Gold sparkled marshmallow crackles (vegan)

These crackle slices need a disclaimer saying "sparklier in real life than in photos". With hindsight, for photography purposes I should have made the slice chocolate flavoured, so the glitter stood out against a dark background. Still, life isn't all about photography for blogging. I promise you that if you make these, they will glitter and sparkle impressively.

Other than the sparkly top, these are a simple mix of (vegan) marshmallows, coconut oil, and puffed cereal. They're easy to make, easy to eat, and the sparkles make them perfect for the festive season. As they don't need baking, they're also a good option if you need something made in a hurry (although you will need to allow time for them to set).

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Three ingredient, no crust, chilled vanilla cheesecake {vegan + raw}

So...that cheesecake mentioned in my last post? It did work out. Rather well, in fact. I still find raw desserts amazing, and this one is a particularly good example because it uses just three simple ingredients.

As per the title of this post, I made the cheesecake without a crust. This contributes to the short ingredient list, but you could easily make a crusted version if you like. If doing so, I recommend the bases I have used with previous raw cheesecakes. With that said, I did like this crust-free version as it allowed the creamy vanilla flavour to shine through without distraction.

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Vegan ginger-vanilla melting moments, for the tricky days

Some days are not good days. Or at least, they start out as good days, but go downhill so suddenly and dramatically that you don't quite know how you got from the start to the middle to the end.

I'm sure you know what I mean. Such is the nature of life, and sometimes the nature of my job, and I am not alone in that. On those days, sometimes the best thing to do is to put one foot in front of the other until you get to the other side.

I am posting these biscuits today because they are the cooking equivalent of climbing into bed, pulling the covers over your head, and shutting out the world around you.

I didn't make them for that purpose, mind you. I actually made them for Valentine's Day, which is a rather more upbeat affair. However, I am sure biscuits can have multiple roles. These are perfect for expressing love, or for metaphorically retreating under the covers, and if you are having a difficult romantic moment they may even be perfect for both.

I adapted these from a Taste.com.au recipe for ginger and vanilla cream hearts. The recipe barely needed veganising, with the only substitution being to use Nuttelex (non-dairy spread) instead of butter. I also used slightly more flour than the original recipe called for, because I found the mix too moist to begin with. Lastly, I made some heart-shaped melting moments and some regular-shaped ones.

These aren't really my sort of biscuits, but that is fitting given I made them for Mr Bite. I did like the use of custard powder in the mix, just because it is a new way of baking for me, and I liked that they were egg free. Mr B indicated that the biscuits were good enough to stand alone with no filling, and also enjoyed them filled, so I am calling that an endorsement from him.

Ginger and vanilla melting moments

Vegan.

Makes 1 batch, with the precise number of biscuits depending on how large you make yours.

Lightly adapted from the Taste.com.au recipe that can be found here.

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Ingredients

Biscuits

180g non-dairy spread (I used Nuttelex)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 2/3 cups plain flour

1/3 cup custard powder

2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp baking powder

Ginger-vanilla filling

100g non-dairy spread (I used Nuttelex)

1 cup icing sugar

2 tsp lemon juice

2 tbsp finely chopped crystallised ginger

Method

Biscuits

Beat the 180g non-dairy spread, vanilla and 1/2 cup icing sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add the flour, custard powder, ground ginger and baking powder. Beat on low speed to combine.

Roll the dough into a ball and cover in plastic wrap. Place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 180'C and line 2 oven trays with baking paper. When the dough has chilled, roll it out between two sheets of baking paper to approximately 0.5cm thick. Cut out shapes using a heart cutter, or form small balls using your hands. Place on to prepared trays.

If making hearts, prick the outside edges with a fork to form a dotted pattern. If making small balls, use the back of a fork to press the top of each ball.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool on the tray for a further 5 - 10 minutes; biscuits will set further on cooling. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Filling

When the biscuits are cool, beat all filling ingredients together and then spread between two biscuits. Allow to chill in the fridge for approximately 1 hour before serving. I had filling leftover.

What do you like to make / cook / do when your days are sub-optimal?

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Cupcakes galore

This month, I have baked 48 cupcakes and helped to decorate 84.

It has been great fun.

The first batch was made at the start of June, for Mr Bite's brother's birthday. They were made to complement a lemon cake and followed my standard, 'can't go wrong' vegan chocolate cupcake recipe (repeated at the end of this post).

I decorated the cupcakes simply, with vegan vanilla buttercream and assorted sugar-based sprinkles: leaves in the above photo, and butterflies in the one below.

