Dairy Free creme "eggs"

A few weeks back, everyone was talking about creme eggs, and how the chocolate wasn't as good any more. In the past there has been much speculation about the diminishing size of the eggs too - so all in all, not good news for Cadbury. It got to a point where This Morning did a bit about it, and Paul Young showed the presenters how to make their own eggs.

This piqued my interest, as I had not considered making an egg before. The girls said that they would love to try a creme egg, so it was time to get the big bag of chocolate out and try for myself.

Ingredients

Vegan chocolate
Fondant icing sugar
Vanilla essence
Water

Silicon moulds are great for making chocolates, but as all I had were individual heart shaped moulds we had to have hearts and not eggs.

The chocolate I used was from Plamil. I've been using their chocolate for years now and you can buy the darkness of chocolate that you prefer by cocoa percentage (45%, 53%, 60% or 72%). For this I used the 53% cocoa, which is still quite dark. If you want to make them more like milk chocolate, you can use the 45% or the Moo free chocolate bars, which are both great.

So, I melted about 200g of chocolate slowly over a pan of gently simmering water, then turned the heat off, but left the chocolate so it would not set again. I put a few tablespoons of the fondant icing sugar into a bowl and added a little water and flavoured it with vanilla. It is a bit of trial and error to get the quantities right so add small amounts at a time until you get that thick, gooey icing that you know from creme eggs.

Next, take your silicon moulds and fill them nearly to the top with the melted chocolate. I put mine onto a plate, then popped them in the fridge for about 5 minutes. After that time, you need to take them out and tip the chocolate out. A thick layer will have started to set around the edges, and the rest will pour back into your melting bowl. Put them back in the fridge to set the chocolate.

Finally, add the fondant centre to the top of the chocolate shell and seal the top by totally covering it with the leftover melted chocolate. Put them back into the fridge and leave to set. When they are ready to be eaten, the silicon mould can be peeled off, but keep them in the fridge until you want to eat them. I haven't mastered how to temper chocolate yet, so they will be quite melty as you eat them!

3 ways with dates....and chocolate

Been away for a year, how did that happen? I've been baking and making but not blogging and I want to get back into it, so here is a great trio of things to do with dates.

A vegan friend of mine recently told me how she made her own twix bars, the recipe is from another site which I shall try to find in due course. The part that intrigued me was the use of dates to make the  caramel section. My girls can't eat dairy, and miss out on traditional chocolate bars, so maybe this was a way to create something for them. I already make dairy-free chocolate truffles with dates, cocoa and ground almonds and the girls love those, so today I tried out my own twix recipe:

1 pack of supermarket shortbread biscuits
100g moo-free chocolate bar
3 tbsp plamil catering chocolate
a block of dates (250g)
2tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp caramel flavouring

I heated up the dates and caramel flavouring with about 100ml of water to soften them, then when they were cooled, I blitzed them to a smooth paste with 2tbsp of cocoa powder.
This mix was then smeared thickly over 9 shortbread biscuits.


I melted the two chocolates together and cooled slightly before dropping each biscuit carefully in and turning it over very gently to coat it, using a fork. The coated biscuits were placed on the cool windowsill for about 30 minutes before going into the fridge. Done.


Almost.

I had a huge amount of the date mix left and the scrapings of the chocolate, which I couldn't waste. So, I thought to myself, what can I use this for?
My girls are always on at me to make whoopee pies, which I'm not so bothered about, but I was feeling generous (why else would I have been making twix bars in the first place?) so I made up the following batter:

2oz sunflower spread
2oz date mix from above
about 2tbsp of melted chocolate
1 egg
2.5oz self raising flour
a splash of soya milk to soften the mix

I mixed all this and made 12 dollops on a baking tray, then baked them at 180c for about 15 minutes. They looked fine, but I think that the mix could have been even softer to let them spread better.

Once cooled, I made my third date and cocoa creation - frosting. Yep, if you mix equal quantities of the date mix and sunflower spread, you get the beginnings of a very good frosting consistency; it's not chocolatey enough, so I tagged another tbsp of cocoa powder and the same of icing sugar to get the texture just right. I spooned the frosting onto one cooled cake round, then sandwiched another cake on top.



