Date and Honey Cake

I made this for a festival. I was going to make rosewater and cardamom cake, but we don't have any rosewater. This smelt like madeleines. I'll have to make this again soon!

You can halve this recipe easily. I make a half-quantity of this recipe last time as I was using small decorative cake pans.




Date and honey cake

1 C self-raising wholemeal flour (or 1 C plain wholemeal flour and 2 tsp baking powder)
1/4 C pitted and chopped dates (about 4)
1/2 C honey
2 tB margarine (I used Nuttelex)
1/4 tsp each ground cardamom and cinnamon
oat milk until it looks right (about 1/4 to 1/2 a cup)

Set the oven to 180°C (356°F).

Sift the flour, baking powder and spices in a mixing bowl. (OK, I never bother with sifting wholemeal flour, but whatever rocks your boat.) Toss the date pieces in the flour to coat – date pieces are really sticky and this means that you'll get more than one big datey ball in the middle of the mixture.

Combine the honey and margarine in a small saucepan and warm gently until the margarine is melted. Add the honey and margarine and stir to combine. Slowly add the milk until you get a consistency slightly thicker than pancake batter. Pour into a greased cake tin and place in the oven. Bake until a skewer inserted in the cake tin comes out clean (I'd guess 15–20 minutes).

Potato and leek soup

It always astounds me that I can never find a recipe for something I consider a basic dish in any of my cookbooks. Admittedly, our collection of recipe books is, thus far, pretty small, but I feel the point still stands.

So I made this one up. And it was wildly successful. I know, because my sweetheart, who is not as enamoured of soups as I am hadn't even finished her bowl before she was demanding I make it again.

It's very creamy, with a delicate flavour. And very, very filling.

Notes on the recipe:
I used a masher on my potatoes rather than a blender because 1) according to the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, using a blender on potatoes causes them to assume a glue-like consistency, and 2) using a blender seems like a pointless use of electricity when a masher does just as well.

If you don't have fresh sage leaves, add 1 tsp of dried to the potatoes while they cook.

This method also leaves quite large pieces of leek. I used an antique handheld beater (I like my non-electrical kitchen tools) to whisk the soup at the end to break some of the leek up so it's more evenly distributed. This way you still get some pieces of leek. It would be just as easy to use a hand blender to puree some or all of the soup for a similar effect.




Potato and leek soup

1 L vegetable stock
3 large leeks, sliced into rounds
2–3 cloves garlic
3 large potatoes (about 1kg), cubed
1 tsp French mustard
1 cup fauxmilk (I use oat milk, but you could use soy or a nut milk easily)
black pepper
small amount fresh sage leaves (reserve some for garnish if you fancy)

Combine leeks and garlic in a lidded pot, along with about 1/2 cup of water. Cover and cook for about 15 minutes, or until your leeks have lost their raw-onion sharpness.

Meanwhile, in a large soup pot, combine your potatoes and the stock, and simmer until the potatoes are ready-to-be-mashed done – about ten minutes. Then, add the mustard and mash enthusiastically until smooth. Add the milk, and give it a good stir – you'll probably find it's a bit thin on top and quite thick down the bottom.

Finally, add the pepper and leek mixture to the potatoes. Tear the sage leaves, or mangle them in a mortar and pestle, and add those in. Cook for a further five minutes or so and serve, garnishing as poshness requires.

Serves 6–8

Winter leftover wraps

I love this. I think this is possibly my new favourite Saturday breakfast/lunch. It's simple and just uses things you have in the cupboard. Of course, I've listed the ingredients I used here, but it can be made with any spices or condiments, or, come to that, any vegetable you have left over. I'd recommend one that needs little cooking and prep (pumpkin would thus be out), and goes well with whatever condiments you have. Broccoli would bring a nice bit of colour, as would using chilli flakes instead of powder.

If you want to use up all the spring onion, I recommend chopping the white end up and steaming it with the cauliflower. It's a bit much to have it raw.

I might make more for my housemates later, using the romanesco we have.


Market morning cauliflower wraps

1 head cauliflower
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/4 cup vegan mayo
1 tsp curry powder
2 tB gerkin relish
2–3 spring onions/scallions
salad ingredients (green leafies, cucumber slices etc) as desired/available
wholemeal flatbread

Chop the cauliflower into small pieces. Don't bother separating it into florets. Place in a frypan. Sprinkle over spices. Add water to cover bottom of pan to depth of 1cm (or thereabouts). Cover with lid and steam for about 5–6 minutes. Add water if necessary.

Mix mayo and curry powder, and spread on bread with relish. Chop green end of spring onions and sprinkle. Add cauliflower and salad ingredients (if using).

Feeds 3–4.

English Risotto

Frankly, I may be biased, but I think this was a work of genius.

I'm a big fan of "fusion food". Well, perhaps that's not quite the word. Certainly multicultural food. I love mixing the flavours of one culture with the traditional dish of another. This may be the result of growing up in Melbourne, which is a melting pot as far as food is concerned.

