Ⓥ Raw Chocolate Mousse - Adapted from Divine Vegan Desserts

I am having a mini spurt of cooking enthusiasm, so I thought I would have a go at a raw chocolate cake, from Divine Vegan Desserts, by Lisa Fabry. I am calling it a Raw Chocolate Mousse and not the actual recipe name of Black Forest Gateau, because I decided to be lazy and only make a basic version of the cake in the book.  My thought was, that I would do a basic version and try it, then if I liked it, I would do the luxury version at a later date, probably for a special occasion.

I thought I would show you the mess I created before showing you my raw dessert...

There are two parts to the Raw Chocolate Mousse: the fudge crumble base and the chocolate hazelnut mousse.

Ingredients

Base:

• 100g cashew nut
• 35g cacao powder
• seeds of 1 vanilla pod
• pinch of salt
• 70g dates
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar

Mousse:

• 140g hazelnuts, soaked
• 370g water
• 35g cacao powder
• seeds of 1 vanilla pod
• 100g dates
• 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
• pinch of salt
• tablespoon of soya lecithin
• 60ml coconut oil, melted
• 1 teaspoon of psyllium powder

Method

For the base, its very easy, all you have to do is blend everything together a bit at a time.  Press into the base of a dish - the dish I use measures 3.5cm in depth and 19.5cm in diameter.

The mousse is slightly more complicated, because you have to make hazelnut milk first.  It's straight forward  enough to do.  You just soak the nuts, blend them with a measured amount of water and then strain it through muslin and squeeze out as much milk as you can.  Put the cacao, vanilla seeds, dates, maple syrup and salt into a blender and add the hazelnut milk gradually as you blend.  When the mixture is smooth add the lecithin, coconut oil and psyllium powder with the blender running.   Pour the mousse into the dish and chill until set.

Differences from the book: I used cashews instead of macadamia, I didn't use the carob but added extra cacao, I used ordinary dates, not medjool and substituted the agave with maple syrup.  This was partly because I am a bit short of cash and also with the nuts, because I preferred to buy organic and could not find organic macadamia nuts.  Mind you, thinking about it, macadamia nuts are really expensive conventionally grown, so I shudder to think how expensive they would be organically grown.

So, all in all it was very easy to make, even without owning a proper food processor and having to make do with a hand blender.  I left it in the fridge over night to set and cut off a slice in the morning to try.

Wow! It's truly impressive, a creamy chocolatey mousse contrasted with the nutty base, it was far beyond my expectations, even with my few tweaks to the ingredients, so I imagine it would be even better with the macadamias etc.

 Divine Vegan Desserts

Ⓥ Semi Raw Banoffee Pie

I remembered that I had a tin of soy condensed milk to use up, but really wanted to make a more healthy version of the banoffee pie that I liked so much last time.  So, I thought I would do a nut and date base with soy condensed milk, banana, and a raw coconut cream topping.

For the base I blended together

1.5 Cups walnuts
1 Cup dates
3 Tablespoons of Cocoa
3 Tablespoons agave syrup

I put this in a flan dish and squashed it down, then put it in the fridge.
 

For the topping I put a tin of coconut milk in the fridge for 24 hours and separated the solid cream from the liquid, I put the liquid in the fridge to use in something else later

I blended the coconut cream together with
0.25 Cups melted coconut oil
3 Tablespoons agave syrup
1 Banana
Pinch salt
1 Teaspoon xanthan gum powder
 

To be honest, I blended all the above ingredients bar the xanthan gum first and found that it separated.  I wasn't sure why but thought the gum might do the trick to get it back on track, it did.  If anything, I might have overdone it with the gum, as the cream topping was a tad thick, so I have reduced the amount in this recipe.

I had simmered the soy condensed milk in the unopened tin for four hours the day before and put the unopened tin in the fridge.

So, now I put a layer of banana on top of the walnut base, poured over the soy condensed cream and spooned on the topping.

It is now two days later and I have just had my second piece.  It is great, the base has got a sticky quality about it and the soy condensed milk, although I imagine full of sugar is lovely.  I have done an hour on my bike turbo today so what the hell, maybe I will have another piece, and it is mainly raw too!

