Saturday, 9 June 2012

Ⓥ My First Vegan Quiche in Fifteen Years



After returning home from the animal charity fayre I was full of beans or maybe cake and decided to make my first vegan quiche in about fifteen years.  After completing the task I'm wondering why its taken me all this time to make one.  I had already handed out the task of making the pastry so it was merely the filling that I needed to contend with.  So, basically all you need to do is decide what filling you want to put in your quiche, I chose onion, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, broccoli, mushroom, green olive tapenade and red pepper.  After blind baking the pastry case I spread on some green olive tapenade, then sprinkled on the chopped garlic, onion, sun dried tomato.  Then place evenly around pieces of chopped mushroom, red pepper and pre steamed small florets of broccoli.  For the actual filling I blended a block of my favourite Clear Spot Organic Tofu with about one cup of soya milk (just add the milk a bit at a time until you get the correct consistency), seasoning and about 100g of grated Cheezly.  The consistency was that of thick yogurt.  This made three 16cm diameter quiches.  I then spooned the mixture on top of the vegetables. It was in the oven for about 45 minutes gas mark 6.  And voila there you have it, very easy indeed.


Ⓥ A Fun Day Out at Morley Animal Charity Fayre in Aid of Hope Pastures Horse and Donkey Sanctuary and Whitehall Dog Rescue





Today we ventured out of Vegan Chat Room Head Quarters to a local town called Morley where they were having an animal charity fayre in aid of Hope Pastures Horse and Donkey Sanctuary and Whitehall Dog Rescue, you might have already guessed this by the title of the post. It was well attended and had around about twenty stalls. There was a mix of animal charity/rights info stalls, tombolas and bric-a-brac stalls in aid of the various sanctuaries and of course a couple of stalls selling things to eat. One of the food stalls was That Old Chestnut based in Leeds, we have their link on the VCR website. They must have had about fifteen different types of vegan cakes/tiffins on display, it was an impressive sight to behold. We did our part in vegan cake research by sampling several of them. The consensus was that they were all very very good indeed!

Roasted hazelnut and chocolate bundt cake


Sticky stem ginger cake

Chocolate orange cake



Sunday, 3 June 2012

Ⓥ Quick and Easy Vegan Truffles


As usual I have taken a long time to put together a blog post. This one is about some vegan truffles my friend Victoria made for me for Christmas. Just before I scoffed them I managed to spare a few minutes to take a photo of them and thought it was probably a good thing to put on the blog. So just five months later I've managed to get around to doing it.


I hope you will agree that they do look very good. Here is how Victoria made them.

Ingredients:

125g/4oz vegan cream cheese
300g/10oz sifted icing sugar
60g/2oz ground almonds
250g/8oz plain chocolate
A tablespoon of dark rum or brandy or anything else that takes your fancy
To coat - cocoa powder, desiccated coconut, chopped nuts
Mini paper cases

Method:

Soften the cream cheese with an electric whisk in a bowl. Then gradually add the icing sugar and ground almonds. Melt the chocolate, stir in the rum or brandy into the chocolate and add this to the cream cheese mixture, mix it in fast and thoroughly. Roll into small balls and put them in the fridge for about 20 minutes (this makes it easier to put the coating on without it all melting all over your hands) coat in the cocoa/coconut/rolled nuts.Pop into the paper cases and chill. Enjoy!!