Vegan chocolate chip cookies invade my kitchen!

For those who haven't heard of the vegan cookie bible (Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar), listen up!

This great little book is packed with vegan cookies recipes that never fails to deliver.They're quick, easy and most importantly SERIOUSLY delicious vegan cookies. I've said before that the easiness and quickness of the recipes are the both good and bad news. I end up wiping up batches within minutes of a cookie or chocolate craving.

I have previously posted about the Carrot Cake Cookie recipe. A recipe I always come back to. Make sure to check that one out too if you're a fan of carrot cake. Anyway, onto the more traditional vegan chocolate chip cookie (Vegan cookies invade your cookie jar - Isa Chandra). Luckily, the recipe is up on Isa's Post Punk Kitchen site.

The Vegan Cookie Recipe

1/2 brown sugar

1/4 white sugar

2/3 cup canola oil

1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (or your favorite non-dairy milk)

1 tablespoon tapioca flour

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease two large light metal baking sheets.

Mix together sugars, oil, milk and tapioca flour in a mixing bowl. Use a strong fork and mix really well, for about 2 minutes, until it resembles smooth caramel. There is a chemical reaction when sugar and oil collide, so it’s important that you don’t get lazy about that step. Mix in the vanilla.

Add 1 cup of the flour, the baking soda and salt. Mix until well incorporated. Mix in the rest of the flour. Fold in the chocolate chips. The dough will be a little stuff so use your hands to really work them in.

For 3 inch cookies, roll the dough into about ping pong ball size balls. Flatten them out in your hands to about 2 1/2 inches. They will spread just a bit. Place on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes – no more than 9 – until they are just a little browned around the edges. I usually get 16 out of these so I do two rounds of eight cookies. Let cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

For 2 dozen two inch cookies roll dough into walnut sized balls and flatten to about 1 1/2 inches and bake for only six minutes.

My Tip: If you prefer yours with a bit of crunch add a table spoon or 2 of granulated sugar and leave them in the oven for just a couple minutes longer. Or if you like yours soft and chewy, keep a serious close eye on them. Make sure they don't brown too much!

Also if you're looking for cheap vegan chocolate, Tesco have Ryeland's 'Plain Chocolate', which are just over a euro!

Vegan Muffins on Rachel Allen's Cake Diarys

A vegan baking recipe made it onto an Irish cooking show! I was pretty surprised when Rachel Allen, Baking extraordinaire featured a vegan recipe on her RTE Cake Diarys show. I was told by a few people about this being on so I watched it and got the recipe on line. I recommend the recipe a lot. The muffins were really easy to make and came out great.

                                 

The recipe called for raspberries. I used a mixture of the few remaining raspberries growing in my garden along with some blackberries I picked in the park behind my house. So resourceful and cheap!

Vegan Raspberry Muffins Recipe

The Ingredients

• 225 g (8oz) plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1⁄4 tsp salt
• 75 g (3oz) caster sugar
• Finely grated zest of 1 orange
• 150 g (5oz) fresh (or frozen and defrosted) raspberries
• 225 ml (8fl oz) soya or rice milk
• 50 ml (2fl oz) sunflower oil
• 1 tblsp cider vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 12-cup muffin tray and 10 muffin cases

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4), and line the muffin tray with the paper cases.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl, then mix in the sugar and orange zest. Carefully fold in the raspberries and set aside.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients, then add these to the flour mixture, folding in to combine. Divide the batter between the muffin cases, filling each three-quarters full, then bake for 15–20 minutes or until golden on top and springy to the touch.

4. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tray for 5 minutes, then take the muffins out of the tray and place on a wire rack to cool down completely.

If anyone has any other great muffin recipes, pass them on to me! I want to try make really big ones and ones to have for college breakfasts. 

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!

Apple and Blackberry pie

I always look forward to blackberry season in Ireland. I live in Killiney,  an area where there is no shortage of blackberry bushes scattered throughout parks and country like lanes that surround my house. The best spots are well know so you need to ensure you get there before another blackberry enthusiast gets there and cleans the best bushes of their juiciest and most ripe berries. 

Mullins Hill is one place in Killiney that covered in overgrown blackberry bushes and where the BEST are found. During the summer the hill becomes some what of a sun trap so the berries benefit from the heat slowly sweetening them up for Autumn. 

Apples are another fruit widely found on road sides and you can successfully grow apple trees in your back garden in Ireland.

