Vegan Lemonade scones
I feel like this might be the last post I write in a while…
It’s not that I won’t be baking but it might just be that you don’t get to hear about every little adventure. Nothing exciting is happening, it’s just I might spend my evenings reading and listening to podcasts. I realised I have multiple un-listened to podcasts and audiobooks on my phone and unread books on Kindle. I have this weekend finished listening to ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor E Frankl and ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker, both fascinating. I’m just starting ‘NW’ by Zadie Smith. So I think that’s how I want to spend my time over the next few months and may I won’t write so much about cake, bread and biscuits!
In the meantime I’ll share that last thing I baked last week. Vegan lemonade scones. I wanted to use up the lemonade that was still in the fridge. I had made scones in the summer, seems a lifetime away, using a recipe that involved 3-ingredients, at the time we were in the height of the pandemic (well the 1st wave and lockdown at least) and baking was my refuge and relief. They were quite nice and ridiculously easy to make. So I thought, why not make some more? I did not have any double cream so I Googled vegan lemonade scones, and this was one of the first recipes to come up:
It was quite easy but I have to say, messy , very messy and sticky ! They were very tasty (bearing in mind that I used sugar free lemonade) and bouncy. I find myself munching on one when I am hungry, they go well with a cup of tea, nice for breakfast and somehow nice with scrambled eggs. I’ve not yet eaten with anything remotely jam or cream-like but there is still time!
Ingredients
- 1 cup dairy-free milkcold
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3½ cups self-raising flour self-rising
- ¾ cup lemonade Sprite, cold
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 210°C (410°F) and line a baking tray.
- To make the vegan buttermilk, combine the milk and apple cider vinegar in a bowl and set aside.
- Sift the flour in to a large mixing bowl and, using a butter knife, create a well in the centre.
- After 5 minutes, add the buttermilk and the lemonade. Bring the mixture together using the butter knife.
- When it is loosely combined, tip the mixture out on to a floured surface. Touch the dough only enough to bring it together in to a rectangle.
- Dip a round cookie cutter – or the rim of a glass – in to flour and cut the dough in to rounds. Dip the cutter in to the flour after each round.
- Place the rounds so they are just touching on the prepared baking tray and brush them with a little milk.
- Bake them in the oven for 15 minutes or until risen and golden.
- Remove the oven and separate to serve with jam and coconut whipped cream.
Notes
- Sift your flour for deliciously fluffy and light scones
- Use cold lemonade and milk. This will make them rise up beautifully when they hit the hot oven.
- Use a butter knife to bring the batter together in a bowl not a spoon.
- As soon as the dough comes together tip it out on to a floured surface and, with floured hands, bring it together in to a rectangle about an inch tall. No need to knead!
- The less you touch your scone batter the lighter and fluffier they will be. The dough is super sticky but that’s OK. Don’t be tempted to add flour or work it too much.
- Dip your cookie cutter in plain flour before cutting each scone to avoid it sticking to your mix.
- Place the cut rounds on the baking tray so they are just touching. This will help them rise up and keep each other from drying out on the sides.
- Separate each scone using the cutter with a push motion not a twist – twisting will give you wonky scones. Having said that, my scones are often wonky and I love them anyway!
Black-eye bean masala with spinach
So I am 4 days into the first working week of the year. It’s been OK. It has mostly been admin-filled. This has been busy enough. One day I got rather enthusiastic about one of the projects I have been working on and did a 12-hour shift. A bizaare concept in this current world, to be doing that at home. Try as I might, sometimes I blur the boundaries between work and home. It’s a bit silly really, especially as it turned out that nobody was as interested in the work as me. Disappointing but I guess other people have their priorities.
Anyway, in trying to make working at home at bit more ‘normal’, I decided to cook lunch. Normally Ignacio whips up a pasta dish and in the summer it was salads but today I thought about my work colleagues who would be cooking for their children while home schooling and thought I might as well nuture ‘the child within’. I know, I know, it’s not the same, it’s not comparable it was just the thought that came to me.