The basis for this dish is "risotto with English flavours". As my partner, Steph, said: "Think a risotto with English pub food": lamb with mint, spinach, potatoes with rosemary, mushrooms, worchestershire sauce. I used a mix of vegie and "chicken" stock to mimic the approximate flavour tone of lamb.


English Risotto

1 onion
1–2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 C brown rice (preferably risotto rice, or other short-grained rice)
1 L vegie and 1 1/2 L "chicken" stock, combined
200g mushrooms, diced
500g potato (about two large), diced
1 1/2 tsp rosemary
1 tB vegan worchestershire sauce (or mushroom ketchup)
100g spinach, chopped
4–5 sprigs mint, torn

Steamfry onions and garlic. Add rice and 1/2 a cup of stock. Add mushrooms, potato, rosemary and worchestershire.

Stir frequently, adding a 1/4 cup of stock when it begins to dry.

When rice is mostly cooked, add spinach and mint, and continue stirring until rice is cooked and spinach is just wilted.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup & Roasted Potatoes

This is something I actually made a few weeks ago, at the beginning of the pumpkin season, but it is still very much using things currently in season. Mmm, pumpkin.


Spicy Pumpkin Soup & Roasted Potatoes

Potatoes
4 medium to large potatoes, either thickly sliced or cubed (depending on preference)
1 tsp hot paprika
1 tsp powdered chicken-style stock
1/2 tsp sage
good sprinkle pepper

Pumpkin Soup
1 small pumpkin, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
4 cloves garlic
1 onion, chopped
1 small chipotle, soaked
2 small potatoes, cubed
3L chicken-style stock
1 tsp paprika
generous sprinkle pepper


Set oven to 180°C.

Combine paprika, dry stock, sage and pepper. Toss the roasting potatoes, and place on a baking tray. Place in oven.

Place pumpkin; carrots; whole, unpeeled garlic and onion in a baking tray. Put about a centimetre of water in the bottom of the tray. Place in oven.

Bake the potatoes and pumpkin ingredients for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop chipotle and place with potatoes, stock, paprika and pepper in a large pot. Cook until tender.

Add pumpkin, carrots, garlic and onion. Cook for a further 10–15 minutes to combine flavours. Puree.

Serve soup in bowls with spicy potatoes on the side.

Serves 4.

Chocolate Jaffa Cupcakes

I was in the mood for something decadent, chocolatey and bite-sized on the weekend, so I turned to Benno's grandmother's chocolate cake recipe and turned it into chocolate jaffa cupcakes. They were quite decadent, and only used things we had around the house – the citrus rind was leftover from the Christmas pud I made last year.

Most of the mixture I made into cupcakes, but I also used a madeleine tray, and made little shell-shaped ones.



Chocolate Jaffa Cupcakes

1 cup plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup organic, fair-trade cocoa powder
3 tB orange liqueur
1 tB white creme de cacao
oat milk (or other dairy milk)
2 tsp candied citrus rind
100g vegan chocolate, chopped (or vegan chocolate drops)

Set oven to 180°C.
Sift together dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and stir to combine. Stir through the rind and chocolate chips.

Transfer to oiled small-cupcake trays (use patty cases if you're feeling fancy; I generally can't be bothered) and bake for about 10 minutes.


Makes around 20 small cakes, suitable for lazy Sunday afternoons with a pot of tea and a good book.

Market Finds and French Cauliflower Soup

Since we moved house, we've started buying our fruit and veges from the CERES market. I've really been enjoying it. It's a wonderful and novel experience to shop under blue (or grey) skies instead of fluorescents, the smell of manure from the animals in the next paddock wafting to your nostrils. The food tastes much better than supermarket produce – in part because it hasn't been sitting in cold storage for months, waiting until their nutrients reach the ideal state of degredation.

Part of what I love about market shopping, though, is finding food that you don't find in supermarkets. Here's what we found last week:

Oranges

See that on the right, with the slightest hint of a blush? That's a ruby grapefruit. See those segments on the left? See the half fruit sitting to the back? That's all an orange. You can't tell from the half (curse perspective), but the segments give it away: it's the same size as the grapefruit. Enormous, well-fertilized oranges. Mmm. We bought one each and they were some of the sweetest oranges I've had in some time.


Potatoes



I'm used to having two choices for potatoes at the supermarket: white or brown. A few weeks ago I was shopping at the Queen Victoria Market's organic section, and found a selection of about eight or nine different varieties, with a sign posted to let you know what the different varieties were good for (I think we got Kipfler, in the end).

These are a type of potato I'd never seen before. The market labelled them as "King Edward, also known as Pink-Eye", but the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries and Water notes King Edward and Pink-Eye potatoes as two different cultivars. It's probably a Pink-Eye, based on the description given by DPIW.

