ohmygosh yum: lamingtons!

Now I'm not very patriotic, but I'm pretty sure the best thing about being Australian is lamingtons. I love lamingtons. So much. When I was a kid, I remember being so incredibly excited whenever my grandma made a batch. Hers were delicious. While I'm not sure that mine are quite as amazing, they are preeeeety delish. And much more vegan friendly!



Ingredients

Cake
- 1 1/3 cup of soy milk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups of plain flour
- 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
- 1 cup of caster sugar
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1/4 cup of sunflower oil
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Icing
-3 1/2 cups of icing sugar
-1/4 cup of cocoa powder
-1/2 cup of boiling water
- raspberry jam
- 2 cups desiccated coconut

Method

Cake

Begin by whisking your soy milk and apple cider vinegar together in a small bowl. Set the mixture aside. Sift all of your dry ingredients together into a large bowl. Stir the oil and vanilla into the dry ingredients, then add soy milk mixture. Mix it all together, but make sure you don't over-stir it!

Grease and line a 22x22 cm square cake tin. Pop your mixture in and bake in a moderate oven for around 25 minutes. When your cake is cooked through, take it out and stand on a cake rack to cool.



Icing

When your cake has cooled, cut it into pieces. I cut mine into 12 pieces, but it's up to you how big you want your lamingtons. I don't usually worry too much about making them all the same size, but if you want them nice and neat, you can measure them out as you cut.

Cut each piece in half and spread raspberry jam in the middle.

Put the cocoa powder, icing sugar and water in a bowl. Stir until the icing is smooth. It should be very runny.



Using two forks, dip a piece of cake in the icing. Make sure every side is coated, then transfer it into the coconut. Repeat for every piece of cake.



YUM!

ohmygosh yum: vegan easter cupcakes!

Easter can be a little dull for vegan atheists like myself. I'm not a huge fan of vegan chocolate. It tends to be a little disappointing. Whenever I've been to the supermarket recently, I've found my self lingering a little while walking through the Easter egg aisle. While vegan chocolate may be a little disappointing, vegan baking definitely is not! So I decided to bake myself some easter-themed cupcakes. They are deeelish. Sure to cure any chocolate cravings Easter Sunday may bring on!



Cupcake Ingredients
2 cups of soy milk
2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
1 and a half cups of sugar
2/3 cups of canola oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 cups of plain flour
1 cup of cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

Chocolate Eggs
1 egg mould - I bought mine from Let's Cook & on Little Bourke Street
125 grams of dairy free chocolate - I used Whittaker's

Icing Ingredients
110 grams Toffutti Better Than Cream Cheese
3-4 cups of icing Sugar

Chocolate Eggs Method
Break all of your chocolate into small pieces. Place a pot of boiling water on the stove top. Put your chocolate into a bowl and sit it on top of the saucepan. The bowl will heat up and the chocolate will melt. Keep stirring the mixture until all chocolate has dissolved. Then spoon the chocolate into the moulds. Put the mould into your fridge until the chocolate has set - this should take an hour or two.

Cupcake Method
Begin by whisking the soy milk and vinegar together in a bowl. Set the mixture aside for a few moments while it goes all curdley. Sift all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Gradually mix the soy milk mixture and the oil into the dry ingredients. Spoon the mixture into patty pans, filling them approximately 3/4 full. Pop them into a moderate oven for around 20 minutes.

Icing Method
Put your cream cheese into a medium bowl and add about 2 cups of icing sugar. Beat them together with an electric mixer. Gradually add more sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Continue to beat it until the sugar has dissolved completely.

Put the icing on top of the cupcakes in any way you desire and decorate with your chocolate eggs.



YUM! Happy Easter!

ohmygosh yum: Vegan Passionfruit Melting Moments!

