Cookies do not need egg or dairy. Ever.
This recipe will make 12 super tasty vanilla cookies which are soft and just amazingly moreish. Use this recipe as a base for you to then add whatever else you like. Personally I love adding macadamia, vegan white chocolate and dried cranberries, so this is what we're making today! I'll also leave some other examples I've tried and tested. All amazing.
From the moment you enter your kitchen, you'll be done within 45 minutes (even faster if you have a food mixer, which I do not).
Cookies do not need egg or dairy. Ever.
This recipe will make 12 super tasty vanilla cookies which are soft and just amazingly moreish. Use this recipe as a base for you to then add whatever else you like. Personally I love adding macadamia, vegan white chocolate and dried cranberries, so this is what we're making today! I'll also leave some other examples I've tried and tested. All amazing.
From the moment you enter your kitchen, you'll be done within 45 minutes (even faster if you have a food mixer, which I do not).
First thing's first - preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F and prepare a couple of flat baking trays with greaseproof paper (baking paper/parchment paper). Grab a large mixing bowl and wooden spoon.
The cookie dough
Combine the margarine and sugar until creamy. If you're doing it by hand like me, this is the worst bit but it shouldn't take longer than a few minutes. If using a processor, follow the same order of adding ingredients.
Add the milk and vanilla extract and combine.
With a sieve, sift in the flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt. Gently combine the mixture until you find yourself eating the raw dough (don't worry — this is totally normal). Try not to over work it, else you'll get tough cookies!
Optional
Stir in your optional extras.
Bake
With a tablespoon, scoop 6 equally sized balls per tray, about equal distance apart from one another.
They'll flatten out during baking so make sure you leave space! It's worth noting that if you try and cram too many cookies on one tray, you'll end up with a tray-bake of square cookies, which isn't necessarily a problem but just doesn't seem quite right.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until very lightly browned.
I like them slightly soft, so I usually take them out at around 12 minutes.
If you're a fairly inexperienced baker like myself, set a timer on your phone for 10 minutes because these cookies bake fast. An extra few minutes could mean ruined cookies, or at least browner than you might like.
Leave the cookies to cool completely before you attempt to move or eat them. It's very tempting, believe me! Just go away for an hour, then return to place them in boxes as by this point they'll just slide right off the parchment.
If you find yourself eating the whole lot in one evening because they're THAT good, then I apologise.
Recipe Notes
For a slightly crunchier cookie, use golden or regular caster sugar.
Go wild with your optional extras. Try these:
Pistachio & Chocolate
50g shelled pistachios
50g vegan milk or dark chocolate (or white chocolate)
Triple Chocolate
40g vegan white chocolate
40g vegan milk chocolate
40g vegan dark chocolate
Peanut Butter
1 generous tbsp smooth peanut butter (for the best results, make your own!)
Fry the Tempeh strips with the sliced onions for approx 5 minutes, turning occasionally until browned. Melt the cheese on top of the bacon strips for a few minutes at the end.
Add the avocado, tomato, bacon strips with cheese and onions to 1 slice of bread. Add about 1 tbsp of mayo and 1 tbsp sriracha to the other slice.
So simple yet so damn good! A super-satisfying plant-based 'chicken', sweetcorn and mayo sandwich with a drizzle of sriracha. Perfect! This requires a few shop-bought ingredients and does not involve any cooking. Get it all from Sainsbury's.
So simple yet so damn good! A super-satisfying plant-based 'chicken', sweetcorn and mayo sandwich with a drizzle of sriracha. Perfect! This requires a few shop-bought ingredients and does not involve any cooking. Get it all from Sainsbury's.
The demand for vegan junk food is on the rise, and for good reason! You may have experienced weirdly-similar mock chicken products available in vegan fast food joints all around the UK and wonder how the hell they do it. The answer is seitan! With this recipe you will learn how to prepare your own fried chicken-style bites, wings, burgers, or whatever else you want to shape it into.
Don't be put off by the ingredients list—it's worth it! Besides, most are basic ingredients that you should have in your cupboard anyway.
The demand for vegan junk food is on the rise, and for good reason! You may have experienced weirdly-similar mock chicken products available in vegan fast food joints all around the UK and wonder how the hell they do it. The answer is seitan! With this recipe you will learn how to prepare your own fried chicken-style bites, wings, burgers, or whatever else you want to shape it into.
Don't be put off by the ingredients list—it's worth it! Besides, most are basic ingredients that you should have in your cupboard anyway.
1tspred chilli flakesI like mine a bit spicy, so I use red chilli flakes but you could use ordinary chilli powder instead.
Servings: people
Instructions
Broth
Start by boiling the kettle and placing all the ingredients for the broth into a large saucepan. It needs to be large!
Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce to a simmer (just below boiling point, bubbling very slightly). Cover.
Seitan
Into a large mixing bowl add the vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, smoked paprika, bouillon and oregano. Mix with a whisk or fork.
Add the soy sauce and liquid smoke, and add the water in a little bit at a time. Use your hands to form a rough dough. Be careful not to use too much water, but if you do just add a bit more gluten.
Knead the dough just a little bit until the ingredients are mixed together evenly - about 2-3 minutes. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Don't overwork it—it only need kneading a little bit else it will go tough. The more you knead the tougher it will get, which is perfect for making seitan steak or beef-style burgers.
With your dough in hand over the broth, rip it up into small pieces and drop them in. You should be able to rip off about 16 pieces. Don't worry if they seem a bit small... they will swell to double the size in the broth! Leave to simmer for 30 minutes.
