Easy Gluten-Free Flatbread

March 7, 2018

By Violet's Vegan Comics

This is so easy and absolutely delicious 😀

No fat, no yeast, no gluten and no frying. Just oats and water. Baked.

You’ll need:

8 oz rolled oats

400 ml of water

parchment paper to line your baking trays so that you don’t need to oil them.

** For garlic bread version see bottom of post 🙂

First pre-heat your oven to 220°C (less if it’s a fan oven).

Then weigh out about 8 oz of rolled oats and mill it into a flour in your food processor (with the S blade).

Add 200ml of water, whiz to combine with the flour and then add another 200ml and whiz again so that you’ve got a runny, pour-able mixture.

Line two baking trays with parchment paper, and pour half the mixture onto each of them.

Then spread it thinly and evenly with the back of a spoon, and put the trays in the oven.

After about 20 minutes remove trays from the oven and turn the bread over. Turn the trays around so that they get evenly baked and return to the oven for another 6 or 7 minutes.

Remove and put on plates 😀

If you want them crispier, bake them for a little longer but keep a close eye on them because there is a very fine line between crisp and burnt.

Now do what you like with them. Add your favourite spreads, cover them with beans, use them as pizza bases, make sandwiches with them …. whatever you like.

** To make amazing garlic bread just add a few cloves of fresh garlic to the oats when you mill it into flour (I use 4 fat ones to this amount of oats but if you like your garlic stronger, add as much as you like). The garlic will be finely minced and combined with the oat flour. Then, instead of using parchment paper on the trays, generously grease them with vegetable oil and preheat the greased trays before adding the runny mixture. This will produce delicious crispy garlic bread ready to eat with no need for margarine.

Commercial Break: Gluten Free, Organic, Fair Trade, Vegan Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

July 24, 2017

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We interrupt this story to bring you a commercial for something very yummy:

Doves Farm organic, gluten free, fair trade, vegan, very crunchy chocolate chocolate chip cookies!!!!!

Find them at your local health food shop, or if you’re lucky they might have them in the Free From section of your supermarket 🙂 Of course there’s always Amazon, or any number of alternative online shops you can find them in 😀

They’re absolutely delicious and very crunchy, but if you prefer your cookies moist, just dunk them in your tea 😀

Mmm, I think it’s time for a little smackerel of something 😉

Chocolate Chip Banana Cookies: ORGANIC, FAIR TRADE, VEGAN, GLUTEN-FREE, NO ADDED SUGAR, NO ADDED FAT

July 10, 2017

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Now, these cookies look very healthy, but they don’t taste it 😉

Of course there is fat and sugar in the chocolate, but the truth is there’s only a couple of specks of chocolate in each cookie, so how can that hurt really? If you’re being ever so strict you could leave the chocolate out and I’m sure the cookies would still be lovely, but since Miranda found a bar of Moo Free in the cupboard that we didn’t know we had, we decided we wouldn’t be 😉

To make these nutritious treats, this is what you’ll need:

4 very ripe medium to large fair trade organic bananas
about 80g of fair trade organic vegan chocolate (optional)
3 ounces of organic sultanas (or other dried fruit)
8 ounces of organic rolled oats
a little water to make the mixture the right consistency

Preheat the oven to 180°C

Mash the bananas with a fork in a mixing bowl and then add the sultanas (or raisins or other dried fruit) and the chocolate cut into little chips. Mix it all together well.

Put the oats into a food processor and mill them into a rough flour, then add it to the mixing bowl (or you can add the oats without making them into flour) and thoroughly combine with the other ingredients. Add a little water, if needed, a tablespoon at a time, and mix it in to make a nice, moist cookie mixture.

Then put heaped teaspoons of mixture onto a lined baking tray and flatten them with the back of a wet spoon.

Bake them for about 20 minutes or until they are as golden as you like them,

keep an eye on them and rotate the tray if necessary 🙂

And there you have it: delicious and nutritious – they tick all the right boxes!

They’re a lot yummier than they look I promise you 😀

Chocolate chip peanut butter oat cookies

November 21, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Peanut butter, chocolate chip, oat cookies – vegan, gluten-free, organic and fair trade: What more could you want? 😀

I just felt peckish so I raided the cupboard for ingredients and found what I needed:

Organic rolled oats
Organic Fair Trade sugar
Organic Fair Trade chocolate
Organic Fair Trade peanut butter
Organic Fair Trade Sunflower Oil
Water (not in the cupboard)

These are so quick and easy 😀

Weigh out 8 ounces of oats and put them through the food processor to turn them into flour.

