This cake is really good just the way it is. Or you can slice it and serve it with some fruit salad and soy cream. Either way it’s absolutely delish! It’s an old fashioned Swedish recipe that doesn’t use eggs, so veganizing it was a no-brainer. It’s also not incredibly sweet but has fantastic flavour.

Cardamom cake:

• 125 g (½cup) vegan margarine
• 300 ml (1 1/4 cups) sugar
• 2 tsp ground cardamom
• 250 ml (1 cup + 2 tsp) soy milk
• 500 ml (2 cups + 1 tbsp) flour
• 2 tsp baking powder

Turn the oven on to 180 C. Melt margarine in a pot. Turn of the heat and add sugar, cardamom and milk into the margarine. Sift together the flour and the baking powder and add to the wet mix. Stir carefully with a whisk until the lumps are gone (but don’t overmix it).  Grease and flour a pan. It looks cuter in a bundt pan but a normal sponge cake pan will do just fine. Pour batter into a the cake pan and bake in the middle of the oven for about 45 minutes or until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted to the centre comes out clean. When the cake is done, let cool for about 5 minutes then flip onto a plate. Remove the pan while the cake is still warm and let it cool completely. Let mature in a bag for a day before eating, it tastes even better if you do!

Saturday was Alex’s birthday and he seems very happy about it. I was an awesome girlfriends and bought him 9 Discworld books as well as supplied him with baked goods and Homer Simpson socks. Who’s the man? You da man! (Yeah, that’s me.)

Now I’ve run out of energy and I’ve come down with a nasty cold. I’m so happy about those frozen soups now, I’m much too tired to cook.

Last week I went to the doctor to talk about my SAD. I’m not getting any medicine but I am going to start seeing a psychiatrist because they figure that might help. The doctor ran a lot of tests, she was really nice and friendly. Upon mentioning being vegan she asked me if I’d like her to do some additional tests just to make sure I wasn’t suffering from any vitamin deficiency. There was a lot of testing being done and they had to take quite a bit of blood (actually, it only LOOKS like it’s a lot of blood, but still it was scary!). Turns out almost everything about me is perfect. Perfect blood.. everything, pressure, sugar, value.. the lot. I’m fine for b12 and the other essentials too. The only thing that was off was my liver. when she phoned me up she asked if I was either taking lots and lots of pain killers or if I’m drinking lots of alcohol. I don’t do either so they’re going to do another test in a couple of weeks. I’ve read up about it on the internet and the other things that can cause this is lots of fatty foods or being on the pill. Maybe the doctor didn’t think I ate much fat, because you know, vegans are so healthy and they never eat fat… um, but I’m going to cut down my fat intake drastically and we’ll see if that makes a difference. I might be vegan but it’s not lettuce that built this very voluptuous body. If that doesn’t work I might have to go off the pill. We’ll just see.

Anyway, before going on this fat free ‘diet’ we had a party to attend. So yesterday we went to a friends house to celebrate Alex’s birthday and the hosts up coming birthday. Here’s what I brought!

Delicious cookies n’ cream cupcakes. I <3 Isa! I ordered Vegan Cupcakes but it ran out of stock so this is a recipe from online.

Vegan homestyle chocolate chip cookies. Dreena is a vegan goddess!

We made a few changes to this one. Mainly, have no blackstrap molasses, we didn’t use a 1/3 cup maple syrup, instead we used half maple and half golden (maple is SO expensive here).

First a photo of the cupcakes. They were lovely and Alex ended up eating about a third of them.

It never ceases to amaze me just how vegan friendly some of our old Swedish cookies are. I KNOW you have checkerboard cookies in other countries too, but it’s also a very Swedish thing. Many recipes are so simple, no eggs, no milk, just butter/margarine. Hey, that’s almost too easy! I flipped through a Swedish cookies and cakes classic, we’ve had it in my home since forever. In Swedish it’s called Sju sorters kakor. Not long ago they translated the book to English, it’s called Swedish Cakes and Cookies. This recipe is from that book, the only thing I changed was the margarine, mine’s vegan, theirs isn’t. It’s one of those recipes that doesn’t even belong to a certain author or anything anymore, it’s so old and well used it’s public property now. They’re not terribly sweet, but they’re lovely with coffee or tea.

Swedish checkerboard cookies: makes LOTS and LOTS!

