Tag Archives: vegetarian recipe

Easy Lemon Curd – dairy and egg free (vegan)

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I’ve been on a bit of a lemon obsession lately so decided I would have a go at making some homemade lemon curd. The curd you buy in the shops is full of refined sugars, dairy and eggs so this is a much healthier option. It was super easy to make too!

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This is divine mixed with some natural soya yoghurt, or of course it will make the perfect filling for a lemon meringue pie (recipe here)!

You will need:

1 1/4 cups of Lemon juice (I used 6 very large lemons)

Zest of half of the lemons used (freeze the rest of the zest for use later)

1/2 cup of Cold water

1 3/4 cups unrefined raw Sugar (adjust to taste)

5 tbsp Cornflour (corn starch)

2 tbsp non-dairy margarine

6 tbsp Almond milk (you could also use soya or coconut milk)

Juice and zest your lemons. You only need the zest from half of the lemons but it’s worth zesting them all and keeping the remaining zest in the freezer to use in other recipes later.

Place the lemon juice and water in a cold saucepan. Add the cornstarch and whisk to dissolve. Add the sugar and turn on the heat. Continue to whisk as you bring the mixture to a boil slowly. Once boiling allow it to boil gently for one minute without stirring.

Add the rest of the ingredients, whisking the whole time, and cook for 3 minutes.  Have a little taste – if it’s not sweet enough for you then stir in some more sugar. Remove from the heat, pour into a bowl or jars and allow to cool. Place in the fridge once cooled. Then enjoy – right off the spoon! 🙂

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Pumpkin Butter (gluten and dairy free) and a bonus Pumpkin Purée Recipe!

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This is so simple and so yummy! It’s like a cross between a jam and a nut butter, with a hint of sweetness but also the savoury flavour from the pumpkin! Simply divine and a great way to use up any pumpkin flesh you have left over after carving those little beauties!

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You will need:

about 800g Pumpkin purée (made from the pumpkin flesh – see below for recipe.  A 6 inch pumpkin should yield enough purée. Althernatively you can buy canned purée if you need to)

1 cup unrefined Coconut or other raw dark sugar

Optional – you can also add spices to your butter. If you fancy doing this I recommend:

1 tsp ground Cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground Cloves

1/4 tsp Allspice

To make the purée, scoop the seeds out of the pumpkin (don’t throw these away! You can lay them out on a pan and roast them – see here for a great recipe).

If you are not using the pumpkin to carve then simply cut it in to halves or quarters and place on a roasting dish and cover with foil. Bake in the oven for 25 mins at 200 C until the flesh is soft. Remove from the oven and scoop the flesh out of the pumpkin, and then place in a bowl.  If you are using the left overs from carving you will probably need to use a few pumpkins (it will depend on the size and how much carving you do!). Lay the flesh out on a baking tray and cover with foil and roast – 10 – 15 mins should be enough depending on the size but just keep going until the flesh is tender.

Use a hand blender to purée the pumpkin. Place the resulting purée in to a muslin cloth / cheese cloth and squeeze the excess water out and voila – you have your own pumpkin purée!

To make the butter:

Place the purée into a sauce pan and add the sugar and spices if you are using them. Then heat on a medium heat, stirring frequently. You are aiming to reduce the pumpkin down to a very very thick, dark paste. This quantity should yield about 1 – 2 cups of the butter itself so just keep going. You need the heat high enough to reduce the purée but just under the burning point. It took me about 45 mins to get to the butter stage – it should be so thick it sticks to the spoon and won’t slide off. Once you are there then remove from the heat and either place in a sterilised jar or simply pop in a bowl and eat!

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Perfect on sliced apples, fruit toast or it goes brilliantly on these breakfast pumpkin bread sweet loaves too (recipe to follow shortly!). Enjoy!

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Funky Raw

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I’ve recently discovered a fab site for buying some of the ingredients I use in the recipes on this blog and also a great place to buy raw and super foods online. It’s the Funky Raw Shop. Do check them out – they’ve got a great range of products, ethically sourced and they’re reasonably priced too.

They also produce a pretty awesome little magazine – the  Funky Raw Magazine. It’s  a quarterly publication which focues on raw food, nutrition, raw food recipes, wild foods and foraging, reviews of books and products, info about food festivals, meets and swaps and more. It’s actually a really cool magazine and full of useful info. The current edition includes info on local gatherings, workshops and events which is really handy. There are reviews of number of great books and DVD’s including “Raw Food 101” which sounds brilliant. Susan Schenk’s book “Beyond Broccoli – Creating a Biologically Balanced Diet when a Vegetarian Diet Doesn’t Work” is also reviewed which is another really useful article.

If you’re interested in foraging for food then there are titbits of info on that too – in this edition there’s a focus on Nettles – something I’ve been keen to try for ages!
There are also a load of delicious sounding recipe’s and Raw Chocolate rears it’s head too – which is never a bad thing! 🙂

As well as food and nutrition-based aticles there are articles on broader life issues like how to overcome procrastination, stories of people’s work and projects, as well as short stories etc.

All in all it’s a great read. I’m not following a Raw diet but I found the recipes and info in there relevant to me regardless and there’s lots of really useful tips for anyone following any sort of healthy lifestyle be it raw or otherwise.

Do check it out. You can buy an e-book version or a paper copy here and you can also download a free trial issue to see what you think.While you’re there check out the rest of the site – it’s a mine of useful info 🙂

Enjoy! 🙂