Stacey's Gluten Free Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

These are absolutely the chewiest cookies I ever made. Seriously good stuff. For our "free-from" month my main "bake" was to make a gluten free veggie lasagne, but I didn't like the way it turned out so I went ahead and knocked up these vegan and gluten free cookies instead. The recipe below started it's life over on this blog here, but as usually I messed with the quantities and stuff. Seriously - I think I have a problem where I'm not actually able to follow a recipe.

I think next time I make these, I may leave 50g of my oats whole to give the cookies a little more structure. I'll post pics/update to let you know how it goes!

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 8-10 minutes
Makes 18 cookies

Ingredients:
150g rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder

250g crunchy peanut butter

150g dark muscovado sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp water (if needed)

1. Preheat your oven to 180 and line a couple of baking sheets with grease proof paper
2. Pop you oats into a blender, and whizz to a fine powder. Don't worry if there are a couple of rough bit. Stir in the baking powder and put to one side.
3. Beat together the peanut butter, sugar and vanilla extract until well combined. Stir in the oat flour until a crumbly dough starts to form, then knead this gently with your hands until the mixture comes together. If you find the mixture is too crumbly, add a little water until you get smooth dough.
4. Roll the dough into balls and pop on the baking sheets, making sure to leave ample space between as the cookies will spread! 
5. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown and starting to get crisp on top. Don't worry if they are still gooey when you take them out of the oven, they will firm up slightly as they cool. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking tray for 5 minutes, until transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Enjoy!

Tom's Autumn Apple Cake

I copied this recipe down a long time ago, and I think I forgot to halve the apples along with the rest of the ingredients.  If you like apples a lot use the full amount (I did for my bake, and it works), but it turns out very apple-y!

It's gluten free, but probably also works fine with normal plain flour. But then obviously wouldn't be gluten-free.

Ingredients

1lb peeled, cored and sliced apples
1½ cups GF flour (or Polenta)
½ tbsp GF baking powder
Pinch salt
1¼ cups granulated sugar (I used brown)
½ cup oil
2 large eggs
1½ tsp Vanilla
Zest and juice of 1 small orange

Method

Put the everything except the apples in a bowl and mix it together well.
Line a 8" square tin and pour in half the batter.
Layer on half the apples.
Pour on remaining batter.
Layer on remaining apples.
Sprinkle some brown sugar and little pinch of cinnamon over the apples.
Bake for around 1½ hours at 180°C/GM4.

Aileen's mini walnut and date brownies

Mini walnut and date brownies

Makes approx. 25

110g walnuts

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

200-250g pitted dates (depending how ‘fudgy’ you want them)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

100g dark chocolate (optional for covering)

1.      Put the nuts and cocoa in food processor and blitz until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

2.      Add the vanilla extract and the dates and blitz until the mix starts to stick together.

3.      Divide the mixture into uniform sizes of whatever shape you want (I stuck to the standard bite size ball)

4.      Place onto greaseproof paper and pop into the freezer for ten minutes while you prepare the chocolate for covering.

5.      Melt chocolate and cover each bite. Allow to set. 

6.      Store in airtight container in fridge.

Note: Covering these bites in chocolate is an optional step.  I decided they were sweet enough, but each to their own I suppose!

Joy's Vegan Sausage Rolls

These "sausage" rolls kept me sane for a few months of semi-inforced veganism as my boyfriend at the time suddenly went dairy free! They're ridiculous easy to make but I didn't have much time or money last week to be more creative.

1 pack of Jus Roll puff pastry (This is the only which is actually vegan. Do NOT get the low fat one, the Tesco one, the all butter one etc)
1 pack of stuffing mix, I used Co-op sage and onion. In my experience, most stuffing mixs are vegan
Soya milk/rice milk etc

Cut pastry lengthways. Mix up stuffing mix and place down middle of pastry strips. Lightly roll one of the edges of the pastry, brush with a little soya milk/water and roll the pastry around the stuffing mix. Cut into bite size chunks, add a few slashes with a sharp knife and brush with a little soya milk.
Bake at 200°C for about 30mins or until golden brown. Looking at the photo I don't think I did mine quite long enough!

And THAT is me up to date - phew! What a productive Sunday evening.

Cake'n'Bake Update

Hello!

It's been a while *coughsixmonthscough* since I've done one of these, and for that I hang my head in shame... Sorry!

But, Cake'n'Bake is still going strong, so here's a brief run-down of what we've been up to in the last six months!

In July we held a fairytale Picnic and raised £86.35 for Marie Curie Cancer Care:

In the August heat we decided to give our ovens a rest and go for a "No Bake" theme:

September's challenge was to bake something that shared your initials...

In October we decided to use cocktails as the inspirations for our bakes:

November was our 2nd Birthday, so we had our 2nd Birthday Party!

In December we helped Santa on his trip by baking Christmas recipes from around the world:

And for January's meeting last week we set ourselves the challenge of baking something "free-from" - here's what we came up with:

The recipes for these bakes will be making their way onto the blog soon - so watch this space!!