Thick Vegan Pancakes

One thing I was worried about when we started our journey becoming vegan, was pancakes. It's mostly a Sunday thing for us, lots of fruit, honey, lemon, and bacon. 

Well bacon was out, as was honey, what about eggs and milk. So I thought well I will just leave out the eggs and try some of our other milks. 

They where the best pancakes I've ever made, kids and husband said they where amazing and they where gone in a blink of an eye.

Ingredients:

1 cup of self rasing flour

2 bananas (I normally just use one)

2 apples (I normally use one)

1/4 of sultanas (some times I leave them out sometimes I throw in a bit more, experiment with what you throw in. Things like pineapple may work.)

1-2 cups of milk (I just pour it in till I get the consistency I like) when cooking for the kids I use soya +1, if using coconut milk make sure you put in a banana. Today I used unsweetened almond milk.

Toppings; 

Go nuts....most things work. In place of honey we use golden syrup. Fake bacon sometimes, lemon and sugar, strawberries are always a big hit too.

Mix the flour and milk first, till all lumps gone. I love doing this by hand, but the mini people where really restless so I got the mixer out. 

Peel and grate the apples, cut up the bananas really small. 

Put the liquid in too. 

Mix all together. You can add seeds and crushed nuts too if you want. 

Mix, depending on how you like your pancakes, as to how thick you make your mixture. For thick pancakes think of cake mixture, thin think of gravy. 

The pan is so important, this is my favourite as its large. It's well seasoned through everyday use. For the best pancakes you need to work 'hot and fast' it make take a few goes to get it right, today with my three year old trying to steal all the bananas I had to give in and use some oil. The best way is to get the pan hot and dry, but it's ok to use oil or water. 

This is my set up, so I can work fast. Pile al the pancakes on top of each other, this way they keep warm till you are ready to serve. 

The size of your spoon helps with the size of your pancakes, larger the spoon the bigger the pancake. 

Once flipped I squash down the pancake. 

Yummy. 

Butternut Squash and Chilli

This was a last minute thrown together meal, it was yummy though.

Ingredients;

1x butternut squash 

Hand full of mushrooms

Half a leek

1x red onion

1x tin tomatoes 

Large splash of white wine

About 200g of soya cream

Hand full of cashew nuts

3 walnuts smashed up

Small hand full of seeds, mostly sunflower and sesame

Thyme, pepper and chilli. 

Boil up the butternut in large chunks till soft. 

Boil up the rice (for the best rice ever, pour in your rice to the pan, then add cold water. Put the top of your thumb on top of the rice and fill with water until the water level is level with the first bend of your thumb. Then cook/boil the rice until holes apear. Take off the heat, put a teatowel over it, you can weigh it down with a plate or lid. Put to one side till your ready.)

Mix all your spices (I used about two teaspoons of mild chilli and I think it needed a little more.) 

Smash up the nuts and mix in the herbs and seeds. (I kept the cashew nuts whole though.) 

Once the mushrooms and onions have started to brown add in the smashed up herbs, nuts and seeds.

Add in the cashew nuts and fry. 

This is about perfect for the rice to be removed from the high heat. 

Set to one side, put a teatowel over the top. 

Add the wine, tomatoes and soya cream (I added 1 tin full of water, after tipping in the tomatoes.) 

Mix in the butternut, bring to a gentle boil. Check your rice, if still really damp give it a little longer but it should be perfect. 

Enjoy. X

Sweet Potato Chips

I love making my own chips, so easy and quick. Here's how to make my sweet chip:

You will need a large tin type (not glass or ceramic) oven tray.

Sweet potatoes. (I used about 4-5 for two of us, bare in mind we could eat these all day this is a large serving.) 

Sesame seeds.

Sunflower seeds.

Pepper, Rosemary and Thyme. (You can add some sea salt but only 1-2 pinches. You can also add breadcrumbs too.) 

And oil, I mostly use vegetable oil.  

Peel and cut all your sweet potatoes into chip shapes, to about the same thickness. (I will try and film my self doing this as people are always asking how I do it.)

Pop them in your large baking tray. You can pre-heat if you like. 

Sprinkle over oil, and all the extras- pepper, Rosemary, Thyme and seeds. 

Pop in the oven, I cook on 200 (my oven runs quite cold, I think this is due to me opening it a lot. So you may like to cook at 190c.) Cook till cooked through and going a little black at some ends. About 30-40mins. Remember to shake and mix about half way through. 

Perfect with most things, tonight it's with pie! 

They are soft and squidgy, with a crip, yum.

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Slow Cooked Soup

My slow cooker has been on a lot lately, mostly for making chutneys. Today I had some left over beans which needed using and was thinking about making some butternut curry. Well, I didn't end up making a hot creamy butternut curry but a lovely winter soup!

