Nut-free Vegan Chocolate bread pudding

Doing things a little differently here. We're playing with our "toys', i.e. the video function on my iPhone and so, pardon the bloopers.

I present you today with my Vegan Chocolate Bread Pudding. Check that the chocolate spread is vegan and we are good to go. This started with my brother waxing lyrical over a warm chocolate bread pudding he had eaten recently. It was served with warmed chocolate spread, drizzled over  just before you dig in. Sounds heavenly! So here's my take. It can be made just egg free, using milk and regular chocolate spread or veganised with dairy free milk and vegan chocolate spread. So just suit the recipe to your preference.

Ingredients for Chocolate Bread Pudding

Vegan Chocolate Bread Pudding

French Bread Slices - 18, 1" thick pieces
Chocolate spread - as needed
Rice Milk (regular milk) - 3 1/2 cups
Custard powder / Corn starch - 4 tablespoons
Vanilla - 1teaspoon
Sugar - 1/4 cup
Fine salt - 1/4 teaspoon
Butter - 2 tablespoons, softened

Method: Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius or 350 degrees fahrenheit. Whisk the custard powder/corn starch, vanilla, salt and sugar into the milk and set aside. Spread the chocolate onto the bread slices and make into sandwiches. Line a glass dish with the sandwiches laid side by side neatly. Pour the milk-custard mixture over the bread and leave to soak for 1 hour or till the liquids are fully absorbed. Dot with butter and bake for 30 minutes till top is browned. Cool slightly and serve with melted chocolate spread.

Nut-free & Egg-free Blackforest Gateau

Nut-free & Egg-free Blackforest Cake

I baked this moist, delicious egg-free Blackforest cake today. It's made up of layers of melt in your mouth chocolate cake with kirsch-soaked morello cherries baked right into the cake. Then, each layer is spread with cherry jam and topped with pitted black cherries and gently whipped cream. The whole cake is then slathered with more whipped cream, coated in grated semi-sweet chocolate and crowned with a circle of glace cherries.....don't you just wish you could have a bite? Well, here's the how-to....

Nut-free & Egg-free Blackforest Gateau

Dry ingredients:
135g self raising flour
25 g cocoa
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder

Wet ingredients:
200ml cold coffee
4 1/2 tablespoons melted butter, cooled
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

12 kirsch-soaked morello cherries, drained

Cherry jam - 2 tablespoons
Canned Dark cherries - 8, drained and each split in 2
Kirsch - 2 tablespoons * optional
Whipping cream - 2 cups, cold
Semi-sweet chocolate - 100gm, grated
Glace cherries for decor

Method:
Preheat oven at 180 degrees celcius. For the cake, sift all the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add all the wet ingredients and whisk till combined. Stir in the morello cherries. Pour cake batter evenly into 2 lined 6" round cake pans. smooth tops and bake in the centre of the oven for 10 - 15 minutes. Test with a toothpick after 10 minutes. When done, take out of oven and cool on a rack till completely cold.

Whip cold cream till soft peaks are formed. Place some in a small piping bag to decorate the top of the cake later.

To assemble cake:

Place one layer of the cake on a cake plate or board. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon kirsch (optional). Spread with cherry jam. Cover over the jam with the split canned cherries. Gently spread 4-5 tablespoons of whipped cream over the cherries and top with the second layer of cake. Sprinkle with kirsch and cover the sides and top of cake with the remaining whipped cream. Smooth the sides with a palate knife as you go along. Chill for 20 minutes. Then cover the sides of cake with the grated chocolate. Pipe swirls along the outer edge of the cake and top each swirl with half a glace cherry. Chill for at least 2 hours. Enjoy!

Nut free & Gluten free Vegan Chocolate Fudge Cake

The first attempt

The Real Deal

Here is the promised recipe for my Gluten free Vegan Choc fudge cake. This is a wonderfully moist cake that is oh-so-delicious! Even the non-gluten allergy sufferers loved it and it was demolished in short order. They could not tell the difference. Feel free to adjust the cinnamon in it as some may find the quantity used in the recipe a little overwhelming! 