We have a big, beautiful passionfruit vine that has been absolutely covered in fruit for a good few months now. I eat a few every day and just can't get enough delicious passionfruity goodness. On Sunday afternoon, however, I decided to mix it up a little and make some melting moments. I haven't had a melting moment in many a year, but these are just as good as I remember them to be! All buttery and crumbly and melty and delicious. As usual when I make a new recipe, I looked around at a bunch of recipes, both vegan (such as this'un) and non-vegan (like this one!). The recipe seems to be fairly universal - here is what I went with:

Biscuit Ingredients
250 grams of vegan margarine (eep not so healthy)
a few drops of vanilla extract
half a cup of icing sugar
one cup of custard powder - most supermarket varieties are vegan, but make sure you check the ingredients!
one cup of plain flour
three passionfruits

Icing Ingredients
two cups of icing sugar
a few teaspoons of margarine
around three passionfruits



Make your Cookies!
Begin by lining two trays with baking powder.
Cream the margarine, sugar and vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl. Remove the seeds from your passionfruits and add them to the mixture. I did this by spooning the pulp into a sieve and then stirring it around and around above the bowl. The pulpy bits all came through and the seeds were left in the sieve. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until your mixture forms a soft dough. Roll teaspoon-sized amounts of dough into balls and place them on your trays around 3cm apart. Gently press them down with a fork and bake them in a 150 degree oven for around 15 minutes. Allow them to cool on a wire rack before icing.



Make your Icing!
The icing is very simple! Pop the margarine and icing sugar in a bowl. Using an electric mixer, gradually add the passionfruit pulp, little bits at a time. You probably will probably only need about two. When the icing is light and fluffy, sandwich about a teaspoon-full between two cookies.











My Mama and I sat down to a little earl-grey and melting moment tea party. They are just the most perfect combination!

xxx

ohmagosh yum: vegan red velvet cupcakes!

While I was away, I constantly found myself dreaming of all the delicious things I would cook upon my return. Red velvet cupcakes were up the top of my list so, over the weekend, I got baking! They turned out beautifully! I haven't had a red velvet cupcake in years so they are such a nice treat! I love the combination of the chocolatey-vanillary cake along with the creamy icing.

Here's what you need for the cupcakes:

2 cups of soy milk
2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
2 1/2 cups of plain flour
4 tablespoons of cornflour
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2/3 cup of oil
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
red food dye - make sure you get a vegan one! most of the supermarket varieties have cochineal in them. i got a natural, vegan one from the health food shop.

Here's what you need for the icing:

one tablespoon of vegan margarine
1/2 tub of Toffuti Better Than Cream Cheese
around about 2 cups of icing sugar



Here's what you do for the cupcakes:

Pour your soy milk and apple cider vinegar into a small bowl. Give them a whisk and pop the mixture aside. Sift all of your dry ingredients into one big bowl. Gradually stir in the soy milk mixture. Add the oil, vanilla extract and red food dye. How much dye you need will depend on the brand. Just add it gradually until the mixture is a nice dark red.

Fill your patty pans about 3/4 full and bake in a moderate oven for 20-25 minutes.






Here's what you do for the icing:

Place the cream cheese and margarine in a medium bowl. Gradually beat in the icing sugar until it is a thick, fluffy consistency.



When the cupcakes have cooled, ice them in any way that you please.

YUM!

oh my gosh yum: vegan maple pecan cupcakes!

Last weekend at World Vegan Day I was lucky enough to eat a delicious Mister Nice Guy French Toast cupcake - maple syrup and walnuts! I’ve been trying to eat as much raw food as possible this week, but my craving for more maple-cupcakey goodness got the better of me. Today I decided to make my own maple pecan cupcakes. And boy am I glad I did. They are delish.

I got my original cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra and Terry Hope Romero forever ago. I pretty much know it off by heart (probably not a good thing!) and whenever I make cupcakes these days I just make a variation on that.



I usually make double this amount, but I didn’t have enough maple syrup, so I halved it. You could always use maple flavoured syrup, but I don’t think it would be nearly as nice.





Cupcakes
½ cup of soymilk
½ teaspoon of apple cider vinegar
1 1/3 cups of plain flour
2 tablespoons of cornflour
¾ teaspoons of baking powder
½ teaspoons of baking soda
1/3 cup of oil
2/3 cup of pure maple syrup
¼ cup of caster sugar
½ a cup of pecans


Whisk the soymilk and the apple cider vinegar together in a small bowl. Pop the mixture aside and sift the flour, cornflour, baking soda, baking powder and sugar into a large bowl. Mix the maple syrup and oil in with the milk and vinegar (it should be a little curdley), then stir all of the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients. Roughly chop the pecans, then stir them in too.