A sprinkle of icing sugar and they are ready to eat:

Bunny shaped Yorkshire puds

My children love Yorkshire puddings (maybe as much as I do, if that's possible) and although they love sausages, they don't like toad-in-the-hole. Strange, huh? I have worked out how to make pretty good dairy-free puddings after much experimentation, and the recipe is:

75g plain flour
1 egg
85ml rice milk (soya doen't seem to rise)
ground black pepper and salt (a couple of twists of each)

I mix the ingredients with a hand whisk and heat a 12 hole pan in the oven at 220c with a little pool of sunflower oil in each well, when the pan is hot I quickly pour the mix into the 12 holes and slam it back in the oven. I leave the oven door firmly shut for 20 minutes or so while they rise and brown, then we scoff them while they are still nice and hot. They don't rise in the magnificent way that they do when made the traditional way, but they are still very good.

Today, as an experiment, I used a 6 hole bunny pan to make the puddings and they came out pretty well, look:

Blackberry pudding

I made a pie for dinner yesterday, but after egg washing the crust, I couldn't throw the rest of the beaten egg away. I decided to try the traditional sponge recipe of weighing the egg and adding equal weights of SR flour, caster sugar and margarine. The small amount of mixture was just enough to spread over the base of my 2lb loaf tin to make a small rectangular cake.
I had some blackberries on hand, which I heated up in a pan with a few spoonfuls of sugar.
Once the blackberries were sticky and the sugar had all melted I poured them (and the syrup that was formed) into the oiled loaf tin and put the cake mix on top.
I baked it for about 20 minutes at 180c and then tipped it out while it was still hot on to a plate to cool a little.
It was delicious with vanilla ice cream.

Chocolate ginger cupcakes

A fair few months ago I went to a friend's baby shower and her sister-in-law had made a selection of delicious cakes. My favourite were her chocolate ginger cupcakes, a name which does not begin to describe the mix of flavours hiding inside. I made a version of them for the cake sale at the school Christmas Market today, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

4oz brown sugar
5oz self raising flour
1/4tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/4tsp ground nutmeg
4oz soya margarine
2 eggs
2tbsp golden syrup
3oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Method

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, then add the eggs, margarine and syrup.
Whisk with an electric whisk until smooth then add the chocolate and mix together.
Spoon into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 150c for about 20 minutes, until cooked through.

When cool, the original recipe calls for whipped cream on top with chopped Crunchie bars sprinkled on top. I made frosting with philadelphia, butter and icing sugar, then sprinkled the Crunchie on top. To make them dairy-free, I have spooned cooled, melted dairy-free chocolate over the top, then topped with chopped honeycomb pieces.

Mulling spice cake

I had a thought, would it be possible to make a cake that replicates mulled wine? I love mulled wine so today I had a go at making something that, while not quite a mulled wine cake, is still pretty tasty. I based it on the orange and poppyseed cake, mainly because it uses milk, which is the key to getting the flavours into the cake.

Ingredients

120ml sweetened soya milk
170g caster sugar
2 eggs
170g self raising flour
140g soya margarine
Zest of 1 orange
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

In a small saucepan, add the nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon to the soya milk. Warm for about 1/2 hour without letting it boil, then allow to cool.
Weigh out all the rest of the ingredients, place in a large bowl with the eggs, zests and finally add the strained soya milk.
Use an electric whisk to blend all the ingredients to make a smooth, soft batter.
Pour into a lined loaf tin and bake at 180c for about 50 minutes, until a skewer pushed into the top of the cake comes out clean.
Cool in the tin.

I think I need to do more with this cake, but I'm not sure what at the moment. It should have a syrup, I think, like a lemon drizzle cake. What I will try is to reduce down some mulled wine and sugar to make a syrup, then drizzle that on it.

Gingerbread Pudseys

It is Children in Need time, and today at school we held a cake sale to raise some money. I was determined to theme my baking, and what better way than this?
I used my gingerbread recipe, then used rolled white icing and icing pens to add the details. Simple, yet effective.

Gluten-free and dairy-free peach cobbler

I wanted to bake a pudding last night, but there were no eggs left. I very nearly gave up on the idea, but then I remembered a peach cobbler recipe I made a while ago. It is incredibly easy to make, so I thought I'd try a gluten-free version.

Ingredients

1 cup self-raising gluten free flour blend
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup sweetened soya milk
1 tin of peach slices
4oz soya margarine

Method

Put a baking dish into the oven at 190c with the margarine in it.
While that is warming, mix the flour, sugar and milk together.
Take the baking dish out and make sure the margarine has melted and spread across the baking dish. Pour the batter slowly on top and do not mix.
Drain the peaches and place these all over the top of the batter.
Bake for about 50 minutes at 190c

Serve warm with ice cream.

Unfortunately, there was still a some partly cooked batter in the middle of the pudding. It was ok to eat, but I wasn't happy with it. The crunchy top was great, though, and Charlotte wants to make it again, so I need to sort out my quantities. I think a little less milk may be the answer.

