Vegan Christmas Pudding

Because vegans need to stir wishes in their puddings too!

Take a look at the video for the Christmas Pudding Recipe:

Ingredients: (makes 2 medium puddings)

- 275g breadcrumbs
- 100g dried apricots
- 100g dried pitted prunes, chopped
- 225g raisins
- 225g sultanas
- 225g seedless raisins
- 50g almonds, chopped
- 75g walnuts, chopped
- 225g muscovado sugar
- zest of an orange or lemon
- mixed spices, optional
- 1 apple, cored and diced
- 150ml brandy
- 3 egg replacers with water
- 150 ml non-dairy milk

Instructions:

1. Combine all the dry fruits and nuts in a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar, the apple, the zest and the breadcrumbs. Add the mixed spices if you want to. Stir to combine well.
2. Add the wet ingredients (milk, eggs replacers and brandy).
3. Pour the batter in the puddings bowls and cover them with first a square of baking parchment (because it's non-stick), then a square of aluminium paper of the same size. Make a sort of plait on the top so the pudding has some space to rise. With a piece of string, fasten the two layers, making a handle on the top to pull the pudding out of the pot (see later). You can see the method performed in detail on the BBC Food website.
4. Steam the puddings in a large pot for about 7 hours. Refill the water throughout the period of steaming and be careful not to pour water higher than about two thirds of the bowl, otherwise you'll get water in your pudding.
5. Steam for 2 hours prior to serving.

Making a Christmas pudding is a very lengthy process. Needless to say, you will need to stay home all day to make this, but I think baking for a whole day is part of the charm of the winter holiday season.

Exotic Frosty Christmas Log

What's better than a beautifully glazed yule log? An exotic one, of course!

The coconut milk gives such a rich, creamy texture to a gorgeous classic. Look out for the subtle and oh-so-sweet flavour of the banana. This sweet vs. bitter contrast will surprise your guests. Be prepared to serve second servings!

We adapted this recipe from the BBC Food Christmas Chocolate Log. As you can tell, we love the BBC Food website; it's sort of our Bible. To replace the eggs, we simply used about 250ml of soya milk. Technically, if you want to substitute soya milk for eggs, you should add 1/4 cup or 60ml of milk for each egg, but that would have made our dough far too liquid. We also had to add some flour; how much we cannot say exactly because we added gradually until we were happy with the consistency. Basically, you want to end up with a thick but still silky smooth dough that will spread nicely in your pan. 

(If you want to do a bit more research on egg substitutions, take a look at this.)

You may need to rely a little on your instincts with this one, but fear not: we did just that and it turned out so beautifully. We cannot wait to serve our yule log at our Christmas party. 

Ingredients:

- approx. 200--250g self-raising flour

- 250ml soya milk. If you want a nuttier flavour, go for almond milk; for a super-sweet flavour, use rice milk 

- 1 banana

- As many tablespoons of dark chocolate powder as you like

- 150g brown sugar

- 250--300g icing sugar

- 100ml coconut milk

- buttercream icing (any flavour you like). We got ours from Tesco, and it's accidentally vegan.

- small nuts to decorate

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat oven at 180ºC.

2. Mash the banana in a mixing bowl. 

Add the sugar and chocolate powder; combine well. Pour in the soya milk and blend until well combined, then add the flour. 

Don't forget to lick the bowl.

3. Pour the mixture into a swiss roll tin lined with baking parchment. It doesn't matter if it spreads out rather thin; ours did too and it was still perfect in the end.

4. Bake for 15 minutes. 

5. In the meantime, combine the icing sugar and coconut milk. Put in the fridge while the swiss roll bakes.

 

6. When the roll is done baking, let it cool completely. Slather on the buttercream really thickly. It's Christmas, that means no self-restraint!!!

7. Roll the flat "cake" into a swiss roll. Pour the coconut icing on top of it and decorate with the nuts (or whatever you like, really). Store in the fridge.

Enjoy :)