Put the oat flour in your mixing bowl and add 4 ounces of sugar. Mix well.

Then break up about 60 grams of chocolate (I used Moo Free) and put it into the food processor with about 3 heaped spoons full of peanut butter, I think (it’s up to you how much you use, I can’t actually remember exactly how much I added this time 🙂 ).

Whiz the peanut butter and chocolate around with the ‘S’ blade for a few seconds until the chocolate is in little chips and beautifully combined with the soft peanut butter. Of course you can do all this by hand, it’ll just take a little longer 🙂

By the way, the peanut butter is unsalted with nothing added – it’s nothing but organic roasted peanuts.

Leave the peanut butter and chocolate to one side while you add about 100 ml of sunflower oil and 5 tablespoons of water to the flour and sugar in the bowl and mix well.

Then add the peanut butter and chocolate chips and mix it in until you have your moist cookie mixture.

This is an oily mixture so you shouldn’t need to grease the baking trays but I lined them with eco-friendly greaseproof paper which is optional.

Put heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto your baking trays and then flatten them with the back of a wet spoon. This recipe makes about 24 cookies.

Bake for 20 minutes at 180°c (in a pre-heated fan oven).

Remove and put on a rack to cool.

Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Ooh, these are good!

Enjoy them with a cup of tea 😀

Buckwheat Brown and White Cookies

May 19, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I’ve recently discovered buckwheat which is naturally gluten free as it is not actually a grain – it’s a fruit seed. Buckwheat is related to rhubarb and the flour has a subtle sweet fruity taste to it which means you don’t need so much sugar. This organic Doves Farm pack is not certified gluten free because it wasn’t bagged in a totally gluten-free environment, but I have been told they do do a certified gluten-free version for those who are highly sensitive. My recipe is very simple:

8 ounces organic buckwheat flour

3 ounces organic fair trade sugar

100 ml organic sunflower oil

4 tablespoons of water

organic fair trade cocoa

***

First pre-heat the oven to 180°c. Weigh out half of your dry ingredients (ie 4 oz flour and 1.5 oz sugar) and place in a mixing bowl with a dessert spoon or two of sieved cocoa. Mix well and then add half the wet ingredients (50 ml oil and 2 tablespoons of water). You might need a dribble or two more of water to compensate for the cocoa and make a soft, moist cookie mixture.

(Bear in mind that I had doubled the recipe the day I photographed it so you won’t have this much mixture unless you do the same). Put the chocolatey mixture to one side and mix up the other half of ingredients (minus the cocoa) in another bowl.

Then spoon teaspoons full of ‘white’ mixture onto ungreased baking trays. Flatten with the back of a spoon. (These look quite big because I had doubled the recipe that day)

Then add another teaspoon of chocolate brown mixture to each cookie and press it on like so:

Bake for 20 minutes and then remove to a cooling tray. There is no need to double the mixture, the 8 oz mixture makes 20 to 24 cute little cookies, but if you want big fat ones like these you know what to do! Oh, and if you do double it they’ll need cooking a bit longer – say 30 mins at 170° in a fan oven.

These are so yummy that I forgot to take any pictures of them after they came out of the oven. When they’ve cooled they’re kind of hard, like a ginger nut, but a little bit chewy on the inside.

Children have good instincts

February 1, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Ilana Kadonoff

Meet Ilana Kadonoff, owner of the Canadian vegan company Sweets From The Earth.

She says:

“It all began with a rabbit.

Yes, the cute fluffy little animal is in a way responsible for Sweets From The Earth. It was the mid-70s, and my dad went out hunting with a neighbor. The next day, the neighbor came over with rabbit stew, and as a 7 year-old animal lover, I was horrified. It was then I declared myself a vegetarian. I began fending for myself in the kitchen amongst my meat-eating family, and learned to love cooking and then…baking.

My passion for food meant that years later when I adopted a vegan lifestyle, I didn’t think for an instant of giving up my love of luscious, decadent desserts. Instead, I decided to learn the craft and science of baking in pastry school, and soon enough discovered that no animals or animal by-products need be used in the making of sweet delicious things. I began whipping up the kind of scrumptious cookies, cakes and treats that dessert lovers everywhere dream about, and in 2002, Sweets From The Earth was born.

Today, Sweets From The Earth makes a full line of original recipe, egg and dairy-free baked goods, which are made all the more delectable by using only the best all natural, 100% plant-based, GMO-free ingredients.
Bonus: You don’t have to be vegan or have dietary restrictions to love these desserts – any old sweet tooth will do. They’re a healthier alternative to your run-of-the-mill baked goods, and you’ll never miss what’s missing from them!