Dairy-free and gluten-free cupcakes

Hooray! I did it, I made cupcakes that are passable as regular ones, but with no wheat or dairy hiding inside. It was dead simple, thanks to my new favourite brand of flour.

I made my 4:4:4:2 sponge mix with vanilla extract, but added 2 tsp soya milk as the flour needs a little extra moisture to stop the cakes being too dry.

The children had them after their dinner and have declared them "the best cupcakes ever" which may be down to the fact that they were ecstatically happy at being allowed cakes for pudding. They do go a bit over-the-top when they are given a treat, but it made for one very happy mummy!

Gluten-free flour experiment

Wheat doesn't seem to do me much good, so I am cutting back on the amount I eat. Less toast, sandwiches and pasta are pretty easy to do, but cake and biscuits is another matter altogether. I discovered Doves organic gluten-free flour blend the other day, and decided to try it out. The way I see it, if you can hardly tell the difference, why bother with wheat in the first place? I am going to be a harsh critic though, as I don't see the point in eating a cake if it isn't delicious!

All that was left of the banana bread after one sitting.

So, first of all I made a batch of dairy-free and wheat-free pancakes, using my pancake recipe but with the new flour and a little extra soya milk. The girls told me they were better than the normal ones, although I thought they were a little more chewy than normal. The flour passed it's first test.

Next, I made my banana bread using the flour. Again, I added a little soya milk to soften the batter up, as the flour absorbs more moisture than normal flour. The cake cooked in the same amount of time as normal, and tasted exactly the same. The only difference was a slightly powdery texture on the crust, but I didn't mind that at all. Test 2 - pass.

I also made some yorkshire pudding batter using the flour, and made myself some wheat-free courgette fritters like my mum used to make for my lunch yesterday. Literally, slices of courgette about 1/2cm thick dipped in the batter and fried. They were exactly as I remembered them, so must have been just right. Test 3 - passed with distinction!

More tests to go, but at this rate I might just give up on wheat flour all together!

Fabulous new cupcake recipe

A few days after making vanilla cupcakes from the Hummingbird book, I realised that the recipe didn't convert so well to dairy-free. The cakes were nice when really fresh, but did not keep well - they went heavy and a bit soggy. I thought that maybe something halfway between my 5:4:4:2 sponge recipe and the Hummingbird recipe might be a good idea.

So (very scientifically), I wrote both recipes out side by side, added the ingredients together and then halved the result to give a 2 egg recipe:

Ingredients

8oz self raising flour
3.5oz soya margarine
7oz caster sugar
120ml sweetened soya milk
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Cream the margarine and sugar together.
Add the eggs and vanilla to the milk and mix.
Add the flour and the egg/milk to the sugar/margarine and mix well.
Fill cupcake cases about half full with the mix and bake at 180c for about 12 minutes.
Makes around 16 cupcakes but would make about 24 fairy cakes.

The cakes rise well, do not have greasy cake cases and the cases do not peel away from the sides. These went down a storm at the school cake sale, children really don't notice that they are eating dairy-free and that makes me very happy. It also means that Charlotte can join in with the others without having to worry about her allergy.

Hummingbird cakes

Today, I had promised Charlotte that I would make chocolate cupcakes with her. A friend of mine made some lovely chocolate cupcakes for the Macmillan coffee morning the other week, and when I asked her, she said the recipe was from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. I have that book, so Charlotte and I dipped in and found the recipe - yippee! Also, Emma was loitering and looking over our shoulders, so I agreed to make a batch of vanilla cupcakes with her too.

The sponge was much less fine textured and moist than my normal sponge recipe, which meant that the cases didn't peel away from the sides of the sponge for once, which was fantastic. Also, as the recipe uses a lot less margarine and milk instead (soya, obviously, for us) there were no ugly oily marks bleeding through the cake cases. These people know what they are doing!

Anyway, Charlotte did all the measuring and mixing and filling of cake cases herself for the first time. She also iced them with the icing that I made. Emma made hers with a little interference from mummy, but iced them herself. I tried half filling some cases and then dolloping a 1/2 tsp of lemon curd in, then topping up with mix. I haven't tried one of these yet, but they smell delicious.

Denise's lemon cake

My friend's mum, Denise, gave me a lemon cake recipe a few years ago, but I don't often make it - I have no idea why, it is delicious. I guess I always forget to buy lemons, and then when I get the time to bake I can't make it. Anyway, my mother-in-law brought me back some lemons from her tree in Cyprus and it was the perfect opportunity to make a lemon cake as there is no danger of pesticides or wax on the skins.

