Sweet As Apple Pie

This is not my pie. The post just looked really dull without a photo.

Crust:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup vegan margarine (I use Olivani Lite)
1/4 cup chilled water

Filling:

5 deece sized apples, or thereabouts
Cinnamon
Brown sugar
Nutmeg

Preheat oven to 230°C

Filling: Peel, quarter, core and cut apples into chunks which are suitable for a pie. Roughly the size of a 10 sent piece (bit bigger, maybe?), I guess but you know, not circular, or flat. Or you could make them circular, that'd be pretty sweet, it'd just take ages. Put apple pieces in pot with enough water to cover them, put on the pot lid, bring to boil then turn the heat down and let them simmer till they are sufficiently soft. Once soft, drain the apps and season to your taste with cinnamon, brown sugar and nutmeg.

Crust: Cut margarine into flour until it looks somewhat breadcrumb-ish. Add water bit by bit until it all sticks together, dough like. You probably won't need the whole amount of water, so do it bit by bit! I used the whole amount and it was too sticky to roll out, had to add extra flour. You can do that if you want, I guess. Roll out into a pie shaped ... shape, bung into pie tin. It should have bits hanging over the edge. Remember to leave some dough out for the pie top, idiot.

Pour āporos into crust covered pie tin. Sprinkle over some extra cinnamon/nutmeg/sugs etc if you are so inclined. Roll out remaining dough, place over apples. Flip in the hanging bits and pinch around the edges to make a sweet crust. I don't recommend a Pizza Hutt-esque cheesy crust for this pie. Although cheese and apple ain't that bad together. You could try it. Vegan cheese, of course.

Place the pie lovingly in the oven. After 10 minutes, lower temperature to 175°C. Bake for another 20 - 30 minutes. I did mine for about 25 minutes, and the top was sweet as, but the bottom could've been a bit more cooked. So maybe 30 minutes is good. It should be a lovely golden brown colour. If it is black, you have cooked it too long. Better luck next time.

Serve with soy icecream, or if you're cheap like us, soy milk, which is pretty fucking good too.

NB: You can throw some sugar and cinnamon into the crust mixture if you like a sweet, sweet pie. Also don't go easy on the sugar when seasoning the apples. It's not suppose to be healthy, it's suppose to be delicious.

Sorry, no pictures, this pie was literally gone within 10 minutes of coming out of the oven.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Vegan chocolate chips/drops (We just smashed up some Whittakers Dark Ghana and Dark Chunks)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/4 cup water

Preheat oven to 180°C

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate in a bowl. Making a valley in the middle. Pretend the chocolate is mini-a-ture cows. Stage a wee farm play. Put it aside for awhile.

In another bowl, mix up the sugar and the oil. Then mix in the vanilla. Then mix in the water. Or if you're lazy like me, ignore the rules and do it all at the same time. Pour the wet stuff into your chocolate cow covered valley. Resume play. Make a big deal over the drowning chocolate cows. Have a moment of silence. Mix, but just enough so it's you know, mixed. Over mixing causes tuff cookies. Maybe that's what you want.

Drop spoonfuls onto whatever it is you're cooking it on. I'd suggest a baking sheet adorned baking tray. By the way, if you're using baking sheets, preheat them along with the oven. I didn't use baking sheets. Infact, I lightly floured the bottom of a roasting tin. I don't even own a baking tray. I like to squish them down with a fork a bit. You don't have to. Maybe you could squish them down with a potato masher. Once you're done fucking around, put them in the oven.

After 5 minutes, flip your tray around. Even baking. Put them back in for another 4 minutes. This will produce a soft, chewy cookie that hardens as it cools. I left mine in for a little bit longer because the original recipe had waaaaaay too much baking powder in it, and my cookies spread like chicken pox at a kindergarten. Remove cookies, put them on a cooling rack to cool. Or a plate, in my case, because I don't own a cooling rack either.

Enjoy your delicious cookies. Make sure you stash some before your flatmates eat them all. Om nom nom.

No photos coz I can't be bothered, but I'm pretty sure you all know what a chocolate chip cookie looks like.