Ⓥ Organic Dehydrated Kale Crackers with Engevita Yeast Flakes

I found a raw Cheezy Kale Crackers recipe a few weeks back and eventually got around to giving it a go today.

As usual for dehydrated cracker recipes, it's very easy to make. The worst problem I have is my blender is total rubbish. Anyway, I won't dwell on my blender.

So, the ingredients are:

Kale, Almonds, Nutritional Yeast Flakes, Coconut Flour, Flax, Paprika and Chili

First you have to soak the almonds over night, then rinse and then blend them. Stick them in a bowl. Put the flax and water in a bowl and leave it to thicken up.  Then blend the kale up. Add all the other ingredients to the ground almonds, add the kale to the almonds, mix well.

Then finally, add the gloopy flax mixture and mix well again.

Then you spread it out on parchment paper and score it. Unfortunately I don't have a fancy pants cutter so I used a knife. Mine are nowhere near as neat as on Susan's blog on Rawmazing.com.

Then you dehydrate it. It smells really good.

Ⓥ Artisan Vegan Cheese - Pub Cheddar with Chives

Since I blogged the Air Dried Cheddar  he  recipe in January, I have been going through the Artisan Vegan Cheese book, albeit very slowly, testing various recipes.  Apart from the Smoked Provolone Cheese, (I have realised I don't like smokey flavours in general), I have really enjoyed every one I have made. Gramondo has enjoyed all of them, so we are both very impressed with the book and would highly recommend that you get yourself a copy.

So, here is another cheese from the book to take a look at.

I set Gramondo the task, to find me an ale to use in the recipe.  He did very well, finding one in the Co-op that was not only a vegan ale, but an organic, Fairtrade and vegan ale.  The ale is brewed for The Co-op by the Freeminer Brewery in the Royal Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.  The malted barley is grown in the Cotswolds and on Salisbury Plain and handcrafted by Warminster Maltings - Britain’s oldest working floor maltings.

First stage is to soak the cashew nuts for 3 to 8 hours.  Then blend them, together with your rejuvelac,
miso, yeast flakes and salt.  You have to leave this to do its thing for 24 to 28 hours at room temperature (about 67f/19c).

Next stage is to thicken the cheese.  You heat the ale, together with the agar powder and then add the cheese.  After you have been stirring it for about five minutes, it becomes smooth and glossy.  You then remove it from the heat and add your chives, I used dried as I could not find fresh.

  

Pour into a glass mould and allow to cool.

Artisan Vegan Cheese

Ⓥ Animal Aid - Chocolate Chestnut Truffle Pudding

Recently we went to Herbies cafe in Exeter.
From outside we could see that the cafe looked cosy and welcoming with a 5 star rating on food hygiene and an array of vegan cakes available why would any full blooded vegan resist the temptation.
It was a cold day so we opted for a hot chocolate each and to accompany it I had a ginger lemon cake, Gramondo went for the chocolate chestnut brandy truffle cake. We didn't have much time to wait until a friendly member of staff arrived with our cakes. They looked fantastic! Really well presented with a cute little jug of cream and a tasty cape gooseberry on top. My ginger lemon cake consisted of a ginger biscuit base topped with a sumptuous lemon curd topping - Divine. Gramondo's truffle cake was a dense dark chocolate truffle that was really rich with a kick of brandy. As usual we swapped dishes half way through and as usual I came away with the better half of the deal. We both agreed that both of the cakes were truly moreish!

So when I got home I thought I would try to emulate the chocolate truffle cake. After much searching I gave up. Gramondo though was more tenacious and found a recipe on the Animal Aid website that looked simple enough and also looked very similar to what we had eaten in Herbies. So the next day we bought the three ingredients required and I manged to make it in a very short length of time. To be honest I added about three table spoons of agave syrup. We had it with some oatly pouring cream but unfortunately no cape gooseberry. Amazingly it was very close to the Herbies' truffle, very rich, not too sweet.

If you have a go at making it I hope you enjoy it!

Animal Aid - Chocolate Chestnut Truffle Pudding

Ⓥ 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.

Ⓥ 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!!