VeganMoFo 22: Speculaas Granola

Okay, I don’t have a picture, because it’s late here and the lighting sucks and my camera’s batteries are empty. Instead, I’ll just write about my MoFo experiment of the day, which was speculaas flavoured granola!

Based on the Cinnamon-Maple Granola from the Students Go Vegan Cookbook, it consists of about 1 1/2 – 2 cups of oats, 1/2 cup of sliced almonds, a generous 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil and a generous 3 tablespoons of maple syrup, about 1 tablespoon of speculaas spices, a few drops of vanilla and almond extract and a little salt. The baking sheet I used at first was too small, so I ended up baking it for 30 minutes instead of 20, but it’s perfect!

I’m having a handful of the granola right now with the last bit of vanilla soy ice cream that was left in the tub. Oh, wait. I do have a picture of the ice cream -

Here it is. I got both of these at Albert Heijn. I like the fact that they’re available in a regular supermarket in the Netherlands, but I can’t say I really love the flavour of the ice cream. I don’t think it tastes that much like vanilla (or like chocolate). So yeah, it’s a pretty plain dessert on its own, but I do like it when it’s covered in something else, such as chocolate sauce or fruit or … granola!

The granola I made is pretty tasty, too! The speculaas flavour isn’t that strong, but together with the maple syrup and almonds, it’s delicious. I’m thinking of adding some dried fruit (apple?).

That is… all I have for today’s post. Notice how my MoFo entries are becoming shorter and shorter?

VeganMoFo 13: East Coast Coffee Cake

The above is a variation on the East Coast Coffee Cake from Vegan Brunch. If you own the book and have made the recipe, you’ll how good it is. After trying a few variations from the book, I wanted to try and make a speculaas-flavoured coffee cake. Here’s what I did:

I omitted the spices in the topping and used about a tablespoon of speculaas spices instead. I also added some chunks of almond paste to the cake batter and a layer of sliced apples between the cake and the topping. Lastly, I sprinkled the topping with a handful of sliced almonds.

I also made a couple of other changes to the batter itself (mostly due to lack of ingredients and laziness when it comes to grocery shopping), but I’m going to stick to the basic cake recipe again next time, because that was much better. The topping on this cake, however, is delicious! The spices in the original recipe are already pretty similar to speculaas, but the extra flavours worked really well in this variation. I also really like the crunchy almonds on top.

As much as I like this speculaas cake, I think the blueberry coffee cake from the book is still my favourite:

It’s perfect. It’s really just the basic recipe with blueberries added to the batter, but I love the simplicity because you can really taste the lovely berries and the delicious topping. It’s so good, I would serve this to anyone. Or eat it all by myself.

I also tried this variation:

Chocolate and raspberry. While I love the two of these together, I can’t say I’m too crazy about them in combination with the cinnamon and nutmeg in the topping. I think I would have liked the cake with just the raspberries, but I would leave the chocolate out next time. It’s just a personal preference, I guess – I don’t like the combination of speculaas and chocolate, either!

Now I don’t mean to say that I didn’t like this cake at all (it was still good!) – it’s just not my favourite. I love the basic coffee cake recipe, though, and I want to try all the other variations listed in the book! If anyone has one they’d like to recommend, I’d love to hear about it…

VeganMoFo 7: Hot Speculaas

Short post today (I’m doing homework).

On the plate on the left: “amandelstaaf”. It’s basically a loaf of puff pastry filled with almond paste. Quite delicious, although my whole wheat puff pastry was unfortunately a bit old and not as crispy as I would’ve liked.

In the mug: hot homemade almond milk flavoured with speculaas spices and sweetened with agave. I blended some smooth white almond butter with water, spices, a little salt, a little lemon juice, and agave. I strained the mixture through a kitchen towel, too. The straining  turned out to be a pain in the ass, but it did make the drink so much more smooth and creamy.

The hot speculaas milk is a lovely autumny wintery drink, but I thought the whole mug was a little too much. It’s pretty decadent, so it’s probably better in small portions! Still, drinks like these are perfect for times when it’s cold and rainy outside, as it is now.

But yes, homework! I’ll be back soon.