Fancy something sweet but don’t want a sugar spike and subsequent crash? Take one ripe banana, one teaspoon to one tablespoon of cocoa, a swirl of agave nectar and your plant milk of choice (soya, oat, rice etc), blend together and drink immediately. This recipe has been given the thumbs up by my nutritional advisor. Substituting some of the plant milk for vanilla vegan ice cream will result in a more US-style shake but, depending on the brand, you are likely to get more sugar and fat although likely still healthier than those Mickey D shakes you can practically sculpt with your straw.
Category: Sweeties
Maple Cookies
These make an awesome gift for friends, family, colleagues, loved ones and solicitors alike. Apart from the fact that they’ll most likely be different sizes and shapes, they will look like they came from a shop, which is what we all want from our cookies.
The recipe below uses pecans in the icing – pictured below instead is swirly, glitter icing. Always ask yourself – would the people eating these cookies prefer glitter or nuts? Sometimes it will end up being both.
1 cup margarine (yeah, I know it’s called spread when you buy it in the shop but nobody calls it that)
1 cup close-packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup maple syrup (maple-flavoured golden syrup is cheaper and will do instead if you’re a bit broke)
vanilla
2 tsp bicarb of soda
½ tsp salt
4 cups flour
⅓ cup sugar
- Heat oven to 175°C / Gas Mark 4
- Cream margarine and brown sugar (beat margarine and sugar senseless with a spoon until they turn into a creamy mixture)
- Add egg, syrup and vanilla
- Sift flour, salt and soda
- Stir into mix to blend
- Shape into balls
- Roll in sugar (larger crystal sugar is better for this)
- Bake 8-10 mins (check after 8 mins)
- Let cool
- Ice with buttercream icing with maple syrup added
- Decorate e.g. with pecans