Xantham Gum

One of the discoveries I have made during my cooking and baking experiments is that xanthan gum is a great alternative to eggs. For those of you that can’t eat wheat or gluten, it also comes in handy for making gluten-free bread as it binds the mixture together better. Xanthan gum is used as a food thickening agent and as a stabiliser in things such as cosmetic products. It can be derived from sources such as corn, wheat, dairy, or soy, so you do need to check the label carefully before you buy it. Doves Farm www.dovesfarm.co.uk sell a great vegan, gluten-free xanthan gum that even comes with a recipe for gluten-free bread on the side of the tube.

Xanthan gum comes in the form of a dry powder, and as a general rule I use ¼ tsp for every egg that the recipe calls for. You do have to be quick when working with xanthan gum, as it starts to set as soon as you add it to anything liquid. For this reason, I would recommend adding it at the end of the recipe wherever possible. If you’re using xanthan gum in place of eggs, I also find that adding a splash of soya milk provides the moisture that you lose when using the dry powder.

Planet Friendly Treats

Back in November last year, I told you about how I had been experimenting with converting recipes into plant-based, planet friendly alternatives. Over the past few months I have started to share some of these recipes with you, but the area where I am finding this hardest is baking. I’ve been doing lots of research into healthier alternatives to oil-based products, eggs and sugar, but I’m not quite there yet with the final product. I’m glad that none of you could see some of my baking disasters so far. I have made some progress, though, and I wanted to share that with you. Below you will find my recipes for shortbread and chocolate brownies. Admittedly, they do both contain oil (in the soya spread) and sugar. However, the recipes are both vegan and if you want to treat yourself occasionally or you’re looking for a slightly healthier, but still sweet, snack for the kids, these are both great. Remember, though, if you are going to buy sugar then make sure it’s Fairtrade. We’re very lucky to have a sugar producer here in the UK called Silver Spoon who are very proud of their home-grown, Assured Food Standards sugar.

I tested the chocolate brownies on my colleagues at work, giving them both the original recipe (with eggs) and the vegan version, to see if they could taste the difference. The two are noticeably different, as xanthan gum is not as light as using fresh eggs, but I’m happy to say that my human guinea pigs said they both tasted great! Plus, both recipes are super easy to make.

Shortbread

Ingredients

125g/4oz soya spread

55g/2oz caster sugar

180g/6oz plain flour

1. Heat oven to 190º/375º/Gas 5.
2. Beat soya spread and sugar together until smooth.
3. Stir in flour to get a smooth paste. Turn onto a work surface and gently roll out until the paste is 1cm/½ in thick. Cut into rounds/fingers and place onto a baking tray.
(I can never be bothered with this bit. Instead, I roll some of the mixture into a ball in my hand and flatten into on the baking tray).

4. Sprinkle with icing sugar (still tastes OK without the icing sugar if, like me, you forget to buy it) and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.
5. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until pale golden-brown.

　

Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients

125g soya spread

175g caster sugar

1 tsp xanthan gum

125g plain flour

55g cocoa powder (make sure it’s Fairtrade/local)

¼tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 170ºc/150ºc fan/325ºf/Gas 3. Use a little soya spread to grease a 15cm x 20cm deep baking tin and line the base with baking paper.
2. Melt the remaining butter and set aside to cool.
3. Put the sugar into a large bowl, and whisk in the melted butter.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Mix this together and then fold into the sugar/butter mixture. Add the xanthan gum and quickly mix in before transferring the brownie mixture to the prepared tin. The xanthan gum will start to set straight away, so you do have to be a bit speedy with this.
5. Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer when inserted at the centre comes out with just a few crumbs on. Leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes until before slicing.

Oatmeal Biscuits

Today I’m going to share with you a recipe for one of my favourite snacks, oatmeal biscuits. They taste great on their own, or you can add a bit of humus (see picture below), and they go great with soup. OK, I know the recipe doesn’t follow the rules of the plant-based diet because it uses oil (in the soya spread), but they are vegan and they taste great.

Ingredients

75g/3oz/⅔ cup plain flour

2.5ml/½ tsp salt

1.5ml/¼ tsp baking powder

115g/4oz/1 cup fine pinhead oatmeal (oatbran also works)

65g/2½oz/generous ¼ cup soya spread

1. Preheat oven to 200ºc/400ºf/Gas 6 and grease a baking sheet.
2. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Add the oatmeal and mix well. Rub in the soya spread to make a crumbly mixture, then blend in enough water to make a stiff dough.
3. You’ve got two choices at this point. The original recipe states ‘turn out onto a worktop sprinkled with fine oatmeal and knead until smooth and manageable. Roll out to about 3mm/⅛in thick and cut into rounds, squares or triangles. Place on the baking sheet’ If you’re like me, though, and you prefer to do things a bit more rustic and can’t be bothered to clean up your worktop afterwards, you can instead roll some of the mixture into a ball in your hands and flatten it straight onto the baking sheet.
4. Bake for about 15 mins or until crisp.

Eliminate Oil!

My biggest learning this week has been to remind myself of what I said in my very first posting on this blog. Rather than rushing in and trying everything at once, the key to making big changes in life is to take them one step at a time. Although I had some successes with my cookery experiments on the weekend, I also had some total disasters. Being a keen baker, I'm really interested in developing recipes for healthier, animal-free cakes and biscuits. As interested as I am, though, even I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm to eat my first attempts. So, with my 'one step at a time' mantra in mind, I've gone right back to my original recipes and started to make small changes. My first step has been to replace dairy-based butter and fat with a dairy-free option. So far it's been working well, even with recipes that call for a hard vegetable fat.
There's another small change that I've surprisingly found a lot easier than I thought I would. Ann Esselstyn's third rule on her 8 Principles is Eliminate Oil! She urges everyone to empty all oil, even virgin olive oil, out of your cupboards. Instead any liquid works. Vegetable broth (no sodium), water, wine, beer, orange juice, carrot juice, vinegar are all viable alternatives. When I first read this I was dubious, but I have since tried using orange juice, vinegar and white wine vinegar and found that they do actually work. Most vegetables also produce enough liquid that they don't need much else to cook them anyway. Chef Sarno's basting liquid for the seitan brisket on planeat.tv is also a tasty way to cook other dishes, and I roasted some delicious vegetables in my own version by mixing vegetable stock, soy sauce and a drop of marsala wine. Coincidentally, whilst conducting my own experiements with alternatives to oil, I saw an episode of Secret Millionaire where the same thing was being done but for entirely different reasons. The secret millionaire in this particular episode was trying to fry a hamburger, and asked his neighbours if he could borrow some oil. They told him he didn't need oil, and he could fry his burger using water. Theirs was a discovery borne out of necessity, as in such a poor neighbourhood oil was a luxury they could not afford. I found it interesting that in these economically challenging times, the cheapest option quite often also turns out to be the most environmentally friendly.