Sometimes you just need cake

And I mean cake. With the sugar, white flour and fat not replaced with healthier alternatives.

Here is the cake Sylvia and I made yesterday, for no other reason than that we felt like making and eating it:

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to make a cake for no particular purpose or occasion. Normally when I make cake like this, it's for a party and I can't really sit down, relax, cram a piece into my mouth and truly enjoy it. I love baking healthy breakfast-y things like muffins, but there's just something special and frivolous about making a cake with absolutely no nutritional value.

On the topic of cakes, I've had a lot of fun making Sylvia's birthday cakes over the past two years. I made this tiger cake for her first birthday: 

Of course, she was too little to request anything in particular, but she was born in the year of the tiger and has always loved toy tigers so that was enough for me. Also, it seemed like one of the few decent cakes I could make with my limited cake decorating abilities!

For Sylvia's second birthday, I made this cake:

I hope that you can tell that it's a rabbit! In case you're wondering, it has a bow tie. It does look slightly demonic. In the weeks leading up to her birthday, Sylvia alternated between wanting a rabbit cake and a 'moon and stars' cake, but finally decided on the rabbit cake.

I used the same recipe for both cakes, as well as the one we made yesterday. It's a chocolate cake because Sylvia loves chocolate. Like mother like daughter. I found it here online. It is a fantastic, simple recipe and always turns out very moist and delicious. Kids especially love it. I use the 'chocolate buttercream' from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. 

I also have to include a link to an amazing beetroot chocolate cake from Nuts and Seeds which I've also made several times. It's so nice not to have to use artificial colouring to make the pink icing - just add a bit of beetroot juice! I'll never use red colouring again.

It will be interesting to see what kind of cake Sylvia requests for her third birthday. With her will and determination growing stronger by the day, I am just hoping it's nothing that requires any engineering/construction ability!

Hungarian Cabbage Noodles

My mum is Hungarian so I grew up eating a bit of Hungarian food. It is quite a heavy cuisine - lots of meat, cream, butter and rich delicious cakes. It evokes lots of happy childhood memories for me, so I've tried to veganise a few Hungarian dishes over the years. 

I have to mention that my mum is a brilliant and versatile cook and has also veganised many amazing dishes for me, including an incredible chestnut chocolate freezer cake. I'll have to post the recipe up here one day!

Hungarian noodle dishes often blur the lines between sweet and savoury, combining onions, sour cream, sugar, pepper and cottage cheese. I created this recipe after I made the sour dressing from Vegan Deli, which immediately reminded me of these flavours. It was an exciting discovery because it is such a comfort food for me!

This may not be to everyone's taste, but I love the combination. I've made it at family gatherings and it is pretty popular.  I have also tried it out successfully on non-Hungarian friends! 

If the amount of sugar and pepper scare you a little, just add a bit at a time and keep tasting as you go. I usually add less pepper when I know Sylvia will be eating it.

Hungarian Cabbage Noodles

Sauce (Sour Dressing from Vegan Deli by Joanne Stepaniak)

1 1/2 cups silken firm tofu (I use a whole 300g packet)

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1/2 tsp salt

a pinch of ground coriander

2 tbsp canola oil

Cabbage noodles

Half a cabbage, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup sultanas

1 tsp black pepper or to taste

salt to taste

pasta of choice, about 300g

Make the sauce by putting everything except the oil in a blender and processing until smooth. Slowly add in oil and mix until smooth. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan. Fry onion and cabbage on medium heat until slightly browning and soft, about 15 minutes. In the meantime, cook your pasta.

Combine the pasta and sauce in the large saucepan along with the sugar, pepper and sultanas. Heat on low heat for a few minutes. Stir to combine and serve!

Delicious odds and ends

French Toast

  

We don't normally have ciabatta bread in the house but we had some leftover from another dish so I decided to make French toast with it. This bread was perfect for French toast, I'll never use any other (healthier) bread to make it again. I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance which has besan/chickpea flour in it. Served with bananas and maple syrup = indulgent breakfast!

Overnight Oat Parfaits

These are so fun, healthy and convenient for breakfast. Just mix up some oats, chia seeds, sweetener and anything else you'd like to throw in like dried fruit or nuts, put it in the fridge and it's waiting for you in the morning to serve with fruit. I always have visions of a sophisticated parfait with perfect layers as pictured here but it usually ends up in mild chaos like this: 

Chocolate Covered Apricots

This seems like such a simple idea but they are so delicious! The chocolate kind of changes the taste of the apricot. It reminded me a bit of cherry ripe for some reason. This idea is from Vegie Head. 

The funny story about these: I'm always trying to get Sylvia to eat dried apricots. She doesn't mind them, but usually just has a nibble and loses interest. I thought coating them with her favourite thing, chocolate, would entice her but when she was helping me make them she ate about 4 plain apricots, tried a chocolate coated one, sucked off the chocolate and spat out the apricot! Lesson: never use logic with a toddler...