• 450 – 500 ml (1 3/4 cups + 2 tbsp – 2 cups) wheat flour
• 100 ml (1/3 cup + 1 tbsp) sugar
• 200 g (2 sticks) vegan margarine

• 2 tsp vanilla sugar or 1 tsp vanilla essence (but make sure to use a little more flour!)
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder

Mix together the sugar, margarine and flour until it forms a ball. (Kind of like when you’re making a pie crust). Divide the dough in two parts and mix each part with a flavouring. One of the doughs with cocoa and the other one with vanilla. Divide each dough into two pieces and roll them out to two rolls (I made three of each because I am hardcore!). Put two different coloured rolls next to each other and put two more on top of that making a checkerboard pattern. Press it a little so the doughs stick together and wrap it in plastic film. refrigerate for a little while. Turn the oven on to 200C (390F). Take the log out of the fridge and cut into 3-4 mm (1/6 inch or so) slices. Put on a baking paper on top of a baking tray and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes. Let cool. Enjoy!

Corny muffins:

• 250 ml (1 cup) wheat flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 200 ml (3/4 cup + 1 tbsp) polenta
• 50 ml (3 tbsp) corn flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup silken tofu
• 160 ml (2/3 cup) soy milk
• 3 tbsps canola oil
• ½ red onion, finely chopped
• 250 ml (1 cup) sweetcorn kernels
• 3 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

Turn oven on to 200 C (390F). Grease a 12 hole muffin tin with some oil. Mix together the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Combine the tofu with the milk and the oil and whizz in a blender until the tofu is smooth. Add sweetcorn, red onions and parsley and pour the mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir together quickly. Put the batter evenly into your muffin tray and bake in the oven for 20 minutes until they are golden on top. Take the muffins out and let cool. Enjoy with vegan margarine and a nice hot soup.

Tomorrow we’re going to the Swedish migrations board to get some things sorted out with Alex’s staying in Sweden. It’s always such a pain going there, there’s hundreds of people and everyone is angry and stressed. I’m going to bring my best smile and try to get through the day with a minimal amount of pain.

Ok, on to the food.

• The tastiest tofuballs in history with a zucchini tomato sauce and some whole wheat pasta. It’s goooood!

• And tasty tasty pancakes! This might sound a little weird, but I loved these because they remind me of oatmeal porridge with apples, but fried in a pan. I told you it was weird, normal people just don’t’ want fried up oatmeal. We both loved this so much.

• ‘Trifle’! When we were in England this summer we bought lots and lots of vegan jelly/jello. Alex has told me about his mum’s ‘trifle’ many times and this summer I could finally try it. I liked it! It’s basically spongecake pieces in jelly, but it’s delicious. I realise it’s not quite like normal trifle, but it’s good nonetheless.

• Vegan lamingtons, because we had spongecake left over from making Alex’s mum’s ‘trifle’ and we really wanted more sweet things.We love our sweets!

Also: I TOTALLY had no idea that quiche isn’t pie! Or well. I was googling for pies (savoury/salty) but I couldn’t find anything but sweet pies. No wonder, apparently you Americans call it quiche! Alex swears it’s not an English thing ‘it has to be American’ but I don’t know. You should have told me!

Coconut banana bread:

• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup margarine
• 1/4 cup apple sauce
• 1/4 cup desiccated coconut
• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed well
• 2 cups flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup soy milk, mixed with 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla flavour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 175C (350F). Grease up a bread pan and coat with desiccated coconut. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Cream together the margarine, apple sauce and sugars. Mash up the bananas and add to the margarine mix. Pour the apple cider vinegar into the soy milk and stir. Add to bananas. Add in the coconut. Mix together the wet ingredients with the dry. Mix well and pour into the bread pan. Bake in the oven for about an hour. It’s delicious!

There’s also been a lot of bad things happening lately, I haven’t slept much and I’m beginning to feel autumn coming (in terms of how I feel mentally) so things aren’t awesome right now. That’s why there’s been such a lack of updates. Hopefully I’ll get some much needed sleep soon and wake up feeling tip-top. Tonight there’s dinner at a friends house though, so yay!

Almond plum pie:

• Pie crust
• 4 dl (1 and 2/3 cups) flour
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 150 gr (5 1/3 oz) vegan margarine
• 2 tbsp cold water

• Filling
• 700 gr (1,5 lbs) ripe plums
• ½ dl (3,5 tbsp) sugar
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 dl (1/3 cup + 1tbsp) finely chopped almonds
• 2 tbsp vegan margarine

• Glaze
• ½ dl (3,5 tbsp) apricot marmalade
• 1 tbsp water

Pie crust: In a food processor, blend the flour, sugar and margarine together until it looks like a coarse meal. Add in the water and mix until it forms a ball of dough. Roll out to a big circle, about 30 cm across. Put in a springform pan, about 22 cm across, don’t bother with smoothing out the dough around the edges, it looks much more rustic if you don’t. Put in the fridge for about 30 mins to let it cool. Turn the oven on to 200C.

