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.

Dark Chocolate and Orange Truffles

Tom today,

These truffles are the final instalment of the vegan cheese and wine evening. I think these were my favourite part, but then anything rich and chocolatey generally gets my vote! The dark chocolate truffle without the orange can be used as a basic recipe to make your own adaptation with other flavours, or can be used alone for a simple truffle. I used 70% dark chocolate from lidl (because it's cheap but still tasty), but this is personal preference as I don't like dark chocolate to be too dark (more sweet than bitter always!) but you can make with with your preferred dark chocolate. The flavoured chocolates (chocolate and chili would definitely be a winner - Lindt's excellence brand is the best variety in my opinion) would make for really nice truffles in themselves I would think, or you can add flavourings as you like.

Ingredients:

300g Dark Chocolate
3/4 cup Coconut Oil
4 tbsp Water
1 Blood Orange
1 tsp Agave Syrup
Pinch Sea Salt Flakes (might seem odd but I would really recommend it for a depth of flavour)
Cocoa powder to roll in

Method:

To make the orange flavouring, zest and juice the blood orange into a pan
Reduce as much as possible (although there probably won't be a huge amount)
This will make the juice quite bitter, as there's not much I didn't want to strain it as I thought I'd just end up loosing most of the juice but if you're making larger amounts this will be an option - there was no grittiness or texture in the truffles though so it's not a problem
Sweeten the flavouring with agave syrup (or sugar or whatever sweetener you like to use) and set to one side
Melt the chocolate, oil and water in a bowl (or pan) over hot water (making sure the bowl isn't touching the water so the chocolate doesn't burn)
Take off the heat just before it is fully melted and stir together gently
Fold in the orange flavouring and sea salt
Place in a wide flat dish and cover and leave in the fridge to set for a couple of hours (don't leave it too long or it will be difficult to roll)
Cover your hands in cocoa powder to stop the chocolate from sticking
Spoon out truffle-sized lumps and roll into balls in the palm of your hand (or if you have a melon-baller this will do this job for you in one go
Roll in the cocoa powder and refrigerate for an hour
Serve and enjoy!

These should keep for up to a week in the fridge. I haven't tried making these with other chocolates so I don't know how that will work, white I think might be a problem but you can probably have reasonable success with milk, although you may need to reduce the amount of oil and reduce or omit the water.

Let us know how yours go at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com

This is the last of the vegan cheese and wine night recipes - however do let us know of any good vegan canapé or other party nibble recipes you have, we love to get mail and photos!

Vegan, Gluten Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Jess again today!

So, it was Tom's birthday earlier in January. Any UoM students will know this makes him incredibly unlucky as his birthday falls approximately a week before the start of the January exam period. Booooo. Therefore, we postponed his birthday celebration to this weekend, and we are going to Dough for pizza (the most amazing place in the world for the gluten free and vegan people of Manchester). And I have made him a birthday cake. A vegan, gluten free, chocolate cake, with peanut butter frosting. Everything Tom loves, in a cake.

I spent a very long time looking for a good recipe for this. So many GFV recipes contain a ridiculous number of ingredients that would cost me a month's wages to buy, I was starting to get disheartened. I came across a really easy recipe but decided it looked too easy. Basically, I was really picky. And then I found this http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2013/01/peanut-butter-chocolate-vegan-cupcakes.html and knew it was the one. I just tweaked it a little to make it gluten free (and I made a big cake, not cupcakes).

Ingredients
1 cup gluten free flour
1/2 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup vegan butter, melted (I used sunflower spread)
1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I used praline rice milk because it sounded nice and I lose all sense of cost in the Eighth Day veggie shop on Oxford Road, but soy milk or almond milk would work just as well)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1/3 cup hot water with 1 tsp Chia seeds (flaxseed would work the same)
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4tsp apple cider vinegar (I don't know how to measure this exactly, I probably used more like 3/4 tsp but whatever, I don't think it made a difference!)
1/2 tsp salt
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup blended fruit
Optional - handful dark chocolate chips, cacao nibs

Now where I say blended fruit, I used a whole mashed banana with a handful of mashed blueberries. The original recipe used blackberries, and suggests that any mashable fruit would work - strawberries, other berries, banana, apple...but I decided banana would go best (and I trusted it best) and just threw a few blueberries in for fun. I'd like to try this with blackberries or raspberries, I'll let you know if I do! Also, the original recipe used 1+1/2 cups all purpose white flour, but I substituted 1/2 cup ground almonds in because I think they give a nicer texture in gluten free baking. And the original recipe used just a cup of sugar, but in my experience a bit of golden syrup makes gluten free baking a bit more moist so I tried this.

Heat oven to 190C. First, blend the fruit and add the milk. You could use a food processor but I just did it in a cup by hand. Place all the dry ingredients in a bowl, sifted. Add the blended fruit, melted butter, seed slurry and other ingredients and mix together. Again, I just folded it all in together. At this point I added a handful of dark chocolate chips and a sprinkling of cacao nibs. This isn't needed but I wanted to make it a bit more decadent since it's Tom's birthday. Fold together, pour in your chosen baking tin and bake. Mine took about 30 minutes, but keep checking and go by your oven (if a fork comes out clean, it's done...). Cake done.

Cake mix is luckily not that great licked from the bowl...

 Yes, all my chocolate cakes do look the same...

Peanut Butter Frosting
1/3 cup peanut butter (use whatever type you prefer, other nut butters would work too if you wish!)
1/3 cup vegan butter
2 tsp vanilla
A few splashes of non-dairy milk
1 cup icing sugar
Optional - 2 tsp maple syrup

Basically, blend it all together. Use a whisk or a fork or a spoon or a food processor, whatever you like. Add more milk if its too thick, more sugar if its too runny. Just go with whatever looks best.

What dreams are made of

To decorate the cake, i literally slathered this beautiful frosting all over it, and then added some flaked almonds around the side. Then I spelled H.B. TOM on it with these cute little vegan chocolate chips 

So, this was the final product....

And in all honesty, it was wonderful. Perfect. Glorious. Incredible. I cannot stress how important it is that you make this. Make it into cupcakes, make it into a victoria sandwich with more frosting and some jam in the middle (had i had sandwich tins, this is what I would have done), just make sure you make this. It is vegan, gluten free baking at it's finest, if I do say so myself.


Then, to celebrate Tom's birthday, we ate cake (after our Dough pizzas), dipped fruit and dark chocolate in frosting, drank prosecco and watched Coyote Ugly. He is a man, I do know this, but he embraced his inner woman this day. And I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it.

 You must do this, it is amazing.

 Please make this and please tell me how amazing it goes :)

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!