Golden Syrup Dumplings

This was one of the first recipes I ever cooked on my own. I was about eighteen and had had very little cooking experience. Although it is a pretty humble dish, I was thrilled with the results. The dumplings are sweet and comforting, and so nice on a cold night. 

According to Google, there are more gourmet versions of this dish but this recipe I veganised works perfectly. It's fun to make because it has the feel of a camping recipe, like damper, that looks a bit rough and is made using staple ingredients. I may not be making these for a dinner party, but these dumplings are surprisingly delicious and much more than the sum of their basic ingredients.

Golden Syrup Dumplings

1 cup self raising flour

2 tbsp vegan margarine (I used Nuttelex)

enough non-dairy milk to form a dough

Sauce

2 tbsp golden syrup

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 cup water

Place the flour into a bowl and rub the margarine into the flour. Slowly add the milk until the mixture forms a manageable dough. If you put in a bit too much milk, just add some flour to balance it out.

Knead the dough for minute or so until it is soft and smooth, then roll into eight balls and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, heat the golden syrup, sugar and water until it is simmering. Throw the dumplings in and keep on medium to low heat until they are cooked, about 10 minutes or so. 

The sauce will thicken quite a lot during this time and the dumplings expand. Roll them around very gently every now and then to make sure they're evenly cooked in the sauce. It's best to take out a dumpling to test to make sure they are ready because they're awful when they're still doughy. They should be cakey in texture. 

I serve the dumplings with a bit of sauce and soy milk over the top. Some kind of vegan cream would be perfect because that sauce is pretty sweet!

Sweeter side of life

I post mainly about savoury food because I tend not experiment as much with dessert recipes. I usually stick to the recipe. However, I probably enjoy making sweet things the most and I have a massive sweet tooth. Over the years, I've baked so many dozens of vegan cupcakes to take to parties, dinners, etc. that it's kind of expected of me now!

I made these marble cupcakes with buttercream icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for Mother's Day. It's the first time I've made these and I loved the swirly marble effect. They are a nice simple tasting cupcake, not as moist as my favourite chocolate cupcake recipe from the same book, but good. The almond essence gives them a nice flavour. The book suggests having a small amount of icing on each one so you can show off the marble effect, which is true. I think they look beautiful, but I think next time I'll put chocolate icing on them and more of it!

These are the Chocolate Fudgy Oatmeal Cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Sylvia and I made these to take to playgroup. They are always a winner - like a brownie in cookie form. And they contain oats so are practically a health food! They disappeared so fast, and were especially popular with the kids.

Tangy Bean Wraps

These wraps were our favourite dinner in a while. Sometimes I get sick of stew-type meals served with rice or pasta, so these were a welcome change. 

The bean filling tastes much more interesting than the bare ingredients would suggest. It has a kind of tangy Mexican flavour from the lime juice and cumin, and tastes delicious with fresh tomato and lettuce!

Sylvia loved these. She concentrated very hard on arranging the filling in her wrap and she managed to eat most of the wrap before it unraveled.

They are pretty quick to make. Making the wraps takes a little bit of time, but they are so easy. You could use store bought wraps if you're pressed for time. 

Tangy Bean Wraps

Filling

3-4 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tin of mixed beans

juice of 1 lime

1/2 - 1 tsp cumin

salt to taste

Fry onion and garlic in oil until lightly browned. Add the beans, lime juice, cumin and salt and cook for a further few minutes. Transfer into a blender and puree (you can leave it a bit chunky if you prefer). 

White Flour Wraps (based on flat bread recipe from Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson - great book!)

2 cups white all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup water, approx

Combine flour and salt in a bowl. Add just enough water to bring the mixture into a dough. Knead for a few minutes and divide into six portions. Roll each out into a circle, stretch a bit with your hands, and fry in a bit of oil (I add a bit of oil before frying each one) until lightly brown on each side. 

Put the bean filling in a wrap with chopped fresh tomato and lettuce, roll and devour!

Cinnamon Buns

We had friends arriving in two hours and the house was a complete mess, so of course I decided to make not only something I'd never made before, but something involving yeast - cinnamon buns!

I made them from this recipe, which is actually about 4 pages long when printed out! I do like to have precise instructions, but I also rarely have time to read them very thoroughly and really take advantage of every detail. 

I think that these buns would have been perfect if only I'd left them in the oven for a bit longer. I baked them for slightly longer than the instructions prescribed, but they were a bit doughy and slightly undercooked although they were lightly browned on the top. They were still pretty yummy and I had no complaints from anyone eating them! I would definitely make them again, just bake them for longer and maybe add some sultanas and ground nuts to the mix.

I didn't have any Tofutti cream cheese in the house so I made this icing out of icing sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and soy milk, which turned out really well.

This recipe calls for quite a lot of Earth Balance margarine, which is not available in Australia so I substituted it with Nuttelex. I wonder if this made a difference? Has anyone else had experience with this?