Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello (for the second time today!),

It's Sunday, and clearly I have too little to do, because I'm doing more baking! Chocolate chip cookies are on the agenda today, because I'm yet to find a vegan shop bought cookie which satisfies me.

The original recipe can be found here.

Ingredients 

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup sunflower oil (or any flavourless vegetable oil)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/4 cup water

This is enough to make around 10 medium-large cookies. It would be really easy to double up the recipe if you want more (I would recommend it if you intend to share, they won't last long!).

The Method

1. Mix your dry ingredients excluding the sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the centre.



2. In a separate bowl or jug, mix the sugar with the wet ingredients



3. Pour the wet ingredients into the well in the dry ingredients, and combine thoroughly (but don't overwork it or the gluten will break down in the flour, and this will make the batter a bit bread-like!).



4. Take a tablespoon of batter at a time, and put blobs onto a lined baking sheet (no greasing necessary).
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven at Gas Mark 4 for 9 - 15 mins (all ovens are different, but mine took about 11 mins).

The Result

These cookies look quite pale, but I prefer a nice chewy cookie, so I took them out quite early. If you like a tougher, more biscuit-like cookie, you could leave them in a little longer (but not much longer!). Be warned - when the cookies cool, they will harden considerably, so make sure they are soft when they come out of the oven. you may think they are undercooked, but trust me, they will toughen up.
I think these would be really easy to adapt. For example, you could substitute some or all of the chocolate chips with chopped nuts or sultanas. You could also try adding citrus peel, or some cocoa powder to make these double chocolate chip cookies (how exciting!). If you do give that a go, let me know how it works out!

Yours,
Callum

Wholemeal Bread

Hello,

For the first time in years, I thought I would give bread a go. Bread is not difficult to find for vegans, but you still need to be wary, because some of them sneak in little fillers like skimmed milk powder or whey powder. Anyway, there's nothing to beat the smell of homemade bread wafting through your house, or the satisfaction of dipping a hearty chunk of it in your soup.

The bread I made was based on this recipe, but I adapted it to my own taste and the ingredients I had to hand.

Ingredients

• 500g strong wholemeal flour
• 1 tbsp dried yeast
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 325 ml warm water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• a handful of sunflower seeds

Method

1. First, prepare the yeast. This should be done according to the instructions on the pack. The yeast that you use will give you an idea of how much yeast you need for the amount of flour you are using and exactly how to prepare it. In my case, I used Allison brand Dried Active Yeast. This needs reactivating by whisking 1 tbsp into a mixture of warm water (150 ml) and sugar (1 tsp). This mix is left in a warm place for about 15 mins until a froth forms on the surface.
2. In the meantime, mix the flour, salt and the sunflower seeds. Add the yeast and the remaining warm water before chopping together roughly with a knife.While the dough is still a bit lumpy, add the olive oil and mix in well. Now get your hands in and knead it until all the flour has been taken up and the edges of the mixing bowl are fairly clean.
3. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place for around an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Knead the dough firmly for several minutes - about 10 should be enough. The dough will become less and less sticky as you knead. To see if it's ready, lightly press your thumb into the dough. If it springs back, then the dough is ready.
5. Shape it however you want - I put most of the dough in a lined loaf tin, but also reserved a little and made two small batons. Coat lightly in flour.
6. Leave in a warm place for another hour or so.





My little batons, ready to go in the oven after the extra rising








My loaf, post-rise, ready to hit the oven

Bake in a preheaten oven at Gas Mark 7 for 35 - 40 mins. Readiness check - lightly tap the underside of the loaf/batons. If the sound is hollow, the bread is ready!

The Result

The bread came out beautifully in both forms. This recipe gives quite a dense bread, and it feels just like bread used feel! Although this is delicious, I think next time I'll aim for a lighter loaf. Maybe I'll double the yeast, or leave to rise for longer.

So I hope you give this a go - the mass-marketed bread is so often full of preservatives and other assorted rubbish. Anyway, the satisfaction factor alone is enough to make this worthwhile!

Also, this recipe looks really easy to adapt. Try mixing different seeds or grains in with the flour at the start, or even dried fruit - I'm sure it would work a treat!



PS. Pasty Update!

Remember when I wrote my pasty recipe and I said that I froze some uncooked? Well, I tried baking the frozen batch in two different ways - straight from frozen, and after defrosting overnight. Both worked fine, but the straight-from-frozen batch lacked the flakiness of the originals. The pastry on the inside was a little soggy, and although it was perfectly palatable (I've certainly had worse), I would recommend deforsting first. The defrosted pastries came out just as good as the fresh ones!

Yours,
Callum