Christmas Buns

I’ve been cooking and baking up a storm since the winter break started, but a bit lazy on the posting part. But there’s more to come, I assure you! I few days before Christmas, I woke up craving cinnamon buns for breakfast (hey, it’s the holidays!). Fortunately I found Mihl’s recipe featuring (as you must already know, my favourite spice) cardamom! They were quick (apart from the rising time) easy to make, and delicious. After eating and sharing that batch of the little goodies, I decided to play around with the recipe and make another batch for my friend whom I was to see on Christmas eve. Here’s my modified version, which is lovely (if I do say so myself) but be sure to try the original recipe too!

Christmas Buns

Dough:

1 ½ cups flour

¼ cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup almond meal

1 teaspoon cardamom

1/3 cup margarine

½ cup almond milk

½ package active dry yeast

zest of 2 clementines or mandarins

Filling:

2 tablespoons margarine

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon cardamom

¼ cup dried cranberries

Melt the margarine in a small saucepan, add the almond milk, then remove from heat and allow to cool. Meanwhile, combine flours, almond meal and cardamom in a bowl. Add yeast to the still-slightly-warm saucepan mixture and let sit for 5 minutes. Then add the clementine zest and combine with the dry ingredients. Knead dough for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a bowl, cover and let rise for at least half an hour.

When dough is risen, mix all of the filling ingredients together, except the cranberries. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and oil a baking sheet. Roll the dough into a rectangle (the bigger the better, but this stuff isn’t easy to roll out). Spread filling on top, then sprinkle with cranberries. Now roll into a log and cut into 10 pieces. Place rolls on the baking sheet and let rise for another half hour. Pop it into the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

Plum Pear Cardamom Crisp

Perhaps not the most summery thing to make, but I was up early on a Sunday morning listening to Joanna Newsom, and I happened to have some plums and lots of pears (but alas, no peaches), and then this was invented, based on the Apple Cherry Crisp recipe from The Everyday Vegan by Dreena Burton. Enjoy!

Plum Pear Cardamom Crisp

Fruit mixture:
5 pears, sliced
2 plums, sliced
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
seeds of half a vanilla bean (or maybe 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1 teaspoon cardamom
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 dash nutmeg
1 dash salt

Crisp topping:
1 cup rolled oats
¼ cup hazelnuts
1 teaspoon cardamom
seeds of half a vanilla bean (or maybe 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1 dash salt
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all fruit mixture ingredients in a lightly oiled baking dish, mix well and set aside (you could do it in another bowl first, but I’m lazy and this way works). Now grind the hazelnuts in a food processor. Add the oats, cardamom, vanilla seeds and salt and process until the oats are mostly ground. Now mix the maple syrup and oil in with your fingers. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the fruit mixture, lightly pat it down, and put the dish in the oven. Bake for about 35 minutes, until bubbling around the edges and lightly browned. Serve with some yogurt or ice cream.

Spiced Rhubarb-Apple-Almond Bread Pudding

If you’ve found yourself with some slightly stale bread and don’t want to just throw it out, take a cue from Laura Matthias (author of Extraveganza, one of my favourite cookbooks) and make bread pudding! All you have to do is cube the bread and leave it out in the open air to dry out (if it’s not in the open air then it might mold, and no one wants that). Once you’ve collected enough dried bread, you can make a bread pudding with it. This is one that I made recently:

Spiced Rhubarb-Apple-Almond Bread Pudding

5 cups cubed, stale bread
1 ½ cups rhubarb, chopped
2 apples, chopped (I didn’t bother peeling them, but you could if you wanted to)
¾ cup demerara sugar
½ cup water
2 – 2 ½ cups almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 good pinch each of allspice, cloves and nutmeg
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1 tablespoon arrowroot
1 apple, sliced (for topping)
1 cup almond slivers or chopped almonds (for topping)

Place the bread in a casserole baking dish and set aside. Combine the rhubarb, apples, sugar and water in a saucepan. Simmer for 10 or so minutes, until the rhubarb and apples can be mashed easily. Place the saucepan ingredients in a blender and add everything except the bread and topping ingredients, blending until smooth (or you can put them in a bowl and blend with a hand-held blender, like I did). Pour this mixture over the bread and allow to sit for 30-45 minutes, preheating the oven to 350 degrees toward the end of that time. If all the liquid seems to have been absorbed by then, add some more almond milk and stir gently. Now sprinkle the top with ¾ of the almonds, arrange the apple slices on top of the almonds, and finish by sprinkling on the remainder of the almonds. Bake for about an hour.


