(PB)²

In my more fledgling vegan days, the one thing I lamented almost as much as chocolate digestives were Reeses Peanut-Butter Cups. I've yet to come up with a chocolate digestive (although the plain low-fat McVities brand are vegan they're not GF!), but I HAVE got a peanut-butter cup replacement!! There's no way anyone could tell these were vegan, they're so sweet & trashy, perfect for disproving the stereotype of vegan food as healthy food ;D Even better, if you don't count a little microwave action, this is an absolutely no-cooking recipe! This is possibly one of the sweets I've had the most requests for, & since it's a bar it's really neat to slice up & put in tupperware to give to people or take on roadtrips! Perfect.

Cinnamon Escargot

I've made cinnamon rolls in the past (un-vegan, due to unnecessary egg wash) and while they've been quite nice, that's just it. 'Nice' isn't very exciting. 'Nice' is bourbons with a cup of tea that has just a little too much milk in it. These badboys, however, are cinnamon rolls with added awesome. Again I'm cooking from Nigella Lawson's Domestic Goddess but there's so much gold in that book. I don't think the picture does these justice, perhaps we should have photographed them all in the pan as they look amazing. I misread the recipe and used muffin cases to make these which meant the pastry didn't puff up properly so make sure just to put the syrup/pastry straight onto the muffin tray.

I'd made these intending to share them among some friends, but plans changed and we were left alone with the schnecken, which is not a good idea if you want to save them! Cathy insists that she can usually stop after eating enough of something, but these are the kind of devils that convince you to consume as many as possible, as quickly as possible.

Chocolate-Chip Ginger Cookies

People are going to assume I can't cook anything without ginger in it, & well, they might be right. I've yet to find anything that can't be improved by either adding ginger or cola. Anyway, I'm on a seemingly eternal search for the perfect vegan chocolate-chip cookie, & I thought well, Bo's pretty good at what he does, surely his chocolate-chip cookies are slammin! Turns out I thought right!

We added some diced crystallised ginger to the mix where Bo asks for the same amount of chopped walnuts, not having any walnuts I thought ginger would be an interesting bit of an experiment & thankfully it turned out well! The pieces aren't spicy at all & distribute nicely so you just get a little sweet gingeryness every few bites. The cookie itself is soft & chewy, exactly how I like my cookies, & may possibly be my new front-runner for the best vegan chocolate-chip cookie ever...

Strawberry Rose Cobbler

From what I've learnt (correct me if I'm wrong!), a cobbler is a traditional American dish that consists of a fruit filling with a thick, soft dough topping. It comes from the 'clump cake' family of desserts which the French call poupeton, translating to 'mess in the pan'. I haven't included a full picture of this as it's really not very attractive in the cooking dish, so if appearance matters to you, plate this in the kitchen first!

This is an amazing recipe, I would definately recommend you make it at least once. We've made this twice and everyone has loved it. Just to put things in perspective, I'm quite modest about most of the things we cook but there was nothing bad about this dish; I often find that with 'fruit plus crust' type desserts the pastry can be a bit too dry and detract from the end result, but the cobbler is very scone-like and went amazingly well with the strawberry syrup. Have I raved enough about it yet?

Gingerbread

I don't foray into the kitchen alone for just any old recipe, but as a general rule something gingery will sway me. It's a little known fact that ginger is a sure-fire ginger girl bait so I can't resist the stuff, & this recipe is easily one of the best ginger-based ginger baits I've had. It's an old-fashioned gingerbread, not a crunchy gingerbread-person biccie, with a texture halfway between a soft fudgey brownie & a carrot cake. The flavour is quite dark, due to the amount of treacle & muscovado sugar, but the lemon icing lightens the whole experience up. This is actually the first thing I've cooked where anyone has said they would pay for it!

Apple Kuchen

This was a bit different to the desserts I normally make, but that's not to say that it was bad! Nigella says that it makes "a fabulous breakfast if you've got people staying", which I completely agree with but I think I'd rather keep it all to myself than share. If you've got the time and, unlike me, can plan ahead, then you could make the dough and leave it to rise in the fridge overnight. I've not tried this with bread before but I hear it gives dough a much better flavour.

Don't be put off by the long instructions, it's fairly easy and it's a nice recipe to do when you've got other things to do during to the rising time. It's the same with any yeast breads, I find it a much more constructive distraction to my studies than Facebook at least. I liked this kuchen a lot, I would definately do it again, though I would add a little more allspice to the topping, and I might make a little more syrup for drizzling. I would be a bit more careful with the yeast, I think I added a little more than the recipe asked for which meant the dough rose quite a bit during baking!