raisins – Food That We Make

Moroccan aubergine and chickpea stew with raisins. RAISINS ARE ACE.

hannahnicklin — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:59:19 +0000

So, like pretty much everything in Rose Elliot’s New Complete Vegetarian, this recipe is cheap, easy as anything, and stupidly hearty/filling. So much so (and so healthy, too, loads of protein in the chickpeas and the rest is just vegetables) that I might only do 3/4 of a portion next time! I added in some chopped parsley at the end (a good handful) and popped some green beans in with about 8-10 minutes to go, these bits aren’t pictured as they were an afterthought (and me being lazy about washing up, as cooking the beans in the same pot works perfectly well). This is similar to another recipe on here, but with added raisins. I bloody love raisins. I’m also often liberal with the spices. I like spices. Cinnamon especially. This’uns totally vegan, too.

Serves: 2 | Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook Time: 30-35 mins
Nutritional info: 445 kcal, 61g carbs, 16g fat, 14g protein

Ingredients sans parsley and beans (sneaking in at the corner)

Soften those onions!

Add the spices and stir for 10 seconds or so

Then add the tomatoes, raisins, chickpeas, aubergine and stock. Simmer for 20-25 minutes until the veg is soft and juice has reduced. If adding beans, halve them and pop in about 8-10 mins before serving and put a lid on the pan.

Season well, stir through parsley. JUST LIKE THAT.

Carrot Cake

hannahnicklin — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:59:25 +0000

It was my awesome mum‘s birthday yesterday, and today I had her and my brother around for dinner. This demanded BIRTHDAY CAKE, obviously, and I went for something a little non-traditional; my first attempt at carrot cake. I’m pretty damn proud of this, you know, about as proud as I was of my first Christmas cake. It was RIDICULOUSLY tasty, and the tweaks and major rewrites that I made along the way (mainly to do with fixing the icing) really worked. Seriously, best cake. You should totally make it. ~~And then give it away. Because you basically ate at least 2 portions before even baking it.~~

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 45-60 minutes | Servings: 10-12

Nutritional Info: (based on it serving 12 – which is plenty!) 406kcals, 23g fat (6.5g saturated), 5.3g protein, 43.4g carbs, 27.8g sugar, 0.7g salt

Ingredients! (lots)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/gas 4. Grease a 22cm round take-apart cake tin with a little butter or oil. It’s best for taking it apart if you put a nice bit of greaseproof paper on the bottom, too. Also, don’t chop into your finger whilst simultaneously also making sweet potato and butternut squash soup for your lunch. That makes the whole process a lot easier. And less bloody.

soak the raisins in a simmering pan of 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice and 3 tablespoons of sherry (medium or sweet, ideally, but I used dry and it was fine) until the liquid has pretty much totally been absorbed.

meanwhile put the eggs, sugar and oil in a bowl and whisk until creamy, at least 3 minutes with an electric whisk, or 5 with an ANALOGUE one.

amass all your dry ingredients; baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon, self raising flour, shredded coconut, bashed walnuts,

then when the raisins have drunk all the sherry/orange mix, combine all of the dry ingredients, plus the carrot and raisins, with the egg/sugar/oil mix, and fold together. Put into the cake tin and level the surface. I forgot to take a picture of that bit, so here’s a picture of me hastily pulling the cake out at 3 minutes into the cooking stage. IT RISES FAST:

cook for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out the center clean, this took much more like 65 minutes, for me, but keep checking after 45 minutes. When it’s done, take it out and cool it in the tin, then turn out and cool for the last bit on a wire rack. Should be something like this when done:

yours might not look like you dropped it a bit trying to bake while your left index finger continued to bleed everywhere.

Now if you like you can try the instructions for the cream cheese icing from the original recipe, here, which is: put 50g of icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla essence, and 300g of cream cheese in a bowl and beat together. When that fails, and you just have a really runny gloopy mess, this is how you fix it. Put about a tbsp of butter (maybe 2) into a new bowl, beat it, and then add icing sugar and beat until you have a very stiff butter icing, then add the gloopy cheese mess bit by bit with icing sugar in turn, beating, to keep a stiff consistency, and until all the cheese mess is used up. It’ll be glossier and a bit looser than regular butter icing, but still cheesy and strong enough to form well and set. Here’s what it should look like:

apply it to the cool cake with a palette knife, sprinkle with walnuts. Et voila! I promise you, this is ridiculously tasty. Make for friends to save devouring the whole thing in one sitting.

