Vegan MoFo Day 7 - Sweet Saturdays - Raspberry yoghurt cake

There was a time in my life when the majority of the cookbooks I owned were a selection of Woman's Weekly cookbooks, which had been impulse purchases during shopping trips to the supermarket. In the midst of a clean out a few years back I gave all but one of these cookbooks away to charity as the pile was so large and I hadn't been using them for ages anyway. I held onto one for nostalgic reasons as it contained a recipe for a lentil cottage pie which was the first vegetarian meal I ever cooked for my family.

When Jes from Eating Appalachia posted about a lemon blueberry yoghurt cake this week, I had an instant flashback to a raspberry yoghurt cake my husband used to bake years ago. I knew that this recipe came from one of those Woman's Weekly cookbooks and immediately went searching for the one I had retained to see if the cake we used to love was in this book. After I scanned the index and found the raspberry yoghurt cake my other baking plans for Sweet Saturdays were put on hold as I was compelled to veganise this cake that used to be such a household favourite.

It was never a complicated cake to put together and this vegan version also proved to be pretty straight forward. The cake can be made with whatever berries you have kicking around in freezer, at times we used to make it with a mixture of berries or blueberries. It's a lovely moist cake and not overly sweet which is a good thing in my book. When it comes to sweet treats I've been making slices mores than anything recently but now that this recipe has been rediscovered I'm sure it will be appearing often at home.

Raspberry yoghurt cake with cream cheese frosting (Adapted from Woman's Weekly Low-fat food for life) 

½ cup (125g) dairy-free margarine

¾ cup (165g) firmly packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons ground flaxseed

6 tablespoons water

1¼ cups (200g) self-raising flour

½ cup (140g) soy (or other non-dairy) yoghurt

100g frozen raspberries

Cream-cheese frosting

60g tofutti cream cheese

20 g soy yoghurt

½ cup (55g) icing sugar

1 teaspoon lemon or lime juice

Preheat over to 180C. Grease a 14 x 21cm loaf pan and line it with baking paper.

Beat the margarine and sugar together with a hand held mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Stir the ground flaxseeds with the water in a small bowl and pour this into the bowl containing the butter and sugar mixture. Beat until just combined.

Using a wooden spoon, stir through the flour, yoghurt and raspberries until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined. Spread the mixture into the loaf pan.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour. Test for readiness with a skewer after this time, if it comes out clean the cake is ready. If not, bake for an extra 5-10 minutes.

Allow the cake to stand in the tin for 10 minutes then turn it out onto a wire rack and allow it to cool down before icing.

Whisk together the tofutti cream cheese, soy yoghurt, icing sugar and lemon/lime juice and spread over the cake.

As the icing contains tofutti cream cheese I prefer to store the cake in the refrigerator.

Vegan MoFo - Aussie Stopover - Jelly Cakes

When I was planning my round the world theme for the month I thought it would be a good idea to finish off with a recipe from Australia. It was tempting to make an Aussie classic like a vegan meat pie or lamingtons yet I've had a childhood recipe in mind to try for some time. Although jelly cakes may not be the most well known recipe, they were my mum's speciality when I was growing up and would always be present at parties and school fundraising fetes. Friends would pre-order them before she arrived at the cake stall and the remaining cakes would sell out very quickly. Jelly cakes are similar to lamingtons but the small patty cakes are dunked into a wobbly half-set jelly rather than chocolate icing prior to being rolled in coconut.

Patty cakes were common when I was growing up which are a much smaller version of a cupcake. We never had anything larger than patty cakes in those days and their miniature size meant that you could eat two or three in a sitting. I found a jelly cake recipe on taste.com.au which used patty cakes and made a few vegan substitutions to the cake batter. This recipe called for self-raising flour which I was out of, although a quick search showed that plain flour, cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda could be used in it's place.

A packet of vegan jelly crystals had been sitting in my pantry for months which I bought for the sole purpose of making this recipe. The trickiest part to making jelly cakes is getting the consistency of the jelly perfect for dunking. If it's too runny the jelly won't adhere to the cake, if it's too firm the cakes are likely to break up during the dunking. My cakes turned out a lighter colour than I expected and I'm not sure whether this was due to a slightly runny jelly or just a different product. The jelly that mum used to buy was probably full of artificial colourings as it was a lot darker than the vegan jelly.

I've heard many people rave about coconut whipped cream which I tried recently and thought it tasted overwhelmingly like coconut so I used cashews to make cream for the filling. After soaking and rinsing the cashews, they were blended with water, maple syrup and some vanilla essence. I prefer this type of cream as it has a more neutral taste and even though it's runnier, a quick spell in the refrigerator firms it up a little.

I was pleased with how the jelly cakes turned out and they have been popular with my fellows at home. Revisiting recipes from childhood is always an enjoyable experience, especially when the vegan recipes work out tasting just as good as the original.


