Dark chocolate pecan pies

So it's almost Christmas and it's time to start making some seasonal food. Normally I don't bother with this stuff. I don't love or hate mince pies, but I don't think I'd make them for myself. So this year I decided to try and make a few variations on the traditional mince pie by making dark chocolate pecan pies and roast cranberry and apple pies. 


Here's how I made the pecan pies, which have been very well received by all who have eaten them so far. My mother thinks she could keep eating them til she gets diabetes. 


That's pretty high praise right?

Spelt pastry recipe

Yesterday I went to my friend Rioghnach's Christmas party. She's been so encouraging about my blog and we have a shared love of cooking and all things retro. So I tried to channel my inner Betty Crocker and planned to bring some tasty baked treats to her party.

My list of tasty treats included chocolate macaroons and my alternatives to the traditional mince pie, so mini jam pies, chocolate pecan pies and roast cranberry, apple and Cointreau pies. Sadly the macaroons as we speak are sitting in the bin. They looked perfectly cooked when they came out of the oven, so not suspecting a problem and feeling slightly stressed about how many things I had to do, I left them to cool and thought nothing more of it. Until I attempted to remove them from the greaseproof paper and they fell apart. They hadn't cooked in the centre and returning them to the oven did little to salvage the situation. Sigh. Baking failures make me very sad. 

Dark chocolate mousse

I've had a hankering for chocolate mousse for a few days now. I volunteer as a moderator with a mental health community website so I caved and whipped up a batch of dark chocolate mousse planning to reward myself after my shift with some chocolate yumminess. And it certainly was yummy!

The recipe I used is the Chocolate rum pots recipe from 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats. But with the cream and rum substituted with oat cream and Cointreau.

Just as a side note, this recipe does contain raw eggs. Also it contains alcohol that doesn't get cooked out, so be cautious about people driving a car soon after eating this, but you don't have to add the alcohol if you don't want to.

Vegetarian black pudding

The smell of black and white pudding cooking reminds me of being a little kid. It's a smell that triggers memories of visiting my grandparents in the West of Ireland. The other sure fire smell that reminds me of them is the smell of a turf fire. 


Before I went vegetarian I really enjoyed meat. I liked rare steaks, sausages, good bacon, chicken skin, smoked mackerel, tinned tuna...to name a few things. I also loved good pudding. To me, really good pudding isn't just mush in a skin. It's well seasoned and full of grains so there's something special about the texture too. 


So far I don't think I've seen vegetarian pudding for sale anywhere. I've heard of veggie hagiss, so there's bound to be someone out there making and selling black and white pudding. But nevermind, if you don't mind putting in the time, this recipe will make a yummy black pudding that you would swear was a proper blood pudding. 


I based the recipe around Darina Allen's recipe for traditional black pudding in her Forgotten Skills of Cooking book but put my own twist on it by using green lentils, pearly barley and red wine gravy. I am really really happy this recipe has worked out so well. Not only do they smell and taste like the real thing but the texture is pretty bang on too. 

Chocolate Orange Macaroons

A few years ago cupcakes became the "it" thing in confectionery.  I think macaroons are possibly replacing cupcakes as the new super trendy sweet treat. Normally I'm not one for being trendy, generally it actually puts me off things but I do have a sweet tooth and really enjoy macaroons. There's something wonderful about teaming of the soft meringuey biscuity base and top sandwiched together with a buttercream filling. The French truly have a gift for creating wondrously indulgent sweet things! I think that last statement is just one of those widely accepted facts of life. 

But one of the unfortunate results of things becoming trendy is that you can end up paying stupid prices for something you could just make yourself. Like €1.60 for ONE macaroon - sod that!

This is the first time I ever made macaroons, a French dinner themed pot luck last month proving to be the kick I needed to finally make them. As you can can see from the pictures, I made two types of macaroons, the green ones were elderflower flavoured but if I'm honest I'm not entirely happy with how they turned out, so I'll hold off on putting up a recipe for them until I've refined it more. 

