Anniversary Dinner and Dessert!

by L Matthews on February 12, 2011

salad with tofu croutons

It seems that I’ve eaten an awful lot of incredibly tasty vegan food this week… I’m feeling quite stuffed really, so it’s a good job I also conquered my fear of the treadmill in the condo exercise room and did more than just cook and eat and cook and eat and cook and…

This Tuesday was mine and my partner’s anniversary, so a special anniversary dinner was in order. In addition to that I had a go at making the tofu, spinach, mushroom lasagne over at the fat-free vegan kitchen. I don’t normally go in for fat-free things as they’re so often just ful of sugar to compensate, and I definitely don’t do dieting! This lasagne looked mighty tasty though, so I gave it a whirl and will post the results at a later date. We also had a fantastic veggie and tofu stir fry, and resurrected New Food Wednesdays! This was a tradition from what seems like an awfully long time ago, but is probably only about 2yrs, when we lived in Manchester/Chorlton, UK, and realised we’d got into a rut when it came to cooking. So, every Wednesday we’d take it in turns to cook something new and interesting. This time we’ve decided to add an extra challenge and make each month a themed cuisine; February is East-Asian Cuisine… hmm. More on that later. Back to the anniversary!

Dinner, then, consisted of the tasty vegan gluten-free zucchini pasta and sweet-pesto, a humongous salad, some deliciously crisp sauvignon blanc, and (not so gluten-free) crunchy bread. For dessert were some incredibly sugary and buttery-tasting vegan almond, raspberry and coconut, gluten-free squares. Well, again, they should have been gluten-free, but I ran out of xantham gum and, as I’m not actually gluten intolerant, threw in a touch of wheat flour to keep everything from falling apart. Anyone know where I can get xantham gum in Victoria!?

The raw ‘pasta’ recipe was posted a little while ago here, and the dessert was from a recipe I found through my friends over at A Tale of Two Vegans, who sourced it from Karina’s Kitchen. Don’t you just love how vegan food-bloggers get around!

As I say, mine weren’t gluten-free, but still managed to fall apart quite a bit and I’ve now discovered that they’re an awful lot better when straight out of the fridge than when at room temp of warm and mushy. The butteriness and the sugar are not so instantly horrifying then… mmm indulgence. They are actually so sweet and buttery that my partner (who eats a lot of ‘naughty’ indulgent things) has not devoured them all immediately as usual. What a shame then that it falls to me to scoff the lot.

raspberry butter almond tarts

The recipe I used went a little like this (but, hey, I’m a terrible one for just throwing things into a bowl and seeing what happens, so don’t hold me to it!):

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line a baking pan (about 9x13in) with parchment or foil (leaving some over the ends in order to lift the sticky gooey mess out afterwards).

For the base:

1 cup soy flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour
1/4 cup wholewheat flour (or sorghum with 1tsp xantham gum added)
1/4 cup romano bean flour
1 cup light brown sugar (if you use larger grains of sugar it will make everything gritty and a bit weird)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 stick of Earth Balance vegan shortening (about 2/3cup)
1 tsp vanilla extract

The Method: mix your dry ingredients first then chop in the shortening and vanilla and get it all squishy between your fingers. Press it down into the bottom of your baking pan evenly, and then bake blind for about 7mins. The original recipe suggests doing the rest of the prep and putting everything together when it’s warm, but I found that that makes it really gooey, so leaving the base to cool a little first might work better…

When it is cooled, spread a layer of tasty jam on top, I used raspberry, the original recipe called for strawberry. Don’t do what I did and use way too much and get it all up the sides of the pan. Your dessert will totally stick to the parchment paper/foil then and be a right old pain to get out. Probably wise to leave a border of about half a centimetre free of jam around the edge of the base.

Next you need your crumble topping, which is basically:

1/4 cup soy flour
1/4 cup quinoa flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2/3 stick of Earth Balance vegan shortening (about 4tbsp)

Mix up the dry ingredients and then cut in the shortening until you get a big sticky mess. It will lump together so try to break it up into little bits before strewing it across the top of your jammy layer.

Next, the sugar fat fest continues.

1 cup sweetened flaked coconut (I used unsweetened with a drop of agave mixed in)
2/3 cup sliced almonds
4 tbsp Earth Balance vegan spread
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Melt the butter in a saucepan or banne-marie, remove from the heat and mix the other ingredients in. Then spoon it, fairly evenly over the top of the crumble and pat it down a bit.

Bake for about 30 mins, then transfer it to a cooling rack briefly before putting it in the freezer on a chopping board. Take it out of the freezer once cooled and cut into about 16 pieces. You cna wrap these as portable treats or just store them in a cookie box in the fridge. Nom Nom.

Thanks to Eve and K over at a Tale of Two Vegans for introducing me to these… I’ll send you my dental bill when my teeth fall out!

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Leave a Comment

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Mandee February 13, 2011 at 15:13

Happy Anniversary! It looks like you celebrated with some delicious food, I’d love to try making the raspberry coconut squares!

admin February 13, 2011 at 19:07

Ah, thanks Cupcake!

To continue the amazing week of food, we decided to make Christmas dinner today! So there’s Bloody Mary Soup a-cooking, along with a nut roast and all the trimmings. Indulgent, moi?!

Let me know how you like the raspberry, almond, coconut squares… they’re pretty sweet!?

I need to add you to my blogroll too, tsk, tsk, sorry!

Cheers,
Leigh

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