Vegan Sweet Potato Dahl

To me, dahl is the ultimate comfort food and it's so easy to make.

So today I'm sharing my sweet potato dahl recipe, the sweet potatoes add a lovely sweetness to this classic dish.

Here's what you'll need:

• 1 clove of garlic crushed
• a little drizzle of oil
• 50 grams of green lentils
• half a medium sweet potato
• half a tsp of ground cumin
• half a tsp of ground turmeric
• half a tbsp of tomato puree
• a little sprinkle of salt and pepper
• some water

These small amounts are enough for one portion or one adult and a little one. This is usually enough for my youngest daughter and I. 

To make enough for two people double the ingredients, for three people triple and for four quadruple and so on, you get the idea. 

Just add a dash of oil to a pan and gently fry the garlic for a couple of minutes.

Next add the lentils and sweet potato and cover slightly with water.

Add the cumin, turmeric, tomato puree and bring to the boil.

Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and cook on a low heat for approximately 40 minutes.

You may need to add a little more water to prevent the mixture drying out. So keep an eye on it.

Once the sweet potatoes and lentils are soft, add salt and pepper, seasoning to taste.

Serve with some flat breads or chapatis or whatever takes your fancy. Rice goes so well with this dish. 

And all thats left to do is enjoy!

Have a fantastic day and stay kind :)

Falafels

They say you never forget your first falafel, well mine was at Banksy's art exhibition 'Dismaland' in September 2015, this was three months before I would make the decision to sign up to Veganuary and I'll never ever forget the taste. I didn't at the time even consider that it was a plant-based Vegan option, it just tasted so damn good.

Since that treasured moment in time, watching the sunset from the Tropicana on Weston beach, falafel and somerset cider in hand, thinking it was a perfect day, I have tried so many recipes to recreate it, only for them to be not quite right in either texture or taste. 

So I messed around with the key ingredients canned chickpeas then dried chickpeas, tweaking the cumin etc until I came up with this one. And it's pretty freaking close to my hazy day, end of summer feeling, Dismaland falafel. 

So here's what you need....

IMPORTANT - you must soak the chickpeas overnight, I've lost count of the times I have forgotten and couldn't make this recipe on the day I wanted to and NO canned chickpeas won't do. And another warning you will end up with sticking falafel mix hands but trust me it will be worth it. 

• 1 cup of dried chickpeas (soaked for 24 hours/overnight)

• 1 medium sized onion (chopped)

• 4 cloves of garlic (pressed)

• 1 handful of fresh parsley

• 1 handful of fresh coriander (or cilantro if you are from the USA)

• 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds (grounded, I use a pestle and mortar)
• 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds (again grounded, I do these with the cumin seeds)

• a pinch of Salt and Pepper

What to do ..............

So you need to rinse the pre-soaked chickpeas really really well, let them drain before placing them in a food processor, add all the other ingredients and pulse for 30 seconds, use a spatula to scrap the sides and blitz again for another 30 seconds, you want to repeat this last step until you have a fine course mixture.

At this point you could put your mixture in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or until you want to start cooking them, this help them to stick together. However I have made these straight from the food processor and they work perfectly well.

Then here comes the messy part, take a dessert spoon and spoonful some mixture into your hands, roll each one in to a small ball, you don't want them too big or they will fall apart.

Add them to a shallow pan of cooking oil on a medium heat. I cook six at a time.

When they start to brown you will need to keep turning them until they are cooked on all sides.

Then I place the cooked falafels in a baking tray and place in a warm oven, you are just keeping them warm so you don't want a hot oven!

And then cook another batch of six and repeat until you have used all the mixture or you have enough, as you could save the mixture in a covered container in the refrigerator for a couple of days.

So how do I eat my falafels, well they are great just served with some hummus as a snack but if I'm serving these for a meal then this is what I do.....

• Take a tortilla wrap
• Spread a layer of hummus in the middle
• Add whatever salad you like, pickled gherkins work well in there too
• Add vegan mayo
• Add three falafels
• Add sweet chilli sauce or hot sauce 
• Add fresh coriander/cilantro or your favourite fresh herb
• Wrap
• AND EAT and then repeat if hungry!

