An Eggless Life

Being vegetarian and being small is hard sometimes. All you ever want to do when your small is blend in. You don't want to be different from anyone else or have to explain why you are who you are.

So when the birthday party invitations started coming in for free range chick no 1. and the realization came that she would miss out on the birthday cake as it was bound to have eggs in it, I decided to start asking the mothers if they minded me making some cupcakes. The triple chocolate cupcakes were always received well by eager little hands and mouths but often there were a couple left over.

I started paying attention to the food that was being served at the parties and I noticed most of the time there was a double up on cupcakes.(the ones Id made and then another batch from the host mother.)

I needed an eggless alternative to a cake that wasn't a cake or a cupcake. So the ‘lamington chunks for a birthday party’ tradition was born.

Lamingtons are another of our families firm favourites, and my personal, absolute, no questions asked, always on the table for my birthday, favourite! I found that small people love them as they are not something that is normally at a birthday party and the parents devour them as they are curious as to what a eggless sponge tastes like.

This is my mother in law’s – lets call her Nana - recipe for eggless lamingtons. She is by far the best vegan/eggless baker I know. The variety of cakes and biscuits she makes is amazing and her cakes are always beautifully soft, moist and risen (which is actually an art all to its own, to get an eggless cake to rise.)

I have slowly attempted her highly admired recipes in my own kitchen and had many failures but recently more and more successes. Following her recipes to the exact detail and failing only led me to realize the one ingredient that she adds that she forgot to tell me I was forgetting.

LOVE.

To succeed in veg*n baking and veg*n cooking you have to love what you are creating. Your food is made from scratch, no one has added preservatives flavours or additives to your food, you create the flavours and textures yourself. A love of natural food and love for those you are feeding is the most important ingredients in your baking. The rest is practice, advice from a wonderful woman that will share her tried and true recipes (thanks as always Nana) and of cause the people you love, to praise your efforts, even your massive failures, and wash the dishes when your done.

Eggless Sponge

· 200mls of canola oil (or sunflower / vegetable oil)

· 1 tsp vanilla essence

· 1.5 cups white sugar (I used Xylotol which is a found naturally in corn)

· 1.5 cups natural set Greek style yogurt

· 5 cups of White Self Raising Flour (SR spelt will work here too)

· 1.5 cups milk (or soy milk or rice milk)

Sift flour 3 times into a separate bowl (this makes the cake really fluffy)

Beat oil, vanilla, sugar & yogurt until really creamy

Add flour & milk and continue beating for around 3 mins

Put into a lamington tray

Bake at 150 in a fan forced oven for around 25 mins (my oven is a commercial sized fan forced oven so I cooked this cake for about 35 mins on 160, just keep checking with a skewer)

Lamingtons

· Icing Sugar

· Cocoa

· Butter

· Hot water

· Desiccated or shredded Coconut (the girls prefer desiccated)

Mix the icing ingredients to a chocolaty strength your family likes, my girls prefer a lighter colour to the traditional dark chocolate lamingtons in the bakery)

Cut the sponge into chunks of cake and ice

Put coconut on a flattish plate.

Roll chunks in the coconut.

The icing and the rolling is really messy business, my girl’s luuuuurrrvvvee this part and I happily hand this job over to them. Don’t put all your coconut on the plate at once as it does get goopy.

My plentiful garden

Today was our first silverbeet harvest. Our garden has provided my kitchen with its first real sign that it will indeed be plentiful . The bounty was luscious & green & oh so crispy, I have been waiting and watching it grow, considering which dish would best fit such high expectations. Cheese & Feta filo pastries, or gently steamed with a nob of butter and little soy sauce. On a hot baked spud with sour cream & coleslaw. Undecided I let the small people decide and of cause they asked for 'Silverbeet & Cheese Cannelloni.' This is the meal EVERYONE in this house asks for on their birthday, this is the meal that comes out at Christmas, Easter, & Anniversaries. This is vegetarian decadence at its best, there is nothing low fat or healthy about this meal, except for the silverbeet itself. A tray of cannelloni is totally devoured by the 5 of us in one night with maybe two pieces left for the daddy mans lunch the next day. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my family has for the last 14 years.

A Swelshed Recipe for Silverbeet & Cheese Cannelloni

2 Packets of cannelloni tubes although this recipe is for 1 1/2 packets cause that's what fits in my tray

Sauce

1 onion chopped

oil
1 red capsicum

dried basil

dried thyme

tbsp sugar
tsp salt

1 jar of tomato sauce (homemade or plain pasta sauce)

1 satchel of tomato paste

1 tbsp white vinegar

about 1/2 cup water

Cannelloni Filling
2 bunches of silverbeet

1 tub of cottage cheese

dried oregano

salt

sugar

nutmeg

black pepper

Topping

1 tub cream cheese

1cup grated cheese

Note: all the ingredients are to taste, I guess they would be around 1/2 - 1tsp each

chop onions, saute in oil, add chopped capsicum (I like to do onions & capsicum in the food processor, it makes a finer sauce) stir until onion turns clear. Add seasonings, jar of tomatoes tomato paste, vinegar and water. Boil then reduce heat while you make the filling.
Steam silverbeet until just softened, then drain really well. Chop spinach add cottage cheese and add remaining filling ingredients. Stuff cannelloni (this is really messy so just use your hands, or your kids hands if they are helping) Don't put too much filling in cause the tubes break. Arrange them in an oven tray or casserole dish, pour sauce over the top and spread evenly. soften cream cheese and spread over the sauce, sprinkle on the cheese and bake for around 30 - 40 Min's or until the pasta is soft. Serve with salad or veggies.
This entire salad came from the backyard as well, we are well on our way to making a complete meal from our garden.

The First & Last Harvest

I have had a mulberry tree in every house Ive ever lived in and strangely enough this is the first time I have made mulberry pie.

Traditions hold powerful emotions & the Mulberry tree tradition is just as powerful as any other. All five of us stand at the base of the tree and eat mulberries straight off the branch. We did this everyday until one of two things happened.... the tree stopped producing .... or the wrigglers entered the fruit.

This year our tree had berrie's along time before our first sighting of fruit fly so with basket in hand I dared to break tradition & create a desert.

I snuck out every morning to pick berries from the tree to hide in a container in the freezer. It took 5 days of picking & 5 afternoons of tears when again there were no berries on the tree, but I finally had the 420 grams of Mulberries I needed for the pie.

My Nanna Smith's Mulberry Pie

420 grams Mulberries

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup all purpose white flour

double crust pastry

Drain berries in a sieve

Preheat oven about 200 in fan forced

Heat sugar, flour & juice drained from the berries until thick

Put into bottom of pie crust

Lattice the top of the pie

Rest in refrigerator for half hour

Bake until golden

Serve with cream or ice cream.... or both

Verdict: They LURVED IT!!!