Gluten Free Vegan Carrot Cake

Jess and Tom here!

We were craving carrot cake, but struggling to find a gluten free vegan recipe for one that didn't require a long list of weird ingredients we didn't have to hand, we decided to wing it and make it up using the contents of Jess' cupboard. And it worked. It worked so well we ate most of it in one night. Now, as happens quite often in our joint kitchen ventures, the exact method and quantities got blurred a little by wine (now Jess is eating clean this should happen less now!). But anyway, these ingredients make a large, gluten free, vegan carrot cake. 

1 cup ground almonds
1 cup plain gluten free flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cider vinegar
2 carrots, grated
1 apple, grated
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
3 tbsp brown/demerara sugar
3 tbsp agave syrup
1/2 cup raisins/nuts (optional)
1-2 tbsp dairy free milk
2 bananas, mashed
1 orange, juiced and zested

I think the general gist of the method is to combine the dry ingredients, then the wet ingredients, then add them together. The mashed bananas, juiced orange and grated apple and carrots add plenty of moisture so no additional fat is needed.  Then, once this incredible smelling cake had come out of the oven, we decided it was too good not to be iced. So we made our own orange-almond frosting up:

1 cup icing sugar (probably more like 2 or 3 cups, we just kept adding til the consistency was right)
1 orange, juiced and zested
2 tsp almond butter
2 tsp dairy free butter/spread
1 tsp vanilla essence

Add orange juice and zest to the icing sugar and mix, adding the vanilla essence along the way. Then add the butters and beat them in until you have a glossy frosting. Add more icing sugar as required until you have the right consistency.

Please do let us know if you know of a better way to spend an evening than eating carrot cake, drinking red wine and watching Girls?

Anyway, sorry this isn't the most useful recipe in the world. But do give it a try and let us know if you come up with something as amazing as we did!

Garbanzo Banana Muffins (with Cherry Jam Centres)

Tom today,

Okay so after having made my housemate the most ridiculously non-vegan, wheat-filled black forest gateau for his birthday, I decided I needed something sweet for myself to have for the party (I'm only so strong when comes to cake). I found gram (garbanzo or chickpea) flour in Sainsbury's a couple of days before and had been meaning to try out a recipe with them. For once, the internet was totally unhelpful so I decided to just wing it and see how they came out. Surprisingly they were an absolute hit and every single muffin (except for the one I hid in my cupboard for breakfast) was eaten! There's quite a lot of ingredients in these, and someone who know's more what they're doing couple probably cut them down a bit, but I was just adding a bit of this and that to experiment and get the right consistency. After I've had a bit more experience of gluten free baking I will probably come back and edit this. Anyway, for now, here are chickpea muffins with black cherry jam centres - yes, this is 100% necessary, trust me, you don't want to miss out.

Incidentally, no one guessed what they were made from!

Ingredients: makes 10 small muffins

1/2 cup Gram Flour (or chickpea or garbanzo beans - these things have too many names)
1/2 cup Gluten Free Self Raising Flour (I use Doves Farm)
1/2 cup Oats
1/2 cup of Soft Brown Sugar
3 tsp Soya Protein Powder (or substitute 1 tbsp Cornflour)
2 tsp Cinnamon
1/8 tsp Cloves
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
3 tbsp Soya Butter
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
2 ripe Bananas
1/4 cup Raisins
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Distilled Vinegar
1/2 cup Almond Milk (or any other dairy free alternative)
10 tsp Black Cherry Jam

The vinegar here probably seems a bit weird, don't worry you won't taste it at all. Quite a few vegan recipes use extra baking powder to give cakes a lightness that eggs would normally give them, but to make sure you can't taste the baking powder, you have to add a bit of vinegar to neutralise it (I've tried it without - it's really really gross - still managed to get all of my friends to try them though, endlessly funny!). As this is gluten free as well I thought it would be a good idea to try this. If you have a soya allergy substituting the butter for oil will work fine, but again the cakes may be a bit denser - maybe sunflower spread would work. Also DON'T TRY THE MIXTURE! It tastes all beany and horrible from the chickpea flour - as is often the case with gluten free recipes - don't worry though, it tastes good once it's cooked.

