November: Noga – (FREAKIN’ WORTH IT) APPLE CRUMB PIE

it is geek week!

Time to see if our geekness has aged well. I’m actually much less into Supernatural than I was back in 2016 (I ended up dropping off in the gazillionth season), but it does still have a place in my heart.

Yes, we are entering the world of Supernatural gifs. We may never leave!

I love the quote the recipe refers to, even though the episode itself is meh, and I love and empathize with Dean’s love for pies.

Ok lets get down to business. Or as Cas put it:

The recipe Rony gave me is this one and she also kindly provided me with a link for a vegan pie crust, which is this one. TBH I majorly suck at dough. But I started out hopeful. First I mixed the dough in a food processor – it contained white spelt flour, coconut oil, ice water and some sugar and salt.

Because I suck at dough, I can’t gauge right when the dough consistency (is that the word?) is good enough. I may have needed more ice water. I thought I ended up with a nice enough ball of dough but then came the part I hate the most – rolling thinly and transferring to the tin. I never never never do this cleanly. So, this is the result of that:

The positive: I rolled it out very thinly which was good. The negative: of course it was a mess to transfer, tore away at various parts, and I ended up sort of giving up, throwing everything in there and just pressing with my fingers. This is why I hate dough. It’s just not for me.

While the failed crust chilled in the fridge, I moved on to filling. This is much easier obviously, but I did take some liberties here based on what I already had in the kitchen and because of my laziness to go out.

First of all, I didn’t have any vanilla whiskey (who does?). Rony wrote I could sub with apple cider, so that’s what I did. I swapped with apple cider vinegar the white wine vinegar I didn’t have (weirdly, listed in the ingredients but missing in the recipe itself), and I didn’t have cornstarch so I just didn’t use any. You toss the apples with these, plus lemon juice, vanilla, and a mix of sugar, flour and spices.

The topping is also easy enough: oats, flour, sugar, (supposed to include ground ginger but yuck), and coconut oil instead of the original recipe’s butter.

I would say this is an ok crumble topping, but it didn’t knock my socks off like the crumble I made back when I made this apple crumble cake.  That one is definitely the victor of vegan crumble, and it’s just flour, pecan and maple syrup.

And this is after baking. I love that the apples peek out from between the crumble bits.

It came out bubbling and I was worried it was going to be too wet and I was going to have a soggy bottom (oh no!), but somehow the thin dough held really well. It even cut alright:

All in all, a nice recipe. I won’t blame the dough recipe for my lack of dough competence, and may use it in the future. The filling as well was great, and very yummy, and in the future I might sub the topping for the one of the apple tea cake.

On to December, the last month of the bake-off (!!!)

October: Noga – VEGAN BROWNIES WITH TAHINI AND HALVAH

The second recipe comeback is, thankfully, much better that the previous disaster. This recipe was actually both super easy and super delicious, so I’m definitely saving it for future reruns.

The month theme was CHOCOLATE (YUM) because October is my birthday month and I’m obvious.

The recipe is these vegan brownies and according to Nimrod, the resident vegan, they were “The best vegan brownies he ever had“. And I have to agree. I would even say they match any non-vegan brownies for taste and texture. The ingredient list was also almost completely made up of things we already have in our kitchen. So – YAY!

You begin by placing a bunch of dates in hot water to boil them. This is something that we get to do a lot with vegan recipes, and is also very convenient as Nimrod’s family grows dates in the desert and we always have tons of them in our freezer.

The recipe requires a surprisingly small amount (2/3 cup = 115 grams)

Then, you sift spelt flour (our favorite!), cocoa powder and baking powder together. I recently purchased fancy dutch cocoa which is just amazing.

So far so good. Please excuse the mess

Then you really get down to business, and use a food processor to process the softened dates (I sometimes peel their skin off but I was lazy this time, it doesn’t matter), almond milk, maple syrup, sugar (I don’t bother with the ‘coconut’ part and use regular sugar), tahini, vanilla, salt and olive oil. You’re going to get a thin liquid at this point so make sure to keep the lid on the food processor shut, as I did not.

I kinda balked at using both 3/4 cup of maple syrup and another 3/4 cup of sugar in this. I put in less sugar than stated. With the chocolate and the halva this is already dangerous. It didn’t come out too sweet in the end, so that’s good. Here it is after you pour it into the flour and cocoa mix.

Now comes the bonus part. I got fancy vegan chocolate chips, as well as halvah made by our favorite tahini makers (we love you Al Arz!)

I love love love halvah. I was so excited about these brownies by this point.

A thief caught in the act!