Jelly Cakes (Adapted from taste.com.au)
Makes 18 cakes

1 packet raspberry or strawberry vegan jelly crystals
60g dairy-free margarine
½ cup raw castor sugar
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons water
¼ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour (or use self-raising and skip the next 2 ingredients)
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2/3 cup soy milk (or other non-dairy)
1 cup cashews (soaked in hot water for an hour)
½ cup water
1 tablespoon maple syrup (or to taste)
¼ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup desiccated coconut

Preheat oven to 180C.

Prepare jelly according to package directions and place in the refrigerator for 1 hour. The jelly should be set enough to be able to coat the cakes with jelly but not too firm otherwise the cakes will fall apart.

Cream the butter and sugar together using a hand held mixer. Add the flaxseed mixture and vanilla essence and beat until combined. Fold the flour, cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda and soy milk through the mixture with a metal spoon.

Place patty pan cake wrappers in a muffin tray. Add a heaped tablespoon of cake batter to each of of the cake wrappers, they should be about half full. Bake for 20 minutes in the oven until an inserted skewer comes out clean and the cakes are golden on top. Remove the cakes from the tray and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Drain the soaked cashews and rise well with cold water. Place the cashews in a blender with 1/2 cup of water, maple syrup and vanilla essence and process until it becomes smooth and creamy. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to allow it to thicken up a little.

Remove the cake wrappers from the cakes. Submerge each of the cakes into the jelly then drain off the excess jelly and roll them in coconut. Cut 3/4 of the way through the centre of the cakes and place a teaspoon or two of cashew cream inside.

Gluten free polenta cake for potluck

Gluten free baking is something I've been meaning to try for ages. Unfamiliar cooking styles like this can seem rather daunting at first and failures in the kitchen are never fun which is probably why I had put it off for so long. A vegan, gluten free potluck to celebrate the 3rd birthday of Planet VeGMeL was exactly the motivation I needed to delve into the world of gluten free baking (Planet VeGMeL is a site containing an aggregated feed of 57 Melbourne based veg*n bloggers which my blog has proudly been a part of since it's inception).

Last year I mistakenly included miso in what I thought were going to be gluten free tofu quiches for the potluck so I was extra careful to check every single ingredient that went into this cake. I was also mindful to ensure my cake tin was free of traces of crumbs from previous baking. Bryanna Clark Grogan's semolina cake has been enjoyed by us a few times now so I decided to attempt a gluten free version of this for the potluck.

After spending time looking up substitutes on gluten free baking sites, fine polenta appeared to be the best replacement for semolina. There were many options as a cake/pastry flour alternative and as I had an unopened packet of a gluten free flour mix in the pantry I decided to give this a shot. This cake took 5 minutes longer to bake than the semolina version and came out with a few cracks on top which wasn't necessarily a bad thing as it provided extra areas for the syrup to drizzle into.

As a initial gluten free baking experience it wasn't a bad effort yet I wasn't entirely impressed as I preferred the original version so much more. Having said that, I'm not the biggest fan of polenta and didn't really appreciate the texture. Regardless of how I felt about the cake, it was lovely to catch up with other bloggers again and share some delicious food. If you haven't done so already, check out the fantastic zine which a few bloggers contributed to and Danni did a wonderful job of editing. Happy birthday Planet VeGMeL and here's to many more!


Gluten free polenta cake with lemon syrup (Adapted from World Vegan Feast)

¾ cup raw sugar
¾ cup water
grated zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
1½ cups fine polenta
½ cup gluten free flour mix
1 teaspoon turmeric
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups raw sugar
1 cup soy milk
zest of 1 lemon
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup pistachios, chopped roughly

Place the sugar, water and lemon zest in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir through the lemon juice thoroughly, then pour the contents into a jug and refrigerate until required.

Preheat oven to 180C.

Line a 23cm round cake tin with baking paper and grease lightly with dairy free margarine or spray lightly with olive oil. Combine the gluten free flour, polenta, turmeric, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. With a hand held mixer, beat together the soy milk, sugar and lemon zest in a large bowl until the sugar has dissolved. Add the dry ingredients as well as the oil and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. Pour the batter into the cake tin and sprinkle the chopped pistachios on top. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then remove carefully from the tin. Using a bamboo skewer, pierce small holes all over the top of the cake then pour approximately half of the cooled lemon syrup on top. The remainder of the syrup can be refrigerated in a sealed container for later use.

Soup, casserole, cake and a new family member

Life has been a little crazy over the past couple of weeks which means that blogging has taken a backseat. There are so many posts I would love to be writing as I've been cooking up plenty of interesting meals, unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day so I haven't had the time to follow most of them up with a blog post.