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius
Combine all the dry ingredients (except the baking powder and sugar) in a sieve and sift into a mixing bowl
Add the sugar (do make sure to break up any lumps beforehand though - much easier)
Rub in the butter (I only used a spoon to do this roughly)
Mix in the oil
Mash the bananas, and mix in along with the raisins
Add the baking powder and vinegar and mix thoroughly
Mix in the milk bit by bit until the muffins are a thick consistency - you may not need all of this
Grease and line your muffin tin with cases (or I used squares of greaseproof paper, I just think it looks nice!)
Fill the muffin cases to just over half way
Add a generous teaspoon of jam
Top up the muffin cases to full (I like mine to rise over the top of the case - use less if you want them more like cupcakes)
Bake for 20 minutes - until a knife comes out clean (except for the jam...)
Cool on a wire rack

Once they were cooled I drizzled them with a bit of lemon icing for a nice effect (just combine half a lemon with 3 tbsp icing sugar in a mug and then drizzle over using a spoon). This recipe is easy enough to adapt to other flavours if you prefer. Anyone who comes up with a peanut butter themed recipe will win...everything. Ever. As always, let us know any suggestions you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com

Gluten-Free (and vegan) Protein Pancakes

Tom here,

So in the spirit of me being gluten free for lent I've decided to try and actually cook something (rather than just staying away from all things that remind me of bread as I have done so far). Had an interesting experiment making rice flour chapattis a couple of nights ago, but these need a bit more tweaking so I will make those again before I blog them. This is just a very simple pancake recipe which worked well, based on the general banana pancakes recipe I've blogged before (http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/vegan-banana-and-peanut-butter-pancakes.html) but made with rice flour instead. This might seem like a speciality ingredient (and I guess it is, but hey, I'm trying to make this gluten free and vegan, give me SOME slack!) but I found a bag in the local greengrocers, and most asian food stores (like Worldwide on oxford road) will sell this, probably in economy sized bags. In our quest to make everything high protein and low carb I've added protein powder to these (mostly to see if it worked) and some flaxmeal, but these can be omitted as they are both expensive and not to everyone's taste - but I would reduce the milk slightly if you're cutting this out). All in all, they made pancakes, so I'm happy.

Ingredients (serves one):

1/3 Banana
2 tbsp Rice Flour (more heaped ones)
1 tbsp Cornflour (quite flat)
1 tsp Soya Protein (or whatever the recommended serving of your powder is)
1 tsp Flaxmeal (we've been using the Linwoods one with goji berries and pumpkin seeds and everything else wonderful in it)
2/3 cup Milk (I use unsweetened almond milk)

Method:

As before, I like to make this is just a mug, so really I add the ingredients and then fill it up to about 3/4 full with milk, but I think this is about the right amount
Blend with a hand blender until smooth (alternatively you can make it in a blender or smoothie maker, or simply mash the banana and whisk together, but all of these things seem like a lot of effort compared to my trusty hand blender!)
Heat up some oil in a non-stick pan (I used about a teaspoon of coconut - not least because anything fried in coconut oil smells amazing)
Place tablespoon sized(ish) dollops of mixture around the pan and brown on either side - don't try and flip them until you are absolutely positive they are about to burn, every time I tried before this they weren't cooked yet and they just flopped everywhere - the first time I made this recipe I ended up just squishing it all into one giant pancake - not so pretty but tasted good!
Plate up with a big portion of fruit and cover with cinnamon (yes, this is necessary)
Enjoy!

These might all seems like speciality ingredients, but once you've bought them and they're in your cupboard, (like me) you'll probably find yourself putting them into everything and experimenting so trust me they're all worth buying if you're trying to be gluten free or vegan. Let us know any flavour tweaks you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com

Vegan Pancake Day

Tom here,

Sadly me and Jess didn't see each other this pancake day, however we make pancakes an average of once a week anyway so it's probably a good thing...however I spent the day in Lancaster with my friend Phoebe and we made some pretty epic hangover pancakes. So here they are

Cinna-blue-bana-maca-choco Pancakes

There is absolutely nothing healthy about these pancakes so don't ask me to work out the nutritional information. Please. I don't want too.