As a final note, those who have problems with sugar, be warned these things are loaded with it!

Corn pasta with feta and spinach and tomato sauce

This is something myself and my mother thought up on a particularly bad day, so we both really wanted comfort food. I had a particular hankering for ready made spinach and ricotta cannelloni, which of course is bad for me with both wheat and cheese. So we concocted this really easy to make, delicious and rather guilt free alternative. Since the tomato sauce is home made using only 4 ingredients, it's suitable for people with sugar problems too since none is used to sweeten the sauce. 

Lentil stuffed sweet peppers

Based on 'A lentil stuffing for a cheap supper' recipe by Nick Slater in Tender, p 289.


Serves 4-6 people.


Ingredients:
200g green/brown lentils,
1 sweet pepper per person,
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 onion, chopped
6 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp sweet paprika,
2 tsps hot paprika,
Salt,
Pepper
Olive oil.


Preheat the oven to 180°C

Peach and flaked almond cake

I had some over ripe peaches and a hankering for cake so I decided to make some of Blazing Salad's fruit pies. But being me I didn't have a bunch of the ingredients I tweaked the recipe and now claim this one as my own! It's a lovely light and sweet cake. Perfect for the lovely summer weather I still wish we had. 

Coming soon...

Veggie jambalaya recipe

Wheat free enchiladas (completely from scratch)

A few months ago Gar cooked enchiladas for dinner using corn tortilla wraps and a really nice jar of garlic and tomato sauce. He also melted mozzarella over the top of them while they cooked in the oven. Needless to say they were very yummy. I've been holding off on cooking them myself at home because I haven't been able to find the corn tortillas in the shops where I live, even though I'm convinced they're one of the Old El Paso products. I made almond and garlic sauce to go with some pasta and quorn chicken earlier in the week and still had some left over sauce sitting in the fridge. I really wanted to see what the sauce would be like with enchiladas so I decided to try and improvise making wheat-free alternative for the tortilla wraps at home. The easiest thing I could think of to substitute them with was spelt flour pancakes. This may cause a raised eyebrow response. But honestly, they worked wonderfully. 

Blueberry and coconut flapjacks

Original recipe taken from What to Eat When You Can't Eat Anything, Honey Flapjacks with Lemon, page 133. 


Lately I've been getting some major cravings for sweet things. It's been years since I've had home-made flapjacks so I figured I'd make some from the What to Eat... cookbook since they seemed to be sweet treat that takes a lot less hassle to make than buns or cheesecake which I've also had a hankering for. Because honey is the sweetener it also means that Gar can eat them too and not feel worse for wear afterwards. Plus since oats are a slow release carb they make for a great snack which won't cause a sudden sugar come down.


I used cranberries in the batch, just to see how they'd turn out. They didn't last long so I had to make another batch within days and thought coconut and blueberries sounded like a good combination. The second batch didn't survive the weekend. 

Barbecued aubergine stacks

So it looks like summer has come early and there's a regular wiff of burning charcoal as people dust off their garden barbecues. While barbecues are mainly a meat eater affair with some corn on the cobb, baked potatoes and salads for the vegetarians. How dull. Myself and my mom really got into veggie barbecuing last year and so far, a piece of meat has yet to grace it's grill. One of my favourite things to cook on it, which is also super easy to make and very tasty to boot, are aubergine stacks. 

Stuffed aubergines

Testing out another recipe from my new Spanish cookbook and adapting it to make it veggie friendly and wheat-free. To make this recipe vegan friendly I'd suggest replacing the quorn mince with brown lentils or soya mince and replacing the egg with some olive oil to help everything bind. I'd also suggest that if you're not into sweet seasoning like myself, you might prefer to replace the cinnamon with something like paprika or basil.

