Apple Pie!

I really love apple pie. That’s why I was happy to see that Coppe posted a recipe for apple pie yesterday. I had been thinking about what to make today (I wanted to make at least something for Easter) and a pie seemed perfect.

And it was! I don’t have cute mini tins so I used a big one, which worked just fine. The only problem was that I didn’t have enough dough at first, so I just made a little more. I also used two apples instead of an apple and a pear, because we didn’t have any pears. I would’ve liked trying it with both of the fruits in there, but this was pretty awesome as well. I didn’t have enough dough left to cover the pie with lattices, so I just crumbled it on top.

Here’s a piece. Mmm.

Oh – I had a couple of pieces of my chocolate egg today, too. I thought it was actually pretty hard to break it. At first I wanted to take a piece off the top and leave the rest of the egg undamaged, but that turned out to be impossible. Then I tried breaking it by hitting the top on the table, but it still wouldn’t give. In the end I just crushed it by putting it on the table and leaning on it and it finally broke into pieces.

Delicious, big, dark, chocolatey pieces.

I guess that’s it for now… I hope you all enjoy your weekend!

Fudgy Wudgies! and other things

Fudgy Wudgy Raspberry Brownies from Veganomicon.

I’ve been wanting to make these brownies ever since I read about them, but I never have blueberries or raspberries around. Last week my Dad bought a box of raspberries, though, so I could finally try the recipe. I halved it, because I didn’t want to use all of the berries at once, and used chocolate chunks instead of chips, as always. They were quite yummy! Not as chocolate-ey as I would’ve liked them to be, though, so I think I’ll use less raspberry preserves and more chocolate next time.

Here’s what my Mum gave me yesterday: a lovely vegan Green & Black’s chocolate egg! I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure it tastes quite good. I always like G&B’s chocolate.

Pretty.

This recipe (Susan’s Peach Upside-Down Cake) has been in my browser’s bookmarks for quite a while now, but I don’t have peaches very often and don’t own a cast iron skillet, so I don’t think I’ll be making it anytime soon. The cake recipe itself looked so good, though, that I decided to use it today to make an apple-raisin cake.

Obviously, I made some changes to the original recipe: I used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose, used a little more baking powder than the recipe asked for and chucked in some baking soda as well, used cinnamon and allspice instead of ginger, apple cider vinegar instead of lemon juice and hazelnut-almond-rice milk instead of soy milk. I added two chopped apples and some raisins to replace the peaches. The fruit was kind of wet and added liquid to the batter, so I used less than the one cup of non-dairy milk the recipe called for.

I think the cake is special – very tasty. As it’s whole wheat and fat-free, I guess it’s not that bad for you either. So far my mother, two of my neigbours and I have tried it and we all like it, so woo-hoo!

I’m sorry for being kind of absent from the food blog world for the past week (school, blah blah) but I’m going to catch up with all of your wonderful blogs now!

The Mini-Post

Time for another post! This time, a miniature one. Not only because I don’t have much to say, but also because I’ve had the tendency of making everything in small sizes lately, for example, cookies.

It’s great that they’re small – it means it’s OK to eat more of them.

I also used my mini cake pans to make two little cakes. For this, I took a non-vegan ‘plum cake’ recipe that I happened to have on hand, changed it all around and mixed one half of the batter with raisins, the other half with blueberries. It wasn’t until I had put them in the oven that I thought about the amount of baking powder that was in there. The original recipe called for self rising flour but also for extra baking powder. Because I’d left out the eggs, I figured I’d just add a little more to be sure. They did end up rising very well.

They didn’t rise too much, though, so I think it was just fine. This is the raisin cake. Half of it was already eaten by the time I took this picture.

The blueberry cake, baked in a miniature bundt pan. I should’ve left this one in the oven just a tiny bit longer, but it was good this way too. Because it had risen so well, I had to cut off the bottom part or it wouldn’t be able to stand flat.

Lastly, an experiment. Let’s call them ‘mini speculaas pies’. It’s speculaas dough (from the recipe I used for gevulde speculaas), baked in a muffin pan, filled with Soyatoo cream and topped with toasted chopped almonds. I’m a speculaas-fan, so I love ‘em!

The last day of spring break…

Yes, my school starts again tomorrow. I can’t say I’m really thrilled about that, but this holiday did have a very nice end to it: a tea party! This post will be mostly pictures, as I don’t have much time right now.

The table, with most of the food on it. I added some notes on Flickr, if you would like more details.

The jam tart! This probably took the longest to make, because I had some difficulties getting the dough in the right shape. It was a lot of fun to do, though.

Here’s a closeup of a slice. The recipe for the tart comes from a cookbook called A Little Book of Afternoon Teas – not a vegan cookbook, but this recipe happened to be vegan and I just had to try it.

Brownies! I had made this recipe before, they’re the Fudgy Brownies from Vive le Vegan!. I love these, they’re so full of flavour.

Above is a bowl of sandwiches. I take pictures outside, because that’s where the light is.

I made two ’spreads’ to fill the sandwiches: a sundried tomato pesto/tapenade and a chickpea salad. The pesto was just (soaked) dried tomatoes, toasted almonds, garlic, olive oil and salt, and the chickpea salad consisted of mashed chickpeas, vegan mayonaise, dried parsley, lemon juice, spring onion, tomato, curry powder, salt and pepper (I think that’s it). Most of the sandwiches also have sprouts on top of the spread, others had thin slices of cucumber.

And here’s a closeup of the sandwiches. I read that the ‘traditional’ way to serve the sandwiches is to remove the crusts, but I thought that was kind of a waste so I left most of them on.

Of course, a High Tea wouldn’t be complete without scones. I used a recipe from Parsley Soup, which was easy and enjoyable to make. I didn’t realise that I was out of baking powder until it was too late to buy any, so used baking soda instead. They didn’t rise very high, but were tasty nonetheless. I’m sure I will use this recipe again when I’ve had the chance to buy some baking powder again! I kept warming them up in the oven so we could eat them warm (I didn’t know exactly at what time we would start eating them), so they turned out a little more browned than when I first took them out of the oven. I served them with margarine, jam and Soyatoo whipping cream. My friends said they liked them and even thought they were kind of ‘addicting’, so they were definitely a success :).

Here’s one of the scones, halved, with a strawberry and some Soyatoo cream. So yummy!

I’m glad with the way everything turned out, and I think my guests were, too, as they just kept eating! Almost everything is gone. I didn’t expect that, but of course it did make me very happy. There is about one plate of the food left. After all this, I’m stuffed, so I hope my parents or neighbours are up for some baked goods!