Here’s what I used (enough for about 8 dl of ice cream):

• 4 dl coconut milk
• 2 dl whippable oat cream
• 1/2 dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or more
• 200g frozen raspberries or more
• fresh raspberries for decoration

I began by melting the frozen raspberries and then putting them in a sieve on top of a bowl. I took a glass, and mashed the raspberries in the sieve with the bottom of the glass, until only the seeds and the skins of raspberries remained. In the bowl was some nice, fine raspberry purée. Obviously, if you have some kind of raspberry-crushing pestle that suits the task better, feel free to use one.

I put the oat cream and sugar in a bowl, and whipped them for a couple of minutes. Then I added the coconut milk, vanilla sugar and the raspberry purée in the bowl, and whipped some more.

I put the mixture in the freezer for an hour. Then I used our immersion blender to break the texture of the not-quite-yet ice cream, and put it back in the freezer again. I repeated this for 5 hours and 5 mixes, and then I put it back in the freezer for two hours more.

It was ready to eat now! We decorated the portions with some fresh raspberries we had picked ourselves. The texture was great, very much like store-bought ice cream. The taste was delicious too! It was very coconutty and could’ve been more raspberrish, so next time I think I’ll add a bit more vanilla sugar and use more berries.

The tartlets were quite yummy on the day of making, but they actually got even more delicious after a night in the fridge: the crusts absorbed some moisture from the filling, which made it creamier and more flavorful.

The Crust:

• 2 and 1/2 dl hazelnut flour (hazelnuts finely ground)
• 2 dl wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 dl sugar
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons egg replacer powder (we have No Egg – can be replaced with corn/potato starch for example)
• 1/2 dl canola oil
• 3/4 dl plain soy yogurt

I mixed the dry ingredients – hazelnut, flour, salt, sugar, and egg replacer – with a fork until combined. Then I added the oil and the soy yogurt and mixed until the dough came together. I divided it in 12 parts and placed them in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Then I greased and floured our muffin tin, and preheated the oven to 175 degrees. I rolled each portion of the dough into a ball, flattened with my hands, and then pressed in the muffin tins. I tried to make the shells as high as possible without making them too thin, and they didn’t quite reach the upper rim of the muffin cups.

Now, I baked the shells 15 minutes on the middle rack of our oven, when they had browned a bit and started to come off the sides of the muffin cups. I let them cool in the tin for 10 minutes, and then removed to cool on a rack.

The Filling:

• 2 dl unsweetened, plain soy yogurt
• 3/4 dl plain soy milk
• 1 teaspoon agar powder (not flakes)
• 1/2 dl sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• grated zest of one lemon
• 1 tablespoon canola oil

I let the soy yogurt come to room temperature before starting with the mousse. This way, it won’t cool down the agar mixture as quickly as cold soy yogurt would, and there’s more time to work with it before it starts to set.

First, I whisked together the soy yogurt, sugar, vanilla sugar, canola oil, and lemon zest. Then I heated the soy milk in a small sauce pan on medium heat until it started to bubble, and then whisked in the agar agar powder. I kept on whisking for half a minute or so until the agar had dissolved, and the mixture started to get very foamy.

Then I quickly poured the agar mixture in the yogurt bowl while whisking it vigorously, and when everything was all combined, I immediately poured the filling in the cooled shells. It settled quite quickly in room temperature, but I popped the tartlets in the refrigerator at this point as we were about to have dinner.

Right before serving, we decorated the tartlets with fresh raspberries.

Waiting for the raspberries.

Frozen berries are my choice this time of year, but fresh ones would be nice – they’re a tad sweeter too, so probably need less sugar than indicated.

The Chocolate Crust:

• 3 dl wheat flour
• 1 dl dark cocoa powder
• 1/2 dl sugar
• 100 g vegan margarine, cold
• 4 tablespoons almond milk (or other vegan milk, or water), cold

This crust is pretty easy to make; I placed the flour, cocoa, sugar, and margarine in a bowl, and mixed with a spoon until crumbly. Then I added the almond milk and mixed until the dough came together, and held together when I pinched it with my fingers.

At this point, there are two options; the crust can be chilled and rolled out with a rolling pin, like I did with the mocha pie, or it can be just pressed in the pie tray as it is. The rolling pin method takes a little longer and the result looks a little more professional, but the latter method is quick and easy, and that’s what I needed this time.