Ingredients: (makes 5 heeeeeeeefty pancakes - plenty for two, even with hangover munchies)

500 ml Soya Milk
2 Bananas
6 oz Self Raising Flour
1 large pinch Sea Salt
150g Macademia Nuts
1.5 cups Blueberries
1 tbsp Cinnamon
1 bar Dark Chocolate (we used Divine)

Topping: all of the fruits and some golden syrups, or phoebe had peanut butter and jam on one (it did look epic to be fair), mix and match as you like!

Method:
Blend the milk, banana, flour and cinnamon together using a kenwood, magimix or hand blender or any other brand of food processor, or if you don't have one of these mash the bananas with a fork and then beat everything together
Stir in the rest of the ingredients except for the dark chocolate (crush the Macademia nuts if they are whole using a tea towel and rolling pin)
Heat some oil in a frying pan to the low end of medium heat (these pancakes with be thick so they need to cool through before they burn)
Pour a good pancakes worth into the frying pan and let it spread out
Break the chocolate into pieces and dot over the pancake (we found three or four was a good ratio)
Wait until cooked about a centimetre from the edge, then flip (if you can do this without a spatula I will be very impressed) and cook on the other side
Slather in fruit, cream, syrup, Nutella, dark chocolate spread (a personal favourite of mine), sugar, more cinnamon, whatever you want
Enjoy. We certainly did.

Update - Apple Fudge Brownies

Tom here,

Okay so after a hard(ish) mornings revision and a run in the rain I decided I had all the motivation I needed to get creative in the kitchen and...well I won't say it was exactly the success I was hoping for, but it kinda worked. I may have another try and tweak this later. I tried to keep this as low calorie as possible which may not have worked all that well, I may tweak this again later with another attempt. My logic with this recipe was to try to create a sort of fudge syrup (which has worked before) to give the cake a toffee-fudgy flavour in the background. This turned into more of a porridge, but was still ridiculously tasty so that worked out. My brownies were lacking in some vanilla as I ran out, which really made a difference. Definitely make sure to get some nice vanilla flavour in this (whether paste or extract) as it really makes a difference. Overall, not a complete success but a tasty brownie nonetheless which I will perfect at a later date (when exams aren't looming over my shoulder!)

Ingredients:

3 cups cooked Black Beans
1/2 cup Cocoa
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Oats (if gluten free use certified oats)
1/2 cup Dates
1/4 cup Raisins
1/2 cup Hazelnuts
4 tsp Cinnamon
2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
Pinch of Salt
1 ripe Banana
1 Apple
1/4 cup Soy Milk

This recipe requires a food processor, it might work with a hand blender (as the other ones did) but having a food processor makes life worth living so if you have one, crack it out! Also I made the mistake of adding cloves to mine to try and compensate for the vanilla. This does not work. Mine just taste like clove now. Very disappointing.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
First to make the fudge syrup, put the dates and raisins in a cup and cover with boiling water and leave until cool (around 15 minutes)
Next, put the oats in the food processor and blend until pretty small (like 30 seconds). No need to wash out the bowl as we're going to use it again in a minute but tip the oats into another cup and cover with about a centimetre of cold water and leave until the dates and raisins are cooled.
Once this has happened, blend the dates and raisins into a syrup using a hand blender.
Place this along with the soaked oats and sugar in a small saucepan and heat until the sugar is fully dissolved
Cut up the apple and banana and pulse in the food processor until roughly chopped.
Add the beans, cinnamon, vanilla, soy milk, salt and fudge syrup and blend until smooth(ish)
Bash the hazelnuts in a pestle and mortar until broken down
Add these to the food processor and pulse until mixed (don't blend unless you don't like chunks of nut)
Pour into 2 greased baking tins and bake in the oven for half an hour(ish) until a knife comes out clean when inserted into the centre
Cut each tin into eight and enjoy!