Cut the plums in half and deseed them. Put them in the piecrust.

Mix all the dry ingredients for the filling and sprinkle over the plums, turn them around a little bit so that the mixture is evenly spread over the fruit. Cube the margarine and put on top of fruit.

The ends of the dough (you should have some extra sticking out over the pan)  you now fold over the fruit filling. It won’t cover the pie completely and it’s not supposed to. Put in the oven and leave for about 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the water and the apricot marmalade together in a pot and bring to a boil. The marmalade should melt. When the plum pie is ready and comes out of the oven use a pastry brush and brush the pie generously with your marmaldae mix.

Tastes LOVELY with some vanilla sauce or some soy ice cream.

It’s actually just two things. A strawberry mousse cupcake that Alex has been eyeing lately, he gets news from Peta2 and the vegcooking blog and this was one of their recipes of the week. He’s a sucker for pink sugary things so we agreed on making these together. Together, however, means that I do the baking and he does the eating. (I know her cupcakes are prettier, but don’t you dare get bitchy with me, this is my second cupcake frosting ever!)

The other thing I made lately was this pink beetroot pie. Alex claims beetroot pie is his favourite so I make it fairly regularly and it’s always soo good. This time one of my friends came by for dinner and we all enjoyed this pie with some salad on the side. The filling is just pickled beetroots cut in pieces, leek, red bell pepper, salt and pepper and some thyme. I mixed some tofu with some soymilk, cornstarch and nutritional yeast and then threw in some more beetroot and blended that with the rest to make it lovely and pink.

Yesterday we went out and bought 4 bags full of lovely produce so we can finally COOK again. The fridge has been very empty lately and I’ve been feeling uninspired but now I can’t even wait. I bought mangold /CHARD!(i’ve never tried it before) so if you have a favourite recipe, please share! I have no idea what to do with it.

1. Strawberry mousse cupcakes, 2. Beetroot love pie, 3. Love pie, 4. Strawberry mousse cupcakes, of love!

Anyway, the day was great with good food. I had a very tasty vegan lemon masala burger (the malmö festival is like manna from heaven for us veggies!)

• 450 ml (just under two cups) flour
• 100 ml (just under ½ cup) sugar
• 200gr (7 oz) vegan margarine
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• raspberry jam

Turn oven to 175 C or 350F. Cream sugar, margarine and vanilla extract together. Mix in the flour and work into a dough ball. Fridge the dough for about 20 minutes. Roll the dough into about 30 little balls about 2 cm in diameter (or about an inch), flatten them a little and put on parchment paper on a baking tray. Make a little thumbprint in them (make the print bigger for more jam!) and fill them with some jam. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until they’ve turned just a little bit golden. Enjoy with some coffee in the company of good friends. Makes about 30.

First of all, Celine is a genius. You really are. You’re my hero and I love you. I made the tomato soup and the cheesy crackers today and wow they were awesome. My mother was given some of all the food as a ‘dinner’ box and she phoned me up immediately saying it was ‘the best tomato soup she has ever had’. Hah, success! I should have lied and told her that I made up the recipe myself but I told the truth like the sucker I am.

For the main course we had black bean and walnut burgers. Lindyloo posted about them a while ago and I had just made a huge batch of black beans that were just waiting in the freezer. We served our burgers with two types of dressing. A pesto dressing (best home made pesto ever) and a garlic parsley one, lettuce, onions and tomatoes.

And finally for desert, the best damn vegan brownies in the universe. Vivacious Vegan posted about them and I knew I had to try them. We ate the whole batch with soyatoo cream and some soy ice cream and everyone agreed they might be the best brownies ever made.. ever!

1. best vegan brownies ever, 2. Tomato soup with cheezy stars, 3. Black bean walnut burger, 4. Cookie loves soyatoo cream

Tomorrow I’m preparing food for our picnic and theme park visit on Saturday. I’m in charge of baking bread, making pancakes and cookies, making marinated bean salad and some ribz. Busy busy days! Also tomorrow, going to malmö to eat veggie food at the malmö festival and visiting astrid and the monkeys to see if Björn at Vegankrubb is any good at cooking ;D.