And where is all this yumminess created? In two separate facilities: One dedicated dairy, egg, peanut and nut-free, the other dairy, egg wheat and gluten-free.”

This is a great story of a child trusting their natural good instincts and not being swayed by grown-ups – she reminds me a little of Luke Walker for whom it also began with a rabbit 😀

And look at these for a happy ending:

gluten-free, fair trade, espresso cheese cake

gluten free flourless cashew cookies

nut-free vanilla cupcake

And those are just a little taster. Get over to Sweets From The Earth and see what else they’ve got!

Purezza pizza!

January 25, 2016

By Miranda Lemon

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Yesterday I went with a friend to visit Purezza, the UK’s only plant-based pizzeria! All their food is vegan, organic and environmentally friendly. I had a brilliant time there! The food was delicious! I was blown away by the fantastic selection to choose from – I can’t wait to go back and try all the pizzas. I had the Marinara pizza, which is tomato sauce, with garlic, oregano and basil, while my friend had the Margherita pizza, which is tomato sauce with cheese and basil. They were absolutely gorgeous!! Phenomenal flavours.

Purezza vegan plant based pizza delicious and wonderful for everyone!

Here you can see the starters and specials – I was very tempted by the garlic bread, I definitely want to get some of that next time! I’d also like to try the Hoisin pizza, and the Nacho pizza!

Here they are! I was so excited by the arrival of my pizza that I forgot to take a picture of it before I started eating! This is the Marinara:

And this is the Margherita:

Here is a slice of mine – it’s really perfect pizza, so thin and soft and crunchy all at the same time.

Once we had finished our pizzas we could not resist the dessert menu! I was just so thrilled by the selection! I was very tempted by the Apple Pie Calzone, the Chocolate Brownie and the Cheesecake, especially as they all come with a scoop of ice cream! But when we came to order, the waiter recommended the Chocolate Calzone, so I had that!

And I was very glad that I did! The Chocolate Calzone is heavenly! It’s a folded pizza with Italian chocolate spread, walnuts and pistachios!!! And I chose to have it with chocolate ice cream. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s a work of art! And it tastes so good too!

It was delicious! I recommend it to you all.

As soon as I got home I wanted to go back. I can’t wait to go back and try everything else on the menu! I hope you can visit them too, and see how wonderful it all is! The staff were really friendly and helpful, checking on us a few times to see that everything was great. The music was lovely too.

Edmund’s Lunch was a peculiar lunch, so everybody said

September 23, 2015

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Edmund’s Lunch is available as a little paperback which includes the recipe for his delicious vegan, gluten-free lunch.

It is also one of the stories in the collection Why are you a vegan? and other wacky verse for kids (not including the recipe)

We Woz Ere! But where?

October 10, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Remember this game? You have to see if you recognise anything in these pictures and work out where we were before clicking on the link at the end. Give it a go!

Gorgeous veg*n cafe – clean, bright, comfortable, friendly …

... with delicious selection of veg*n food to choose from. Sorry I didn't hold my breath when taking this photo - don't look at it too long, it'll make you feel dizzy!

… with a delicious selection of veg*n food to choose from. Sorry I didn’t hold my breath when taking this photo – don’t look at it too long, it’ll make you feel dizzy!

This one’s a bit easier on the eyes – and not just because it’s in focus!

Here’s a clearer look at the menu from the outside. We indulged in scrambled tofu with salad and baked potato, followed by a scrumptious slice of vegan, gluten-free chocolate cake. Mmm mmmmmm!

Have you got it yet?

We loved this place – you should definitely visit if you are in the area. We’ll certainly be returning next time we’re visiting family in that neck of the woods. Do you know where this is?

And the answer is …. here!

There should be one in every town 🙂

Yummy Scrummy Crispy Cakes

October 6, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I used to make crispy cakes which were absolutely scrumptious but really not good for my health because of all the syrup in the recipe. So I thought, I wonder if I can make these gorgeous treats healthier by leaving out the syrup and substituting dates. Turns out – you can! I am therefore very excited to share with you my recipe for yummy, scrummy, chocolatey, nutritious crispy cakes.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Gluten-free, sugar-free, organic corn flakes; nothing-added organic peanut butter; pitted dates, soaked over-night; and chocolate (this one does have sugar in it admittedly, but you could use organic raw sugar-free chocolate instead if you prefer, I just didn’t have any today)

First get your chocolate melting in a little pot over some hot water.

