Vegan Zucchini / Courgette and Onion Mini Cornbread - Recipe

So it's only day 4 of my 40 day vegan trial and already I'm slightly frustrated at the lack of options available to me in the cafe at work. I love savoury snacks but there is always some form of lactose or egg-derived ingredient on even the most vegetarian option on offer.

So when I got home this evening, I decided to whip together a savoury snack I could pack to work which doesn't taste like grass, hommous or lentils. I found some cornmeal lurking in the kitchen and decided to make a vegan version of the traditional cornbread. Now I am no expert in soul food by any stretch of the imagination so I appreciate this will be a very distant relative to proper southern corn bread. Nevertheless as someone who has been cooking since the age of four, I do have some common sense in the kitchen and promise you the final product is pretty yummy for something with no butter, milk or cheese in it.

Firstly, get your muffin tray. I use these cute re-usable silicone cups from Asda. You don't need to grease these and they work so well. Very cheap too. Oh, and easy to wash after! Grate 3/4 of a courgette/zucchini (depending which side of the pond you live) into a bowl and season with salt and pepper. As you can see from the photo below, the mixture starts becoming mushy as the salt causes the zucchini to seep water.

Next, add softened onions. I'd softened these a couple of days ago and kept it in the fridge. I have a habit of softening a huge batch of onions at once and storing them so that as and when I fancy something quick, I don't need to chop and fry onions from scratch, stinking up the kitchen.



Then add half a cup of soy milk and 4 tablespoons of oil. This soy milk is sweetened because that was all I had but I don't think it makes a difference. Excuse the Old El Paso salsa in the background. My flatmate was making burritos.



Then add a cup and a half of corn meal. There's a story of how this cornmeal ended up in my kitchen but I'll save the story for another day. For now, I'll just say I didn't know this ingredient existed in UK supermarkets before and this is the first bag I bought.



I love the bright yellow colour of cornmeal!



Mix it all in. Now, I know the next step will cause either

A: looks of horror and disgust
or
B: whoops of delight

as along with a teaspoon of vegetable bouillon and turmeric, I add a generous squirt of Marmite. I love Marmite. I have it almost every day, on crumpets with butter, on toast, in rice porridge, the list goes on. You don't have to add Marmite if you don't like it, but trust me, it's so good and doesn't actually taste that strong in the grand scheme of things.



Mix very well (remember you added bouillon so MIX MIX MIX). Spoon into the muffin moulds.



They call me yellow mellow...



Bake in a pre-heated oven at 190 deg celcius until golden brown. These babies took about 20 minutes. Just keep an eye on the baking in the last 10 minutes.

Mmmmm... I love the sight of shredded zucchini peeking out! The cornbread is on the heavy side as I didn't add any baking powder and plain flour so maybe I'll include those next time. However, I really like it this way as the zucchini keeps the cornbread moist and it's not crumbly at all, unlike some cornbread I've tried in restaurants. I like the slight pull you get once it cools down.
Do try this at home! It's totally vegan and no animals were harmed in the production of this recipe.

Banana bread

Just a little photo of mini-banana breads on my windowsill on a sunny day in Manchester. I baked this out of necessity more than inspiration. There were two overripe, spotted bananas in my fruit bowl on the verge of going mushy and brown.

Aren't the fushia carnations ever so pretty?

I scoured the internet for recipes and couldn't find one where I had all the ingredients. So I made this one up, and they were delicious!

2 ripe bananas

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of light "I can't believe it's not butter"

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

3 tablespoons of sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup + 1 tablespoon of plain flour

1 tsp of salt

1 tsp of bicarbornate of soda

Mash your ripe bananas and set aside.

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda) into a bowl and set aside.

Blitz the "I can't believe it's not butter" in the microwave until melted, and add vegetable oil. Mix the sugar in the melted oil and mix very well so that the sugar is sticky from dissolving. Add vanilla extract and let the mixture cool.

Once the butter/sugar mixture is cool, add the eggs and mix in well. Add mashed bananas and mix again. This is the wet mixture.

Finally combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture and mix well.

Pour into greased cupcake trays and top with chocolate strips, raisins and nuts - whatever you have in your kitchen - go insane!

Bake at 170 deg celcius for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

This "recipe" (more like me throwing leftovers together until I get the right batter consistency) yields wonderfully moist mini banana breads that are not too sweet. They're great warm but better cold!

The best cookie dough recipe (so far)

Everyone's got their own definition of the perfect cookie, so I would qualify the title of the post by saying that this is the perfect cookie dough recipe for me.

Five cookies sitting on my windowsill

I also don't think I've found THE recipe yet, and so am still experimenting. This is the basic dough to which you can add whatever you want, toffee chips, chocolate chips, raisins, swirls of espresso, nuts, blueberries - go wild!

Crunchy cookie = good

To me, the perfect cookie is:

1. Crunchy (think Famous Amos); and

2. Possibly just ever so slightly chewy right in the middle...

I do not like big soft chewy cookies (think Millie's) or worse, powdery crumbly cookies (think shortbreads). Yech at the powdery floury aftertaste. Yech Yuck Bleruch.

Walnut, cashew nut, peanut...and a swirl of coffee

I'd like to share this latest recipe. It's work-in-progress, but I think it's pretty close to what I'm looking for.

     1 and 1/2 sticks of butter

     1/2 cup brown sugar

     2/3 cup granulated sugar

     1 egg

     1 tsp vanilla essence

     1/2 tsp salt

     2 cups of plain flour

     1 tsp baking soda

1. Cream sugar and butter in a bowl until well combined.
2. Add egg and vanilla essence. Mix well
3. Add the dry ingredients - plain flour, salt and baking soda, and form into a dough. At this stage you can add your nuts, raisins, chocolate chips etc.
4. Next, roll the dough into a cylinder and place it in the fridge for at least 30 min. YOU MUST DO THIS. Especially if you live in the tropics. Lukewarm cookie dough makes bad cookies. Don't ask me why, just trust me. I'm yet to figure out why myself. Maybe one day, if I ever do a baking 101 class, my pâtisserie teacher will tell me. Until then, I do this on the basis that my refrigerated cookie dough always yields better cookies than room temperature ones.
5. Preheat the oven to 175 deg celcius.
6. Cut out your cookies into discs and place them on a greased, non-stick baking tray, 2 inches apart. Greasing is mandatory.
7. Bake in pre-heated oven for 12 minutes, and keep a close watch on them as the bubble deliciously.
8. Remove tray from the oven, and let the cookies cool completely before transferring them. Do not attempt to touch/move your cookies when they're even remotely warm as they are very soft at this stage and will fall apart. I leave mine to cool and harden for at least 2 hours.

Enjoy your crunchy cookies!

The photos are of the most recent batch I made. They are wonderfully crunchy with a slight chewy centre. I put raisins, cashews, walnuts, brazil nuts and swirls of espresso in them. I love the chewiness of caramelised raisins and crunchiness of the nuts which have roasted in the cookies. Yup - definitely a chew/crunch fan :)

What type of cookie are you?