Here is the batter after I sprinkled sesame seeds and toasted almonds on it, before it went in the oven:

And then in the oven for about 45 minutes. I didn’t understand why the recipe said a toothpick should come out clean, and why you need to “Refrigerate until cold and firm before cutting. Bring to room temperature before eating”. Cold and firm?? The whole point of brownies is to be gooey and almost but not quite batter-like in the middle. I don’t want my toothpick to come out clean! Sure, there is always the fear you will take it out when it’s still raw, but I don’t like messing up and over-baking brownies as well. Like Rony said – then it’s not brownies, it’s cake. Either way, 45 mins was exactly the right time for the perfect brownie texture.

We enjoyed it thoroughly and I’m definitely going to be making this again. The only negative thing I can say is that the halvah is unnoticeable. Maybe I crumbled it too finely, and larger chunks would have survived better. Another thing to do would be to crumble some halvah on top after baking. Will definitely try next time.

On to the next one!

September: Noga – Two Layer Vegan Strawberry Tart

Surprise!

We’re back!

This is so exciting!

I can’t believe Rony had saved the envelopes, and even took them with her when she moved to a different country. I have no idea where my envelopes are. But even if I had them, I would have needed a new set of recipes because…. I need them to be vegan.

I know, I’m shocked too.

Things have changed since we started the bake-off. One of them is that I got me a live-in boyfriend who’s vegan. Again, I’m shocked too. Side-note, I really love the term “live-in boyfriend”. It sounds like somebody I hired, like a maid. Anyway, out of solidarity, I now try to bake vegan only. Solidarity, and not feeling the shame of baking whole desserts just for myself.

This is all a disclaimer to say that vegan baking is sometimes surprising, and sometimes just a complete fail, as is the case today. But I told Rony that our readers (?) should also be exposed to the flops, to show that we, too, are human.

OK I will stall no longer. Let’s get to it. The theme this month is Layers and the recipe is this strawberry tart. It’s a pretty simple recipe, but it was my first time using agar agar. I also really liked the decoration and actually bought edible flowers for this, which I didn’t end up using, but we’ll get to that.

Crust ingredients. Yes, we buy big jugs of maple syrup. And we finish them very quickly

First step is the crust, which is very simple. You blend almonds and pistachios in a food processor, add maple syrup, coconut oil, some cardamom and salt, mix, and press into a tin. Easy-peasy and you think, what can go wrong there? the actual result was a very crumbly base that didn’t hold. *shrugs*

The filling is where things started to really fall apart faster than the crumbly base. I heated up the coconut cream, added cornstarch and agar-agar, and.. I had major lumps. That wouldn’t go away as much as I tried to smoosh them.

I have nothing good to say about this

I didn’t know what to do about the lumps and I hoped they would melt, but they didn’t. I decided to ignore them completely. Then you’re supposed to keep it boiling until it thickens, which was kind of hard to decide how thick is thick enough, and then you leave it to cool. I poured it into another bowl so it cools faster, and I waited the stated 15 minutes, only to come back and find that it cooled so much it actually already solidified in the bowl instead of in the tin, and also had a skin forming. All of this was pretty gross, would not change as much as I tried to mix it, and (feeling where this is going) I just poured it over the base as-is and got a lumpy yucky first layer.

Nothing about this one neither

But I’m a brave soldier so I soldiered on to the next layer, after placing some strawberries on top of the first. I thought – ok, I learned some lessons, this one is going to be better. First thing I did: sifted the agar and the cornflour in a sieve before dumping them in the coconut cream, hoping it would help with the lumps. It didn’t.

Yep.

Again with the question of the thickening, this time I opted for shorter time, hoping it wouldn’t solidify so fast as it cools. Finally, I also sifted the whole mixture so at least I can leave the lumps out of the actual tart. This was perhaps smart in some way, but it meant leaving out a meaningful amount out, and when I poured the mixture over the strawberries, it turned out I didn’t even have enough to cover the completely.

I mean… ew

No matter, I thought, I will decorate the crap out of this and completely cover this abomination!

But the simple and sad truth was, as it cooled in the fridge, I just knew it’s just not worth it and no one’s going to want to eat it – I had actually planned to take it to a dinner with family which was so naive in hindsight.

See above re:crumbling base

We tried a piece. It was.. not good. It tasted like rubber. I ended up nixing the decoration plans, and throwing the whole thing in the garbage. I’m half taking the blame, maybe I don’t know how to work with agar. But maybe it’s just the recipe. Or maybe some things just don’t work in vegan versions. Or maybe it’s just that in general I hate jell-o textures and this was just not meant to be.

Not to leave with a bad taste (very literally), I will say that I’ve made some *phenomenal* vegan desserts. Even tarts. Please see Exhibits A and B:

 

yum

 

AH-MAZING bakewell tart

A: https://leelalicious.com/no-bake-chocolate-tart-vegan-gluten-free-paleo/

B: https://www.lazycatkitchen.com/vegan-raspberry-bakewell-tart/

~Honor restored~

I’m sure the next ones will be better. Hopefully, this one has been a lesson to all of us.