Awesome sauce:

You will need a potato press for this recipe (It looks like a giant garlic press, check it out here or here!) if you don’t have one then I advise you to not even try this recipe out, it’s not worth the hassle.

The apple sauce doesn’t use much sugar, I don’t like it when it’s too sweet. Taste your sauce (haha, that sounds rude, sorry!) and decide if you want more. It has no preservatives and it is delicious!

• apples
• sugar

Turn oven on to 200 C (390F). Take your apples and ‘fork’ them (that is, pierce them with a fork) in several places. Put apples on a parchment paper on an oven tray. Put as many as you can fit on there. The bigger your tray the more apple sauce you will get. Bake apples in the oven for about 40 minutes. If they fall apart, don’t panic, they’re supposed to. When the apples are done, take them out of the oven and immediately start pressing them into a big bowl. Don’t worry about trying to remove the peel, just press a few apples at a time in the press, the peel and the seeds will stay in the press and the apple purée will go into the bowl. Open the press, remove seeds and peel. Repeat with more apples. After they’re all done you add the sugar to your purée. Measure how much puree you have and add sugar accordingly. For every 4 cups of purée add ½ cup sugar. (Or if you’re Swedish like me, or just use metric anyway, for every litre of purée, add 1.5 dl sugar). Stir together and freeze in little bags. The apple sauce keeps for about 1-2 weeks in the fridge as it has no preservatives.

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.

Everywhere I look now people are making upside down cakes. I didn’t want to be any worse than them (and also I still have loads and loads of plums) so I made us an upside down plum cake. It was delicious! We ate it with ice cream (not vegan) and everyone agreed that I am a baking genius (goooooo me!). The recipe is adapted from one a found here.

Upside down plum cake:

• 10-20 plums (depending on the size, you want to cover the bottom of your cake tin)
• 2 tbsp brown sugar

• 250 ml (1 cup) flour
• 3 tbsp soy flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 160 ml (2/3 cup) soy milk
• orgran no egg replacer 2 whites (2 tsp egg replacer and 2 tbsp water)
• 80 ml (1/3 cup) golden syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (or if you’re Swedish, you use the powdered version and put it in with the dry ingredients)

Heat the oven to 175C (350F). Rinse the plums, cut them in halves and remove the pith. Cover the bottom of a cake tin (one with removable sides)  (22cm/9in)  with plums. Take them out again and sprinkle them with brown sugar. Let sit for a while. Spray the cake tin with non stick oil.

Combine flour, soy flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and stir them. In another bowl whisk together the soymilk and the sugar for a few minutes, until the sugar has partly dissolved. Add the other liquid ingredients and stir together. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet and stir together.

Put the plums into the cake tin, cover them with the batter and out into the oven for 35-40 minutes. When the cake is done loosen it immediately and invert it onto a plate. Serves a small bunch of hungry people!

I have spent the entire day in the heat of the kitchen, making jam, marmalade and plums in vanilla syrup. It’s horrendously hot and humid and I’m ill so maybe this wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made, but it’s a very delicious one.

I still have more than two thirds of the plums to go. I think I’ll make some more jam, and some marmalade maybe.

1. Plums in vanilla syrup, 2. white rose, 3. An abundance of fresh produce, 4. Plums in vanilla syrup

Plums in vanilla syrup:

• 1 kg (2 lbs) plums
• 1 stick of vanilla
• 8 dl (3 cups) water
• 6 dl/500 gr (1 lb) sugar

Cut the vanilla stick in half, lenghtwise. Put in a pot together with water and sugar. bring to a boil and let boil for ten minutes. Cut the plums in half and deseed them. Put in the sugar syrup and let simmer for about 2 minutes. After simmering put the plums in a clean heat resistant glass jar and pour some syrup on top so that they’re all covered. Put lid on, let cool. Keeps in the fridge for about a week and tastes lovely with some soy icecream or in a cake.