Crispy Coating
While the seitan is cooking in the broth, prepare your coating. Add the flour, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, cumin and chilli flakes to another bowl (you could use the same bowl you mixed the seitan dough in to save washing up!). Mix with a whisk or fork.
After 30 minutes the seitan will be done, so turn out the heat. Ideally you want to wait for it to cool in the broth before coating the pieces with the flour mixture, but that seems like a lot of waiting around, so take the lid off and go do something for 20 minutes or until you can handle the seitan pieces with your hands.
Heat a large wok or frying pan with about 250ml oil (a lot I know, but as long as it's hot enough it shouldn't absorb too much into the seitan).
Gently squeeze each piece of seitan over the sink or broth before pressing them into the flour mixture and set aside. Don't squeeze too hard.. you want some moisture to stay in there so it stays succulent!
With the pan really hot, fry the pieces in the oil for a couple minutes each side until golden brown. I did this in batches which took about 10 minutes because I have a small wok.
Note: upon putting the pieces in the pan, it's supposed to be quite violent. If it's not hot enough it will sit there slowly bubbling away, absorbing all that oil. Gross!
Either serve as-is, or do what I did and dip the pieces into buffalo sauce (Frank's & melted dairy-free spread) before flashing on a hot BBQ. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
You could use BBQ sauce instead of buffalo to make BBQ chicken if you'd prefer. I find that the texture is almost like boneless chicken thigh, it's pretty amazing! Be careful not to overheat it, because it can go quite tough if left on the BBQ for too long.
Peanut butter can be pretty expensive if you go for the organic or "whole" types. Peanuts themselves are so cheap you can make it yourself for a fraction of the price. For this recipe I used 500g of red skinned peanuts which cost me £1.20. Organic peanuts are usually about double the price, but if you can get those then do. This recipe filled a 340g jar.
Peanut butter can be pretty expensive if you go for the organic or "whole" types. Peanuts themselves are so cheap you can make it yourself for a fraction of the price. For this recipe I used 500g of red skinned peanuts which cost me £1.20. Organic peanuts are usually about double the price, but if you can get those then do. This recipe filled a 340g jar.
Roasting the peanuts is important. If they're not roasted then the oils don't release as well and it tastes completely different to what peanut butter should taste like. You could use already-roasted peanuts, but they might contain a bit too much salt for your liking.
Use a flat oven tray and lay out the peanuts evenly. Use 2 trays if you need to and place them in the centre of a pre-heated oven for around 20 minutes on 180°C.
They should be slightly browned - try not to burn them or they'll be really bitter! Sprinkle with salt and give them a good shake before tipping them into a food processor.
Processing
Turn the processor on to break up the peanuts. Stop after a few seconds and remove a couple of handfuls of roughly broken up peanuts if you like your peanut butter crunchy - we'll add these at the end.
Keep processing - you'll need to keep stopping it and pushing the peanuts back onto the blades. At this stage the mixture will seem hopelessly dry and won't resemble peanut butter. This will change - trust me!
After about 10 minutes, you'll notice the mixture becoming a bit more paste-like. It will still be pretty thick at this point, but it just needs processing a bit more. If you think it's taking so long to do anything, then just have faith that it will work! A bit of perseverance will pay off.
Eventually it will resemble actual peanut-butter and will smell incredible. Give it a taste and add more salt if you need to. If you feel it's at a consistency you're happy with, then remove the blade and add the peanuts we set aside earlier and give it a stir. Transfer into a jar and there you've got delicious homemade peanut butter.
Recipe Notes
The same method can be used for a variety of different nuts including almonds, cashews or pistachios.
There's something about cooking your own chickpeas over buying tinned that makes them so much better. Maybe it's because the tinned variety are processed but this way is cheaper, and they taste way superior! They're easy to cook, they just need time to soak first.
600g of chickpeas will yield around 1.6kg of finished, cooked chickpeas. You can buy 2kg bags of chickpeas from the "world foods" section of the supermarket for about £3, or in any good Asian Food store. There are of few of the latter in my town, and they're fantastic for ingredients.
This means that a 2kg bag for £3 will yield 5.3kg of cooked product. Assuming a 400g can of chickpeas is 60p, you'll need to spend £7.95 to get the same amount and they just don't taste as good, trust me!
There's something about cooking your own chickpeas over buying tinned that makes them so much better. Maybe it's because the tinned variety are processed but this way is cheaper, and they taste way superior! They're easy to cook, they just need time to soak first.
600g of chickpeas will yield around 1.6kg of finished, cooked chickpeas. You can buy 2kg bags of chickpeas from the "world foods" section of the supermarket for about £3, or in any good Asian Food store. There are of few of the latter in my town, and they're fantastic for ingredients.
This means that a 2kg bag for £3 will yield 5.3kg of cooked product. Assuming a 400g can of chickpeas is 60p, you'll need to spend £7.95 to get the same amount and they just don't taste as good, trust me!
Empty the chickpeas into a large bowl and pour in cold water until they're covered. Cover and leave somewhere over night or for about 10 hours. I usually just leave the bowl on the kitchen windowsill.
When you come back to them you'll see that a lot of the water has been soaked up and the kernels have swelled to about 2.5x the size. Empty the bowl including the water into a large saucepan. Top up the water a bit and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for an hour to an hour and a half.
When they're tender turn off the heat and drain. If you're making houmous, then save some of the liquid to use in my recipe.
Recipe Notes
I store my chickpeas in a large plastic box in the fridge. They'll keep for about a week but they can also be frozen. Add them to salads, curries, wraps, burgers, or to make amazing houmous!
