having yourself a wee little doughnut party! Happy days!

Sunshine Yellow Vegan Lemon Tart.

This recipe is a straight out miracle. For years I have fantasised about making a vegan lemon tart. However, it seemed wholly impossible given that your traditional lemon tart is kind of based around butter, eggs and cream. How then, and in what universe, is it possible to create a bonafide, authentically delicious lemon tart without such things?

The answer? With large amounts of PERSEVERANCE, and in this very universe we inhabit. (*fist pumps*)

This particular recipe is a literal labour of love. It's been years in the making, and oh my have I created and tasted some HORRIFIC concoctions in my quest to bring this baby into the world. It all started out with the base, which is kinda obvious given you can't make a tart filling unless you've got something to put it in. Anyways, obvious realisations aside, creating a tasty vegan tart pastry was not an easy undertaking. My first attempt tasted like nothing. As in no flavour whatsoever - it was weird. My second attempt, and my third, fourth and fifth, were all harder than a brick, which is, how shall we say...less than ideal. Then one day I had a breakthrough! The pastry was perfect! But then I forgot the measurements I used and we went back to a few more failed rock-hard pastry shells. And, that's only the damn pastry!

Next came the lemon filling, which was, quite frankly, a hot mess for several months of recipe trials. I tried various things, including cooking the filling, not cooking the filling, adding in some random things, taking out some things, putting a bit more lemon in, regretting that because things then got very sour very quickly, creating the perfect (!!) filling before realising I'd totally forgotten to put any lemon in (#fail) - you get my drift. Things were not going well. And then just a few short weeks ago came rock bottom. I'd been in the kitchen for a while messing about with various ingredients. I had successfully created a mixture that I believed could, dare I say, possibly be 'the one'. It was a bit runny, so I put it in a container in the fridge overnight to see if it would set a bit. The next morning I enthusiastically swung open the fridge door, got myself a giant dessert spoon from the drawer and delved into that jar of lemon filling. Queue instant REGRET. It. Was. Awful. Like, gagging, please have mercy on me lords of the culinary universe, I am so sorry to all food everywhere regret. I truly do not know how, but I had succeeded in single-handedly creating the worst tart filling, and possibly kitchen creation, like, EVER. I was so scarred that I couldn't bear the thought of even attempting to rectify my travesties in the kitchen for weeks. But then, like a pesky frenemy from my past, the need to make a vegan lemon tart came over me again.

I went right back to the beginning and tried a totally new approach that seemed somewhat ludicrous at first but so long as it wasn't anything remotely like the horrific attempt of the past, I would consider it a good day in the kitchen. I decided to use coconut cream as a base, and then flavour the bejeezus out of it with lemon so I ended up with a proper lemon tart rather than a coconut-lemon tart. And you wanna know something amazing? It worked! Like, legitimately it tasted delicious. There was just one minor issue. It was as white as snow, with not a hint of yellow to it, and I dunno, it just feels kinda wrong to have a not-yellow lemon tart.

So away I went mulling things over and then I had an epiphany! I could colour the tart yellow with a pinch of turmeric. ABSOLUTE GENIUS. It worked perfectly. So perfectly that I shall gift to the world what seemed impossible - a Sunshine Yellow Vegan Lemon Tart. I definitely look some very un-tasty hits for the team, but here we are, where all is well in the world (well, mostly well) and you betcha I'm doing the happy dance in my kitchen over this recipe!

Ingredients;

The Base
2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
125gm vegan butter (I used Nuttelex)
1 tsp vanilla bean paste

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius. 
2. Take a large mixing bowl and put the 4 base ingredients in it.
3. Using clean hands, rub the vegan butter through the flour and icing sugar. It takes a bit of mixing, but eventually you should start to see things begin to form a dough-like mixture. Keep at it, mixing things through with your hands and working the butter and vanilla into the dry ingredients.
4. Eventually you should end up with a big ball of yellow dough that you can roll around in your hands without it sticking to you. If things are still sticky, add in a bit more flour.
5. Clean down a table top and sprinkle it with some flour. Take a rolling pin (I like to wrap mine in cling-film/gladwrap) to prevent sticking, otherwise more flour also works) and plonk your dough down in the middle. Gently roll it out into a large circle big enough to fit your tart tin (my tin is approx. 20cm in diameter).
6. Line you tart tin with some baking paper. (*see below for some tart tin tips)
7. Likely with some difficulty (apologies, not all things are easy in life), carefully lift the rolled out dough off the table top and transfer it into the tart tin. If the dough splits or tears, fret not, you can use leftover bits to fix things up. Alternatively you can skip the rolling part and just manually push the dough into the tin, but I like to roll it so I get a more even coverage. Make sure you have a fairly even thickness on the base and sides of the tin, then cut off any excess you have.
8. Use a fork to gently score the bottom of the tart.
9. Cover the unbaked tart with some baking paper and then put some baking weights into the tin so the dough doesn't rise in the middle. You can get fancy ball things from baking shops for this, but being the inventive student that I am, I just use some rice.
10. Bake the tart shell for approx. 15-20 minutes, or until the sides start to lightly brown. At that point, remove the baking weights and allow the tart to cook uncovered for a further 10 or so minutes.
11. Remove the tart shell from the oven when its lightly brown and the base of the tart is cooked, and not dough-ey to touch. Allow to cool before putting the filling in!

