Vegan Carrot Cake Cookies

I love cookies and when you come across a vegan cookbook packed full of cookie recipes, you get pretty excited. I picked up this great book:Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar over Christmas and only really have started using it! All the measurements were in cups, but I got my hands on a cup measurement jug so I could bake to my hearts content after that. The book itself is really great and has so many amazing recipes in it.

The best (and kind of worst) thing is that they are all so quick and simple to make. I've been known to whip up a batch within minutes of having a cookie/chocolate craving!

I checked out a couple of the recipes but the Carrot Cake Cookies have got to be my favourite. It's a genius idea combining two amazing types of cake! So I had some homegrown pretty deformed looking carrots growing in my garden. So I thought, why not use them in this recipe and turn their ugly appearance into something delicious.

If you're digging this genius carrot cake and cookie combination so far, here is the recipe!

Carrot Raisin Spice Chews

1/3 cup non dairy milk
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds ( I didn't add these)
1/2 cup vegetable oil or peanut oil
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1 1/2 tea spoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup finely shredded carrots
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 cup raisins
1 cup walnut (optional really)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree farenheit and grease or line 2 baking sheets with baking paper.

2. In a large bowl, beat together the milk, flak seeds, oil, brown sugar, sugar, orange zest and vanilla. Sift in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and spices. Stir to moisten ingredients and then fold in carrots, coconut, raisins and walnuts. Dough will be sticky and moist.

3. Drop generous table spoons of the dough onto cookies sheets, leaving about 2 inches between them. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes until the edges brown and the tops are firm. Leave to cool and then enjoy!!

My Tips:
They're very sweet so maybe hold off on some of the sugar. Make a lemon glaze to go on top and go all out and make an amazing ice cream sandwich out of 2 cookies. 

Check out my post for vegan chocolate chip cookies!

An Eco Dublin Guide

I just finished up a 6 month internship with the Visit Dublin team in Failte Ireland. I was working on the www.VisitDublin.com website, which is the official tourism site for Dublin. Just before I left, the newly designed and updated Insider Guides went up. One of which is an Eco Dublin Guide which features lots of tips for  vegetarian/Vegan dining in Dublin. I was happy to see such a useful resource being implemented.
You can download the handy guide here. And check out the rest of the guides too, they're great.

Vegan Burritos in Dublin!

Burritos are increasing in popularity in Dublin with a variety of new companys popping up. There will however be an ongoing argument of where does the BEST burrito. Most say Boojum, but I'd be moving more towards Tolteca!

Boojum - Mexican Burrito Bar

I had heard the Veggie Burrito was vegan but I contacted Boojum just to be sure. and the Veggie is 100% vegan ( minus the cheese and sour cream). I contacted Boojum just to see what they say regarding the burritos being vegan and John kindly informed me with the following information:

'Hi Hannah,

Thanks for contacting us. Rest assured that the pinto beans are in fact vegan. A lot of Mexican restaurants use lard or bacon drippings in their pinto beans for extra flavour, but we do not. We want to keep them vegetarian so we omit these items. The black beans are also vegan.

All of our salsas are vegan as well as the guacamole.'

A Boojum vegan Burrito consists of:

-The wrap

-Fried Peppers/Onions

-Pinto/Black beans (I go for half and half)

-Rice (Mexican/plain)

-Guac

-Salsa

-Lettuce

Boojum Mexican Burrito Bar is located on Millennium Walk Way in Dublin. Just behind Jervis Shopping Centre and across the bridge from Temple Bar. Nice and Central!
http://www.boojummex.com/ 

Tolteca Burritos:

Tolteca located on Baggot Street and recently open a city center location on Suffolk Street offer vegan friendly and vegetarian burritos, fajitas, salads and burrito bowls. Extremely tasty and 5 euro deals offered for students with free drink refills. I personally prefer Tolteca to Boojum. It is a bit more expensive here but the burritos don't make feel as sick and full as Boojum does. 