Nutritional Information: (calculated using myfitnesspal.com)



                       Calories   Carbs     Fat     Protein     Sodium     Sugar
           Total:      2578      444       68         72           2398       269
 Per Serving:         161        28        4           5            150         17

Update - Cherry Bakewell Monkey Bars

Quick one today!

Tom and I decided that as the dark chocolate and cranberry monkey bars we made were so good, it was definitely time to make them again with a variation. So I had the ingenious plan of making cherry bakewell monkey bars. And they were good - so good they deserved their own blog post.

The ingredients are pretty similar, but obviously a few changes
2 cups rolled or jumbo oats (gluten free if needed)
1/2 cup flaked almonds
1/4 cup milled flaxseed
1/4 cup oat bran
2tbsp maple syrup
2tbsp golden syrup (you can use 4 tbsp of one of these but we decided to try a bit of both)
1/2 cup almond butter
1/4 cup honey
1 large banana, very ripe and mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon almond flavouring
 1/2 teaspoon salt
Glace cherries, halved
Morello cherry jam
Icing sugar and hazelnut milk (didn't measure, but make sure it's quite thick - the icing can look quite...unfortunate if it's too thin!)


So, as before ( http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/monkey-bars.html ) , mix the oats, almonds, flax and oat bran with the syrup and toast this mixture for 10 minutes. Mash the banana and place in a saucepan with the honey and almond butter and melt until you have a runny mixture. Add the vanilla and almond flavouring and the salt to this mixture, then add the two mixtures together. No need to wait for this one to cool down as it doesn't use chocolate so there's no risk of anything melting. However, this time, only put half of the mixture in the dish you are baking it in. Flatten this mixture out so it is a smooth covering for the bottom of the dish, then add a generous layer of morello cherry jam on top. Then layer the other half of the mixture on top and bake for 25 minutes, until golden. Then, add the halved glace cherries on top, and drizzle the icing over the top.

This makes more of a dessert than the original recipe - a bit more of a treat with the icing but it's a really good variation. The flaked almonds give it a lighter texture than the cashews did in the original, and the almond butter goes really nicely with the cherry jam. Morello cherry jam is amazing. I cannot stress to you how important it is to have a jar in your life. It also goes really well on a salted rice cake with a bit of almond butter (not that me and Tom were trying this whilst making these...).

These are becoming a bit of a favourite for us so we will let you know of more variations - and let us know what you try too!

Press the first layer down well so the jam stays on top!

We served ours with pomegranate. Don't ask why, it just worked...

Dark Chocolate and Cranberry Monkey Bars

Group effort today!

We will readily admit we got the idea (and the basic recipe) for this from makeitnaked.com. This blog is fantastic for gluten free recipes and we will sure be trying (and varying) many more of their recipes too. But this is the first one we did. Monkey bars are basically a peanutty cashewy chocolatey bananaey cranberry-y mapley syrupy granola bar. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? Well it is. If you can make these without eating half the mixture before it's made, hats off to you. This recipe is incredible. It's high in protein, so a great one for the gym-goers, and because it's high in energy it works well as a mid afternoon snack to stop you craving a sugar rush (OK, so it's kind of a sugar rush in itself, but it contains healthy stuff too like flax and nuts so it's OK, right?). And you can change it up however you like. This is what we did though...

Ingredients:
2 cups rolled or jumbo oats (gluten free if needed)
1/2 cup cashews
1/4 cup milled flaxseed
1/4 cup oat bran
2tbsp maple syrup
2tbsp golden syrup (you can use 4 tbsp of one of these but we decided to try a bit of both)
1/2 cup peanut butter (we used crunchy)
1/4 cup honey
1 large banana, very ripe and mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
50g dark chocolate chunks, 50g dried cranberries (this bit can be whatever you like!)