Drain the water off your soggy dates and bung them in the food processor. Process them to a smooth, moist consistency and place them in a mixing bowl like so:

Then add a couple of generous tablespoons of peanut butter:

Combine thoroughly with a fork and then add your melted chocolate and mix that in too:

When that’s all well combined, it’s time to mix in the corn flakes. Add a few at a time and keep adding them until you can’t mix any more in (ie until the mixture is too dry to add more):

When I’d added all the cornflakes my mixture could take, I tasted it and felt it could do with a little more sweetness. So I added sultanas. You suit yourself:

When you’re satisfied with your mixture, spoon it into some paper cake cases :

And chill until ….. you want to eat them:

Done!

Yum!

Lunch like Edmund’s

July 22, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Remember Edmund’s Lunch?

Lentil Burger with mushrooms and leeks

May 11, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

If a husband does not want

To eat his food all raw

It’s nice to give him a surprise

So he smiles even more.

***

To this end I made for mine,

A gluten-free bread roll,

Lentil burger with mushrooms and leeks,

To put into his cake-hole!

Raw Carrot Cake

April 7, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

In celebration of …. life!

This is my modest version of Fully Raw Kristina’s Birthday Carrot Cake

I didn’t have all the ingredients on her list, nor the equipment (Vitamix and food processor) so I made do with what I had and made my own version. Making raw recipes is a great idea for children to be able to do on their own or with little supervision because there’s no hot oven to worry about and, in the case of using these manual tools, there’s no sharp blades either.

Hand-crank BL30 manual juicer with different screens and hand-crank whisk.

For the base:

2 cups of carrot juice pulp

1 and a half cups of sultanas

Half a cup of medjool dates

Half a tablespoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

For the icing:

1 and a half cups of raw cashews (soaked for 3 hours -or overnight- in the fridge)

Half a cup of filtered water

Half a cup of medjool dates

1 tablespoon of fresh pineapple juice

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Now, if you have a blender and a food processor, you can follow Kristina’s instructions, but if, like me, you’re making do without, here’s how I suggest you continue 😉 :

First put the carrots through the juicer and collect the pulp. Put 2 cups full of pulp into a mixing bowl.

Then take the juicer apart, rinse it and put it back together, replacing the holey screen with the smooth one. Put the sultanas, followed by the dates (after you’ve cut out the pits) through the juicer. These come out as a stiff, sticky rope of fruity goodness.

Add the mushed sultanas and dates to the carrot pulp and mix well. Your food processor is your arm and a large fork. Really get stuck in and combine that stuff! It’s not easy – I had to sit down! – but think how much you will have earned that cake when you’ve finished! 🙂

Then add the cinnamon and vanilla and mix well. When you’ve got a moist mixture with all the ingredients and flavours well-combined you’re ready to mould it into a cake shape.

Cut a circle of parchment paper to fit the removable bottom of your cake tin. Then cut a rectangular piece to line the sides of the tin. Spoon your mixture into the lined tin and press it down so that it fills the bottom evenly. Place the tin in the freezer for an hour to help the cake set in this shape. While it’s setting, wash up your juicer and bowl and everything so that you can use it all again to make the icing.

Put a little fresh pineapple or lemon if you’ve got it, through the juicer (using the holey screen) and put aside 1 tablespoon of juice. Then change to the smooth screen and put your soaked cashews through the juicer (after draining and rinsing with fresh filtered water). Put the mushed cashews into your mixing bowl.

Put your pitted dates through and add the resultant sticky rope to the cashews. Mix well -and again this is going to require some effort – with a fork. Add half a cup of filtered water, plus 1 tablespoon of the juice you made and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence. Mix it all well with your fork. You will notice it’s not as smooth as Kristina’s but as long as you’ve got all the flavours well combined it will taste just as delicious. To make it as smooth as possible I also gave it a good whisk with my hand-crank whisk.

Put this mixture into the fridge and wait until your cake has been in the freezer for a full hour.

Now, this is the exciting bit where you see all your hard work come together:

Take your tin out of the freezer and carefully push the base of your tin up to remove the cake. Slide the paper off the base of the tin and onto a plate. Your cake should now be standing proudly, unsupported, on your plate.

Take your soft nutty icing out of the fridge and cover your cake. Add decorative nuts or fruits if you like.

And that’s it! 😀

Slice it carefully, and then remove each slice with a pie-slice (triangular thing) if you’ve got it, and share it with lucky family and friends. Keep what’s left, if any, in the fridge.