Eggless Carrot Cake - FAIL!!

I am sad to announce that my first ever vegan bake off went VERY badly!  It tasted absolutely delicious, but the texture was very soggy because it didn't rise properly.

I've done some research, and apparently the rescue remedy is to use self raising flour AND baking powder AND bicarb to get it to rise with no eggs.

These are the adapted recipes which include the baking powder and bicarb - next week I'm buying free range eggs!


Utterly Vegan Carrot Cake

Recipe taken from this website

Ingredients:

• Carrots 225g
• Sultanas 170g
• SR Flour 280g
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb
• Sugar 170g
• Ground Cinnamon 1tsp
• Ground Ginger 1 tsp
• Fresh nutmeg 1 tsp
• Vegan Margarine 200g
• Orange juice 200ml
• Orange Zest 1 tsp
• Vanilla Ext 1/2 tsp
• pinch of salt


Method


Get yourself prepared by preheating the oven to 170 Degrees Celsius, lining the tin, weighing out all the ingredients and getting all the utensils out your going to need.



1. Mix the sugar and margarine together in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy.



2. Grate the Carrots and add to the mix.


3. Add the sultanas to the mix (soak sultanas overnight in the orange juice.)





4.  Sift the flour, bicarb, baking soda, salt, spices and vanilla into the mix and stir well.








5. Spread out in the baking tin and place in the oven for 20 minutes until nice and brown on the top and cooked in the middle.









Next week's Vegan Bake Off Challenge

My first ever attemot at Whoopie Pies!

My First Ever Weekly Great British Bake Off Challenge!

By now, everyone knows of my great obsession with Paul, Mary and the Great British Bake Off!  I've decided that I need an impetus to blog regularly, so every week (probably on a Tuesday) I am going to set myself a Bake Off Challenge that I must complete and blog about at the weekend.

Please feel free to join in - suggest challenges, and participate in challenges and post your entry!

My first challenge is linked to an important change I'm making in my life that I've been thinking about for a long time - I am becoming a supermarket vegan!

I've been a vegetarian since I was 16, and, over the last few months, I'd been thinking about cutting down cheese because I am a self-confessed cheese junkie!  I could literally eat it at every meal and every snack every day, and I know that's not healthy!

Another factor in my decision is that I have always used free range eggs in my baking, and always assumed free range meant free range.  I found out recently that that is a complete fallacy.  Sky News recently did an undercover investigation into the Happy Egg company and found that conditions were definitely NOT happy.  I always assumed free range meant on a nice farm with lots of grass.  It does not.  It means in a large cage in a barn with stinted access to the outdoors.

So I've now decided I am not going to eat eggs or dairy products unless I know 100% where I come from.  Mum stop panicking, I'll still eat dairy and eggs from the farms in Cambridgeshire becuase I can see how the animals are treated!  Unfortunately this is a luxury I cannot afford in London.  I've found a lovely farm that supplies Twickenham Farmers Market, so I can use their eggs in all my baking.  It's called Lee House Farm, please check out their webpage and gallery, you can see the beautiful outside spaces for the chickens and how much they are clearly loved and well cared for.

Until I find a dairy farm I can trust (please email/comment/tweet if you know one) I am going dairy free.  So far it's going surprisingly well, and I can eat most of the stuff I'm used to as long as I check the label carefully. 

Vegan Changes I've made:

• Pure olive spread instead of butter
• oil in cakes instead of butter
• soya yoghurt instead of dairy yoghurt
• dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate (still check the label carefully!)
• Linda Mccartney sausages and mince instead of Quorn

Vegan changes I am researching:

• Vegan cheese!
• Tofu (I don't normally like it)
• Olive tapenade and vegan pesto for pasta sauces instead of cheesy sauces
• vegan jacket potato toppings (I love me a jacket potato)

As I said, I'll still be using eggs from Lee House Farm, and I will use dairy again when I find an ethical farm that treats their animals well.

So my first Vegan Bake Off challenge is...