After the crust was in the pie tray, I pre-baked it for fifteen minutes in 175 degrees Celsius.

The Raspberry Filling:

• 200 g frozen raspberries
• 300 g silken tofu (Mori-Nu for us)
• 1/2 dl plain soy yogurt
• 2 tablespoons potato (or corn) starch
• 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar
• 3-4 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1 and 1/2 dl sugar

Heikki mixed the tofu with our immersion blender until it was all smooth and creamy, and then whisked in the rest of the ingredients except for the berries. Then we added the berries and stirred until the filling was pale pink in color, and then poured it in the prebaked crust.

Now we baked the pie in 175 Celsius for 15 minutes. Heikki grated some 50 grams of semi dark chocolate, and we sprinkled that on top of the pie – the chocolate melts nicely when the pie is still warm, and if there’s some pie left to store in the fridge, it forms a crunchy layer over the filling.

This cake was especially good right after baking, steeped in the raspberry sauce, but went well on its own with a cup of tea on the next day as well.

Wet Mix:

• 4 dl coconut milk (one can)
• 2 dl sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons Grand Marnier liqueur

Dry Mix:

• 3 and 1/2 dl wheat flour
• 1/2 dl potato starch
• 3 tablespoons desiccated coconut
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• pinch of turmeric (for color)
• pinch of salt

Also Needed:

• 2 dl cubed apricots (from a can)
• margarine and desiccated coconut for the cake pan

First, I preheated the oven to 175 degrees Celsius, and took the raspberries out of the freezer.

Then I poured the sugar and the coconut milk in the bowl, and let the sugar melt while I greased the cake pan and covered it with desiccated coconut.

I mixed the dry mix in another bowl, cubed the apricots, and added the rest of the wet mix ingredients in the coconut milk bowl. Now, I combined the wet with the dry mix and stirred until the batter was relatively smooth, added the apricots, and poured the batter in the prepared cake pan. I baked the cake for approximately one hour, until a toothpick inserted came out clean.

Raspberry Sauce:

• 2 and 1/2 dl frozen raspberries, thawed
• 1 tablespoon agave syrup

I pressed the raspberries through a fine sieve with the help of a table spoon until only the seeds remained in the sieve. Then I mixed in the agave syrup and refrigerated the sauce until the cake had cooled down a bit. There was just enough sauce to drown two big slices of the cake. Fresh raspberries would probably make an even more delicious sauce, but we are months away from those!

I adapted the recipe from the Jam-Filled Oat Bran Muffins recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Unlike in the pretty muffins in the book, the jam in my muffins decided to spurt out a little bit, but they tasted wonderful all the same. This recipe makes about 7 muffins.

Here’s what I used:

Wet ingredients:

• 1 and 1/2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
• 5 tablespoons water
• 2 dl oat milk
• 1/2 dl canola oil

Dry ingredients:

• 1 dl rolled oats, finely ground
• 1,2 dl spelt flour
• 1,2 dl wheat flour
• 3/4 dl raw cane sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 1 dl chopped walnuts

Filling:

• 7 teaspoons raspberry-blueberry jam

For the topping:

• 1 and 1/2 tablespoons raw cane sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons margarine

First, I placed the flaxseed and water in our electric mixer and mixed for a minute or two, until it had a creamy and thick consistence. I haven’t used flaxseed as an egg replacer before, and here it worked very well. But I can imagine that in more delicate things it might have a little too much taste of its own, since it does have a kind of earthy, nutty flavor.

After making the flax egg, I ground the oats in our electric grinder. Then I mixed the wet ingredients in a small bowl. I mixed together the dry ingredients in a bigger bowl, poured in the wet mix, and stirred with a wooden fork just enough to combine everything.

Now, I mixed the topping ingredients in a small bowl and assembled the muffins. Since the jam burst out during baking, I probably wouldn’t follow my own advice in this, but here’s what I did: I greased and floured the muffins tins, and filled 7 muffin tins half full with the batter. Now, I placed a teaspoon of the berry jam in the middle of each muffin, and then covered the jam with the rest of the batter, at which point the muffins cups were completely full.

Now, I sprinkled each muffin with the topping, and baked them in 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

To keep the jam inside the muffins, I suppose the amount should be reduced a bit. Before adding the jam, it might be a good idea to make a well in the center area of the muffin batter instead of just spooning the jam over the batter.