On of the many wonderful things you can do with a slow cooker is soup. A great way to use up some left over veg, just throw it in and forget about it. 

Today's soup had the following-

Ingredients:

1x large butternut squash

1x red onion

1x celery stick

1x carrot

3x white potatoes 

About three large handfuls of beans.

2x tins tomatoes

2x tin fulls of water

1 cup of white wine

About a cup of porrage oats, the same of red lentils. 1-2 tablespoons of sunflower seeds. Thyme, pepper and chili powder. 

Chop and peel up everything and throw in. (Chop up the potato smaller than the butternut pieces.) 

I cooked on high for about 2-3hrs then on low for about another 4hrs. 

I checked on it and mixed every now and again. Tasted and checked, added in a little more chili powder. It's a great dish to have bubbling away in the day for dinner or to freeze down in portion sizes. 

If popping on in the morning for dinner, set to low for 6-7hrs I think. 

When ready to serve I used a hand blender to blend it down in the slow cooker. Lots left over to freeze. 

It's yummy. 

Homemade Breadcrumbs

I bake about a loaf a day, so my bread machine is always hard at work. I often get the odd end piece left over, so the best thing to do is make my own breadcrumbs. 

So handy to have in the kitchen and always needed. 

 

This first stage you can just toast them but I like going straight to the oven.

Bake till golden brown (I baked at about 190c for about 15-20mins) don't burn them. 

Once they are starting to turn a nice golden brown, blend. They will most likely still be damp to the touch. 

Pop them back into the oven. This second bake I turned the oven right down to 100c and kept mixing them up for an equal bake. 

Keep a close eye that they don't burn, I kept them low as I was popping in and out of the kitchen doing some washing. Then once dryed out, blend again till the consistency and size you want.  

(Check, if still damp return to the oven again.)

Add to an air tight container and use. I love using my own breadcrumbs, it may sound a bit extreme but it's great to reduce waste and know what's in them.

Freezable Burgers

Having three young children, quick easy meals can sometimes be an necessity. I wanted to batch make/cook some burgers, to freeze down and then just pop in the oven.

Ingredients:

1x onion

1x large beetroot

Chunk of tofu

Handful (large) of kale

2x large mushrooms

Tablespoon of peanuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts and sunflower seeds. 

A sprinkle of chia seeds

Pepper, Rosemary, chopped chives and thyme.  

Blend up the nuts.

Blend, chop and mix it all together.

Roll into equal balls and flatten onto tin foil. 

Cover, or put in Tupperware. Pop in the freezer. 

Cook for about 40mins on 200, check then and flip them. (I burnt mine but I forgot they where there!) very yummy. 

Housewife Tips

Storage is a huge problem in our house, my husband would blame my hoarding ways. So am always thinking of better ways to live in a packed out house. I came up with a great way of storaging our Christmas and Camping stuff.

To camp in our car, I used plastic boxes to create a bed in the back. I will do a blog on this as it was brilliant fun. I then used the boxes to store all the camping gear. In the summer the live above the washing/tumble dryer, high on some shelves we had put in. In the winter they can be stored in the loft, leaving this space to store the Christmas things. 

Each year the cardboard boxes holding all our precious Christmas decorations, was becoming more and more scary to get in and out of the loft. So I brought some more large plastic boxes with lids, and transferred all the stuff over. 

Now all the Christmas stuff in down, I've boxes it up. 

Naming each box and which one it is, ie 1 of 4. So they are easy to find in the loft.

And that's Christmas packed up for a few months, leaving lots of space ready for the camping stuff.

X

Girls Night Nut Roast

My turn to cook this week, for our weekly girls night dinners. Really fancied a nut roast but having not long had Christmas, I thought the girls would fed up of full on roasts so sweet potatoes it was! 

Here is my second ever nut roast-

Ingredients: 

Lots and lots of Mushrooms

Half a courgette

Handful of peanuts

Handful of cashews nuts

Handful of walnuts

(I need to start weighing as I go!) 

Blend up the nuts, add to a large bowl.

Fry up mushrooms till starting to brown off and squeaky. Then blend and add to the nuts. 

Don't worry about all being the same size.

Grate courgette add in with the mushrooms.

Add what ever seeds you would like. (Will list once I have got the baby off to bed.)

Breadcrumbs and mix.

Handful of porridge oats, mix.

Once mixed add to a bread tin, which you have lined or buttered.

Cover and pop in an oven at about 190, I cooked it for just over an hour and it was a little dry. So try for about 45 minutes. 

Take off too to brown. 

This was so close to being perfect, just a little over done.

Place on top of pre brought and rolled puff pasty. Close and add detail, oiling the party. Cook till golden. 

Everyone had seconds, the whole thing was gone. 

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