Vegan Baking

In Holland it is traditional to celebrate your birthday by treating others to cake, tart, borrel, or dinner. For example, on your birthday you bring in something like vlaai, appeltaart, or cake (usually purchased from the baker) for your co-workers. I always bring in homemade cake, quickbread, and/or cheesecake.

One of my colleagues is vegan, and doesn't  normally get to enjoy the treats people bring in, so I went hunting for some recipes that would work for him too. I started with the basics—banana bread and chocolate cake.

Vegan Banana Bread
Adapted from PostPunk's Banana Bread by substituting oil for margarine, reducing the white sugar, and adding ginger.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat or spelt flour 
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
6 tablespoons oil
6 tablespoons soy milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-3 very ripe bananas, mashed
6-8 pecans (optional)

1. Preheat oven to  350F/180C. Grease and flour an 8×4 bread pan (use oil or margarine, not butter!) 
2. In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking soda, salt, and spices.
3. Mix the sugars, liquid ingredients, and mashed bananas. I puréed the liquid ingredients because I don't like chunks of banana in the resulting cake.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing just enough to moisten everything. 
5. Pour the batter into the pan, garnish with pecans (if using). 
6. Bake for aproximately 45 minutes.

Vegan Cocoa Cake

Adapted from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Amazon Cake

This is a very easy, everyday cake. 

1 1/2 cups flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup cold coffee or water

5 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoons vanilla

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Line the bottom of a 9-inch cake pan with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix the liquid ingredients together. (I dissolved 4 teaspoons of espresso powder into a cup of cold water.) 
3. In another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.
4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the liquid ingredients and mix well so that there are no lumps.
5. Pour into the greased cake pan and bake for 35-45 minutes. 
6. After 10 minutes, carefully turn the cake out onto a cooling rack, peel off the parchment paper, and flip onto another cooling rack or a plate.
7. Just before serving, sieve some icing sugar over the cake. (Use a paper doily or other cut out to produce a pattern.)

Dulce de Membrillo

I've seen them in the Turkish grocers and wondered what they were, and only recently discovered that they are quinces (kweeperen in Dutch). A South African colleague said he used to eat them sliced with a bit of salt, and apparently the Chinese and Turks also eat them this way. The Spanish and Portuguese, however, make them into dulce de membrillo. This is a firm, jelly-like paste that is traditionally sliced and served with a good cheese, such as the Spanish sheeps cheese manchego. The sweet and salt combination really works for me!

I recently acquired a new cookbook called Comfort Food by Janneke Vreugdenhil, which despite its name, is in Dutch. This recipe comes from her, but I've also seen recipes that call for some lemon juice and/or rind, a vanilla bean, and lots more sugar.  Although I like the idea of the lemon rind, I can't imagine using more sugar. This is plenty sweet enough.

Apparently membrillo is supposed to be a very rosy pink or red color. For whatever reason, my mebrillo turned out to be a caramel colour. It tastes fine, but I'm sorry it didn't turn pink. I wonder if it has to do with the variety of quince.

Dulce de Membrillo
Adapted from Comfort Food, Janneke Vreugdenhil

It is not difficult to make membrillo, but it is time-consuming. Ideally, you should have a kitchen scale (the amount of sugar you use depends on the weight of the cooked quinces) and a food mill (to puree the cooked quinces and separate the peels and cores). I don't have a food mill, so I used a sieve, but this was a lot of work.  I have since discovered some tips that would have made this less work. I've made note of these in the instructions.

4 quinces (this was1.6 kilos)
500-600 grams (2.25 - 2.75 cups) sugar
water

1. Wash the quinces, chop them, and put them in a large heavy pan. However, next time I will first peel and core the quinces, wrapping the peel, cores and seeds in a couple of layers of cheesecloth or muslin. (If these are hard to come by, consider using a very fine mesh laundry bag, or a knee-high stocking). 
2. Add enough water to the pan to reach a depth of 2 inches, add the peels and cores in muslin, and cook the quinces for 45 minutes until they are cooked soft. The peels and cores add a lot of pectin, which is needed to set the membrillo, so they really should be included.
3. Drain the cooked quinces, reserving the liquid for another purpose (add some sugar to make it into a syrup for pancakes or ice cream), and discarding the peels, cores, and seeds.
4. Purée the cooked quinces using a food mill, sieve, or food processor. (Using a spoon to push small batches of cooked quinces through a sieve took a good half hour. If I had separated the peels and cores, I could have used a food processor which would have been so fast and easy!)
5. Weigh the quince purée and return the puree tthe pan.
6. Add sugar that is equal to half the weight of the quince puree. In my case, the purée weighed about 1120 grams and had a volume of 4.5 cups, so half the weight in sugar was 506 grams.
7. Cook the quince purée, stirring frequently, to reduce it to a thick paste. Although you can start cooking over medium high heat, you'll need to turn it down soon to prevent the bottom from burning. I even used a flame spreader. 
8. Line a 9-inch square pan with baking parchment.
9. After 1.5 to 2 hours, the purée should no longer or hardly flow back when you stir it. At this point it's ready.
10. Pour and scrape it into the lined pan, spread it evenly with a spatula. Let it cool and set for a day. If the bottom has not quite set, turn the membrillo over onto a plate lined with more parchment paper, and return that to the pan. Let it stand for another 12 to 24 hours so that it can dry out and set some more. 
11. Cut the membrillo into squares or rectangles and wrap these in pastic wrap.  These will keep a long time int the fridge.
12. Serve with a good hard cheese, cutting it into thin slices.