So this time of year has come again. I went on my annual blackberry scavenge and I got my hands on a bag of Irish apples freshly picked from a friend's garden. 

I made a crumble pie using blackberries I collected along with some cooking apples. I followed the same crumble recipe I've used before here. I just used blackberries and applies instead of raspberries and blueberries. I made a vegan shortcrust pastry base which was very easy to make as well. 

                                                                                                                             

And here is the end result! So yummy and perfect for this time of year. I was a big fan of it. 

Vegan Cinnamon Rolls

I was itching to make these for a few days for some reason. While attempting to do work in the library I packed my bags and went to the shops and picked up some flour and yeast to go make these. After finding a simple enough recipe the day previous, I was set to go. I followed this recipe here. It's from a vegan blog called Vegan Yum Yum! These buns are so soft, sugary and of course cinnamony. I put way much more cinnamon than the recipe intended. I just kept pouring! The more the better. What I find about some cinnamon buns is that they are quite bready and dry, these aren't though. As they are made with plain flour, opposed to strong white flour(used in bread making), they are soft and doughy.


The recipe was very simple so make sure to check it out here! I used pure soya butter for the dough and stork margarine for the filling. I also used a mixture of caster and brown sugar for the filling with LOADS of cinnamon, yum yum yum!


They were a hit with everyone and SO ADDICTIVE. I pretty much ate them all :(

Oat, coconut, raspberry, chocolate bars recipe

I posted about these bars a few months back and promised I would add up the recipe. I finally have! I made these as a thank you present when I left work. They went down a treat and people have asked for the recipe so here it is.

They’re a coconutty, oaty, raspberry and chocolate all rolled into one bar of delicious goodness. So here’s the recipe! They’re a recipe from the book ‘Sweet Vegan’ by Emily Mainquist.

Oat, coconut, raspberry, chocolate bars recipe

-195g plain flour
-160g soft dark brown sugar (I just use caster sugar if I don’t have any brown sugar)
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-225g stork margarine
-120g porridge oats
-45g desiccated coconut
-350g raspberry jam (I just use a whole jar or near about. I don’t measure it)
-90g chocolate chips/chunks (just chop up a chocolate bar.

1. Preheat oven to 180oC.
2. Get a baking sheet or tin and line it with baking paper or heavily grease with butter/margarine.
3. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar and baking powder and whisk together until well combined.
4. Using an electric beater start beating in small chunks gradually to the flour mixture. Beat until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Make sure there are no large margarine chunks.
5. Add the coconut and oats and mix again until well combined.
6. Press about 1/3 of the dough onto the baking sheet. Make sure it’s quite equal levelled. I sometimes use a rolling pin to flatten and spread it out. (Remember there’s baking powder in the recipe so it will rise slightly.)
7. Then spread the jam on top on the dough. And then place the remaining dough on top of the jam. I break up little chunks of the dough and spread it around the top. Then sprinkle the chocolate chips on top.
8. Bake for 20-25 mins until bubbly and golden brown. Cool in the tin on a wire rack.

Really easy, Really quick, Kind of healthy cookies..

These cookies are an adaption of the vegan choc chip cookies I posted about before.
I call these chocolatey, oaty, raisiny, peanut buttery and coconuty cookies. They basically have a load of yummy ingredients in it.
They are slightly dangerously easy and quick to make though. I've found myself twice this week wiping up a batch for myself..

Anyway, here is a recipe and I highly recommend it.
I don't have exact measurements for most of the ingredients as it's really down to your own taste. Everything is optional in the recipe really!

200g Plain Flour
Cocoa powder..as much as you want! Depends of how much you like chocolate
spoonful of Cinnamon
Desiccant coconut..as much as you want! I just use a good sprinkling
Oats.. I use a good handful or 2
Raisins..as much as you want! The more the better, I find.
Chocolate chips (optional)
-
120ml Vegetable oil
100ish grams Sugar (I use a mix of caster and soft brown sugar) Anything goes!
60ml Water

Peanut Butter (couple spoonfuls)

Bowl 1 
Combine the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, Oats, Raisins, Chocolate in a bowl (The first half of the ingredients)
Bowl 2
Combine the oil, sugar and water together until well mixed.


Add the wet to the dry ingredients and mix together. Then just roll out little balls and flatten them down onto a baking tray!

Bake for aprox 10 mins!
And voila!

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!

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!