Carrot n Coconut Date Squares

It has been too long. Way too long. I don't know where the last three months went by (apart from five weddings and a vacation)  but I'm hoping to keep a tab on the coming months. Thankfully I have no more excuses left to update recipes now, so I hope to do this more often.

I don't ever remember having Date Squares before I made this one. It intrigued me even more when I was planning to make it for a cook along because it sounded so healthy and because I knew I could make it even healthier. I used this recipe from Joy Of Baking as my base and played around with it to make it vegan and healthy. I eliminated wheat from the recipe (though I know sometimes oats can be contaminated with wheat) and also used organic jaggery instead of sugar. The addition of coconut to the base gives it a nice nutty flavour and the carrots are just for added bursts of orange.

I was not so convinced about this recipe until I tried it and I think you should too.

You need:

For the base and crumble:

3 cups Oats powdered

¼ tsp Salt

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp Cinnamon

½ cup Desiccated Coconut

1 medium carrot grated

½ cup jaggery melted

½ tsp vanilla extract

4 tbsp oil

For the filling:

400gms pitted dates

1/2 cup water

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp orange peel

Preheat your oven to 180

Mix all the dry ingredients for the crumble and then add the wet ingredients. Make it into a thick firm dough.

Boil the dates with ½ cup water for 15 minutes. Make sure it doesn’t burn. Once it cools, blend it into a smooth paste and add more water if required. Add the vanilla and orange peel.

In a square or rectangular baking dish lined with parchment paper, put 2/3rds of the oat mixture and spread evenly. Spread the date mixture on top of it. Crumble the rest of the oat mixture on top of it.

Bake for 45-50 minutes.

It should be a lovely golden brown on top.

In other news, I am on my way to improving my "make a cake look pretty" skills. This is something I made for an order as an engagement cake at The Green Stove. The bottom tier is a Vanilla Sponge with Vegan White chocolate Frosting and the top is all Dark Chocolate. What do you think?

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Jaggery Banana Loaf

A vegan lunch date was planned and how could I not bring dessert. Knowing that it is hard to get vegan desserts in restaurants, unless you request the chef to put in some extra effort, I was pretty sure I wanted to bring something along for the meet.

It had to be something "healthy" since we were meeting at Yoga House, a macrobiotic restaurant for lunch. That took care of the sugar and thank dog for that. With all the cavities I am accumulating, my on-again off-again relationship with sugar needs to be permanently off. And so this spiced jaggery loaf was rehashed and brought back to life. I bake a whole bunch of sugar free stuff for The Green Stove for other people, but I thought I should extend it to my vegan peeps also.

Also in other news, Vegan MoFo is happening in October again. 500 plus vegan bloggers from all over the world are going to be spamming each other with vegan food porn and recipes. I have a theme this year and hopefully I will be able to stick to the theme. It is going to be an EPIC month of vegan food. Can't wait!

This is a simple, dense and flavourful loaf. The nuts and berries add a nice crunch. It's very quick to mix up and if you have organic ingredients on hand it's even better.

Here is the recipe

Makes two 6 inch loaves

Dry Ingredients

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1 tsp all spice powder (optional)

2 tbsp cranberries chopped

2 tbsp raisins chopped

a handful of walnuts chopped

a pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients

1 1/2 cups jaggery powder

1 1/2 cups water

1/2 cup oil

3 medium bananas chopped

1 tsp vinegar

Dark Chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 175°C

Mix all the dry ingredients including the berries and nuts. Melt the jaggery with a little water and add the rest of the wet ingredients to it. Fold it in well and add more water if required. Taste the batter and if you like it to be sweeter, then add more jaggery. It should be a thick cake batter. Put it into two lined / oiled 6 inch loaf tins.

You could put the dark chocolate chips on top after putting the batter into the loaf tins, but that could constitute as cheating. I put it for added visual effect, nothing else. This loaf will be absolutely perfect without it too.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. The toothpick test works to see if it is done. Remove it from the loaf tin and let it cool a bit before cutting.

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Sticky Cinnamon Rolls with Jaggery

Let Cinnamon fill the air!

There's a new Cinnabon in town and of course I can't eat there, but nothing stops me from making my own cinnamon rolls! I tried this one with jaggery instead of sugar and it was awesome!

Here's how I did it:

200gms Whole Wheat Flour

10gms Fresh Yeast

5gms Salt

1/2 cup Jaggery Syrup plus little extra to brush

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

150 ml Hot water

20 ml Oil (Rice Bran, Sunflower, Safflower)

1/4 cup or more slivers of roasted almonds

1/2 cup raisins

Mix the fresh yeast with one teaspoon jaggery syrup in a tall glass and add some warm water to it. Cover it and let it sit for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, it should have risen and should look like a frothy mess of yeast.

Mix the flour, the rest of the jaggery, vanilla essence and add the yeast mixture to it. Mix it around and keep adding water little bit at a time till the entire mixture binds well. Add in the salt and oil.

Kneading the dough is always easier on a flat surface. Sprinkle some flour and put this dough on a flat surface. With one hand push the dough out, away from your body and with the other hand fold it back in. Keep rotating the dough and continue this pushing and compressing till the dough is smooth and not too sticky. After about 5 minutes or so put the dough back in to the bowl and cover it with either a wet cloth or cling wrap. Let it sit for about one hour at least. Sometimes more depending on the weather, but till you fell it has doubled in size.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C about forty minutes after keeping the dough to rise. After an hour or more, remove the dough out and put it back on a flat surface with some flour on it. Punch the dough out and remove the air. Repeat the same push- compress method for about three minutes. Roll out the dough brush it with some jaggery syrup and sprinkle some raisins, roasted almonds and cinnamon. Roll it as tightly as possible. Cut it into smaller pieces and put them on an oiled baking tray. Let them rise for about 15 minutes and put them in to bake.

Bake till they darken in colour. It takes about 25 to 30 minutes. I couldn't wait for them to cool down! They were absolutely awesome!

This recipe makes about 15 pieces.

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