Cooking With Dia

I’m sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything. Life… well is life, you know how it can be! But I have been thinking of this blog/website a lot lately and really wanted to do something for Christmas this year. It won’t top my 12 Days of Christmas Recipes from December 2009, but it will give you a little last minute recipe that you can surprise your friends and family with or just eat by yourself!:)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really do all that much for the holidays, especially since it is such a “family” time of year and all of that jazz. I have however, always found baking and cooking a comfort during this time of year. Just the wonderful smells of cinnamon, clementines and ginger are enough for a temporary relief of whatever happens to be bothering you.

3/4 cup of chopped clementines
2 tsp of ground ginger
3 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 cup of vegan spread (For this recipe I used PURE soy spread)
3/4 cup dark soft brown sugar
3/4 cup gluten free bread crumbs (I used a stale loaf of bread that I had baked using just some rice flour and yeast, but you can use whichever bread you like to make the bread crumbs. All you need to do is put the stale bread, or even semi fresh bread in a food processor for a few seconds, and you get breadcrumbs. Easy!)
1/2 cup of rice flour
2 tsp gluten free baking powder
1/2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of cider vinegar or 2 egg replacers

This really is a no fuss project because all you need to do is put all of the ingredients in a large bowl and mix away until it looks well combined.

Grease your pudding bowls ( I used two 17cm bowls, but you can always make one big pudding or two smaller ones.)
Pour the mixture into the bowls.
Cover bowls with greaseproof paper and then with tinfoil.
Place in a steamer and steam for 3 to 5 hours.
For this pudding, I steamed 3 hours, but the longer you steam it the better it will taste and the darker it will become.

You can also use this as a base recipe for any kind of Christmas pudding. If you don’t want to use clementines for example, you can replace with apples or sultanas or both! The possibilities are endless.
Check out my 7 mug pudding to get an even better idea of what you can put into a Christmas pudding.
When the pudding is finished steaming, let it cool down for 20-30 minutes before turning out over a cake stand.
I sprinkled some chopped nuts on top, but it is an optional thing.

Here are some other recipes from Christmas Past on Cooking With Dia:
Gingerbread Men and Women
Tipsy Laird
Vegan Christmas Fudge
Cinnamon and Peanut Brittle

Happy Holidays to all who still keep up with this blog!
© Cooking With Dia

Roasted Tomato Soup from Dia DiCristino on Vimeo.

I have an overabundance of tomatoes ripening in the garden and have had around 3 lbs of some sitting in my fridge for the past few days. So, I thought I would make a soup. I was inspired yet again by Masterchef. Recently one of the challenges on the show was to make a tomato soup in 45 minutes. Not an easy task since the flavor can take hours to develop. Usually the longer a soup is cooking, the better it will taste when it’s done. But I took on the challenge because I think secretly I wish I were on that show . Here is my version of tomato soup in 45 minutes. Please watch the video to get an idea of how it was made.

Roasting the tomatoes is a great way to quickly get this done, so I hope you like it! It turned out really nice and creamy even though it doesn’t have any dairy in it at all. Everything I used in this soup I grew in the garden. For anyone out there who is growing their own food, you will understand how nice it is to not only save money, but to know where every ingredient in a dish has come from!

Approximately 3 lbs of tomatoes (I used a mixture of Ailsa Craig, cherry and plum tomatoes. The more varieties you use, the better the soup will taste!)
6 cloves of garlic
6 leaves of basil
5 bay leaves
3 chili peppers (cut it down to 2 if you don’t like it too spicy)
1 large onion
2 cups of vegetable stock (if you don’t have any of your own left over just use 2 vegetable stock cubes and dissolve them in 2 cups of boiling water)

Preheat oven to 428°F (220°C)
You don’t need to peel the tomatoes for this recipe. Just cut them in half and place on a baking tray.
Peel the skin off of the garlic cloves, and place the cloves on top of the tomatoes.
Roast this in your oven for 20 minutes or until you feel the tomatoes look soft and well cooked.
Meanwhile peel and chop your onion and then sweat the onion in a frying pan for 8 minutes.
Chop the chili peppers (I never seed them) and fry them at the same time you are frying your onion.
Take out a large pot and put the onions, peppers, basil, bay leaves and stock in to simmer.
Once your tomatoes and garlic are finished add them to the pot.
Bring to a boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
Take the bay leaves out before you put the soup through a liquidizer.
After liquidizing (or you can use a food processor) pour through a sieve into a clean pot.
There you have it! Roasted tomato soup in under 45 minutes, but of course you can allow it all to cook longer if you want. I just did this to prove to myself it was possible! And it is good to know that you can whip up a fresh homemade soup from scratch in under an hour! You never know when you will need to!!
© Cooking With Dia

There has been so much zucchini (courgettes as we say in the UK) growing in the garden. What to do? What to do? Well, I’ve left one of them to grow as big as it can…just for fun, and I baked some muffins today. Really easy recipe and instead of taking pics I filmed a video just for you!