The Vegi Burritos and Bowls also contains:

-The wrap

-Fried Peppers/Onions

-Black beans (pinto not 100% vegi)

-Rice (brown/white)

-Guac

-Salsa

-Lettuce

Great for a causal meal or just a quick one. Compared to other Dublin Burrito joints, Tolteca on Suffolk Street has plenty of seating so no need to worry about getting a seat. 

Tolecta also claim to have 'happy food' meaning 'We work hard to ensure that our suppliers have the highest animal welfare practices and care about our environment. All our meats are certified Irish and Board Bia approved. Our vegetables, cheese and sour cream are of the highest quality and purchased locally where possible. Tolteca serves you caged free naturally raised Irish chicken and meats'. 

It's still animal products and farming but it's a better effort than most places!

I’m pretty sure the pinto beans ARE NOT VEGETARIAN! So double check if you’re taking a visit.

For more information see: http://www.tolteca.ie/

So that's 2 burrito joints in Dublin, perfect for a quick bite, especially when eating with no vegan/vegetarian friends! 

Cornucopia's Recipe for Chocolate Silken Torte (vegan cheese cake)

Cornucopia's recipe for Chocolate Silken Torte (vegan cheese cake)

This recipe for a vegan chocolate silken torte aka a vegan cheese cake is from Cornucopia's cookbook, who are vegetarian whole foods restaurant located in Dublin. A vegetarian restaurant that have taken Dublin by storm through churning out great vegi dishes time after time!  I am also excited to say that they are currently working on their second cookbook 'The Green Cookbook', which will include fully vegan and plant based recipes from Cornucopia's renowned chef, James Burke.

This was my first attempt at vegan cheesecake. I was very inspired by the silken tofu cakes I had in London (in a below post). So I tried given Cornucopia's vegan Chocolate Silken Torte recipe a go.

This recipe is hands down AMAZING! The cake however is very time consuming and expensive to make and takes a lot of patience but it is worth it. What is even more worth the wait is getting the opinion of how the 'cheesecake' tastes by people who don't know it's vegan. They always say you wouldn't know it was vegan, it tastes THAT good. So that's a good sign it's a great recipe right?!
The recipe lends its cheese cake like texture to the firm silken tofu. The texture at first made me feel a bit suspicious at first but once blended and baked you wouldn't even know its tofu.

Some recipe alterations I have noted:The recipe says leave set for 2 hours but its still runny and not firm at this stage. It takes at least 5 hours or even overnight in a fridge to completely set and firm up.

Chocolate Silken Torte - Vegan Cheese Cake

The Cheese Cake Filling:

• 2 packets of silken tofu (700g). Can find it Nourish health food stores. 
• 200ml soya cream. 
• 175g Tahini. 
• 120ml vegetable/sunflower oil. 
• 200g golden syrup. 
• 2 tbl spoons corn flour/starch 
• 225g chocolate.

The Biscuit Base:

• A packet of vegan biscuits. 
• Margarine. 

1. To make the biscuit base:
You can either make your own biscuit base with a simple flour, margarine and sugar mixture or just crush a pre bought packet of vegan biscuits. When you either bake the biscuit base or crush your pre bought biscuits, add enough melted margarine to evenly cover and wet the biscuits. Press the mixture into the base of a lined spring from tin and place into the fridge. 

2. Melt chocolate: Place the 225g of chocolate into a glass bowl and place on top of a pan with hot boiling water and stir until melted.

3. The cheesecake mixture: Add all of the required ingredients (minus the chocolate)and place in a food processor and blend until smooth.

4. Place about half or a quarter of the silken tofu mixture on top of the biscuit base lined tin.

5. Add the melted chocolate to the remaining cheesecake mixture and mix. Place that mixture on top of the cake.
Stick a fork in and make swirl motions to create a marble effect but that didn't really work for me!


6. Cover with cling film and leave to set in the fridge for several hours. Once a knife comes out clean, you're good to go!