I used rye bread for the pudding, which I think made it especially flavourful. While it can be eaten by itself, in my opinion it tastes best with either warmed almond milk or some vegan custard or vanilla sauce – delicious!

(Why is my custard sauce so yellow? I don't know)

A note on the sauce:

Not that you need a recipe for making custard sauce, but here’s what I do:

I heat about 2/3 of a cup of almond milk in a small saucepan until almost boiling. Meanwhile, I whisk 2 teaspoons of vegan custard powder and 1 teaspoon of cane sugar with a couple of tablespoons of almond milk in a small bowl until very smooth. Then I whisk the custard mixture into the saucepan and continue to whisk for a couple of minutes (or else it lumps up) and then I take it off the heat and stir in a couple of crops of almond or vanilla extract (and pour some of it over my bread pudding – there’s lots extra, of course)

Before I had custard powder, I made vanilla sauce – I basically did the same thing as above, only instead of custard powder I added 2 teaspoons of arrowroot. I also added probably twice as much sugar and a full ½ teaspoon of vanilla, and a small pinch of salt as well.

Yellow Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

I devised this as a way to help use up a copious amount of berry soy yogurt I had acquired earlier. The flavour reminds me of a blueberry bundt cake that my mom made when I was little. Actually, this batter would probably make a pretty decent bundt cake as well.


Yellow Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

1 cup of spelt flour
½ cup sugar (I used demerara, but cane sugar would probably up the yellow-ness)
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cardamom (optional – I love cardamom and you can’t stop me from adding it to everything)
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup berry soy yogurt
2 tablespoons flax meal
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon canola oil
zest of one lemon
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 tablespoons demerara sugar, for sprinkling on top (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, mixing well. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix, but not too much (to avoid gumminess). Fold in the blueberries. Pour into a sprayed muffin tin, filling ¾ of the way up. Sprinkle tops with demerara sugar. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Makes 9-10 muffins.

Banana-Blue-Bread

I had some bananas to use up, and I was inspired by this recipe to make some banana bread with cardamom in it (because cardamom is my favourite spice in the whole world!). I think blueberries go pretty well with cardamom so I added them in, and I made some modifications so I could use maple syrup instead of the sugar (I’m taking a break from any type of cane sugar for the time being). Oh and I used spelt flour too. Here is the adapted version:

Banana-Blue-Bread

¼ cup coconut milk
1/3 cup almond milk
½ cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon coconut oil (or any kind of vegetable oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ripe bananas
2 heaping cups spelt flour
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Oil/spray a loaf pan. Blend together the coconut milk, almond milk, maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla and bananas. In a large bowl, combine the spelt flour, cardamom, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just mixed. Fold in the blueberries. Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Tip: If the top starts to brown up before it’s ready, put a piece of tinfoil over it so it doesn’t brown too much.

Danish Braid v.1

On my quest to satiate my longing to travel with cooking instead, I decided to make a Danish pastry. Canadian danishes never appealed to me, with their fake-looking cherry and lemon fillings – I’d always go for almond rings or croissants instead. Now another digression (just indulge me here): so after second year, I went back to Europe (partially) by myself and traveled to a few different countries. I started out eating ok (again, I wasn’t a vegan back then) but by the time I got to Vienna, Copenhagen and Paris, I got into the habit of eating a healthy homemade breakfast and dinner at my hostel, and during the day I would eat a pastry and tea instead of lunch. Not very healthy, I know, but damn, I’d give anything to replicate those sweet-cheesy and nutty fillings. Those Danish danishes were nothing like the Canadian ones. I have dreams of perfecting vegan pastry-making one day.

I made an amalgamation of this recipe and this one.


Danish Braid (makes 2 braids)

Ingredients for the dough:

4 tablespoons cane sugar
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon dry active yeast
¾ cup almond (or other non-dairy) milk
zest of 1 small orange
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
seeds of ½ a vanilla bean
1 teaspoon cardamom
2 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 oz) cold earth balance margarine
3-4 tablespoons almond milk, for brushing of the dough just prior to baking

Warm the water and almond milk in a saucepan just until tepid (watch carefully!). Transfer to a bowl, add the yeast, and let it sit for a few minutes to foam while you prepare the rest of the dough. Combine the flour, salt and cardamom in a large bowl. Cut the cold margarine (it must be cold) into ½ inch cubes and add to the flour mixture, mixing a bit but not too much. Add the orange zest and vanilla extract and seeds to the yeast mixture. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour the yeast mixture in, mixing gently but not too much. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or for 8 hours (that’s right, it’s got to rise in the fridge or the margarine will melt and you won’t get the necessary flaky pastry goodness).