Fill your patty pans about 2/3 full, then put them in a moderate oven for around 20 minutes, or until they are a dark golden brown and cooked through.

Icing
1 tablespoon of vegan nuttelex
1 tablespoon of maple syrup
½ cup of icing sugar

Mix all ingredients together with an electric mixer. You may need to add a little more icing sugar to get the right consistency. Once you are happy with your icing, pop it on top of tour cooled cupcakes. Yummo!

It’s tea party time!

Strawberries!

Recently, we were given hundreds and hundreds of beautiful, organic, freshly picked strawberries. Strawberries are one of my favourite fruits and they make me so excited that warm weather is on its way!





We originally planned to make them into jam, but soon decided they were much too beautiful and chose to live off strawberries for the next week! I'm so glad we did!

My new favourite morning tea treat is strawberries on toast! Simply some buttered (well, nuttelexed) wholegrain toast, some fresh mint, a few squished strawberries and a teeny drizzle of pure maple syrup. Amaaazing.

oh my gosh yum: sun-dried tomato pesto!

One thing I do miss a teeny bit about my pre-vegan days is delicious spreads and dips. Most supermarket varieties are packed with either parmesan or cream cheese. And wellll.. hommos can get a bit old. So I thought I’d have a play around at creating my own! This semi sun dried tomato pesto is delish!

Here’s what you need:

- A small tub of sun-dried tomatoes - I think mine was around 220 grams
- ¼ red capsicum
- I used 3 lil home-grown cloves of garlic, but maybe just one if it’s the bigger, supermarket variety
- 30 grams pine nuts
- A few tablespoons olive oil
- A few fresh basil leaves
- A little pepper, and maybe some salt if you’re not saltaphobic like me

First, I chopped the capsicum into medium-sized pieces and roasted it, with the garlic and a little olive oil, until it was cooked through.







Now of course you could just pop it all in the blender and it would only take a few seconds, but I rather like any excuse to use a mortar and pestle, so I went with that option. It’s also a bit more chunky too, which is nice. I put the capsicum, garlic, basil and tomatoes in and smooshed them around until they started to turn into a paste.



Then pop in the pine nuts and keep bashing, until most of them are broken up. Stir in some olive oil, until the pesto is the right consistency.



Yum!

I popped mine in a wrap with nothing but salad and avocado and it was deeelish! It’s equally good alone as a dip, or mixed through pasta.

Peanut Butter Pillows

Yesterday, we went on a little hunt around Melbourne to find the book Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar. I already have Vegan Cupcakes take over the World. It is definitely my faveeee vegan baking book. The cupcake varieties are delish and the recipes are fool-proof, so of course i was pretty keen to find its cookie-counterpart! Sadly, we were unsuccessful, so I ordered it online. Hopefully it comes soooooon! While I wait, I decided to make these Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows! Me oh my, they are so good! i tried them once before, but accidentally burnt them a little. This batch was perfect! Crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside!




They are by no means healthy, and are rather fiddly to make, but they are such a yummy treat!



You can find the recipe over here!

oh my gosh yum...

Yesterday I made these raw brownies from the blog My New Roots. What an excellent blog, and what amazing brownies! They are made from nothing but nuts, dates and cacao! It's amazing that something so healthy can taste do decadent and delicious! They're sweet and chewy, as all good brownies are!

I have loved fresh dates forever. Fresh medjol dates are so sweet syrupy! They've always reminded me of caramel or something. I'd never thought of using them as a sweetener though! Such a good idea.





These brownies would be so great for vegans, raw vegans and the gluten intolerant.



My poor ol' blender didn't do too well with the mixture though. I would recommend dividing the mixture into two and doing them separately if your blender is not the best.

If anything I think these brownies are a little too full on. I think next time I might put in a few less dates and not as much cacao.

On the whole though, AMAZING! Such a decadent and amazing treat!



xxx