Date Spelt Loaf Cake

Origin

After my first attempt at spelt bread turned out cake-like, I decided to modify the recipe to make it into a cake. I made an apple cake without added stevia and with date syrup at the bottom, and a banana cake with the date syrup swirled in and a little additional stevia.

Ingredients

• 250 grams vegan yoghurt
• 5 tablespoons date syrup
• a few drops of liquid stevia, if a sweeter cake is desired (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 100 grams whole grain spelt flour
• 100 grams white spelt flour plus extra for dusting
• For the apple cake:
  • 1/2 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/4 teaspoon allspice
  • 1/2 firm apple (I used Granny Smith, but Jonagold would be better)
• For the banana cake:
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 large banana
• vegetable oil

Process

Preheat the oven to 180° Celsius/350° Fahrenheit.

Grease a small bread pan with vegetable oil and dust flour inside.

Beat the yoghurt and three teaspoons of date syrup together. If using stevia, add it. Add the salt. Sift in the baking soda, baking powder, spices and flours and mix well.

Chop the apple into cubes and coat them lightly with flour. Stir them into the batter. Alternately, chop the banana and mix it in the batter.

Either pour the remaining two teaspoons of date syrup in the bottom of the pan or stir it roughly through the batter. Use a spatula to scrape the batter into the bread pan. Smooth the top.

Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 150° Celsius/300° Fahrenheit. Bake another 30 minutes.

Remove the bread from the oven and set it on a cooling rack. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before turning it out, but use a spatula to loosen it immediately. Let it cool another 20 minutes before cutting.

 

Snake Gourd in Gravy with Milk

I made snake gourd gravy with milk which I served with roti (containing a bit of methi) and cabbage-carrot fry.

Cabbage-Carrot Fry

Vegetable Breakfast Scramble

For this savoury breakfast, I cooked garlic and mushroom on low heat in a little oil, then added some broccoli, fenugreek leaf (methi) and sweet pepper. Near the end I added some egg mixed with soy sauce and scrambled it.

Purple Pea Coconut Curry

What do you do when you encounter a vegetable in a novel colour? If you’re me, you buy it. This is how I ended up with purple peas.

These purple peas became a curry with coconut, which I ate with kidney bean curry and spelt-flour roti.

Devil’s Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

A friend and I made this rich chocolate cake layered with cherries soaked on cognac.The recipe comes from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum, which contains some excellent cake recipes.

This particular cake was so incredibly rich I could barely eat a small piece. I thought it was a bit too complicated for what is essentially a very intense chocolate cake. My friend, however, thought it was quite good so take my rating with a grain of salt.

Rating: So-so – I’m unlikely to make this again

Vegetable Beer Stew

Beer gives a rich flavour to this vegetable stew. I have listed the vegetables I used, but of course you can use any vegetables you like, so long as they all hold their shape. I just used the vegetables I had on hand. I used a German ‘landbier’. The colour of the stew comes from the beet; avoid this vegetable if you’d like a more traditional colour.

Origin

I had half a bottle of beer left from making pizza crust, so I decided to use it in a stew.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 70 grams tomato paste
• 250 ml beer
• 2 carrots
• 3 stalks celery
• 2 potatoes
• 1 purple yam
• 1 beet
• 6 mu-err mushrooms
• 1 teaspoon vegetarian Worchestershire sauce
• salt to taste
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 2 tablespoons flour

Process

Set the mushrooms to soak in water for at least a half hour. Rinse them well and set aside.

Cook the onion in the oil in a medium pot over medium-low heat until soft, about 10 minutes. While the onion is cooking, peel the root vegetables and chop them into bite-sized pieces. Tear the mushroom into pieces. Chop the celery into pieces.

Add the tomato paste to the onions and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.

Pour the beer over the tomato paste and stir well. Add all the vegetables and enough water to barely cover them. Bring to a simmer. Keep the heat low and simmer for an hour, until all the vegetables are cooked.

Remove the lid. Add the salt, thyme and Worchester sauce. Mix the flour with a little water and add the paste to the stew. Turn up the heat and cook on medium for about 10 minutes or until thickened.

Serves 4.

Spelt Soda Bread

Origin

Recently I posted my first attempt at recreating a spelt bread without using dairy or yeast. This was my second attempt, and this time the flavour matches my memory pretty well. I find it interesting how almost identical ingredients can produce such a different loaf. Here are the two, for comparison.

Above: Current recipe on the left, previous recipe on the right.

Ingredients

• 250 grams vegan yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon date syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking ammonia
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 175 grams whole-grain spelt flour, plus 20-30 grams extra for kneading
• 100 grams bleached spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin seeds seeds
• vegetable oil

Process

Preheat the oven to 180° Celsius/350° Fahrenheit.

Grease a small bread pan with vegetable oil and dust flour inside.

Sift together the baking soda, baking ammonia, flours and salt. Add the yoghurt, lemon juice and date syrup. Turn out the dough on a floured surface and knead. The dough will be somewhat sticky. Shape into a loaf and put in the bread pan. Sprinkle the pumpkin seeds on top.

Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 150° Celsius/300° Fahrenheit. Bake another 20 minutes.

Remove the bread from the oven and set it on a cooling rack. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before turning it out. Let it cool another 20 minutes before cutting.

Quick-Rise Sweet Spelt Bread

Origin

Some time ago I was given a taste of a spelt bread. The person who gave me the bread hoped to make something similar, but there were a number of constraints: no wheat, no dairy, and no yeast. Leaving out the yeast was easy, because it tasted like a soda bread. It was fairly dense although not heavy, with a small crumb. A typical soda bread contains buttermilk, but I used a Provamel soy-almond vegan yoghurt instead.

The resulting bread was pretty good, but sadly it is not the bread I was aiming for.  The date syrup I added to keep it moist was enough to make it somewhat sweet, and there was no hint of sourness or bitterness. It actually reminds me of a banana bread, although it contains no banana, probably because it is baked like a cake, just like banana bread.

I did create the loaf I was aiming for in my second attempt. I’ll be posting that recipe next.

Ingredients

• 250 grams vegan yoghurt
• 20 grams (2 tablespoons) date syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 100 grams whole grain spelt flour
• 100 grams white spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon sunflower seeds
• vegetable oil

Process

Preheat the oven to 180° Celsius/350° Fahrenheit.

Grease a small bread pan with vegetable oil and dust flour inside.

Beat the yoghurt and date syrup together. Add the salt. Sift in the baking soda, baking powder and flours and mix well. Use a spatula to scrape the batter into the bread pan. Smooth the top and sprinkle the sunflower seeds over it.

Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 150° Celsius/300° Fahrenheit. Bake another 30 minutes.

Remove the bread from the oven and set it on a cooling rack. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before turning it out. Let it cool another 20 minutes before cutting.

Below: whole grain spelt flour (left) and white spelt flour (right).

Pesto Mozzarella Pizza

Pizza is a good food for company because each person can customize it, making it with or without meat. For this pizza I used my standard tomato sauce, and I made a beer-dough crust which I refrigerated overnight.

I made one of my favourites for myself: mozzarella and pesto.