DAY ONE:

The Cake Base:

Dry things:

• 3,5 dl wheat flour
• 1 dl spelt flour
• 1,5 dl cocoa powder
• 2,5 dl sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1,5 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 2,5 dl vanilla soy milk

Mix together:

• 2 teaspoons egg replacer (or corn starch)
• 1/2 dl water

Add also:

• 1 dl water
• 100 g vegetable margarine, in room temperature

Oven 175 degrees.

First, I mixed the soy milk with the vinegar and set it aside to curdle up a bit. Then I mixed the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. I made the egg replacement by mixing the egg replacer with water until smooth.

Then, I added margarine, soy milk mix, rest of the water, and egg replacer to dry ingredients, and mixed until moistened. Now, I beat the batter with an electric mixer for a few minutes, until it was smooth and a little fluffy.

We only have one round cake pan, so I had to improvise. I lined a cookie sheet with baking parchment, but since there wasn’t enough batter for a cookie-sheet-sized cake, I made corners in the parchment with paper clips, like this:

Now I had a baking pan of the right size (about 30X35 cm) for my cake.

I baked the cake for 25 minutes, when a toothpick inserted in center of cake came out clean. Then I removed the cake from oven and let it cool.

Raspberry Mousse:

This mousse is a little bit complicated to make, but agar makes it nice and creamy, not at all jelly-like.
Raspberry mix:

• 200 g plain soy yogurt
• 200 g frozen raspberries
• 1 dl sugar

Whipped oat cream mix:

• 4 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 2 dl oat whip cream (or whippable soy cream, we used “gogreen vispi”), chilled
• a bowl, chilled in fridge as well

Agar mix:

• 1 tablespoon crushed lingonberries (or a few of the raspberries, crushed)
• 3/4 dl water
• 1 teaspoon agar powder

First, I spooned the soy yogurt in a colander lined with a kitchen towel to get rid of some of the moisture. This will take an hour and a half, or as much time as you have. Raspberries must be defrozen, and then mashed in a mixer until a smooth paste results. Then I mixed the yogurt, the raspberries, and the sugar together.

Now, Heikki took the chilled bowl and oat cream from the fridge, and whipped the oat cream until fluffy, and then mixed in the vanilla sugar. Now, we had two bowls, one filled with berry mixture, and the other with vegan whipped cream.

Next, I placed a small saucepan on the stove, put the crushed lingonberries and 3/4 dl of water in the pan, and heated it up until boiling. When the liquid started to boil, I sprinkled the agar powder in the pan, while Heikki was whisking it briskly. Then he whisked the liquid rapidly while it was boiling, until the powder was dissolved, and the liquid was quite clear, and started to thicken a bit. This took about half a minute or less.

When the agar mixture was done, we folded it in the raspberry mix quickly with a spatula. Then Heikki poured the whipped cream into the raspberry-agar-mixture and I whisked it, until everything was nice and fluffy.

Assembling the Cake:

Now I cut the cake in half, to have two layers. I had to cut a few strips off the edges to have even rectangular shapes. Then we spread two thirds of the raspberry mousse on the bottom half of the cake, it made an about 2,5 cm thick layer. Now, we stored the cake base layers in the fridge overnight.

DAY TWO:

Chocolate Mousse:

• 350 g firm silken tofu (Mori-Nu from the Asian market)
• 130 g vegan chocolate
• 1 dl raw cane sugar
• 4 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons Grand Marnier or other citrus liqueur

This is easy, first I melted the chocolate in a water bath on the stove top, like this:

And then let the melted chocolate cool down in room temperature, for 10 minutes or so, while I was smoothing up the tofu.

I imagine this would be easiest to do with a food processor, bit since we don’t have one, I used a hand held mixer. I just patted the tofu dry with paper towels, crumbled it in a bowl, added sugar, vanilla sugar, and liqueur, and then mixed it. I scraped the sides of the bowl a few times and just kept on mixing until the sugar had melted and the tofu was completely smooth, with no signs of crumbly texture, as seen in this picture:

Then I added the melted chocolate and whisked it in. Now I just refrigerated the chocolate mousse for an hour or so, until it had thickened quite a bit.

