Savoury Seed Straws

Hello lovelies! Firstly, I want to apologise for not posting anything in so long! Hopefully I should be getting back to that more now that the summer is on its way! :)

This is a recipe that I have done quite a few times but never got right and just how I wanted..until yesterday! Hooray! *Pulls confetti* 

Some people's taste buds are more sweet than savoury, and others' are more savoury than sweet. Personally, I fit better into the savoury category. But I'm sure you can agree with me in the fact that we all have those times when we favour one category over the other. And for those times when you need something more savoury-these straws are the answer.

Firstly, I love how the paprika and cayenne compliment the salt and mustard perfectly-and give it that extra something. And this is a GREAT way to get seeds into you if you're not the biggest fan or just are simply stuck with what things you can do with them. Secondly, they are gluten free (as far as I know) so if you generally try to stay away from gluten, these are a definite thumbs up!

The nutritional yeast is also marvellous if you want to get some extra vitamin B12 into you, although it isn't necessary. Nutritional yeast has a nutty/cheesy taste and is ideal for when you follow a plant based diet.

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Makes around 8-16 straws

Ingredients:

130g GF Plain Flour (I used Doves Farm which I really like)
130g Brown Rice Flour
1/4 tsp Himalayan Pink or Sea Salt
4 tsp GF Baking Powder (I used Doves Farm)
140g Dairy Free Margarine (I like the brand Pure)
A pinch of cayenne pepper and paprika -As much as is desired
1 tbsp Nutritional Yeast (Optional)
1 tbsp Brown Rice Syrup
5 tbsp Ice cold water and 5tbsp Soy Milk

Topping

1 tsp or tbsp Whole grain mustard (depending on taste)
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp Paprika
A combination of seeds that you like, I used poppy seeds, pumpkin, sunflower and linseed that I know of. A good idea would also be to buy a bag of mixed seeds from your local health shop or supermarket.

Method:

1. Put the flours, salt, and baking powder in a food processor and pulse to mix. 
2. Add the margarine, cayenne, paprika, brown rice syrup, and nutritional yeast, if using. Pulse again. 
3. Add the water and soy milk and pulse until it begins to form together. Shape into a ball and put into the fridge wrapped in cling film to chill for up to an hour.
4. Grease a baking tray and put the oven on at around 180C. Take the ball you put in earlier out of the fridge and cut into two halves. Roll each half out individually with a rolling pin and cut into 8 rectangular straw like pieces. Top tip: Be very careful at this point as they break up VERY easily. You may need to use something to lift them up onto the baking tray. 
5. In a small bowl, mix your preferred amount of cayenne and paprika with mustard and 1 tsp water. And use a pastry brush to coat and infuse the straws with flavour evenly. Then sprinkle your seeds over.
6. Once thats finished, put the tray in the oven for 10 minutes and it should be pretty easily to tell when they're ready.

Enjoy!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read today's post! 

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Cashew Shortbread Biscuits

These biscuits are nothing fancy, but are something that are lovely if you feel like making something in the kitchen or need a little pick me up. When I made these last week I didn't expect to enjoy them so much! They were one of those gems of a find that happen to really surprise you.

They are great because you can do whatever you want with them. If you have some biscuit cutters you can cut them into pretty shapes of all sorts. Hearts, flowers, stars.. you name it! Be creative. If you didn't want to just have them plain and are desperate for some extra sweetness, another thing you could do is drizzle some dark chocolate over the top. Yummy!

Note: Your biscuits may turn out a little darker than the ones in the picture as I was short on coconut sugar and only used a bit and for the rest used light brown.

For this recipe one thing you will also need is some kind of machine to grind your cashews, I use my Nutribullet. If you have a high speed blender or food processor that would work great too.

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Makes 12-24 biscuits

Ingredients:
4 oz Vegan butter (Pure/Vitalite/Biona)
2 oz Coconut palm sugar
3 oz Raw cashews
4 1/2 oz Self Raising Flour (To make healthier use just under 4oz SR and the rest Spelt Flour)
1/4 tsp GF Baking Powder
Pinch Himalayan Pink Salt

To Make:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees/375F/Gas Mark 5 and grease a baking tray. 
2. Cream the butter and coco sugar with the back of a wooden spoon until smooth.
3. Grind the cashews to a fine powder then add to the butter/sugar mixture.
4. Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into the mixture and mix until combined. This will make quite a sticky dough. 
5. In your bowl, gradually add around two or three tablespoons of flour to the mixture then press in & gather together so that you can roll the mixture into a ball ready to roll.
6. With a rolling pin, roll out your dough to a reasonable thickness and cut into shapes with biscuit cutters and place them on your greased baking tray. You may need to use a knife to help lift them up. 
7. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy! 

