Day 5 Pastry

I was tempted to not post today. I have never had success making pastry , and today was no exception. I followed my mothers pastry recipe to a T and went further by putting all my tools and ingredients into the fridge for a bit. No luck.  A waste of flour and shortening. Oh well. I know you can find some decent store bought pastry crusts and that will be my go to from now on.

That said, I had a ton of fresh Ontario peaches I had already prepared for the pie and didn’t want them to go to waste (as if a good peach ever could LOL)....  had some accidentally vegan puff pastry in my freezer so made a sort of strudel and a few peach hand pies. Not pretty but tasty.

And no recipe to share. Just photos! Enjoy 🍑

#veganmofo19

Vegan Mofo 2019

Day 3 Biscuits!

I have a lot of good cookie recipes I  use around the holidays but today decided to try a Paul Hollywood recipe for ginger nuts. They are my favourite cookie/biscuit for tea.

https://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/paul-hollywood-s-gingernut-biscuits

Of course Paul’s recipe is not vegan. It uses dairy butter and egg which are both easily replaced . I used Earth Balance for the butter and Ener-G for the egg replacer.  In the picture of my ingredients here I show Chia seeds but didn’t use them for the egg.  

The cookies turned out pretty good. While they didn’t snap the way a good gingernut probably should, they had a nice gingery flavour and will be great with my evening tea. 

#veganmofo19

Day 4 Cake!

As I mentioned in my intro, I tend to leave baking to others. However, in the spirit of MoFo, I present my simple, basic chocolate snacking cake. Yes I had already removed  a slice before I took the picture LOL

The basis of this cake comes from depression-era baking when eggs and milk were not easily available. I think everyone must have a variation of this cake in their recipe boxes.  I have seen it called wacky cake and crazy cake. To me, it’s a genius cake because of the simple ingredients. I make this when a simple snacking cake is what I want.  I would double the recipe and make an icing if this were to be a birthday cake.

I had some fresh cherries so decided to add them to make this one a bit different. Honestly didn’t really notice them much in the final taste test, and their juiciness meant a slightly longer cooking time, but all-in-all, not a bad cake.

Genius Snacking Cake

Pre-heat oven to 350 F / 180 C

Place the following dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together with a fork

1-1/2 cups flour (I used all purpose)
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 t salt.

Once mixed, level off the dry ingredients in your bowl and create three holes for the wet ingredients (that’s one hole for each of these three)

1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla

Finally add

1 cup warm water

Mix everything together until fully incorporated.  At this point I then also added 1 cup of fresh pitted cherries as a variation.

Pour into an ungreased 8 inch cake pan and bake for 35 minutes . Check for doneness.

Let cool in pan , slice and enjoy.

#veganmofo19

My First Vegan Mofo 2019

Hello Fellow Vegan  MoFoers!

Welcome to my blog. I started this blog a few years ago, made a few posts , and then put it away. All sorts of reasons, mainly just busy with work, family, and the usual day to day things. 

I realized I spent so much time browsing other bloggers sites as well, I had no time for my own.

My sister has been submitting her recipes (see Downright Vegan) to MoFo for a few years and encouraged me to do the same. I am admittedly not the baker in the family but do enjoy cooking and coming up with a few recipes. 

A small bit about me ...I have been vegan for 10 years.  My niece went vegan at a very young age causing much angst and worry from her father , and many years later is raising her own son as a vegan from birth. He is now 10 years old. Healthy, happy, and kind and generous beyond belief . He is my inspiration and I went vegan when he was born.

I am looking forward to sharing what I cook throughout this month and beyond.

#veganmofo19
#kindiscool