Gluten free Vegan Chocolate Cake

The dry:
1 1/4 cups gluten free self-raising flour
1/4 cup pure cocoa
3/4 cup soft brown sugar
3 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

The Wet:
1/2 cup mashed banana
1/4 cup apple sauce
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
3/4 cup plain rice milk
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon flax meal mixed with 3 tablespoon hot water
1 teaspoon pure vanilla

Method: Mix everything together with a hand whisk till well combined. Pour into an 2 6" shallow pans or 1 7" pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes at 180 degrees celcius. Check for doneness with a toothpick, after 20 minutes. Remove to rack and cool in tin. I prefer to chill the cakes in the pan before turning out. Turn out and frost as you wish. I used my Non-dairy frosting from my chocolate cupcake recipe, for frosting this cake. Enjoy!

A piece of cake!

Casein allergy

A glass of milk

Baking this weekend for a gluten and casein allergy sufferer. I have been baking gluten free cupcakes for a while now but this will be my first attempt at a layer cake. What's the big deal right? Well, the deal is, I'm afraid that the cake will crumble while assembling or after. So I'm trying to work out the best way to go about it. While I'm processing that in some corner of my mind, I'm checking out this casein thing. With a lot of help from the internet, this is what I gathered in a nutshell.......I think I'm beginning to sound archaic. Must be the early hour. It's just after 5am here, so a little hard to sound hip at this hour. Again an age thing.
Casein is a milk protein and it's found in a whole lot of stuff including some supposedly non-dairy spreads - how scary is that? Whey is the other culprit for dairy allergy suffers. So we have to read the list of ingredients very carefully to make sure that there is nothing toxic hidden under fancy words on the list. Stuff like lactalbumin, which is albumin found in whey, is a no-no! See, this is really hard work. In fact, it scares me so much, that I make sure I recognize everything I read on the back of a package. And fewer the number of ingredients, the better as its less processed and closer to the real deal.

Gluten free Vegan Chocolate Fudge Cake

Here is the egg free, dairy (casein) free, gluten free chocolate fudge layer cake I baked this weekend. I will follow up with the recipe really soon. Cheers!

A slice from the above cake

Chocolate frogs anyone?

Chocolate Frogs?

My children's friends bought them some chocolate frogs at extortionist prices from the Harry Potter exhibition, here in Singapore. Well, here is my take on chocolate frogs as a 'thank you' for the gift and for being such great friends as well! Egg-free and dairy-free chocolate cupcakes with dairy-free chocolate icing, topped with a cute fondant frog. Sorry, mine don't come with cards! This ones' for you two - Priya and Prakash Nair!

Nut free Gluten free Vegan Brownies

Nut free Gluten free Vegan Brownies with glace icing

The very first gluten free recipe I tried making was brownies. Figured that it will be the most forgiving one. So it has proven to be. But since that first one, my recipe has undergone several revisions. I tried replacing xanthan gum with guar gum and found that it gave the brownies a slightly weird gel-like feel in the mouth. Too strange. I read up further on guar gum and found that it works best in cold foods, presumably ice-creams and such. It thickens without heat and a little goes a long way. Well, here's the recipe for gluten-free brownies. It contains xanthan gum, as I used a gluten free self raising flour mix to which xanthan gum had been added already. Feel free to use any flour mix of your liking in its place and add 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum to the recipe. I have used all rice flour and it turns out just fine. As I said, it is a very forgiving recipe.