Vegan Garlic Mayonnaise

I had gone to Cornucopia a few weeks back and got their Vegan Garlic mayonnaise Potato salad and fell in love. I couldn't believe they were vegan.

I remember seeing the recipe in the cookbook so I took it out and made a crack at it.

The recipe made way too much so I would half the ingredients.

-88g cashew nuts (soaked over night)

-63ml olive oil

-63ml water

-Juice of half a lemon.

-2/3 cloves of garlic chopped roughly.

Then just pop all the ingredients in a food processor and blitz until smooth.

It didn't turn out as smooth as I thought it would. It didn't resemble the mayo from the restaurant but still tasted good. I added some chives, salt and pepper into the mayo too and made a potato salad.

The recipe also called for mustard and hazelnuts. I forgot the mustard... and i had no hazelnuts but they are for sure a good addition.

Raspberry chocolate bars and Vegan findings at Howth market.

I had another crack at the vegan baking books I have. I haven't had much luck making cupcakes so far. I decided to go for something no cakey. So I decided to make Vegan chocolate raspberry bars from 'Sweet Vegan'. The recipe involves a coconutty mixture, chocolate, oats and raspberry jam. Delicious combination!

They came out so good as well. I devoured nearly all of it! I'll post up the recipe next time.

Howth Market

Instead of heading to the market in Dun laoghaire, like we do nearly every Sunday. We decided to head out to the Sunday market in Howth and make a day of it. So we headed off on the DART to howth. It was a lovely day as well but freezing. There's 2 sections of the market. The main one is across from road from the seafront area and then there's a small section just beside the dart station. We headed to the main one first. All that was there vegan wise really was falafel. So, I had a falafel wrap..was okay. I really wanted a soya lattee but off all the 3 cafes I checked, none of them had soya milk :(. Unfriendly Vegan howth.

After we headed off for a walk and came back we checked out the other part of the market. There was a vegetarian and vegan Indian food stand! Wish I had seen it before but even better they had Vegan and Vegi cakes! I was so excited. They said they usually had more but because it was late in the day, most had been bought already.

What they had left that was vegan was a slice of chocolate cake and date and walnut muffins. They had a 3 for fiver deal so I was sold! I slice of cake and 2 muffins. They didn't last very long though haha.

I never got the name of the stand either. I've tried to google it but had no luck. The cake and the muffins both tasted lovely anyway! I was over the moon with this find.

So I'm going to write about a few things on this post. Once again, I regret that most of my photos are taken on my phone, so pretty bad quality!

Pesto Pasta Bake

I've posted about this many times before, but I can't get enough of it. I just made a big one for work lunches. I've started an internship and working smack in the middle of town on Suffolk Street. I have all the best food places right on my door step. I went a bit overboard on the first week and burnt a hole in my pocket. Blazing salads right around the corner, so expensive but so hard to resist. So from now on it's packed lunches.

Pesto pasta bake has been a favorite so far to bring in, so far. Roasting up lots of red peppers, sweet potato and whatever vegetable and stiring it in with whole grain pasta and home made pesto. The roasted vegetables are so tasty and sweet. I sprinkle a little brown sugar on top of them to bring out the sweet flavours more.

I bought some nutritional yeast during the week to add into my pesto and It tastes great. I had read about it's almost cheesy taste.

I sprinkle the top with Cheezly mozzarella after, along with bread crumbs. I have grown to love the cheese.

I want to use the pesto mix it up with baby potatoes and bulgar wheat too. Yum Yum.

Shepardless Pie

Here is a picture of a shepards pie I made. It had puy lentils and veg in a tomato sauce. It tasted alright but It needs work. At least it's full of goodness. The family liked it anyway. I'm thinking of adding cheese on top along with mashing some sweet potato into the mash.

New Alpro range

I came across Alpros new Hazelnut and Almond Milk. It was on special so I went with the Hazelnut. It tastes great and I way prefere it to soya. Tastes alot like normal milk, I find. It has a great nutty and kind of chocolaty taste. It tastes absolutely great with cereal. I plan on buying this from now on.