My sister shared this recipe (Black-eyed pea masala with kale)with me and our other sister and it has been on the cards for a few days now. Canned black-eye peas are not a thing for me, so I soaked one cup of black-eye beans for 2 days.
It turned out that this took much longer than expected. I brought the work laptop and my work mobile phone into the kitchen and I actually ended up replying to multiple SystmOne instant messages and e-mails in between chopping and tearing up vegetables. We have a weekly teaching session on Tuesday afternoon, and I found myself joining the MS Teams session, a 3 pm, in my kitchen with my apron on. I’m not sure if anyone noticed but there was no comment made! I eventually left the food to quietly stew and returned to the 2nd bedroom/home-office and continued the meeting in a more professional manner ‘sans’ apron.
We finally got to eat the finished product just after five, an incredibly late lunch. But well worth the wait. It was delicious. I did make a few adjustments. I am a not a great fan of kale so I replaced this with spinach. I do not have cayenne pepper so I used spicy paprika instead. It’s a lovely simple recipe to make and I have all of the ingredients as a staple in my cupboards and freezer (there always seems to be a container of frozen spinach in the freezer, I’m guessing a hangover from my childhood). I made some coconut rice, that complemented this really nicely.
Like the bagels (last one finished today), I would like this to become a staple food item for the next few months. I am trying to reduce the mental burden when it comes to meals and mealtimes and this is just the type of meal that can also be stored and frozen for days when I have to go into work and take a lunch with me. Also black-eye beans are also hangover from my childhood, so I might indulge this, in the time when we need to take care of ourselves and each other.
Previous black-eye recipes:
https://cantaloupe.press/2018/12/15/whats-for-lunch/
https://cantaloupe.press/2019/08/31/black-eye-beans-in-the-slow-cooker/
https://cantaloupe.press/2018/08/27/black-eyed-beans-curry/
Ingredients
4 SERVINGS
1 large white onion
4 garlic cloves
11″ piece ginger
1 bunch Tuscan or curly kale
315.5-oz. cans black-eyed peas
¼cup extra-virgin olive oil or vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. plus 1½ tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1tsp. garam masala
½tsp. cayenne powder
114.5-oz. can crushed tomatoes
1Tbsp. plus 1½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or 2¾ tsp. Morton kosher saltCooked rice, roti, or sourdough bread and lime wedges (for serving)
Steps
1.
Prep your ingredients: Finely chop 1 large white onion. To do this, start by cutting it in half through root end. Trim top, then peel away skin and first tough layer; discard. Leave root end on. Starting close to the board and moving upward, thinly slice through onion parallel to cutting board, leaving root end intact. Make thin lengthwise slices across onion, leaving root end intact. Slice onion crosswise, working from top to bottom to create small cubes. Run your knife through once more if any pieces are too big. You should have 2–3 cups chopped onion.
2.
Smash, peel, and finely chop 4 garlic cloves. Peel one 1″ piece ginger with a spoon, then slice into planks. Stack 2 planks at a time and cut into thin matchsticks. Set aside. Remove ribs and stems from 1 bunch Tuscan or curly kaleand discard. Tear leaves into 2″ pieces. Rinse three 15.5-oz. cans black-eyed peasin a fine-mesh sieve.
3.
Heat ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil or vegetable oil in a medium pot over medium-high. Cook onion and garlic, stirring often, until golden, 10–12 minutes.
4.
Add 2 Tbsp. plus 1½ tsp. ground coriander, 1 tsp. ground turmeric, 1 tsp. garam masala, and ½ tsp. cayenne powder to pot and cook, stirring constantly, until incorporated and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add one 14.5-oz. can crushed tomatoes, bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring often, until sauce darkens and thickens, 10–14 minutes. The sauce should look jammy and will start to stick to the bottom of the pot.
5.