I have tried a number of vegan cupcake recipes (including the batch I made for bookclub back in May), but these are still my favourite. They are always fluffy, chocolatey, and can stand alone without icing, as all good cupcakes should.

The other 36 cupcakes were, of course, made for my sister's 21st party. My Mum and sister made another 4 batches between them and we ended up with more cupcakes than I have ever seen in one kitchen.

The party was last Friday and from all accounts it went well. I think my sister had fun. I think my contributions (cupcakes, a speech, a photo slide show) went ok. Speech aside, I even found it to be more enjoyable than the 21st parties I went to when I was that age. I suspect this was because I got to stand with Mr Bite, my brother and the adults, rather than the 21-year-olds, and to go home at 10pm. I am old at heart!

I had intended to make the same (vegan) chocolate cupcakes for this occasion, but then on the Monday my sister casually said "You aren't going to make vegan cupcakes are you?".

Now, in fairness to my sister, because I haven't been open about this blog I also haven't gone into extensive detail on my vegan eating preferences. Up until recently my family has thought of me as vegetarian (they do now know I prefer vegan when possible). When I bake, I don't necessarily tell people it is vegan. All in all, they haven't had the opportunity to work out what 'vegan' actually looks like or to grasp that much of what I have been baking over the past year or so is vegan.

Instead of going into this with my sister, I foolishly just said "No, of course not!".

This was a lie.

Unfortunately, my sister then double-checked at the end of the night that I really was going to make "normal" cupcakes and not vegan ones. After confirming this twice, my conscience wouldn't let me make vegan ones and not tell her.

At the same time, I didn't want to try a non-vegan cupcake recipe for the first time when the stakes were a 21st party with 70 plus people.

What to do?!

In the end, my research brain kicked in. I would make a vegan batch and a non-vegan batch and arrange for a single-blind taste test comparison.

The vegan ones

I made the non-vegan ones according to this recipe from Taste.com.au . I followed it exactly, but marbled the batter so that they would look different to the vegan, plain chocolate version. In the end, they would have looked different anyway, but the marbling was easy to do (the recipe calls for melted chocolate, which is mixed in to the batter).

The non-vegan ones

Mr Bite was my first willing participant. I gave him half of each variety and asked him to describe what he thought of each; to pick a favourite; and to guess which one was vegan. For reference, I labelled the vegan batch A and the non-vegan batch B.

A (vegan) on the left; B (non-vegan) on the right

He tasted B (non-vegan) first and described it as "nice, rustic and home-like [?!], chocalatey, and with no harsh undertones".

As for A (vegan)? "Very similar to the first, with the same consistencey and background flavour. Both are chocolatey."

He thought that B (non-vegan) was the vegan one, and indicated that if he had to pick, he slightly preferred A (vegan).

Good-o.

When I repeated this with my Mum and sister, they also found the cupcakes to taste similar. My Mum said that she couldn't pick a favourite but found A (vegan) to be fluffier and so she though it was probably the non-vegan one. My sister said she couldn't pick a favourite but thought A (vegan) was probably the vegan one.

I'm happy to take these results as support for the fluffiness of vegan cupcakes, and for the similarity of this version to the 'real thing'.

Having determined that all cupcake varieties were edible (my Mum and sister's vanilla version also met with approval), we set about piping pink, lemon and vanilla icing onto 80-odd cupcakes and decorating them with marshmallow flowers and more sprinkles.

These were served on an assortment of cupcake holders, with mini chocolate cups mixed throughout. The latter additions were made by my sister's boyfriend and consisting of milk and white chocolate melted over lollies, a simple but effective idea that I am tucking away to try in the future.

All in all, I think it was a cupcake success. I think I may also have reached my cupcake quota for June.

As for the recipe, I have posted it before but I am re-blogging it here as the photos in the original post are a little less than optimal!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

Vegan and intensely fluffy, these cupcakes have become a firm favourite of mine

Adapted from the Red Velvet Cake recipe in Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's The Vegan Table

Makes 12 large cupcakes or 16 small

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For the cupcakes:

Ingredients

1 cup non-dairy milk (I tend to use soy)

1 cup white sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/3 cup good quality cocoa (*see note)

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

Method

Preheat oven to 180'C and prepare your cupcake tin.

In a medium bowl, combine the milk, sugar, oil, vinegar and vanilla, and beat with an electric beater on medium speed for 1 - 2 minutes.

Add the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt and mix well. 

Bake for 20 - 22 minutes, until the cupcakes spring back slightly when touched.