Emily X

Becoming vegan: 2 months on!

On January 1st I decided to make the decision to become a vegan, and exactly today it will be two months eating this way. So I thought it would only be right to blog about my experience as a vegan, with all my successes and failures. Before I get into the rest of this short post, I would also like to add that I still stand by all the original reasons I set out to become one in the first place, even if everything hasn't worked out quite to my plan.

I must say that I think have may been a little overly ambitious, which I think we sometimes do when we feel passionate and enthusiastic about something. In the first few weeks and month, I did really well. I drank no milk, ate no cheese or eggs. If I fancied eggs I would make myself some scrambled tofu which might I add, is lovely! And not to be compared to scrambled egg! And eating out was no bother either. But then at the beginning of February onwards I started to slip and had an egg or two, and now I have started eating eggs now and again.

In a way, I'm happy that I decided to become a vegan. Because for two months, well..almost-I experienced something different. And not only did it benefit me, it benefited the animals and environment greatly too! My skin has been clearer, my eyes have been brighter, and my digestive system has thanked me also. Now, I have decided to stick to no milk, no cheese (apart from the very occasional bit if I eat out) and eggs once or twice a week.
Plus scrambled tofu because I love that too. :)

What are your thoughts and experiences on removing animal products from your diet? I'd love to hear from you, comment below!

Love always,

Emily X

Valentines Goji Heart Chocolates

Instead of the typical box of chocolates from the shops for Valentines day, why not treat your loved one (or yourself in my case) to some pretty homemade chocolates that you've made yourself? In my opinion the best gifts are always those that have had extra effort and time taken over them. Not only are these delicious and easy but they are also super good for you. One or more of these and you'll be high in the clouds with happiness, not to mention love!

The recipe below is just an estimate of what I used. Adjust the recipe to be as runny, thick, bitter, or sweet as you like. To make make more runny, add coconut oil, to make more thick add some more cacao powder, and to make more sweet if the cacao powder is too bitter add some more maple syrup or vanilla. Keep tasting as you go along so the chocolates will taste just the way you like. Also make sure to do it all quite quickly as the chocolate will begin to set if you make them too slowly. How do I know? My first batch didn't turn out so pretty. Haha :) The thing with this sort of recipe is trial and error-once you've done it a few times you'll get the hang of it.

I get my cacao butter and cacao powder from The Raw Chocolate Co and the coconut oil I use is Lucy Bee that I get from Sainsbury's for £6. To make these you'll need any kind of silicone mould. I used one that I found from M&S but there are some from amazon that are great for this sort of thing that you can get for really cheap and Lakeland do one thats really good too. If you don't have a silicone mould you can also use an ice cube tray or some bun cases. If you use bun cases make sure that they are firm enough so that the mixture won't spill out as soon as you move them. To take extra precautions place them on a mat or something solid to transfer them to the fridge.

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Makes 6 large or 20 small chocolates

Ingredients:

100g Cacao butter
4tbsp Coconut oil
2tsp Vanilla extract
100g Cacao powder
6-8 tbsp Good quality maple syrup (add more or less to your personal preference)
2-3 phandfuls Goji berries or other nuts/dried fruits (raisins would work really well)

You'll also need: Heart or other shaped silicone moulds and a sieve

To Make:

1. Fill up a medium sized saucepan with water and bring to the boil. If you can, try not to let the pan get hotter than 45 degrees Celsius so all the ingredients contain their original nutritional value.
2. Chop the cacao butter very finely (this way it will melt easily) and set in a glass bowl with the coconut oil.
3. Take the boiling water off the heat and place the bowl on top of it. 
4. Let the cacao butter slowly dissolve and melt down to a liquid. When it has all melted, stir in the vanilla.
5. Sieve in the cacao powder and mix until smooth with a wooden spoon. Add the maple syrup and goji berries. 
6. Slowly pour into moulds and leave in the fridge for thirty minutes to an hour or until firm. When they are ready push out of the moulds and put in a plastic container/box. The chocolates will stay fresh for up to three months in the fridge, though I doubt they'll last that long!

Happy chocolate making!

Lots of love,

Emily X

Review: Dee's Vegan Sausages

I first came across Dee's foods when me and my mum were shopping on Ocado a few weeks ago as they were on offer and were a brand we'd never heard of before so we thought we'd order a couple packs of her sausages and give them a go. As vegans it is a wonderful thing when we find new brands and healthy alternatives we like, as it can be pretty boring if we find ourselves eating a lot of the same things all the time. Dee is a nutritionist and first started her business at a farmers market which for starters, I really admire. Her foods are all free from meat, wheat, soy, eggs, gluten, artificial additives, palm oil, and nasty GMO's and made from the best quality natural and organic ingredients. All of which is a winning combination in my eyes.