Our time has largely been devoted to our new family member Ollie. Long time readers of my blog may remember the heartache we experienced last year with our dog Jasper after he was diagnosed with a bone cancer. Jasper successfully went through a hind leg amputation and lived an active and happy 6 months before deteriorating rapidly when the cancer spread to his lungs. It was a devastating experience and has taken almost a year for us to feel ready to accept another dog into our home.

We went through a lengthy period of attempting to adopt a dog via various rescue organisations. After a lot of waiting, red tape and many close calls we ended up finding an older puppy outside of these organisations that was in just as much need, if not more, of a good caring home. A group of young international students had purchased a border collie puppy from a breeder obviously without having any knowledge of dogs or this particular breed of working dog. The pup had been confined to the inside of their house for 5 months, was never walked, trained or even desexed and had developed into a bundle of frenetic energy that just wanted to jump all over people. They were so desperate to get rid of the problem they had unknowingly created and didn't even bother to say goodbye when we took him off their hands!

In just over a week with us Ollie has learnt to stop jumping on people (most of the time), walk on the lead, sit, stay, drop and go to his bed. He is a sweet pup that is very eager to please but there are still a lot of areas where he needs work, including learning not to chase our dear old cat Monty! It has been an exhausting period as he can be the equivalent of a badly behaved toddler at times although it is wonderful to have a canine companion around the house again.

A couple of weekends ago I pulled up some more borage plants to make soup. This dark green soup was very basic and adapted from an old celtic recipe which we initially enjoyed and likened the flavour of the borage to spinach. Unfortunately the leftovers didn't fare as well! The following day the soup was very thick and set like jelly. It thinned out a little after it was reheated although the flavour wasn't as nice as it had been on the first day. The man thought that it tasted like egg yolk and although we did finish our bowls I'm not sure that I would use borage this way again.

The other night I baked a tortilla casserole to use up some very old corn tortillas that had been in the fridge for ages. I made the tortilla casserole from Viva Vegan a while ago and didn't have the right ingredients for it this time so I created my own version. Rather than topping it with a creamy nut/tofu based sauce, I crumbled some plain corn chips followed by grated cheezly. The sauce that was spread within the tortillas included pinto beans, corn kernels and diced mushrooms. I love the concept of a tortilla casserole as it's like a Mexican styled lasagne, this recipe is simple and versatile as it could be changed up to suit whatever vegetables or beans happen to be on hand. This meal was fantastic and just as tasty as I recall the one in Viva Vegan, it's definitely something I'll be repeating again as it was a hit with all of us.

A recent acquisition to my ever growing pile of cookbooks is World Vegan Feast by Bryanna Clark Grogan. I wrote about Bryanna's delicious tofu "fish" fingers recently which is a recipe that is posted on her blog. I have made a handful of recipes from World Vegan Feast recently and they have all been fantastic. I had been eyeing off a recipe for a lebanese semolina cake with lemon syrup from the book and ended up making it with limes as my mother in law gave me heaps from her tree. The semolina cake which is also known as sfoof was supposed to be topped with slivered almonds and as there were none in the house I used some chopped pistachios instead. This cake had a nice tangy flavour from the syrup, a different texture from the semolina and it was so lovely and moist. The syrup is supposed to keep the cake fresher for a longer period. I'm not sure we will be able to test that theory as I have a feeling that it won't last long around here.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back into more regular blogging soon, for the time being I'll leave you with these three recipes.

Borage soup (Adapted from a recipe on celtnet)

2 tablespoons dairy free margarine
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup basmati rice
4 cups vegan chicken stock (I used Massel stock powder)
450g borage leaves, washed thoroughly
½ cup cashews
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
Salt and pepper, to taste
Garnish borage flowers

Melt the margarine in a stockpot over medium heat and fry the onion and garlic for 5 minutes or until softened. Add the rice and stir thoroughly so that all of the grains are coated. Pour in the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Stir through the borage leaves and allow to cook for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the cashews, water, lemon juice and salt in a blender and process until a smooth paste results. Stop the blender and scraping down the sides a few times if necessary. Transfer the contents to a bowl and refrigerate. Rinse out the blender with warm water.

When the borage has cooked for 20 minutes, transfer the contents of the pot to the blender and process in batches until it is completely smooth. Return the blended soup to the stockpot and reheat gently. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve the soup ladled into bowl with a dollop of the cashew cream, garnished with borage flowers.


Tortilla casserole (Inspired by Viva Vegan)

1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
150 g mushrooms, diced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 heaped teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 x 400g tin pinto beans, drained and rinsed
400g fresh tomatoes, chopped (or use a tin)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
½ cup water
½ teaspoon smoked salt (or use regular)
6 small corn tortillas (15cm diameter), cut into halves
Large handful of plain corn chips
100g cheezly, grated
Serve with cashew cream, guacamole and salsa picante

Preheat oven to 180C.