*I strongly suggest using a special tart tin with a base that you can push up from below/one that has a base that sits inside, although separate to the sides lest things get unnecessarily difficult when it comes to removal of tart from tart tin.

The Filling
1 can coconut cream (leave to sit in the fridge for a few days)
Rind of 2 lemons, and juice of just 1
3 Tbsp maple syrup
1/4 cup icing sugar
Pinch turmeric

1. Take the can of coconut cream and open it. The can should have separated into a solid cream on top and relatively clear coconut water at the bottom - you only want the thick creamy part. Scoop the cream out into a large mixing bowl and set aside.
2. Grate the rind off 2 lemons, then juice just one of them. Put the lemon innards and outards (ain't that some terminology!) into a blender along with the maple syrup. Whizz that on high speed for a couple of minutes so that the rind breaks down into the mixture.
3. Add the lemon/maple mix into your bowl with the coconut cream. Put in the icing sugar then get out your electric mixer and go to town mixing that up for a few minutes. Things should get very nice, very thick and very creamy.
4. WITHOUT significant enthusiasm, add in a pinch of turmeric. Restrain yourself from getting too eager at this step otherwise you'll end up with a neon orange, weirdly tasting tart. You shouldn't be able to taste the turmeric at all because you've used so little - it's literally just for aesthetic colouring purposes.
5. Give everything a final mix together and when you're happy with the colour, scoop the filling out into you cooled tart shell.
6. Use a spoon to smooth everything over, then cover and leave in the fridge overnight.

The following day you should have yourself a delightfully yellow, deliciously sweet and tangy lemon tart. Serve it however you like (berries make an excellent garnish) and bask in the glory that you've created something that theoretically seemed impossible. Enjoy!!

Classic Chocolate Cupcakes.

I've said it before, and I will say it again - vegan baking can be a very hit-or-miss exercise, generally more on the 'miss' side of things than the 'hit'! I've suffered many the baked disaster in my time, but I've finally cracked the winning formula, which was initially unearthed through my The Perfect Vanilla Cake recipe. I decided to hack that recipe though, if you would call this hacking, because I cannot put into words how much I love a good chocolate cupcake and since becoming a vegan a few years ago, I've only rarely chanced upon a good one. I am most proud to declare that not only have a found a genuinely good chocolate cupcake, but I have actually made that very cupcake! You know how usually you find something good and like, it's only available on the complete other side of the world and that makes more maximum inconvenience and hopeless lusting after that unattainable food? Maybe not actually. Reading that back I do sound a bit weird... ANYWAY! The point is that the tasty chocolate cupcakes are very much within your reach - they're easy to make, they're very very tasty and they're, quite frankly, an excellent vegan recreation of an all-time classic baked food!

*this is very much an adaptation of my Vanilla Cake recipe (which can be found here), but these turned out too delicious to not have the honour of their own post on this blog!*

Ingredients;

125gm vegan butter (I use Nuttelex)
1/2 cup raw sugar
3 tbsp aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas)
3 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 1/4 cups soy milk
2 cups flour (I use white spelt) (sifted)
3 tbsp cacao/cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb soda

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Take a large mixing bowl and place the vegan butter, raw sugar and aquafaba into it. Using an electric mixer, mix the three together for 5 minutes. It's important to mix for the entirety of that time as this step is what makes the cake light and fluffy.
3. After the butter, sugar and aquafaba has combined into a thick, creamy and slightly fluffy mixture,  add in the vanilla bean paste, then mix again with the electric mixer for a minute or two.
4. Add the soy milk and half the flour to the bowl. Use a spatula to gently fold the mixture together. It's important to use the spatula so that you don't lose all the air the mixture gain when you mixed for the 5 minutes initially.
5. After the mixture is mostly combined, add in the second half of the flour along with the baking powder and bicarb soda, again gently folding the mixture in together until everything is well combined.
6. Pour the mixture out into a muffin tin (lined with some muffin casings!). Place in the oven for approx. 20 - 25 minutes, keeping an eye on things to make sure things aren't burning. You should be able to press down lightly on each cupcake and they'll hold their own shape and not cave in when they're cooked.
7. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool before transferring the cupcakes out onto a cooling rack.

Icing
(This is the real cream-de-la-cream, if you will, of the recipe and yeah I have been sneaking sneaky mouth fulls straight from the icing bag I have left over in my fridge...) 