Needless to say we really enjoyed them and despite some of the other negative reviews on Ocado, thought they were brilliant. Unfortunately we enjoyed them so much that they were all gone within a few days (oops!) and I said to myself that I would write a review sometime soon on my blog because I believe Dee's Wholefoods is a brand that likeminded people should know exists. I'm not too keen on her burgers as I am the sausages, but it might just be because of the ingredients and flavours that were used. I don't like to be negative at all but I do think that the burgers needed a bit extra flavour and seasoning, and I didn't find them that appetising. If I were to give feedback I would say that these things would definitely need to be changed.

Leek & Onion, and Coriander, Pepper & Ginger

Now onto the review. For starters, I love the packaging, the colours and fonts used really appeal to me and give me the impression that what I am about to eat is actually going to do me good and I'm not going to feel rubbish afterwards. The sausages are wrapped in a vegan casing made of rice flour and they have quite a different texture to a lot of other veggie/vegan sausages on the market. Personally I find it refreshing to have found a different take on veggie sausages that aren't the same to all the rest but thats just me. Other members of the family weren't so keen but I do think they are nice, not the best I've ever eaten, but nice. They are quite light so you could probably have 2-3 with some veggies and beans or something on your plate and you wouldn't leave the table feeling all horrible. In one pack you get six sausages and the price in my opinion is a bit too much money and they wouldn't be something we'd buy every week. Only occasionally for a treat. 

When cooking, because of the texture, they are quite prone to crumbling in the pan and matters are made worse if you miss out heating the pan up on a low heat first before you try to cook but as long as you have the pan heated up before you start cooking them they'll be okay. So overall these are really quite nice sausages that are definitely worth a try as everyone is different and although one person who tries them may not like them another might.

Emily X

Dairy free dark mint chocolate chunk cookies

Before I had never really thought about vegan/dairy free baking as something that I would seriously be interested in doing, but after making some brownies and and then these cookies on Monday and them turning out so yummy and perfect, now it seems like the perfect way to go. I love how they were so quick & easy to make and are just like cookies should be, a lovely golden colour-hardened around the outside and soft and gooey on the inside.

I'm not sure if I've ever made many traditional cookies before but I don't think I have any need to after discovering these, and the best thing is they are both free of dairy products and refined sugars, which are both things I try to avoid. In this recipe I used coconut palm sugar which is both natural and unrefined with a lovely caramel taste that doesn't leave you feeling yucky afterwards. Brilliant for health freaks like me. So for this recipe and for the majority of recipes I will be doing in the future, I will be using coconut palm sugar. Ahh, just saying the name of it makes my heart flutter. If I could eat the whole jar to myself I probably would because I love it that much. If you don't have or want to use coconut sugar you can just stick with caster as it wouldn't make that much of a difference to the recipe.

If you find yourself craving something sweet and chocolatey on an evening thats also ridiculously good for you, these cookies would be perfect with my warming hot chocolate with 100% natural ingredients.

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Makes 6 large cookies

Ingredients: 

125g vegan butter
125g coconut palm sugar
250g plain white flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp peppermint extract
50g dark baking or normal chocolate cut into chunks (I use Green & Blacks)

To Make:

1. Cream the butter and coco sugar with the back of your spoon in a large bowl until fluffy, then add and stir in the peppermint extract to your preferred mintiness. 
2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder then add the flour to the creamed butter until a soft dough is formed. 
3. Once you have your dough, make it into a log shape and wrap it in cling film ready to go in the fridge. I would recommend keeping it in the fridge for at least an hour and if you can, overnight. I kept mine in overnight just to be safer! 
4. A few hours later, or the next day, take your dough out of the fridge and preheat the oven to 180C/Gas mark 4. Grease a baking tray with butter and cut out some baking parchment to fit. 
5. Then taking a knife, equally divide and mark six lines on the dough before rolling into neat balls and pressing them down on your baking tray. Make sure there is plenty of space between each one as they will expand in the oven. Depending on your personal preference, you can make six large cookies or twelve smaller ones.
6. Pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes. It will be pretty easy to know when they're ready, just remember to make sure they are all cooked through properly. Also keep in mind that they will cool down and harden quickly when they're out. Once they're all cool, transfer to a wire cooling rack or plate. 

Enjoy!