Lightly coat a clean surface with flour, and bring out the dough, shaping it into a rough square. Warning: if the margarine appears to soften at any point in the rolling-our process, put the dough in the freezer for a bit to cool down. Roll out into a 16-inch square, and fold into thirds (like you’re folding a letter). Now roll out into a 10x24 inch rectangle, and fold into thirds again. Roll into a 20 inch square, then fold in thirds again. Finally, roll into 10 x 24 inch rectangle and fold into thirds one last time. Wrap in plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so.

Take the dough out of the fridge, and cut in half. If you don’t want to make two braids at once, wrap the second half in plastic and keep in the freezer until you feel like making another one (it’ll keep for a couple of weeks, at least). When you’re ready, transfer to the fridge and allow to thaw for a few hours or overnight, then proceed from here.

From here on, I’m assuming you’re using one half of the dough, like I did. So if you’re making both at once, assume I’m talking about each half (maybe a no-brainer, but I just thought I’d warn you).

Cover a cookie sheet with some parchment. Roll the dough out into a rectangle about ¼ inch thick. Transfer the dough to the parchment and make slightly angled parallel cuts down both of the long sides of the rectangle, about 1/3 of the way in (good images to show how this is done can be found here. Spoon your filling of choice (I’ll describe what I used below) down the middle of the rectangle, and fold the flaps (alternating sides) over it, tucking in the ends. Spray cooking oil onto a piece of plastic wrap, and place it over the braid. Place in a warm-ish place and let rise for two hours or so, preheating the oven to 400 degrees toward the end of the rising time.

Brush the almond milk over the top of the braid, pop it into the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Then rotate the pan 180 degrees, lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees, and bake for 15-20 minutes more, until golden brown.


For my braid, I made a filling of cream cheese and strawberries:

Cream Cheese Filling (makes enough for two braids)

Ingredients:

1 container tofutti cream cheese
2/3 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
seeds of 1/2 a vanilla bean

Blend all ingredients together.

I sliced up 1 ½ cups of strawberries and layed them out on the dough, then I spooned out half of the cream cheese mixture on top.

After I took the braid out of the oven, I sprinkled on some powdered sugar, and it was so pretty, I didn’t want to ruin it by cutting it up. But I had to eventually, and I have to say that it tastes most delicious warm from the even, or reheated in there. Mmmm…


I still have half the dough in the freezer, so probably next week I’ll make another braid with a different filling, maybe something with almonds?

Cinq-Cinquièmes à la Pistache Végétalienne

When the weather gets warm and sunny, I want to go to Europe. It’s a curse or something. The first big trip I ever took was to Spain – it was with my school after first year, it was May, and we toured around like mad, spending no more than three days in each city, for three weeks straight. Not sure that I’d do that again, but I digress. We’d get up early every day, eat breakfast at our hotel (usually coffee with hot milk and some sort of pastry – I wasn’t a vegan back then) and then off into the city we were, to look at museums and buildings. Something about the sun (it was sunny every single day) and the morning breeze, and the activity of big cities like Barcelona and Madrid… I am reminded of it every year around this time and I want to go traveling.

Unfortunately I have not the means to go traveling this year, so I like to indulge in my nostalgia and make European-style food (in my mind, at least) instead. Not just Spanish, either - this one’s French. When I was making it, I thought of that scene in Amélie where she’s making her plum cake and realizes she’s out of yeast. I love that movie. Now I want to make plum cake, too.

So I found this recipe online, and adapted it a bit:

Cinq-Cinquièmes à la Pistache Végétalienne

Ingredients:

Egg replacer to replace 3 eggs (I used the powdered kind)
¾ cup earth balance margarine
¾ cup dark cane sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon rosewater
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 1/3 cup flour (I bet spelt would work well, in which case you’d need an extra 2 tablespoons)
1 1/3 cup raw pistachios, roasted and chopped
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9-inch round cake pan and set aside.

With a hand-blender, mix the margarine and sugar until creamy. Add the egg replacer slowly, and then the vanilla and rosewater, mixing well. In a medium-large mixing bowl, combine the flour, pistachios, baking powder and cardamom. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Pour into the cake pan (don’t worry if the batter seems too thick – it’s supposed to be) and smooth out the top.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

This isn’t the healthiest cake ever, but it was pretty yummy – light and fluffy, and the cardamom/rosewater addition was quite nice. Next time I’ll play with using spelt flour and reducing the amount of sugar/margarine. And maybe I’ll try soy yogurt instead of the egg replacer, we’ll see.

On a side note: I really wish someone would write a French vegan cookbook. Maybe someone already has and I don’t know about it – if so, please tell me!