Sweet Bricks

Sweet Samosas made with Brick.

Three left over sheets of Brick made six little sweet samosas, two filled with strawberries, two with chocolate and two with date and preserved lemon. I liked the date and lemon version best.

Blackberry Crumble 22/07/07

Blackberry Crumble made with the first, unexpected, blackberries of the season.

Crumble topping is so easy - take a quantity of flour, half its weight in a good vegan margarine and a quarter of the weight in fine sugar.

Rub the fat into the flour, mix in the sugar and gently sprinkle over fruit - either raw soft fruit as here or prepared lightly cooked apples or pears - until you have a thick layer. Pat down gently but remember this should be a crumble, not a shortbread crust. Add a further sprinkle of sugar for colour and sparkle. If you like extra spice add this to the fruit before covering.

Bake until the crumble is golden and fragrant, about 40 mins at 180C. The fruit may bubble up from below so set your pie dish over a tray if you don't want to make a dirty oven.

Eat with soya cream, yoghurt or dairy free vanilla icecream.

Flan

This is an experiment I've been meaning to try for a long time.

Anyone who's ever been to Spain when they weren't a vegan will remember trying Flan, an egg custard set on a bitter caramel base so that after a while chilling the caramel melts and makes a sauce that coats the pudding when it is unmoulded.



This simple pudding is a 'custard' made from soya milk, vanilla, sugar and agar set in a ramekin containing some sugar melted to form a hard caramel. As the pudding chills the same transformation takes place and the end result is a light cool smooth pudding glazed with caramel and utterly delicious.