Blazing Salads

As I mentioned before, I have to stop myself going to Blazing Salads. Costing a good 6 euro to fill a box up. It tastes sooooo goood though.

Our orange lunch

I cooked a load of food for my friends 21st during the weekend. I made us a little birthday lunch involving sweet potato wedges and cous cous. :)

Cookies

Same cookies I have posted about many times before because they are SO GOOD. These are triple chocolate ones. Dark chocolate, vegan white chocolate and the cookie it's self is chocolate. Delisssh.

And this! Orange chocolate spread. I love orange chocolate. It tastes just like terrys chocolate orange. I picked it up in Nourish on Wicklow street. Highly recommended!

Recent food

I am constantly taking picture of food on my phone. Everything is a bit mixed up so instead of doing a load of separate posts I thought I'd throw them all into one.

I went out to the Happy Pear today for Lunch. I went for the pitta and salad. I didn't know the pitta had goats cheese in it though so I had to take it out and eat around the left over bit. I had a lovely coffee and vegan choc fruit and nut tiffin slice. I also love going to The Happy Pear.
I had another attempt at cupcakes but with another recipe. I used the Vegan cupcakes take over the world one. I didn't have all the ingredients really though. It required corn starch but I assumed that's corn flour. It made the cupcakes taste like corn flour though. They were alright though. Still not there yet. The icing was good though!

I came across these in Dunnes Stores and HAD to get them. Orange chocolate is a favourite. They tasted really good.
Here is a salad with a Good Life nut cutlet burger. I love them and they are so quick to cook under the grill.

Linda McCartney sausages. Last week people kept mentioning breakfast rolls and I was craving sausages and beans so bad. I made this for lunch a couple times and really hits the spot. It's a nice change from salad. The sausages are so tasty and only take a few minutes under the grill.

And this is my usual lunch while at home. I eat so many falafels but I don't know what I'd do with out them.

I made more cookies recently with the usual recipe. I guessed the measurements this time as my scales was broken. I added some chocolate powder into the mixture to make double chocolate cookies and oh my god they are dangerously tasty. I eat them all :/. The trick is to almost under cook them and then let them set and you get an extremely chewy cookie as the all the sugar sets but doesn't harden from being heated.

And another 'The Counter' post. As I've said before it's a great place to go for dinner when with non vegis and it's cheap and sooooooo tasty. This is the vegi burger in a bowl with various toppings such as avocado, roasted peppers and grilled pineapples. And you NEED to get the sweet potato fries.

And this is the falafel wrap from Gourmet Burger in Dun Loaghaire. It is very very tasty. It's vegan but you just have to ask for no Harisa. I get guac instead. It is so yummy when they grill the wrap after. It comes with rosemary chips!

What's good.

Devonvale 

So today I discovered this bar. What grabbed my attention was the vegetarian society approved logo on the packaging on all of the bars. So I thought maybe some would be vegan. I first saw the range of these bars today in the Bus Stop Newsagent on Grafton street. I only looked at a few and none of the ones were vegan. However later on I was in the cost cutters on Aungier st and saw them again. I picked up the raspberry crumble and it said Vegan so yay! And it tasted sooooooooo delish. The pastry tasted so familiar. It was certainly delish and I plan to stock up next time. On the website , it says that the Apple and Blackcurrant and the Rhubarb crumble are also vegan. As well, a number of their flapjacks. So, I hope to see these around more.

The Counter, Dublin.

The counter are a custom build burger place located on Suffolk street in Dublin and in Dundrum. I have eaten here many times. They have sweet potato fries that are unreal. They also have a vegan option, a veggie burger which is really tasty.

You can choose:

-the size of your burger

-if you want it in a bun or in a bowl with salad (can choose type of bread and type of salad)

-type of cheese

-toppings (up to 4 and have a very wide range)

-sauce (again wide range)

Here is a picture of the menu, you tick it all off yourself. http://www.thecounterburger.com/menu/

If you're vegan, the burger in a bowl is vegan and none of the buns are vegan.