Storecupboard fruitburst muffins

hannahnicklin — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:52:45 +0000

So today I did a triathlon. That is relevant, but I also wanted to say it ~~out loud~~ on the internet ~~again~~. My rewards to myself include the best cheese sandwich you ever did see, and a bit of baking. A nice sweet treat, which is also quite healthy, and a good snack throughout the week. I’m calling these ‘storecupboard fruitburst’ muffins because they’re based on one that required fresh blueberries (put in 70g if you can and take 20g off the other fruit amounts) which I bet tastes ace, but didn’t have, so I increased the fruit I did have. Yes I am the kind of dick who has dried cranberries and apricots in their storecupboard. ALL THE MORE FOR ME WHEN APOCALYPSE STRIKES. Maybe I should call them apocalypse muffins? You probably can’t get eggs in the apocalypse, though. Need a chicken in my cupboard… Anyway I also changed the mix to make it orangier. And slightly sweeter (but I used cloudy set honey, so runny honey might solve that problem. Anyway, they’re well tasty, which is the important bit.

Prep Time: 10 mins | Cook Time: 20 mins | Servings: 6 | Difficulty: Easy

Nutritional Info: 243 kcals, 5g protein, 41g carbs, 8g fat, 3g sat fat, 2g fibre, 6g sugar, 0.59g salt

Ingredients:

Directions:

Preheat oven to 200•c and pop some muffin cases in a tin. Sift the flour, baking powder into a bowl

dull illustrative photo is dull

In another bowl lightly beat the egg then stir in melted butter, soya milk, orange juice and honey

Combine egg & flour mixtures, and remaining ingredients, without overworking (lumps & gloopiness fine!) Spoon into muffin cases:

and bake for 20-25 mins until well risen & pale golden. Dust with icing sugar if you want to be fancy. I always want to be fancy.

Source: GoodFood 101 cakes & bakes, modified quite a lot.

In search of Instant Vegan Porridge.

hannahnicklin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:00:16 +0000

So I do a reasonable amount of staying in hotels and things, and I don’t each such a wide variety of things for health or environment reasons that the stupidly expensive breakfasts are usually just made of me eating horrible cardboard tasting toast. So then I thought ‘well I like porridge now!’ and ‘I hear you can buy ‘instant’ versions of that stuff’. Then a cursory glance on my next shopping expedition revealed the skimmed milk powder, etc. etc. So I wondered about making my own version. Then I googled a bit. Then I bought some Soy Milk Powder off of eBay and low and behold I HAZ INVENTED INSTANT VEGAN PORRIDGE/borrowed the idea from the hundreds of brilliant food bloggers out there.

Ingredients:

Each portion is 95g, works out at 390 kcal, and is made by adding 120ml of boiling water, and any more to taste. You can take it in a container, or even make it in the mugs in your hotel room! The exclamation mark is to show how exciting this is!

Here are the ingredients weighed out in a big ol’ bowl (1 portion pictured)

mix them together

Add 120 ml of water, or just guess at about a 1/4 of a cup, and add more until it’s the consistency you like. Stir and stand for a minute. Eat in the smug satisfaction of having avoided paying Holiday Inn £12.50 for toast. It’s not as tasty as the proper hob cooked stuff I make with real soya milk, but much much better than the alternative.

mmm… hotel camping.

Carrot, Apple and Raisin Cake (vegan, also the BEST THING EVER)

hannahnicklin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:25:46 +0000

This is the tastiest thing I’ve made in a long while, I made it as a packed-lunch filler for my recent week in Manchester, made it on the Sunday, and it was still stupidly moist and tasty on the following Saturday. Also SUPER easy, pretty healthy, and totally vegan. WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE?

It’s based on a recipe from Good Food’s 101 Cakes and Bakes, and serves 12.

Ingredients:

Nutrition info:

per serving (12 per cake) 207 kcal’s, 3g protein, 36g carbs, 7g fat, 1g saturates, 1g fibre, 13g added sugar, 0.47g salt

Directions:

Stick your oven on to 180’c/Gas 4/fan over 160’c and grease a 20cm/8″ round tin.

Grate and prep all of the veg/fruit things

Mix the flour, baking power, salt and cinnamon together in your main mixing bowl

In another littler bowl/mug/jug mix together the oil, orange juice and sugar (this may not be the most attractive thing ever. Unless you like gloop)

Add that mixture, plus the grated carrot, apple, orange zest, raisins and pumpkin seeds to your big bowl

mix well together, add a bit of flour if it doesn’t feel stiff enough (should feel like basic fruitcake mix, grainy to look at, not runny)

pour into your greased baking tin (taking care to get enough over your hands so as to be able to eat lots of raw mix nomnomnom).

Flatten down. Bake for 50mins – 1 hour – it’s done when it pulls away from the tin, and is light brown on top.

Let it cool IN the tin (otherwise it’ll fall apart), get it out, and then dust with icing sugar/cut into 12 portions

Try it, trust me, it’s stupidly good. Mm.