Easy As Shortbread

(Sorry about the shitty picture, I wasn't really interested it making these look good at midnight-ish, just wanted to see how they tasted, haha.)

1 cup vegan margarine (I use Olivani Lite)
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup cornflour
2 cups plain flour

Preheat oven to 150°C

Cream marg and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Don't be weak about it, it really needs a good creaming. Sift in the cornflour and flour, and knead.

Like the cookies below, you can roll into balls and squish a bit on a baking sheet covered baking tray, or you can roll the dough out and cut it into shapes. Cocks and tits would be pretty humourous, depending on who you're planning on giving these to. Might want to stick to hearts and stars for Nana. They should be between a half a cm and 1cm thick.

Bake for 25 - 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them, they're not suppose to go brown, but "slightly golden", aww bless. Remove from oven, cool, devour. Or you could dip them in chocolate and let them set, OR make some chocolate filling and squish it between them... that'd be pretty sweet.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

Candyfloss frosting with hundreds and thousands

Cupcakes:

1 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla essence/extract
1/2 teaspoon of some other essence extract (almond, coconut, chocolate, or more vanilla. Whatevs.)
1 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 175°C. Line ya muffin tray with pretty pretty cupcake liners, or use none and save the universe.

Whisk soy milk and vinegar in a bowl. It will curdle, don't worry, it's suppose to. Set it aside for a few minutes. Once sufficiently gross looking (approx. 3 minutes) add sugar, oil and essences, and beat until foamy.

In another bowl sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Pour wet into dry in two lots, and mix until there are no large lumps. A few small lumps are OK. The mixture will be quite wet, but that's how we like it, right?

Pour mixture into liners, filling 3/4 of the way. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until something inserted into the centre comes out clean. I do not recommend any extremities. I generally use a chopstick, because we just don't have toothpicks. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely. This step is imperative if you plan on frosting these suckers. Warm cupcakes + frosting = sticky, disastrous mess.

Frosting:

1/2 cup Kremelta
1/2 cup vegan margarine (Again, I use Olivani Lite)
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla essence/extract
1/4 soy milk

Beat Kremelta and margarine together until fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for another 3 minutes. Add vanilla and soy milk, and beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until even fluffier. I cannot tell you how important it is that you beat the shit out of this stuff. When you add that soy milk, it's gonna look fucking gross. You have to beat it until your arms are going to drop off. Some of you boys really won't have a problem with this, but for the ladies, you're gonna have to drop shoulder on this shit. The longer you beat it, the lighter (in colour) it gets, and the fluffier it gets.

Add food colouring or whatevs if you want it to look pretty. Obviously this is vanilla frosting. Chuck in some cocoa powder if you want chocolate, or whatever flavoured essence/extract, etc.

Peppermint frosting with Skittles

EDIT: This recipe is from the book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, so credit where credit is due to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Welcome to Vegan NZ

Hey guys. I decided to start this blog for a few reasons. I was inspired by the punkas vegetarian/vegan forum to begin with, but realised that not everyone in NZ uses punkas, though it's probably getting pretty close, haha. Secondly, I'm really lazy, and hate having to search through thousands of pages for vegan recipes. In saying that, there are a few really good recipes sites around (links in the side bar) - I just thought it would be nice to have a little NZ vegan community going on. The other good thing about having a NZ vegan blog is that all the recipes will use ingredients that everyone else can access - occasionally a problem when using recipes from the States, etc. What I'd ultimately like to happen is have people join the blog as members, and have access to the account, and be able to post their own recipes/photos up as the make new dishes. So, if you're interested in having your recipes shared on here, give me an email: jayherself@gmail.com, and I'll add you to the blogs member list. Choice.

I'm going to put up a few recipes now, but they are all for sweet treats! I'd be really keen for some people to share some less unhealthy recipes, because my sweet tooth is getting the better of me! If you have some things you'd like to cook/bake/make, and don't have a recipe, feel free to use this blog to ask if anyone else has it!

Edit: I'd just like to add that my sweet profile pic of Moz was actually a .gif, with Meat is Murder on it, but for some reason blogspot has frozen it on his lovely face only. I don't actually think I'm Morrissey.