Heat the oil in a deep sided frying pan over medium heat, add the onion and fry for about 5 minutes or until soft. Stir through the garlic for a minute, then add the mushrooms and cook until softened. Add the cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and smoked paprika and stir until fragrant then add the corn kernels, pinto beans, tomatoes, tomato paste, water and smoked salt. Allow to cook for 10 minutes.

Spread a thin layer of the sauce in the bottom of a 20cm x 20cm baking dish and layer a couple of tortillas on top. Repeat the layering another 2 times finishing with the sauce on top. Crumble a large handful of corn chips on top followed by grated cheezly. Cover with foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes then remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes. Serve with cashew cream, guacamole and salsa picante.


Sfoof - Lebanese semolina cake with lime syrup (Adapted from World Vegan Feast)

¾ cup raw sugar
¾ cup water
grated zest of 1 lime
juice of 4 limes (about 2/3 cup)
½ cup pastry flour (low gluten)
1½ cups fine semolina
1 teaspoon turmeric
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups raw sugar
1 cup soy milk
zest of 1 lime
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup pistachios, chopped roughly

Place the sugar, water and lime zest in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir through the lime juice thoroughly, then pour the contents into a jug and refrigerate until required.

Preheat oven to 180C.

Line a 23cm round cake tin with baking paper and grease lightly with dairy free margarine. Combine the pastry flour, semolina, turmeric, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. With a hand held mixer, beat together the soy milk, sugar and lime zest in a large bowl until the sugar has dissolved. Add the contents of the small bowl and the oil and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. Pour the batter into the cake tin and sprinkle the chopped pistachios on top. Bake for 35 minutes on until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Cool the cake for 10 minutes, then remove carefully from the tin. Using a bamboo skewer, pierce small holes all over the top of the cake then pour the cooled lime syrup on top.

Lemon poppy seed cake

This may look like just another cake, to me it's a lot more than that! I'm fairly certain that this would have to be one of the best cakes I have ever baked, vegan or otherwise. It ticked all of the right boxes - light, moist, lovely flavour without being too sickly sweet and it was very simple to bake. The only box it didn't tick is that it's not exactly healthy which doesn't bother me as life is too short to worry about eating the right things all of the time.

Over the past month or so, our lemon tree has been taunting me. From a distance it appears there are plenty of fruit ready to be picked. When I'm about to rip some off ready for baking I discover green patches on the base or one side of the fruit and have to resort to the lemons from the grocers. So I have continued to wait patiently, planning many more recipes to make than I possibly could with my limited supply of fruit. It's only the first season the tree has been in the ground and with over 30 lemons this year, I'm optimistic for an even bigger crop next year.

Right up on the top of my list to make was a lemon poppy seed cake. I was planning to adapt it from an orange poppy seed cake recipe that my mother in law had given me years ago but I couldn't track down the recipe. A quick search led me to a lemon poppy seed cake on taste.com.au that needed a few vegan substitutions to be made. A further replacement had to be made for the self raising flour when I found a few nasty weevils lurking within my packet. Using plain flour plus baking powder for the self raising flour, nuttelex for the butter, soy milk for cow's milk, a bit of extra lemon juice and egg replacers I was delighted with how light and moist the cake turned out.

An interesting point to note from the recipe was that the poppy seeds were required to be soaked in warmed soy milk for 15 minutes initially. There was no explanation for this on taste.com.au so I did some further research and found that it was to soften the seeds and prevent them from drawing moisture out of the cake whilst baking. I'll never know if this made a difference as I don't think I'll make it any other way now!


Lemon poppy seed cake (Adapted from a recipe on taste.com.au)

50g poppyseeds
3/4 cup warm soy milk
1 cup raw castor sugar
2 cups plain flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
3 egg replacers (I used 3 teaspoons Orgran whisked with 6 tablespoons water)
185g dairy-free margarine, softened
zest of 1 lemon plus 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Icing

1 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon dairy-free margarine
2 tablespoons (or a bit more) lemon juice

Mix the poppy seeds into a jug containing the warmed soy milk and allow to soak for 15 minutes.


Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 23cm x 10cm loaf tin with baking paper.


In a large bowl, place the castor sugar, plain flour, baking powder, egg replacers, dairy-free margarine, lemon zest, lemon juice and soy milk/poppy seed mixture. Beat with electric hand beaters until all ingredients are thoroughly combined. Pour the mixture into the lined tin and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

Meanwhile, mix the icing sugar together with a teaspoon of dairy-free margarine and slowly drizzle in the lemon juice, stirring all the time. If the icing becomes too runny, stir through some more icing sugar. When the cake has completely cooled down, spread the icing on top of the cake then refrigerate for 5 minutes to allow the icing to set.