Oh Zucchini! Gluten free & vegan zucchini muffins! from Dia DiCristino on Vimeo.

2 cups grated zucchini (courgettes)
2 cups rice flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 lemon for juice
1 tsp cider vinegar
1/2 cup of rice milk
1/2 cup of vegan spread
2 tsp of cinnamon
2 tsp of ground ginger
1 1/2 cups of caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180°C (356°F)
Sift the flour into a big bowl and stir in the grated zucchini.
Add in the cider vinegar, rice milk, vegan spread, cinnamon, ginger and sugar.
Squeeze in the lemon juice.
Mix.
Line a 12 muffin tin with muffin cases.
Pour the mixture in.
Bake for 20 minutes, turning after 10.

So simple and so good!

The past two days have been filled with so much sadness. When I get upset and sad I tend to bake muffins. I just keep baking them and baking them some more until I have so many muffins I don’t know what to do. I find baking very therapeutic, and today I just decided to make a mini variation of my vegan and gluten free Victorian Sponge cake. It is an amuse-bouche, fancy for bite sized! I hope you will enjoy this distraction from all of the horrible things happening in this world.

1 10×7″ non stick brownie pan
1/2 cup vegan spread
1 cup of rice flour
1 tsp of gluten free baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Ener-G egg replacer
3/4 cup unrefined caster sugar
1 cup of strawberry jam: see my recipe for it here
1/4 cup of icing sugar
1 cup of non dairy cream whisked until thick

Cream the vegan spread, extract and caster sugar together.
Slowly add in the egg replacer and mix in with the vegan spread and sugar.
Meanwhile sift the flour twice and slowly fold into the mixture.
Stir together until nice and creamy.
Pour the batter into a 10×7″ brownie pan.
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for 20 minutes.

After it is baked, turn out onto a cooling rack.

Take a 1 1/2″ circular cookie cutter and cut 24 circles into the sponge cake.
Peel away the rest of the cake and put in a little baggie to feed to some birds, or you can always eat this as well if you get desperately hungry after eating all of these mini bite sized Victorian Sponge cakes.
Split circular sponges into 2 sections of 12.
On 12 of them spoon out a tiny bit of strawberry jam first on the top.

Then spoon out a little bit of the whisked non dairy cream (I used soy cream) onto the top of the jam.

Next take the other 12 sponges and place them on the tops of the cream.

Sift the icing sugar over the tops of all 12 mini sponge cakes.

Feel free to watch the video I made of me baking these to get a better idea how the process went.

© Cooking With Dia

I have been hearing a lot lately from some people who didn’t get a cake on their birthday, and it got me thinking…I haven’t had a proper birthday cake since 1998…seriously! So, as my birthday is just around the corner I thought, “why the hell not?” And I made my own birthday cake! So…so…sad…:(…But it’s really freakin’ good. If you feel lonley on your birthday too and don’t know what to do, bake this cake and you will be on such a sugar high you will be feeling a lot happier.

The reason why I decided to do a 4 layer sponge cake is because on a recent Masterchef episode, Gordon Ramsay made the contestants make a 6 layer sponge cake, and I just wanted to prove to myself I could do it and do it gluten free and vegan, minus two of the layers.

For the Sponge Cake
1/2 cup vegan spread
1/2 cup gluten free flour (I used a blend of rice and tapioca flour)
1 tsp of gluten free baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Ener-G egg replacers (read back of box for instructions)
1/2 cup unrefined caster sugar

Cream the vegan spread, extract and caster sugar together.
Slowly add in the egg replacers and mix in with the vegan spread and sugar.
Meanwhile sift the flour twice and slowly fold into the mixture.
Stir together until nice and creamy.
Split the batter evenly between two 5″ sandwich tins.
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for 20 minutes.

Turn out on cooling rack.
Once the cakes are cooled, slice each one in half.

Place the most sturdy slice on the cake stand first and start adding your fillings of choice. I alternated between brandy cream icing and chocolate icing. But you can use whatever you wish, even strawberry jam would make a great filling.

For the Brandy Cream Icing
2 tablespoons soy cream
splash of brandy
1 cup icing sugar

Take out a bowl, put all ingredients in and mix. It’s magic, now you have icing!

For Pink Icing
1 cup icing sugar
splash of water
A few drops of pink food coloring

Take out another bowl, put all ingredients in and mix. It’s magic, now you have icing to pipe!

For the Black Fondant Icing
I played around with a recipe from a youtube video someone else made and added black food coloring.

After I sandwiched the layers of the sponge cake together I rolled out enough of the black fondant icing for the top half of the cake.

To make sure the fondant icing sticks to the sponge cake, place a little cooled boiled water underneath the fondant. Then it should stick just fine and not peel off.

Then for the bottom half, I spread the pink icing around. I also used the pink icing to pipe the shapes on top of the cake.

So…now you know what to do if no one brings you a birthday cake, right???
Bake your own!

© Cooking With Dia