It is reasonably priced too. So just another vegan option in Dublin!

My first vegan Christmas.

...wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. For once, I didn't feel horrible and unhealthy from the copious amounts of chocolate. So no weight gain what so ever!

As I said previously, I went to Cork for Christmas, down to my Aunt's. It was a long drive down and a very long and squishy one on the way back (4 people+2 dogs and a flat tyre on the m50). I didn't have my digital camera with me so all my pictures were taken on my phone. I had a surprisinly delicious dinner anyway. My aunt made me roasted sweet potatoes and gave me a lesson in roasting. I also had falafel, peas and roasted potatoes. As plain and boring as that sounds it was really tasty when put together with some gravy and ballymaloe country relish.

For dessert, My aunt had gotten me a slice of Natasha's Living food Raw Coaco Orange Ganache Tart. It's 4 euro for a small slice but was so worth it! It was so creamy.

I received 3 vegan baking cookbooks for Christmas.

I had picked out 'Sweet Vegan' myself for my mum to get me. I choose it mainly due to the fact all the recipes are in grams. I really don't trust my cups to grams conversions. Different sites have different calculations! I have marked out all the reicpes I want to try.

However.. a lot of the recipes have ' unprocessed cane juice'.. or un processed cane sugar. I've asked around a few health shops and they have no idea what I am talking about. Does anyone know where to get some??

And Jesse got me Vegan Cookies-Invade your cookie jar and Babycakes! They both have amazing looking recipes and are lovely books. Once my exams finish, I will get stuck in.

Update and Vegan Christmas prep

Food filled day. Went to Fresh Vegetarian restaurant (edit, no longer open) in Powerscourt for the first time in years. I got Red Lentil soup, Chocolate cake and coffee. I wanted to die after the cake, it was so heavy. It came with cashew cream, ew. Soy ish creams so far have been horrible. The powercourt centre is such a good building. Need to go in there more.

I picked up some dairy free caramel chocolates from the sweet shop in George's street arcade and my god they are good. It was good to have some good chocolate again. All the tins of roses are killing me this Christmas. They're 3.50 euro for 12. Quite expensive but good.

I also got a little vegan Christmas pudding by The Village Bakery from The Organic Supermarket to have on Christmas. They also have loads of the Moo Free Chocolate range. They taste real good too.

And here is tonight's late night dinner.

I am going down to Cork for Christmas, so it might be a bit of a challenge. Considering it's not my kitchen. I hope I'm not too annoying about the food. I just hope my aunt will leave me some mashed potatoes with no butter.

Bagels!

I go to Itsa Bagel a fair bit as I am in love with their Kind Veggie Bagel. It never fails to please me but It always promises a messy lunch. There is no way to eat it gracefully without getting food allover your face. I have managed to eat it neatly once, but I was alone so Bring lots of tissue if you are going to eat it. I have talked about it on this blog before but It needs another mention as It is Vegan. This bagel is Vegan and the Vegetable and Lentil soup, which is also unreal. There is an Itsa Bagel in Dun Laoghaire, Abbey Street in Arnottss, Sandyford, Fitzwilliam lane, Malahide. They're Irish, reasonably priced BUT I do not like the coffee one bit.

I tried to make one myself at home, didn't taste as good but still very good.

I started off by making some guacamole. It was my first time and it went as follows:

1 avocado

2 cloves of garlic

Juice of 1 lemon

Half a red chilli ( I made mine spicy)

1/4 of a chopped onion

salt and pepper

 all in the food processor

I then grilled some strips of red pepper and sweet potato.

Layered it up with some of the guac, hummous, strips of veg, spinach and balsamic dressing.

The photo isn't very pleasing but I was in a rush and just wanted to eat!

And another bagel idea, I have posted before.

Bagel with Hummous, sweet chilli sauce, Grilled or roasted thin strips of sweet potato in sweet chilli sauce and a salad on top!