Steph didn't appreciate their little dark pink eyes. She found them creepy. I read Neil Gaiman, myself, and write stories featuring fortune-telling dead men. I enjoy creepy.

Romanesco


This vegetable lurking in a rather sinister fashion in the shadows is called a romanesco cauliflower – or broccoli, or cabbage, depending who you speak to and what language you're speaking in. It's a brassica, like cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, and I can confidently state that it tastes similar to cauliflower when cooked. I first heard of it on the SurviveLA blog on a post about purple cauliflower (!) and have wanted to try it since. I was thrilled to find it sitting nonchalantly on a barrow at the market last weekend.

I find Romanesco so fascinating because its structure is fractal – a small part reflects the whole:

Steph found this creepy, too. She said it looked like an alien creature that was going to come and eat us in our sleep. I have no explanation for her strange fear of vegetables.


I have noticed that I tend to post an inordinate amount of soup recipes, and as we're moving into winter, that is, frankly, unlikely to change. Perhaps I should write a recipe book: 365 Days of Vegan Soup.

This one is a French-influenced creamy soup with cauliflower and romanesco. There is, perhaps against type, no onions in it, as my girlfriend had just made an onion tart the previous day. The herbs were meant to be thyme, rosemary and basil, as I had just learnt from Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila Latourrette that these are the Provençal herbs. My education was furthered by discovering we had no thyme nor basil in our pantry. This has since been remedied. If you wish for authenticity, you can use the Provençal herbs. I promise it tastes good both ways.

French Cauliflower Soup


1 cauliflower head, chopped
1/2 romanesco head, chopped
2 potatoes, cubed
7–8 garlic cloves, chopped finely
2 L vege "chicken" stock
2 tsp pepper
generous pinch each dried marjoram, sage, rosemary and basil
2 tB mustard
1 1/2 cups oat milk (or other non-dairy milk)

Combine the vegetables, garlic, stock and herbs in a large pot, and simmer until vegetables are tender (about 10–20 minutes – I must confess I'm not much of a one for watching the clock). Stir through the mustard, puree, and stir in the oat milk.

Serve with a little more black pepper sprinkled on top.

Serves 6.

Apple Morris Cake

This was going to be "harvest apple cake", but I thought, how often does morris dancing get a dish named after it? Not often, I'd wager.

I made this cake to take around to some (morris-dancing) friends' house. The day before we all danced out at a harvest cider festival, and received some apple juice and scrumpy. In celebration, I crammed apples into this cake recipe any way I could, until it was bursting at the seams with appley goodness.

This cake is based on a mud cake recipe, but since it has almost no chocolate in it, it can't really be termed a mud cake. It did have the denseness and moistness of mud cake, though. It is a very appley, spicy cake. Note that if you don't have access to scrumpy (or apple cider), apple juice will do just as well. Similarly, if you don't have apple concentrate, you can either cook down apple juice until it thickens to a syrup, or you can use a liquid sweetener of your choice, like maple syrup or agave.

I'm afraid I forgot to take a photo before I came home again with the empty cake tin. Sorry.

Apple morris cake

Icing

1 cup almond meal
1/3 cup apple juice
1 tB apple concentrate
1 tsp peanut oil, other nut oil, or neutral-tasting oil (peanut is what I have on hand)
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup cornflour (optional: chill icing for 15 minutes or so, and add if it still needs thickening)

Cake

1 apple (for apple sauce)
40g dark chocolate
1/2 cup oat milk (or other non-dairy milk)
1/2 cup apple juice
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 tB apple concentrate
1 tsp vanilla essence (or 1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste)
Egg replacer equiv. to 2 eggs (I used 2[1tB flaxseed + 3 tB water])
1/4 cup self-raising flour*
1 cup plain flour
1 tB cocoa
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
100g tahini


First, prepare the apple sauce. Chop the apple, peeling it if you're fancy (and don't want bits of apple peel in the cake; I think it adds texture). Put in a small saucepan, filling the saucepan about half-full with water, and place on the stove. Cook for about 15 mins, or until the apple is tender. When apple is done, puree it in your food processor, or mortar and pestle.

Meanwhile, prepare the icing. Combine all ingredients in a bowl or food processor, and combine thoroughly. The mixture will be sloppy, but don't be disheartened. It thickens upon standing (and refrigeration). Chill.

Place chocolate, milk, apple juice, concentrate and sugar together in a double boiler. Stir together, and when smooth, remove from heat. Prepare egg replacer with vanilla, and add to liquid ingredients.

Combine flours, cocoa and spices in a medium bowel. Add liquid mixture a little bit at a time and stir until smooth. Add tahini, and stir to combine, then add apple sauce.

Pour mixture into a greased 7-inch circular cake tin and bake for 1 1/4 hours. Allow cake to cool in tin, then turn out and ice. If icing is too thick to spread easily, let it stand at room temperature for 15 minutes or so, then try again.


* 1 cup of self-raising flour is roughly equivalent to 1 cup of plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder.