Tag: LickYourPlates.com

12 Days of Christmas: Italian Christmas Cookies

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These vegan Italian Christmas cookies are soft and pretty cake-like, but they’re cookies! When deciding to make these, as we had never made anything like them before, we compared multiple traditional swirled Italian Christmas cookie recipes and then averaged out everything and made them vegan by replacing non-vegan ingredients with the most appropriate vegan substitutions. Honestly, we feel so weird referring to them as ‘cookies,’ but that’s what they are!

Unfortunately, we did not have colourful sprinkles and we couldn’t find any that were vegan (and didn’t cost a fortune for a small bottle) so we just sprinkled chia seeds on them. In addition to that, as these cookies are very sweet already, instead of dipping them in a thick icing sugar mixture (as is traditionally done before sprinkling), we brushed on a light icing sugar mixture on its surfaces to make them more edible for those who can’t handle extremely sweet foods.

We hope you enjoy these…..cookies.

Bon Appétit!

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12 Days of Christmas: Pigs in a Blanket

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Pigs in blankets are beloved sides or appetisers at British Christmas dinners. They are great finger foods which people can easily snack on and they are delicious!

Although we’ve only ever encountered Pigs in blankets at British events, we are fully aware that this dish is also common in other cultures although with some variances. For example, in Germany, Würstchen im Schlafrock (which translates to “sausage in a dressing gown”) is eaten. However, the pastry is usually made from puff pastry. Other examples include the Moshe Ba’Teiva (which translates to “Moses in the basket”) in Israel which is covered in ketchup and, at times, is made using phyllo dough, the Argentinian version for which the sausage is topped with ketchup then wrapped with empanada dough and the American one which is wrapped in croissant dough, biscuit dough or pancakes.

For this, we have opted for a pizza dough which is one of the easiest doughs to make or purchase ready-made. The cocktail sausages are also made as a form of seitan. They are flavour packed and moreish.

Regardless of the way you choose to make your pig in a blanket, this recipe will be a delicious and easy guide for you.

Bon Appétit!

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12 Days of Christmas: British Christmas Dinner

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Christmas Dinners tend to be the highlight of a lot of people’s years in the United Kingdom. Every Christmas dinner features a roast meat centrepiece which is usually poultry, but nowadays, other meats are included such as beef and pork. Served alongside the roast are roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips, brussels sprouts, stuffing, pigs in a blanket, Yorkshire pudding and gravy.

As we have already shared out roast seitan and gravy with you, for day 4, we are going to share our fluffy roast potato, carrot and onion-herb stuffing recipes with you. They are delicious and pair well together through a linking of infused oil flavours.

As a warning to our American readers, British stuffing is very different from American stuffing. With that said, if you try our stuffing recipe, do so without the stuffing you are more familiar with in mind.

Bon Appétit!

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12 Days of Christmas: Roast Seitan

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The centrepiece of most Christmas dinners is roast meat. For Day 3 of our 12 Days of Christmas, we will be sharing our roast seitan recipe with you. It is packed with flavour and glazed with a simple brown sugar glaze.

This roast seitan takes about 2hrs to make. However, 92% of that time is cooking-time which means that you won’t have to actively be in the kitchen. Therefore, this seitan is rather easy to make and not time-consuming while still being so delicious.

This seitan can be served with our Mashed Potatoes and Creamy Mushroom Gravy and is also linked to tomorrow’s recipe which will be of a British Christmas Dinner.

Bon Appétit!

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12 Days of Christmas: Mashed Potatoes with a Creamy Mushroom Gravy

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American Christmas dinners usually consist of roasted root vegetables, some roast meat, mashed potatoes and gravy. Today, we’re sharing our delicious mashed potato and gravy recipe with you. These are not your ordinary mash and gravy as we have infused the mash with the flavours of onions and garlic and thickened the gravy using a mixture of mushrooms and rice which have been added to a vegetable stock seasoned to perfection.

Although we are just sharing the mash and gravy recipes with you today, we will be sharing our flavoursome roast seitan recipe with you tomorrow followed by a British Christmas dinner which will feature other elements found in American Christmas dinners alongside those solely found in British Christmas dinners.

Let us know your thoughts if you try any of these recipes.

Bon Appétit!

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12 Days of Christmas: Cozonac (nut-free)

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Welcome to 12 Days of Christmas. Starting from today, every day, at 11am GMT, we will be sharing a new recipe with you to help you prepare for this festive period. In this series, we will be featuring breakfast ideas, snacks, appetisers, main meals and desserts from various cultures in order to introduce you to new dishes as well as to give you a variety of options or plant-based meals you can make for yourself or your vegan/vegetarian loved ones. Some of the recipes will also be alcohol-free, nut-free and gluten-free for those with particular dietary requirements or preferences.

To kick this off, here’s our first recipe – a nut-free cozonac.

Cozonac is a Romanian sweet bread which is usually eaten during Christmas and Easter. Traditionally, it is made with eggs, milk and butter which enrich the dough. However, for this recipe, we have substituted those ingredients with suitable and affordable plant-based alternatives. We suggest that you do not substitute those alternatives with other alternatives such as flax eggs instead of aquafaba as that will change the texture and density of the bread.

The shape and shininess of this bread are so attractive and foretell the delicious taste experience offered by the bread. However, they hide the surprise inside the loaf which is the curving effect of bands of raisins and chocolate toasted oats, which is what we have used to replace the chocolate walnuts found in traditional cozonac in order to keep this bread nut-free whilst not compromising on a nutty flavour and texture.

Without further ado, here’s our nut-free cozonac recipe.

Poftă Bună!

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Tomato One Pot Pasta

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One-pot pasta dishes are delicious lifesavers. You literally just have to chuck a sauce, optional bunch of veggies, herbs and spices into a pot, add some pasta and freshly boiled water then let it cook. No draining is needed as the pasta absorbs all of the water and flavours in the pot.

Any store-bought pasta can be used. However, if you have a little extra time, you can make a simple marinara sauce which you can use instead.

This recipe can easily be customised using a range of sauces, spices, pasta shapes and additional ingredients in order to make delicious meals without spending a lot of time in the kitchen or fussing over the process of cooking.

Without further ado, here is this one-pot pasta recipe!

Bon Appétit!

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Garlic-Onion Infused Brazilian Cheese Bread

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Pão de Queijo, Brazilian cheese bread, is an addictively delicious food. Traditionally, it is made using eggs, dairy cheese and milk. However, as we are keeping this recipe completely plant-based those ingredients were omitted. Nonetheless, these pães de queijo taste extremely cheesy and have a chewy centre enclosed in a thin pastry-like case.

For this recipe, we were inspired to use potatoes for several reasons. We retained the traditional tapioca starch used in making pão de queijo. However, as we were excluding three important ingredients, we needed an ingredient which could act as a binder that also would not make the final product too firm. We also needed an ingredient containing more starch for the chewy texture and the ability for the pão de queijo to still have a soft stretchy cheese-like interior when warm or hot. Finally, our decision to use potatoes, in particular, was because we knew it would serve the purposes we need it for based on research. From reading through the recipes of others such as a translated version of this pão de queijo de batata recipe, stretchy vegan cheese recipes and Japanese imomochi recipes, we realised that potatoes were our best option for experimenting to develop this recipe.

This recipe also includes an infusion of garlic and onions. Although these were flavour profiles we wanted to introduce. They ended up just contributing to the cheesy flavour of our pães de queijo making them even more addictive.

Without further ado, here is or vegan pão de quijo recipe!

Bom Apetite!

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Pad Thai Ramen Soup by Plantifully Based

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This Pad Thai Ramen Soup recipe is a featured recipe developed by Francesca of Plantifully Based and PlantifullyBasedBlog.com.

This soup is a fusion dish that plays off the flavours of Pad Thai. Traditionally, Pad Thai contains fish sauce. As this dish is vegan, in its place, soy sauce is used in order to provide a nice umami flavour. However, you can always substitute that with a vegan fish sauce.

In relation to heat levels, authentically, Thai chillies would be used. However, for this recipe, sriracha was used to make the process of cooking and controlling the heat level this easier.

As for common allergens, in order to make this dish soy-free, replace the soy sauce with coconut aminos and exclude the tofu. To make the dish gluten-free, substitute the soy sauce for tamari or coconut aminos and use gluten-free ramen. With regards to making the dish nut-free, just leave out the peanuts.

Without further ado, here’s Francesca’s Pad Thai Soup recipe!

Bon Appétit!

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Veganising Gordon Ramsay – Meatballs

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Gordon Ramsay is the chef vegans love to hate. Actually, he’s more like the chef vegans love to laugh at. Why? Well, he’s an incredible chef who is great at what he does, but he’s also not a fan of vegans. Due to this….abhorrence of vegans, he publically makes some….interesting remarks mocking vegans or vegan dishes without even tasting them, but then…..BUT THEN, he goes on to add a vegan roast to his Bread St. Kitchen menu and tells the ever-outspoken vegan-hating Piers Morgan to “get with the times,” with some cussing, of course, when Mr. Morgan described the look of his new roast as utterly revolting.

ANYWAY, we are digressing. This post is to share a vegan version of Gordon Ramsay’s meatballs with you. We are just replacing the non-vegan ingredients in his meatballs with vegan substitutes (which we will suggest or provide recipes for). As we’re not actually using meat, the taste of the final product will be a bit different. However, it’s still really delicious, soft and full of texture. As you will notice when making these meatballs, the binder will be the breadcrumbs mixed with milk as opposed to a traditional egg binder or more common vegan flax/chia “egg” binder. This allows for a lighter meatball that still holds its shape.

‘Veganising Gordon Ramsay’ is be a series in which we will veganise a number of Gordon Ramsay’s recipes so those who enjoy(ed) watching him cook could try out his recipes without non-vegan ingredients or, if they haven’t completely eliminated animal (by-)products from their diet, in a way that that they feel more comfortable occasionally eating it.

So, without further ado, here’s our vegan version of Gordon’s Meatballs!

Bon appétit!

p.s He says they’re freezable and he defrosts them to cook with! His words, not ours. He’s promoting freezer-use for meals. There’s video evidence!

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