Nut free & Gluten free Vegan Brownies

The Dry
1 1/4 cup gluten free self raising flour
1/2 cup pure unsweetened cocoa
2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/4 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
3/4 cup light brown sugar (increase the sugar by a 1/4 cup if you like as these aren't very sweet)

The Wet
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1/4 cup rice milk
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ground flax seed mixed with 3 tablespoon hot water (aka flax egg)
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana
1 tablespoon rice milk - extra

The Glaze
1 cup pure icing sugar
1 - 2 teaspoons cool water

Method: Preheat oven to 170 degrees celcius. Mix wet ingredients with the dry using a spoon or your hands. It will be crumbly, almost like a cookie dough. If it's very dry, add 1 tablespoon of water or rice milk. Press into an 8"x7" rectangular pan and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Check with a toothpick after 10 minutes. When ready, remove pan to a wire rack to cool. When cool, mix the glace icing and drizzle over brownie. Chill for at least 2 hours before cutting into squares. For glace icing, slowly mix water, teaspoonful at a time into icing sugar, till a thick sugar paste is formed. Use a fork and dribble over brownie.

Animal Safari fondant decor workshop

Busy at work with the animal toppers

Ong Sansan and her two boys, Nathaniel and Immanuel have been such staunch supporters of my cakes from the the early days of my baking career, with Foodinfinity. I have been making their birthday cakes for them for over 3 years. Last year, we did things a little differently! All of us together, baked and decorated the birthday cakes for the boys. A real family effort with just a wee bit of input from yours truly. 

Beautifully decorated cupcakes!

Here are the pictures from our latest cake decorating venture together. A few weeks ago, I did a decorating class for Sansan. There were 6 kids including Sansan's two sons, and between the lot of them, we had a whole gamut of allergies. The cupcakes I baked for the class were egg-free and dairy-free chocolate cupcakes with dairy-free icing. They were nut-free as well.

Animal Safari cupcake toppers

"Animal Safari" was the theme for the fondant decor and the toppers for the cupcakes were a reflection of that. There was an elephant, tiger, lion, monkey, snake and hippo.I did a set of toppers so that the kids could have some idea of the finished result. But apart from the basics, I left it to them to make their own toppers as they saw fit. We had a great time, and so did my hired hands - the Princess and Pee-Wee. Thank you Sansan, for bringing together your wonderful kids, their cousins and friends for the 'Animal Safari' theme workshop 

A very pleased little cutie with her elephant cupcake

Chocolate strawberry cheesecake!

Creamcheese filled Strawberries

Don't these beauties look yummy? They were! I had a whole lot of cream cheese frosting left after frosting some egg-free Guiness cupcakes (that's a story for another time) and decided to try these out. Just gouged out the centres of the strawberries and piped in the cream cheese frosting. Then dipped each strawberry into melted dark chocolate - a happy combination of chocolate dipped strawberries and strawberry cheesecake. Marriage made in my heaven!     

Cupcake decorating class for kids at IBM, Singapore

Tables prepped for kids decorating class

We did a couple of cupcake decorating sessions for 50 kids at IBM, Singapore. Each child was given 4 egg-free and dairy-free chocolate cupcakes to decorate. The sessions were completely egg, dairy, nut and gelatin free so that at least 4 of the main allergies were covered.

Animal face toppers 

Easy-to-do animal face toppers for the cupcakes were chosen for the decorating workshop, as the kids were ranged in age from 4 to 12. They were taught to make the faces of a pig, cat, bear and elephant (see picture above).

Messy fun!

The elephant was the star of the day. The children came up with some amazingly creative forms of the animal faces shown them. One of them made an incredible elephant face with heavy eyebrows which so reminded me of Snuffulufagus from Sesame Street!

Making animal face toppers for cupcakes

A great deal of free artistic expression was going on, I tell you! A lot of fun was had by all! 

Kiran's Angry Birds Birthday Cake

Kiran's Angry Birds Birthday Cake

My son, Kiran's 8th birthday cake was a real labor of love.....8 mini 'labors' - Angry Bird characters, one for each child at the party. The birds were made of fondant and seated on an egg-free chocolate mousse cake. The cake was a hit with the kids but we nearly had a riot on our hands when, some of the guests wanted the same character! Thankfully, the situation was resolved with minimum fuss and all had a great time.