Assembling the Cake:

First, I covered the top layer of the cake thinly with the chocolate mousse, and now we had two mousse-covered layers of cake, like this:

Now, I just had to make magic happen and insert the layers on top of each other, without messing it all up. With the help of some plastic wrap it was actually easy, since the cake base was pretty stable.

Finally, me and Heikki frosted the cake thoroughly, using a butter knife and what was left of the raspberry and chocolate mousses. Chocolate on the sides, since it was firmer, and raspberry on top, since it was pink:

Then I piped little decorations around the sides of the cake with a vegan whippable vanilla sauce, because I just didn’t have enough energy to make a third topping for the cake. And then I wrote on a cake for the first time in my life, that was fun!

And it was a success, the birthday girl said it was the best birthday cake anyone’s baked for her! Yay!

I received a bowl of lingonberries from a friend yesterday, and decided to bake a batch of muffins with our evening tea. Heikki had been working the whole day, and really needed a break.

This was my first time experimenting with organic spelt flour from a local farmer, and the muffins turned out very moist and delicious. The recipe is inspired by the Carrot Spice Muffins from Susan at the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen, but in the end I actually had replaced most of the ingredients. I used regular sugar, since Finnish sugar is made from sugar beets, and is always vegan. And my muffins are definitely not fat free, although there is less oil than in some recipes. Susan’s batter was supposed to be quite thick, but mine was pretty fluid. The berry batter was pink before baking, but when the muffins came out of the oven, they had turned brown.

The measurements are not totally accurate, since I did the replacing as I proceeded with the baking, but this is more or less what I used:

Dry ingredients:

• 3,5 dl (or 1 ¾ cups) spelt flour

• 1,2 dl (or half a cup) granulated sugar

• 2,5 teaspoons egg replacer (potato or corn starch could do as well)

• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar

• 1 tablespoon ground flax seed

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:

• 0,4 dl (or 1/6 cups) canola oil

• 1 dl (or 1/3 cups) crushed fresh lingonberries (or cranberries, even blueberries could do)

• 2,5 dl (or 1 cup) soy milk

• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

• a few drops of rum extract (totally optional)

Add:

• 1,5 dl (a little more than ½ a cup) frozen raspberries, in smaller pieces

On top:

• 1 dl (or ½ a cup) crushed, toasted cashews

• 2 tablespoons raw cane sugar

• 2 tablespoons vegetable margarine

• ¼ teaspoon cinnamon powder

• ½ teaspoon ginger powder

First, put the oven on at 175° celsius, which is more or less 350° Fahrenheit. While it was heating up, I prepared the batter.

The batter is really easy to prepare. My lingonberries were already crushed coarsely, like this:

To make the batter, I just mixed the dry and the wet ingredients in separate bowls, and then poured wet into dry. I mixed them together until the batter was smooth, but no more than necessary. Then I folded in frozen raspberries. Now, the batter was relatively fluid, such that it could be poured into the muffin pan, rather than spooned.

Next, I prepared the muffin pan. I never use paper liners, because it is such a waste. Instead, I rub a little margarine in the muffin pan with a piece of baking parchment, and then add some bread crumbs to cover the margarine. At least with these muffins this worked very well.

I think there was a little bit too much batter for 12 muffins, since they ended up looking a little bit like mushrooms. This amount of batter fills the muffin pan compartments completely before baking, and next time I would probably fill them only ¾ full to make the muffins prettier. Well, now we got bigger muffins, so we weren’t complaining.

Before baking, I mixed the topping ingredients and crumbled some of the cashew mixture on top of each muffin. The topping can be left out, but it adds some decadence to these otherwise relatively healthy muffins.

I baked the muffins for about 20 minutes, when a toothpick inserted in one muffin should have come out clean. To be honest, I used a match, and it wasn’t completely clean. But the muffins started to brown a little bit, so I thought they were done. And they were, so following my instinct was the way to go.

After baking, I let the muffins cool by the window for five minutes, and used a knife to detach the top of each muffin from the sides of the little compartments in the pan. Then I just turned the pan upside down above the kitchen table I had just lined with baking parchment. I knocked on the bottom of the pan, and the muffins just popped out one by one!

Spelt flour makes the texture of these muffins really nice, but mine was quite coarse, even more so than whole wheat flour, so it was necessary to add some kind of thickening agent in the batter. My muffins didn’t fall apart one bit, but I think it was the liberal use of egg replacer that made this happen.