Ingredients:   (serves 2)

1 large aubergine,

100g of quorn mince,

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tomato, chopped

1 red onion, chopped

1 egg

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon,

2 tbsp chopped parsly,

50g ground almonds.

Spelt Toad in the Hole

Hello everyone, Happy Pancake Tuesday! I decided to be my usual weird and different self and go the non-traditional pancake route today. Instead I made toad in the hole using the pancake recipe from 'What to Eat When You Can't Eat Anything', p39.

Ingredients: serves 3 people
5-6 veggie sausages, I used Quorn ones,


To make the batter
190g of spelt flour,
2 free range eggs,
375 ml of rice, oat, soya or goat's milk,
2 tbsp bio-live or organic yoghurt.


Heat oven to 220°C


Measure the flour out into a bowl. Make a well in the centre, crack in the eggs and gently mix together. Whisk in the yoghurt followed by the soya milk, until a smooth batter has formed. If you can the original recipe recommends that you leave the batter to stand for half an hour before you use it. During this time I heated the oven and a deep dish in which I cooked the toad in the hole with some vegetable oil in it. When I was sure that the oil was hot (do not touch it to check!!) I added the Quorn sausages and put the container back in the oven. I let them cook until they had begun to turn golden brown, checking regularly to turn them in the oil. 

The sourdough experiment, trial 1

So the past few days have been a baking experiment for me. Well ok, mainly the preparation for a baking experiment. You see I'm trying to make my own home-made spelt bread, since the one in the shops that I can eat is close to a fiver to buy. So why is it taking days of preparation you may wonder. I'm attempting to make it using a sour dough starter, which requires cultivating a natural bacteria culture in flour by regularly feeding it and keeping it in a warm place like a hotpress (aka airing cupboard). The starter allows you to make a nice soft hopefully doughy bread loaf without having to add yeast. 


The tricky part is what is the best way to make a sourdough starter? We have 4 or 5 different recipes all of of which differ, not only in how long they leave the starter to develop, what it's made with and subsequently fed, when it's ready to use, how much of the starter to use in the sourdough loaf and how to continue looking after it. How confusing! You'd think it'd be like a sponge or a basic biscuit recipe which is pretty much the same all the time. So as it's my first time making one of these I went for the simplest of the recipes, one of the back of a Dove's farm spelt flour bag which only uses spelt flour and water to make the starter and the final loaf. 

Sourdough on day 1

Revised sweet treats for my valentine

This will be my second Valentine's day with Gar and I've been giving some thought to some yummy treats for us to enjoy that are still within the limits of our combined dietary restrictions. Ideally I'd like to make cupcakes. They're so versatile in flavor, decorated to look so pretty and of course the icing is delicious, whether it's just plain butter cream or something more exotic. But they are of course riddled with all three things we shouldn't eat; wheat, dairy and sugar. It's pretty easy get daunted by this and think our only option really is some cardboard probably with a slice of fruit on it. I have genuinely been giving it some thought though and I think I have a very delicious alternative to cupcakes worked out, icing and all. 


So here's my alternative. Double chocolate brownie cupcakes with red currents, using the chocolate brownie recipe on p131 in The Blazing Salads Cookbook topped with a variation of my diabetic trufffle recipe to make the icing. :) Sounds good huh?!


Makes 16-20 buns


Ingredients:
170g butter, dairy free that's suitable for baking if you can find it
3 free range eggs,
200g natural honey,
1/2 tsp natural vanilla essence,
80g oatflour,
80g Green & Black's cocoa powder,
1 heaped tsp of baking powder,
soy milk,
150g red currents.

Dark chocolate cookies

Adapted from: 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats recipe for Midnight Cookies, p 82.


Makes about 2 dozen


Ingredients:
125g softened butter
175g caster sugar
1 egg,
1 tsp vanilla essence,
125g wholegrain spelt flour,
35g cocoa powder,
1 tsp bicarbonate soda,
2 tbsp orange juice (this gives the cookies some extra moisture but is not a must if you don't have it!)