Enjoy and let me know how they turned out. Stay kind :)

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Vegan Lemon Cupcakes

I was first introduced to Ms Cupcake's amazing cakes at a recent Vegan festival, I received her book,  'The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town' for my birthday and I have been dying to try a recipe ever since.

As I've been having a huge craving for lemon drizzle cake recently, I decided to adapt the basic cupcake recipe slightly. Well there was no real magic here, I just basically added some lemon essence, lemon juice and zest.

I also want to mention that I only had cupcake cases and I think muffin ones would have been better, as there was more icing to cake ratio going on, not that my children minded and believe me when I say that these turned out to be the most amazing and lightest fluffiest cakes I have ever made!

Everyone who had the pleasure of popping over today to try one, commented on how fantastically fluffy and tasty they were. Before changing to a plant-based diet, I was always baking but I just haven't found a Vegan cake recipe that really worked for me until today. I mean I've made Vegan cakes that were ok and tasted good but these were on a whole new level of cupcake heaven.

So here's what I did, I took the basic vanilla cupcake recipe from the book, here's the link


Ms Cupcake: The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town


and yes it's an Amazon affiliated link, which doesn't change the price if you were tempted to buy it, however it would make me a few extra pennies to keep the blog going. This is not a sponsored post, I'm new to blogging and so if I'm ever lucky enough in the future to be sent items to be reviewed I will be honest and tell you guys.

Anyway back to what I did, I took the basic vanilla cupcake recipe but didn't add the vanilla extract, as I added some lemon extract instead. Then I used the vanilla buttercream icing recipe but added some lemon juice instead of vanilla, with some more icing sugar to thicken the icing back up again. Finally I added some lemon zest on the top of the finished cakes.

Seriously these cakes turned out so so good! I thought mixing plant-based milk with cider vinegar was a bit weird but now I'm thinking it must be the secret weapon.

There is only one downside to this recipe and that is these cakes will disappear so fast.

Let me know in the comments if you found any great cake recipes. I absolutely cannot wait to try out more from this book.

Have a great day, stay kind.

Vegan Pancakes

With pancake day coming up on Tuesday, it's time to perfect those tossing skills so they don't end up on the floor or stuck to the ceiling.

I've personally tried so many different ways of making plant-based pancakes but these were the most scrum-diddly-um-ious. Pancakes in our house either get covered simply with lemon and sugar or lots of chocolate sauce with bananas or raspberries or strawberries or any other fruit for that matter.

So for the pancakes, first you will need to decide what style of pancakes you want to make, crepe style or stackable pancakes.......

Then you will need......

• 150g self-raising flour (pancake stack) or plain flour (crepe style)
• 2 tbsp of caster sugar 
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1/2 tsp of salt 
• 300ml of non-dairy milk
• 1 tbsp of oil 

Put all the ingredients in a blender, I always use my nutribullet. Just be careful if you use this method when you unscrew the lid, it will probably get you a little, think fizzy drink bottle opening.

For the crepe style pancakes, with a lightly oiled non stick pan, pour some of the mixture into the middle of the pan and then tilt it each way to make it spread to the edge of the pan.

For stackable pancakes, depending on the size of your pan you will need a large spoonful for each pancake, I can fit three in mine.

Cook on a medium heat for a few minutes before turning or tossing if you only have one in the pan, unless you have skills to toss all three at once, then go for it! And please share the video online because I need to see this :)

It they feel like they are stuck to the bottom of the pan, they aren't quite ready to turn. You really do need to make sure you use a lightly oiled non-stick pan. Use a spatula to turn them by checking the edges. The stackable pancakes are easier than the crepes.

And then serve your pancakes your way, with whatever you fancy. I've gone for melted dark chocolate, banana and maple syrup and they were delicious.

So how do you have your pancakes? I'd love to hear in the comments.

As always stay kind and have a beautiful day xx