BakingBoutique!: Recipe Post 2024 - Valentine's Day Treats + Start into Veganism

Hello all,

I hope you're all doing amazing and have enjoyed my festive posts. I've taken a break since then to settle into the New Year and prepare for 2024.

This week's recipes are inspired by my recent challenge of Veganuary, where I changed my eating habits to soley plant-based foods.

Personally, it was one of the best challenges I have ever completed, it opened my stance on cuisine and culinary skills so much more and allowed me to manipulate different foods which I would not have otherwise used.

My branch into veganism is a topic I would like to delve deeper into in a later blog post. However, it is needless to say it has inspired my thoughts of this recipe and has raised my understanding of conscious healthy eating.

I decided to try out 2 new recipes.

The first is Vegan Flaxseed flatbread.

For this you'll need:

120g of ground flaxseeds

1 tsp of baking soda

½ tsp of sea salt

pinch of pepper

The equivalent of 3 chia eggs

60g of melted coconut oil

2 tbsps of apple cider vinegar

2-3 tbsps of water

½ tsp of dried thyme

¼ tsp of garlic powder

1 tbsp of sesame seeds for topping

Instructions for recipe:

Prevent oven to 350°F/180°C/160°C fan/ Gas Mark 4 and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper as part of preparation.

Combine the flax seeds, baking soda, sea salt, pepper, thyme and garlic in a bowl.

Add in the chia eggs, melted oil, apple cider vinegar and water.

Allow dough to 'rest' (a.k.a power nap!) for around 10-20 minutes

Scoop a 4-5 tbsp of batter and mould into a patty before placing on the sheet. Repeat until all the batter is used.

Place dough patties in the oven for 20 minutes and allow to cool.

Serve as desired ( I cooked up mushrooms, peppers and added slices of avocado and it tasted divine).

Photos:

In addition to these healthy bread dough balls, I also made these delicious and healthy peanut butter chocolate cookies.

For this recipe, you'll need:

225g of organic peanut butter

55g of maple syrup or organic honey (I opted for honey but use whatever you have available and can alternate the honey to a plant-based alternative)

1 egg or 1 flax/chia egg (I opted for chia egg)

½ tsp of baking powder

½ tsp of sea salt

1 dark chocolate bar, chopped in pieces (I used vegan chocolate)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/ Gas mark 4.

Add together all the ingredients into a bowl, except for the chocolate pieces and form the dough into 14-16 cookies.

While the cookies cool, melt the chocolate and you can either drizzle the chocolate over the cookies or dip the cookies.

Photos:

My experiences with Vegan:

I participated in Veganuary and completely took on the plant-based diet. It's important to define veganism as I have noticed there are discrepancies within the media and people as to what foods are classed as "vegan". Typically, a vegan diet means you derive your energy from plant-based sources. As ethical and economically friendly it is, for someone who is not accustomed to the diet, it means a large proportion of dairy-based and animal products are excluded from the diet. This can be as simple as pasta and bread unless it specifies otherwise, even couscous is not vegan although I had only uncovered this later on in the journey. I also had to cut out one of my most favourite treats of all time - chocolate. Cutting chocolate out had its perks and downsides. It significantly reduced my sugar intake and sugar cravings so I generally felt more energised. On the downside, even though there are vegan chocolate alternatives, options do feel a little cut short and you have to be extra vigilant with food labels to ensure it is suitable for VEGANS, rather than vegetarians alone.

One of my highlights of veganism was a birthday meal at Turtle Bay in Camden, London. I hope to post a review of the restaurant soon, as this is simply a month wrap up of meals.

Here are some photos of the meals I prepared. There were satisfying, delicious and super healthy and I saw many health benefits such as clearer skin, raised energy levels and moods and regulated sleep.