To make a vegan carrot cake!

Carrot cake is my ultimate favourite cake - and has the plus side of it shouldn't be TOO hard to convert it for my first challenge as it is usually made with oil instead of butter.  The big challenge is the cream cheese icing - which is the best part!  I'll let you know how I get on.

Please let me know if you are vegan, thinking of going vegan, or know some good vegan websites or ethical farms.

A cheesecake is not a cake!

For my final Jubilee post, I want to let you all know how bitter I am that I came second in a cake competition...  to a cheesecake!

A cheesecake is not a cake!  It  is a pudding!  The offending cheesecake can be seen right here...

                                                                                                                                 ***

                                                                                            This is my cake

My cake was (as always!) a Mary Berry sponge cake.  I was very excited, because I had been feeding my baking addiction at Lakeland (I love Lakeland) and bought a Victoria Surprise Cake set I'd had my eye on for a loooooooooooong time!

Click on the picture if you want to look at it in the website.  I'd advise using baking parchment because otherwise it sticks no matter how much you grease it.

I filled it with raspberries and whipped cream, topped it with white chocolate buttercream and my lovely boyfriend made a fab Union Jack on top with fruit.

It must have been good because after the judging it was absolutely devoured - I didn't even get a piece!

Mary Berry's Very Cherry Trifle!

 

Hi!  My name's Julia, and I'm addicted to the Great British Bake Off!

I looooooooooove Paul and Mary.  I want to live with them, I want to carry around mini versions in my pocket....  you get the idea!

So when I read about Mary's cherry trifle in Delicious magaxine, I knew it had to be my showstopper challenge dessert!

It is sooooooooooooooo easy you must make it!

Click on the official picture for her recipe, but keep reading and I'll break it down for ya...

Ingredients
2 cherry madeira cakes
a jar of cherry jam
2 packs of glace cherries (or stoned cherries)
Some cherry liquer or cherry juice
fresh custard
double cream
fresh cherries to decoorate

Method
Slice the madeira cake and stick toegther with cherry jam.
Pour some cherry liquer or juice into a bowl and dip the cake sandwiches in.
Line your bowl with cake sandwiches.  When you've used them all, pour some liquer or juice over them.
Cook the glace cherries and the rest of the jam in a saucepan.
Pour the cherry mixture over the cake sandwiches.
Top with custard and whipped cream.  (I added some extra juice to my cream for taste - and it made it ever so slightly pink!)
Decorate with fresh cherries.

Sooooooo easy, but so effective!  Someone stopped my MIL when she was tidying it away and told her how delicious it was -  was proud! :)

My version of Very Cherry Trifle:

Jam Sandwiches and Tarty Fingers!

I thought I'd combine these two recipes into one post as they are SO easy!

I made cheese finger sandwiches and chocolate spread finger sandwiches.

Cheese:
Cut the crusts off brown bread.
Put a slice of cheese in between two slices. 
Cut into rectangles.

Chocolate spread:
Cut the crusts off white bread.
Put a spoonful of chocolate spread in between two slices. 
Cut into rectangles.

Jam tarts:
Roll out some eady made sweet pastry (I used sainsbury's own dessert pastry) to 1//2cm thick.
Cut out circles with a cookie cutter that are just bigger than a hole in a cupcake tin.
Put the cicles into a cupcake tin!
Fill with any flavour of jam, or lemon curd, or chocolate spread (yum!)
Cut out a cute shape to go on top (I chose a star)
Bake for about 10-15 mins at 180c until the pastry is golden brown and the contents is bubbling.
Leave to cool in the touch - the jam will BUUUURRRN!

Jam tarts are my new favourite easy peasy simple pimple treat!

 

Luvverly Jubberly Jubilee!

This year's Jubilee was my FIRST EVER Street Party, so I decided to go full on!

I made:

Finger sandwiches

Jam tarts

Mary Berry Cherry Trifle

Union Jack Surprise Cake

See the next posts for recipes and pics...