Add black-eyed peas, 1 Tbsp. plus 1½ tsp. Diamond Crystal or 2¾ tsp. Morton kosher salt, and 4 cups water and stir to combine. Add kale in 2 batches, stirring and letting wilt slightly between additions. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook until beans are tender and kale is tender, about 10 minutes.
6.
Remove pot from heat and stir in reserved ginger.
7.
Serve masala with rice, roti, or sourdough bread and lime wedges for squeezing over.
More bagels!
Sunday before work is still like the Sunday before school. Feelings of apathy and low-level fear. No, I don’t have any homework to do but I have e-mails to check and respond to, reports to correct and clinical queries to attend to. I have not opened my work laptop since December 23rd and quite frankly I’m dreading the moment that I do. I will have to take a look this evening, I don’t do Monday morning suprises and it will help to have some degree of control the first day back, I’m on call tomorrow so I know it will all fall to pieces within the first few hours.
So, what better way to soothe these anxieties than an afternoon of baking. I thought bagels would be good to make. This is now my third batch in a week, I feel like I am a little obsessed. However it would also provide a very practical solution for my work-food situation. I found another bagel recipe on BBC good foods, which I followed and produced ten perfect bagels (they are looking a bit rounder now).
I’m all about the poppy-seed toppings at the moment but at some point I will explore others. Variety is afterall, meant to be the spice of life.
So that’s it for me now.
I’m heading to my work-laptop, back to reality and down the rabbit-hole I fall.
But it’s all good, it’s all good.
Ingredients
- 7g sachet dried yeast
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- 450g bread flour
- poppy, fennel and/or sesame seeds to sprinkle on top (optional)
Method
- Tip the yeast and 1 tbsp sugar into a large bowl, and pour over 100ml warm water. Leave for 10 mins until the mixture becomes frothy.
- Pour 200ml warm water into the bowl, then stir in the salt and half the flour. Keep adding the remaining flour (you may not have to use it all) and mixing with your hands until you have a soft, but not sticky dough. Then knead for 10 mins until the dough feels smooth and elastic. Shape into a ball and put in a clean, lightly oiled bowl. Cover loosely with cling film and leave in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1hr.
- Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. On a lightly floured surface, divide the dough into 10 pieces, each about 85g. Shape each piece into a flattish ball, then take a wooden spoon and use the handle to make a hole in the middle of each ball. Slip the spoon into the hole, then twirl the bagel around the spoon to make a hole about 3cm wide. Cover the bagel loosely with cling film while you shape the remaining dough.
- Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to the boil and tip in the remaining sugar. Slip the bagels into the boiling water – no more than four at a time. Cook for 1-2 mins, turning over in the water until the bagels have puffed slightly and a skin has formed. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain away any excess water. Sprinkle over your choice of topping and place on a baking tray lined with parchment. Bake in the oven for 25 mins until browned and crisp – the bases should sound hollow when tapped. Leave to cool on a wire rack, then serve with your favourite filling.
Two score years and then some
You know me by now. I love a birthday cake, more making them than eating them. The last birthday of the year, and the most important for me is Ignacio’s. It was a strikingly different from last year. This time last year, we were Spain bound and we spent the time and the beginning on the new year in Marbella. Lol, it could not have been more different.
Last year’s birthday ‘cake’ – made in Spain and absolutely delicious.
But we know 2020, was what it was. So Ignacio’s lockdown birthday was just the two of us and the obligatory phone calls to loved ones.
I did have a plan to make a luscious vegan chocolate cake. However that did not quite happen. Instead, I recycled/repurposed the Christmas tea loaf that I had made a few days earlier. Ignacio loves chocolate, so I melted some dark chocolate and mixed it with a little icing sugar and covered the loaf with this. I then chopped up some walnuts and sprinkled them on the top. It also turned out that in my box of delights, in the cupboard that makes the kitchen tidy there were some candles and a happy birthday ribbon. I thought my little work of art was quite nice!
Here’s hoping we can spend the next birthday with family and friends.