Ingredients

4oz soya margarine
6oz caster sugar
grated rind of 2 lemons
2 eggs
6oz self raising flour
A little milk (I use soya)

Method

Cream together the margarine and sugar.
Add the lemon rind and eggs and mix well.
Sift in the flour and fold into the mix.
Add a little milk to soften the batter.
Pour into a lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes at 180c.

Make a syrup using the juice of the 2 lemons and 2oz caster sugar.
When the cake comes out of the oven, let it cool a little, then make lots of holes in the top with a skewer and pour the syrup slowly all over and allow it to soak in.
I boiled up the syrup for a few minutes to thicken it, as I find that it then runs off more slowly, allowing it to soak in before it runs down the sides.

Creamy chocolate pudding

By a convoluted route, I ended up on the website of Heavenly Treats and Treasures looking at their Chocovado pudding recipe. I make a pudding for the girls, inventively called "mango pudding" by blending together a mango and an avocado. Charlotte still loves it and she's been eating it since she was 6 months old (not just that, obviously!). It is pretty good, and most importantly dairy free but still creamy and sweet.

Well, I saw this recipe for what looked like a chocolate version of our mango pudding and had to try it out. I made it slightly differently, so I'll write the recipe out again here:

Ingredients

1 ripe avocado
1/4 cup of cocoa powder
1/8 cup of agave/maple syrup
1/8 cup sweetened soya milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup dairy free vanilla ice cream

Method

Put all the ingredients except the ice cream in a blender and blend until smooth.
This was too rich tasting for the children, so I then added the ice cream and blended again to make a smooth, cold and creamy chocolate pudding.
This went down very well with Emma, but Charlotte still prefers her mango version.
I believe it would be fantastic in an ice cream sundae with chocolate brownie pieces, maybe some chopped banana and ice cream. When I get a chance to try that out I shall get a photo before we scoff it!

Seedy apple cookies

I have been merrily baking what I know my children will eat, and a lot of the time paying little attention to the nutritional qualities of these treats. I have decided that there are times when I need the full on sugar extravaganza - like a birthday cake, but I could also use baking as a sneaky way of getting more good food into my children and myself.

Emma is quite happy munching on nuts and seeds, but Charlotte does not. I was hoping that I could adapt a recipe to get seeds into Charlotte's diet as a starting point for my experiments. I based it on my apple and cinnamon cookie recipe, which I have also made as ginger and lemon cookies.

Ingredients

130g soya margarine
55g granulated sugar
45g soft light brown sugar
50g crushed digestive biscuits
100g plain flour
80g oats
50 g sunflower seeds (blitzed into small crumbs)
20g sesame seeds
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
200g dried apple, chopped roughly
1 large egg
1 tbsp agave syrup

Method

Cream together the margarine and sugars.
Add the egg and agave syrup and mix well.
In a separate bowl mix the flour, biscuit crumbs, oats, seeds, bicarb and cinnamon.
Add the dry mix to the wet, mix well then stir in the chopped apple.
Bake on a lined baking tray at 170c (fan) for 12 minutes.
Makes 24.

Scooby Doo Birthday Cake

I have a confession, I faked the icing on a cake. It is not like me to pass up the chance of an icing challenge, but I am trying to pace myself and not take on too much at once. I'm so glad I did it, the cake topper that I bought was fantastic, and it took a lot of pressure off an already complicated cake. I also had time to make Scooby snacks for the party as I didn't end up spending a whole afternoon icing an intricate cake design. I bought the icing topper on eBay for £3.50. Bargain.

So, the cake. I decided to try out a 3 colour sponge cake like I have seen all over the place recently. Charlotte decided on purple, orange and pink and as luck would have it my baking trays are just the right size to make an A4 cake - the same size as the icing topper. I decided to make each sponge separately (a 2 egg batch of my 5:4:4:2 mix with added vanilla), colouring the egg with my colour paste before incorporating it. I started with purple, which baked well but the colour was not very nice. I then made the orange and pink which were lovely.

I ran out of eggs, so while I was out buying more I had a re-think. Green would be easier to achieve than purple, so the 3rd sponge was a glorious froggy green. Once I had made the 3 sponges, I assembled the cake. I put home made plum jam between the pink and orange, then buttercream between the orange and green. I then put a thin layer of buttercream over the whole thing and covered it with white rolled icing.

To attach the icing topper, you have to remove it from it's plastic backing and place it on tacky icing. I slightly dampened the icing on the cake then placed the topper on top. Perfect. Unfortunately the cake was more risen in the middle, so a couple of edges rucked up a bit, but that was hidden by the piped blue icing that I put around the top and base of the cake.