Emily X

Review: CoYo Coconut Milk Yoghurt-Natural and Raw Chocolate

Left-Raw Chocolate Right-Natural (250ml)

A few months ago these yoghurts had been popping up all over my instagram timeline and I was incredibly curious to know what all the fuss was about, so I ordered one of the 250ml natural yoghurts to try and couldn't believe how good it tasted. This time I also ordered a raw chocolate 250ml tub to try too and wasn't disappointed. The brand also does other flavours such as morello cherry, mango, vanilla and mixed berry. CoYo coconut milk yoghurts are all free of dairy, soya, lactose, and gluten with no added sugar which would be perfect for a large variety of people, those of which who are vegetarian, vegan, health conscious, lactose and gluten intolerant. Or it could be for those who simply just love coconut! Even if you don't fit in any of the above, I'm sure you would agree that they are as they say on the tub "Heaven in a mouthful".

The yoghurt is really nice and creamy and has a lovely light and refreshing taste that I really like. It also goes with a lot of things so it doesn't necessarily have to be just eaten on its own. I enjoy having it with my homemade banana bread and later on in the week will be serving some with some chocolate buckwheat pancakes, yay! Anything like that goes really well together in my opinion. Another positive is that because its coconut, you don't need too much in one go either, making it last longer. For one to two people one tub would probably last all week, well just! The price for a 250ml tub is really good at only £3.55 for the raw chocolate and £2.99 for the natural. The tub is also has a really clean and fresh look which is very simple but still gets the message across. As you can tell I just really love this company, and I don't think there are really any bad points. CoYo is always one of my first choices now for dairy free yoghurts as in terms of nutrition, they have everything I look out for.

Emily X

Why I decided to become a vegan

As you may already know either from knowing me personally or from in the about me section, I have been a vegetarian ever since I was born and have loved being one my whole life. But since greatly changing my eating habits this year, I have had the desire to become a vegan. Thanks to the many talented and beautiful people I follow on Instagram for healthy food inspiration who were doing the exact same thing I aspired to do, I realised that it really was possible, and opened myself up to a new world full of possibilities. Part of me is thinking oh no, what have I got myself into? But the other can't help but be excited for the adventure ahead.

I had thought about it a lot and even spoke with my mum about it (as she has recently gone vegan too) but we both came to the conclusion that I should just eat dairy only occasionally like I had been doing-the odd goats cheese in my tea & scrambled eggs with veggie bacon for breakfast (except for dairy milk which is something I haven't been drinking for over a year.) And I also had to take into consideration my baking which uses non vegan ingredients such as milk, cream, and eggs and if you like to bake too you will know the temptations that come with baking and resisting the urge to lick the spoon! And of course we can't forget the time when our creations come out of the oven and not being able to eat and try what has just been made.

But then after a couple of weeks of just continuing the of way I was I simply wasn't satisfied with where I was at, and although it suited me for a while, I felt I could do much better! So I made the  courageous decision to dive into unknown waters, and take a BIG step out of my comfort zone. I understand that eating a vegan diet and living a vegan lifestyle can and will be a little tricky and inconvenient sometimes, but I'm willing to go through with it as I believe it is worth it. Although one of the main reasons for my becoming vegan was my overall health and my skin, the other is about the animals. My whole family (well, mostly me, my mum, and my younger sister Isobel) feel very strongly about the way animals are treated in farming and food industries in today's society. As a Christian I believe God created animals to be loved, cherished, and cared for. Not brutally murdered and treated the disgusting way they are as if they have no worth and value. The gift of compassion in my opinion is not only to be shown to humans, but extended to every living creature on this earth, because like us, they have a spirit and are beautifully and wonderfully made.

When I was younger I was also well aware of all that goes in within the meat and dairy industry, but often tried to turn a blind eye to it because it meant having to face up to the cruel and harsh reality of the way the world is and I wasn't ready for that yet. But now I am much older I have been able to fully understand the truth of it all and come to make my own decisions about the way I live and eat.
Because this is a very controversial topic I think lots of people often lack the courage to speak out and share their views and opinions and be honest about whats really happening in the food industry in fear of offending. But how can we ever bring change if we don't do something about it? People won't ever know whats really going on if you don't tell them.

Plus, how could you ever want to hurt these little fellas? :)

If you want to know more about the subject, I strongly recommend watching Earthlings. Earthlings is a documentary film about the suffering of animals for food, fashion, pets, entertainment, and medical research. I had tears in my eyes the whole way through this and for the majority of the film I was just sat watching the screen with my jaw wide open out of sheer shock, anger, and despair. It is very hard to watch but I think it is important that we know what is going on behind closed doors. You can watch the full documentary for free on YouTube, just follow the link here :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce4DJh-L7Ys


I love the quote below from William Wilberforce.

"You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know."