Vegan Baking- Recipes/Ideas/Advice

loveisdivine

I've always loved baking, both sweet and savoury, but trying to adapt a lot of my favourite recipes into vegan recipes has been a little frustrating and challenging.

I've discovered that sweet and savoury breads are my friend! They seem to be the easiest to convert and many of them are already vegan to start with.

So I thought it would be good to have a thread dedicated to vegan baking

Ill start by posting my current favourite recipe, Cinnamon Apple Rolls, next time I make them I'll add some pics. I'm afraid its in cup measurement, sorry for any inconvenience!

Dough -
1 Packet fast action yeast.
1 Cup of non dairy milk
1/2 Cup of non dairy butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons of sugar
3 cups of plain flour.

Filling-
As much cinnamon as desired
Butter
4 Tablespoons of apple puree

Method -

1. To make the dough, gently heat the milk and butter in a saucepan until the butter has melted but the mixture isn't boiling. Leave to cool down till luke warm. Then add the yeast and leave for 5 minutes.

2. Put the flour, salt and sugar in a bowl and slowly mix in the milk/butter mixture till you have a slightly wet dough. Knead until soft and smooth. I use a stand mixer and it only takes about 5 minutes. I'd say it would be at least 10 minutes by hand.

3. Leave to rise till doubled in size. If its warm, just a couple of hours, if its cool then you can leave it all day!

4. Line the bottom of a springform tin with baking parchment.

5. Once the dough is risen, roll it out to form a rectangle about half an inch thick. Spread the rectangle with butter, not too thick, just like you would butter toast. Then smear over the apple puree and cover with as much cinnamon as you like, I love cinnamon so I use loads!

5. Now, with the longest side facing you, roll it all the way up. Then gently cut into slices. You can make them as big as you like really but I usually get at least 6. Place the rolls, cut side up, into the tin. They should be just about touching each other.

6. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 160.

7. Bake for 30 minutes. Take out and enjoy fresh and warm from the oven. Or you can let them cool a little and drizzle with a simple water icing.

Yum! I'm planning a savoury version with garlic and butter but the ovens currently broke

--LOS--

I saw this on "Buttercreams Bakery" page before......

some tips...

Some Rules for Vegan Baking!

1) Tap! Always 'tap' the bubbles from a mixture before placing in the oven. It also helps the mixture to spread fairly evenly before spreading around the tin. When you see air bubbles forming on top of a batter, it's a bad sign - you don't want the raising agents to work already. Tap, tap, tap!

2) Instead of using eggs, there's a couple of great alternatives that give fabulous results! Here is just a small number of them:

- Silken tofu: Try it in brownies and other baked goods where you want the product to be fairly heavy and dense.

- Commercial Egg replacer: My favourite! So easy to use, and tasteless, so doesn't have an impact on the flavour of the baked good.

- Fruit purees: Apple, banana, etc, are all great! Although, beware that the flavour of the fruit will be noticeable in your bake, so choose accordingly!

3) DO NOT decorate your baked good as soon as it has come out of the oven. It'll still be piping hot and any decoration added will melt right off! Give it time to cool, place in the fridge or overnight in an air-tight container (gives a really soft, tasty sponge.

Simple!

- Lauren.

I would love to be able to make banana bread, any time I've had that I love it, recipes welcome

--LOS--

Ok I was a bit torn, I started making donuts from the 'nom yourself' recipe but not to deprive everyone of donuts here is my sorta un-americanised version of that.


You don't have to be strict with this recipe, what's important is the consistency of the dough, it shouldn't be too wet but it's going to be a bit stickier than pizza dough, more like cookie dough.

~200g all purpose flour
~50g raw sugar
pinch salt
1 tbsp active yeast
1/3 can coconut milk
1 tbsp soy butter
peanut oil


-Mix yeast with water and leave it to activate for about 5mins or so.
-Mix dry ingredients in a bowl
-Add the active yeast, coconut milk and soy butter and mix
-Knead the though until smooth, adding more flour if it's too sticky.
-Cover the bowl of dough with cling film and leave to rise for 1 -2 hours at room temp.
-Place dough in fridge overnight (I have made them straight away too once the dough has risen but like cookie dough it works better if you refrigerate it first).
-Take from fridge, knead, roll out to 1/4 inch thick, cut into circular shapes using a glass and something like a bottle cap for the donut hole and it's best if you give them a few mins to rise up a bit before frying.
-Heat up peanut oil (peanut oil is what gives donuts that distinctive smell and taste, other oils wouldn't really substitute here), when it's hot but before it gets smokey.... fry the donuts about a minute each side, donut holes take 30 seconds each side.
-Let cool on some kitchen towels

Put whatever you like on them, below I have melted dairy free choc using double boiler method, with some cacao nibs and coconut on top.

loveisdivine

Oo the donuts look lovely. I make churros quite a lot but haven't tried donuts yet.

Made some quick lime cupcakes last night. Use dsoy yoghurt in place of eggs and was really pleased with the finished bake. Had a really good texture, you wouldn't really notice any different from a dairy filled cake.

The only negative, was the top seemed to develop quite a crunchy crust. It was quite nice actually but not really how a cupcake should be.

I'll perhaps add a photo later when I've had chance to ice them properly. Ran out of icing sugar last night so they look a bit pathetic at the minute.

loveisdivine

Well its Great British Bake Off time again and this year I'm hoping to make a vegan version of one of the bakes each week.

The first week I went for Black Forest Gateaux. It was amazing! I used coconut cream for the whipped cream frosting and a simply chocolate cake recipe with apple puree instead of eggs, soy butter and soy milk.

The only change I would make next time is to cut the 2 cakes in half and make 4 layers, as I think it would be nicer with more cream in it!





Can't wait to see what they're making this week!