I also made some Scooby snacks using my gingerbread recipe, then piping the design on top with leftover icing from the cake.

Big Georgie cake

My niece turns two tomorrow and I was very pleased to have been asked to make her birthday cake. What did she want on her cake? "Big Georgie" (from Peppa Pig) was the answer, so I trawled the internet for a Peppa shaped cake pan. No such luck, so I made a round cake and drew an icing George on it. This is only my second character cake, so was a bit daunting, but I have to say, I really enjoyed it.

I made two round sponges 10" across, then sandwiched them with strawberry jam and covered the whole thing in a thin layer of dairy-free buttercream icing. I then laid a ready rolled circle of icing on top and smoothed it down. I then used a print-out of George to transfer the image onto the icing. I did this by pushing a pin through to make a dotted outline (I did this for the other character cake, and it works pretty well as long as you cover all the holes with outline icing) and then used my icing paints to do the block colouring. I then made up icing in the colours that I needed for outlining and piped all the outlines.

It took a while, but I am very happy with the result.

Biscuit cakes

After trying out the "graham cracker and chocolate chip muffin" recipe recently, I decided I would try to adapt my basic cupcake recipe to incorporate digestive biscuit crumbs and chocolate chips. Whilst the muffins were delicious, I was advised by one of my critics (mum) that they were a bit heavy and didn't need the crumble on top. It was my birthday yesterday and a group of us were going to the park for the afternoon, I needed to take some cakes along as the batch of cupcakes my mum had made were not going to be enough for everyone. I gazed around the kitchen, looking for inspiration and noticed the last few digestive biscuits loitering around the fruit bowl, and decided they needed using up, today was their day to shine...

Ingredients

2.5 oz self raising flour
2 oz digestive biscuit crumbs
1/2 tsp baking powder
4 oz soya margarine
4 oz caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz dairy free "milk" chocolate chips
2 eggs

Method

Cream the margarine and sugar in a bowl.
Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Add 1 egg, vanilla and a tbsp of the dry mix to the wet mix and stir well.
Repeat with the other egg and more of the dry mix.
Add the rest of the dry mix and the chocolate chips and stir.

This mix made 18 small cupcakes, which cooked at 180c for 13 minutes. They were very light and moist, so I think another time I would add the biscuit crumbs as extra to the 4.5oz flour instead of substituting 2 oz of the flour with biscuit crumbs and baking powder. The flavour was great though, so worth trying again to get the texture right.

Marbled bunnies and cupcakes

Two children want to make cakes and inevitably both want to do everything themselves. I am fed up with saying who gets to crack the eggs or measure the sugar so I let them both make cake mix at the same time. Charlotte made chocolate cake mix and Emma made vanilla cake mix. I then swirled the two together and we made marbled cakes. All of us are happy and we get lots of lovely cakes to enjoy.

Charlotte made a mix using 4:4:4:2 ratio with 1 oz of cocoa powder added to it.
Emma made a 5:4:4:2 mix with 1 tsp vanilla extract added to it.

We swirled the two mixes together and dolloped the mix into the prepared bunny mould and some  cupcake cases. We cooked them at 180c until a skewer poked in came out clean - about 20 minutes for the bunnies and 15 minutes for the cupcakes.

Chicken and couscous "ready meal"

My sister had her second beautiful little girl last week and I went over to see her yesterday. I wanted to take a pre-made dinner to save them the hassle of cooking, as I know what it's like with a baby and toddler in the house! I had a lot of things to think of, it needed to be easy to finish off cooking, contain no onions or hot spices (she is breastfeeding and these don't seem to agree with new babies) and not need any ingredients that were not already in my fridge.

So, the answer came to me, chicken in a vegetable and tomato sauce with couscous.

Method

I skinned and chopped 3 large tomatoes and placed them in my big saute pan with a small tin of "chair de tomate", a splash of olive oil and 2 frozen cubes of garlic.
I simmered these together with about 150ml of chicken stock, black pepper and mild paprika.
I added 2 medium sized chopped carrots and half a bag of spinach and simmered until the sauce was quite thick.
In a frying pan I seared 2 chicken breasts and then placed them in a casserole dish and covered them with the tomato sauce. I then cooled it quickly in a bath of iced water and put it in the fridge.

I made up 200g couscous with chicken stock and 1 tbsp sunflower oil, then cooled this and put it in the fridge.

When I went over, I took the 2 dishes of food, all they had to do was microwave the couscous and cook the chicken for 30 minutes at 180c and they had a home cooked dinner. Easy.