Preheat oven to 350C. In a large bowl, mix the oats, oat bran, flax, cashews, cinnamon and syrup so that the mixture is coated. Place in a oven suitable dish and toast in the oven for 10 minutes, turning after five. KEEP CHECKING IT and do not let this mixture burn. Once golden, remove from the oven and let it cool down completely.
Whilst the oats are in the oven, mash the banana and add the peanut butter and honey. Cook this in a pan on medium heat until it becomes a runny mixture, and after about 5 minutes remove from the heat and add the vanilla and salt. Let this mixture cool completely too.
Once cooled (and make sure they are cool, especially if you're using something melty such as chocolate), mix the oat mixture and butter mixture together, and add the chocolate/cranberries/whatever your flavour in here.
Spread the mixture flat in the dish you're using (we found this was enough to fill two pyrex dishes, but the original recipe recommends a 9x5 baking pan) and bake for about 25 minutes, again do not let burn. Once baked, cut into your desired size bar, and there you have it: monkey bars.

I think there are loads of variations that need to be tried with this recipe - try adding the zest of an orange to the buttery mixture, use other berries such as raspberries and blueberries, replace the cranberries with raisins, add some dessicated coconut, grate an apple and add that instead of chocolate...the list is endless. You could also try other nut butters - almond would be lovely - and other nuts such as peanuts, hazelnuts or macadamia (white chocolate macadamia monkey bars anyone?).  Let us know what you think and what works best for you. And don't eat them all as quickly as Jess did :)

Also, when we say cup, don't go on the internet trying to convert cups to grams. Just literally measure everything out using the same cup. A coffee mug is perfect. Cups are actually a really sensible way to keep the proportions right without having to bother with scales, and recipes like this really don't require strict adherence to grams or lbs!

Vegan Banana and Peanut Butter Pancakes

A very tired but glad-to-be-home Tom here,

This is a recipe my mum taught me that I make for a special treat breakfast once in a blue moon when I don't wake up, grab the museli I made the night before and run out of the door at top speed half dressed and definitely not awake. However, this morning being.....well almost 70-80% awake, I had a phenomenal brainwave whilst eating peanut butter from a jar with my fing.....I mean spreading peanut butter on toast like a normal, respectable human being. (I love peanut butter, you get the picture)

So here it is.

Makes three small or one large pancake (a rough single person portion)

Ingredients:

1/2 a cup of Milk (I use almond but as ever, any will work)
1/3 of a Banana
3-4 tbsp Flour (I use self raising, works well with any flour including gf - my mum recommends millet but since I don't know what a millet is or how to get flour from it I stick to what's in my cupboard)
1 very small teaspoon of Peanut Butter
A pinch of Baking Powder (provided you're not using self raising flour, I mean like 1/8 of a tsp, really don't need much)
A sprinkling of Sunflower Seeds

The basic recipe here is the milk, flour and banana to bind it. This is my variation but these pancakes are excellent just with the basic recipe, or with cinnamon (as always), blueberries, maple syrup, date syrup, almond butter, chocolate chips.....you get the picture. Add what you want. Enjoy.

I make the whole lot in one mug and just pour into into a hot, lightly greased non-stick pan and cook on either side until golden (go for medium heat on the hob, I know the high one looks fun and sizzles and sounds good but trust me, they burn quick), minimal effort, minimal washing up.

Method:

Combine all ingredients except the sunflower seeds (you really need the tiniest amount of peanut butter, you'll still taste it, panic not) in a mug and blend until smooth.
I'd add three tbsp of flour, see what it looks like, and if it looks a bit thin add the extra one. If you like crepe-like pancakes keep it thin (3 tbsp) or if you're like me and like thick pancakes keep the mixture thick (4 tbsp).
Stir in the sunflower seeds and then fry in a pan, flip after say 30-40 seconds when they look golden (leave them for at least 30 seconds as if you try and flip them early they just smush)
Serve with chopped up fresh fruit (I go for strawberries, blueberries and grapes) and a sprinkling of cinnamon on top. Sweeten to taste!

Nutritional Info (using self raising flour and including oil for frying):


                          Calories      Carbs       Fat      Protein       Sodium        Sugar
per Serving             333            46         14          19              22              14

NB// Including fruit and cinammon adds about 23 calories more (if you add half a cup of fruit)


As always, try your own variations and let us know what you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com or leave a comment. We love to get pictures!