Note. The quality of the cocoa is important as it is what gives the cupcakes their flavour. We tend to use Van Houten, but any good quality brand would work. Although I rarely sift anything, I would also recommend sifting or whisking your cocoa if it is lumpy.

For the icing:

Ingredients

50g non-dairy spread, at room temperature (I use Nuttelex)

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 - 1tbsp water, depending on desired thickness

Method

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric beater on medium-high speed until light and fluffy.

If you plan to pipe the icing, I recommend making a double batch and using only 1/2 tbsp water per set of ingredients.

Do you have a favourite cupcake recipe? And do you think you could pick a vegan cupcake in a line up?

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Peach and Vanilla Cake, for my Mum

January seems to be the birthday month for a surprising number of people. My mother is part of this group, and I have enjoyed making her birthday cake for some 15+ years now. When I moved out, I was briefly worried that my sister may want to appropriate the role, but it turns out that my siblings are quite happy to let me keep it. This will continue to work well for as long as I live in Perth, after which it may prove more complicated!


This year, I settled on a peach and vanilla cake.

The fact that I chose this flavour combination before finding a recipe could have been a foolish move. Fortunately, my tendency to adapt recipes to suit my needs whimsical desire works out more often than not, and this proved true for this combination.

The cake was adapted from a plain vegan white cake, which gave the vanilla component, and the icing was based on the 'buttercream' frosting in The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes (Kris Holechek). I wasn't committed to making a vegan cake, given that my Mum isn't vegan and I wanted something that would suit her tastes rather than mine, but in the end it worked out that way.

The cake itself was good, but I think in future I would increase the vanilla and the peaches. I wasn't sure how thick the cake texture would be, and I didn't want to overload it with too many peaches if it was on the fluffy side. As it turns out, the cake was almost fudgy in consistency, and so I could probably have doubled the peaches without problem.

Can you tell this was inverted onto a cooling rack? :-)

The icing, in contrast, I wouldn't change at all. Given that I don't usually like icing much (unless it's of the cream cheese or ganache variety) I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this. I added a generous dollop of plain natural yoghurt to the buttercream ingredients, and that provided a slight tartness that worked very well indeed.

Using my new electric beater was pretty fun too. I was definitely reminded of the benefits of having two beating whisks rather than one!

Peach and vanilla cake

Adapted from this vegan white cake

Icing adapted from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes (Kris Holechek)

Vegan

Makes 1 large round cake

Print recipe

Ingredients

For the cake;

1 1/3 cups white sugar

1/2 cup non-dairy margarine (I used Nuttelex)

3 cups plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

2 cups non-dairy milk (I used soy)

1 - 1.5 tbsp vanilla (see note below)

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

2 - 4 large fresh peaches, peeled and sliced (see note below)

Note. I used 1 tbsp vanilla and 2 large peaches, but next time would increase these proportions to 1.5 tbsp vanilla and 4 peaches

For the icing;

3 tbsp non-dairy margarine

~2 tbsp plain natural yoghurt (I did 1 generous dessertspoon dollop)

2 1/2 cups icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp non-dairy milk

2 - 3 medium fresh peaches, to decorate (I used 2.5), plus optional strawberries

Method

For the cake;

Preheat the oven to 180'C and prepare a round cake pan.

Cream the sugar and margarine in a large bowl, until light and fluffy.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Alternate adding this flour mixture and the soy milk to the creamed sugar, stirring to combine after each addition (e.g., add 1 cup flour mixture, stir, add 1 cup soy milk, stir). Continue until all of the flour mixture and all of the soy milk have been added to the large bowl and stirred through.

Add the vanilla and apple cider vinegar. Beat the cake batter with an electric beater for about 2 minutes (or the equivalent by hand). 

Add the chopped peaches and stir through.

Pour the mixture into your prepared cake pan. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Let the cake rest in the pan for 10 - 20 minutes, then cool completely on a cooling rack.

For the icing;

Cream the icing sugar, margarine and yoghurt in a large bowl, until light and fluffy. 

Add the vanilla and soy milk and continue beating until well-combined.

Ice, and decorate with extra sliced peaches and optional strawberries.

Although I would have liked more vanilla and peach, the cake was well received and I don't think others were concerned. The icing mix was also a hit, and the yoghurt addition is definitely something I'll be doing again.

In addition to being a birthday week, yesterday, of course, was Australia Day. I hope the Australians among you enjoyed it, whether you were celebrating or simply enjoying the public holiday (as we did, inside, in air conditioning!).

Do you have favourite birthday cake recipes, or do you like to vary things from year to year?
Are you a fruit or chocolate cake type of person?

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