2 cans coconut cream, placed in the fridge overnight
1/2 cup icing sugar
50gm high quality dark chocolate

1. Remove the cans carefully from the fridge, being mindful not to disturb the contents. Open them, and you should be able to separate the cream part from the coconut water. This is a delicate operation, and the longer the cans have been in the fridge, the easier this will be. Scoop the cream (JUST THE CREAM!) into a mixing bowl.
2. Add the icing sugar to the bowl and then using an electric mixer, combine on high speed for a minimum of 5 minutes. The length of time you mix is important, as just with the cake, it will make things light and fluffy which is precisely what you want/need in a good icing!
3. Melt the chocolate (I recommend double-boiler style - i.e. using a saucepan on the stovetop with some water in the bottom, and then placing a bigger bowl on the top to melt the chocolate in).
4. When the chocolate is melted, pour it out into the bowl with the mixed coconut cream and icing sugar, then mix all three things together for a further few minutes.
5. Place the icing in the fridge for a few hours to set further.
6. When the icing has cooled and thickened a bit, scoop it out and directly onto each cupcake, or alternatively use a piping bag for some extra pizzaz. Sprinkle some grated chocolate on over the top and voila! DELICIOUSNESS!

Store the cupcakes in an airtight container in the fridge.

The Perfect Vanilla Cake.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a bold name for a recipe. However, when one creates a truly MAGNIFICENT cake, it seems only fitting to bestow a bold and unambiguous name upon it.

I've been in pursuit of the perfect, go-to vegan cake for YEARS. I have baked and eaten an insane amount of cake in that time (some creations definitely less tasty and satisfying than others…) but I just couldn’t get it ever quite right. I've found the biggest challenge was overcoming the absence of eggs, which naturally require some kind of vegan substitute, but finding something that didn't give a strange taste or texture seemed like mission impossible. However the day has come that I have found that ingredient, and I can guarantee it isn't what you're expecting.

Aquafaba.

Yeah. What's that you ask. Well my friends, perhaps rather unappealingly 'aquafaba' is the juice from a can of chickpeas - but please trust me, it's not gross like I almost guarantee you're thinking!

Aquafaba, when combined in an electric mixer with sugar, creates meringue. Weird right? (Don't ask me how...) Anyways, it also crucially functions as a binder, but significantly a lightweight one. Usually egg substitutes do the opposite and drag a cake down, but not the aquafaba. It, with the aid of an electric mixer and a solid 5 minutes beating, lifts everything up, which makes for the PERFECT light and fluffy cake!

I was so sceptical about aquafaba, mainly because it seemed utterly impossible to include it in baked goods and not have them come out tasting like a chickpea (and that would just be gross and very weird), but please trust me when I tell you it genuinely has no flavour in the end creation. You literally cannot taste it AT ALL. (MAGIC! – my mind has imploded with this revelation) All you can taste is a delightfully light, fluffy, gloriously tasty cake!

Ingredients;

125gm vegan butter (I use Nuttelex)
1/2 cup raw sugar
3 tbsp aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas)
3 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 1/2 cups soy milk
2 1/2 cups flour (I use white spelt) (sifted)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb soda

1. Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Take a large mixing bowl and place the vegan butter, raw sugar and aquafaba into it. Using an electric mixer, mix the three together for 5 minutes. It's important to mix for the entirety of that time as this step is what makes the cake light and fluffy.
3. After the butter, sugar and aquafaba has combined into a thick, creamy and slightly fluffy mixture,  add in the vanilla bean paste, then mix again with the electric mixer for a minute or two.
4. Add the soy milk and half the flour to the bowl. Use a spatula to gently fold the mixture together. It's important to use the spatula so that you don't lose all the air the mixture gain when you mixed for the 5 minutes initially.
5. After the mixture is mostly combined, add in the second half of the flour along with the baking powder and bicarb soda, again gently folding the mixture in together until everything is well combined.
6. Pour the cake mixture out into a lined cake tin. Place in the oven for approx. 45 minutes, keeping an eye on things to make sure the top doesn't burn. You should be able to insert a skewer into the centre and have it come out clean when it's cooked.
7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before transferring to a cooling rack.

Icing
You can ice the cake with some plain coconut yoghurt (recipe here), or alternatively if you're feeling a little indulgent;

2 cans coconut cream, placed in the fridge overnight
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence

1. Remove the cans carefully from the fridge, being mindful not to disturb the contents. Open them, and you should be able to separate the cream part from the coconut water. This is a delicate operation, and the longer the cans have been in the fridge, the easier this will be. Scoop the cream (JUST THE CREAM!) into a mixing bowl.
2. Add the icing sugar and vanilla to the bowl and then using an electric mixer, combine on high speed for a minimum of 5 minutes. The length of time you mix is important, as just with the cake, it will make things light and fluffy which is precisely what you want/need in a good icing!
3. Place the icing in the fridge for a few hours to set further.

To serve the cake, you can carefully slice it in half with a bread knife to create 2 layers, with some icing and fresh strawberries in the middle (as I have done), or alternatively just ice the cake as is and serve with some fresh berries and a dusting of icing sugar! Enjoy!