Peanut Butter Cookies, vegan or not

Yes, I know, 'cookies'. Never liked the word, but I take it to mean chewy biscuits, whereas 'biscuits' are crunchy to some degree. These are definitely cookies. Vegan recipe, with dairy alternatives in brackets.

Preparation takes about 20 minutes, baking 12 minutes or so. Oven needs to be at 180C fan, 190C otherwise, and a large baking tray ready, lined with parchment. This recipe makes 16-20.

Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
170g plain flour
75g demerara sugar
100g granulated sugar
1 tsp fine salt
1 tsp baking powder
50 Flora spread (butter-based spread)
100g peanut butter
60ml plant-based milk (dairy milk)
10 soft ready-to-eat apricots (from a pouch), snipped fairly finely - optional
16-20 peanuts, whole or halved, roasted or not

Method
1  Place all the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well to make a dough, using
       a mixer, a wooden spoon, or just hands. Make sure all the Flora and flour
       disappear into the dough. 

2  Put individual tablespoons of the dough on the baking tray, a little apart, and
       press lightly to flatten a little. Push a peanut into the middle of each one.

3  Bake for about 12 minutes until they are turning golden. If your oven, like mine,
       can bake unevenly, quickly turn the baking tray around halfway through.

4  They will seem a little soft, but leave to cool and they become nicely chewy.

Adapt
Chocolate chips could be added, or substitute finely chopped dates or snipped raisins for the apricots. If the cookies don't need to be vegan, buttery spread could be used instead of Flora, and dairy milk.

VEGAN TOFFEE SAUCE

Having already produced a successful vegan Eton mess for the family, I recently made a vegan roulade for them, using coconut cream, aquafaba and soya margarine. Tasted good, but the less said about my success in rolling up at the final stage, the better.

Still, the roulade's shape was to be cunningly disguised by my invention of vegan toffee sauce. The recipe here takes about fifteen minutes to make, and the quantity would be about right for two to pour over a messy roulade or perhaps some great vegan ice cream. It can be served warm or at room temperature; if served hot it could be a bit runny, as it thickens slowly with cooling. The recipe doesn't even require weighing scales.

Vegan Toffee Sauce

Ingredients
100ml soya 'single cream' (e.g. Alpro)
1 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
half tsp vanilla paste (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1 tbsp agave syrup (or golden syrup)
1 tbsp vegan margarine 

1  Put all the ingredients into a small pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved.
         Stir occasionally. 
2  Bring to a gentle simmer and continue to cook for around 10 minutes, stirring
         occasionally, until the mixture starts to darken. Remove from the heat and leave
         to cool.

Can be made a day or two in advance and kept in the fridge, then brought to room temperature to serve. I love it. 

Walnut, Three-Cheese and Apricot Strudel

Pretty pleased with this one: a savoury version of strudel that is easy to make and lovely with it. Though I say so myself!

The quantities given will serve four with large appetites or otherwise six as a hot main, or would make eight to twelve nice slices served cold - it's easier to slice more thinly then. The whole process from start to serving takes me about 70mins, including 35m cooking time. The ingredients can be prepared in advance, making the method itself very quick. The oven needs to be at 190C fan oven (200C otherwise) before the dish goes in. 

A large baking sheet is needed, lined with baking parchment, and a medium bowl.

Walnut, Three-Cheese and Apricot Strudel
Ingredients
1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry, thawed in the fridge for a few hours
90g walnut pieces (or halves), chopped fairly small
70g soft goats' cheese
50g blue cheese, crumbled
40g cheddar, coarsely grated
70g dried apricots (about 10), soaked for an hour, then drained well & coarsely chopped
3 tbsp snipped fresh herbs (basil, thyme leaves, sage, coriander all OK) 
2 tbsp milk

Method
1  Unroll the pastry on its covering paper, then roll out a little to thin it slightly. It will be 
       the right shape (rectangular).

2  Put all the other ingredients except milk into a bowl and mix them very well.

3  Spread the mixture evenly over the pastry, leaving a 2cm space at each short end 
       and the farther long side. Dampen all these edge spaces with water.

4  Starting with a short end, roll the pastry up quite firmly, pressing down at the end, then
       place the strudel on the lined baking tray and brush with milk. Use a sharp knife to
       make slashes straight across the top: for 4 people, slash the middle, then three
       evenly-spaced slashes each side of the middle (for 8 slices) or for 6 people, up to 
       5 slashes each side of the middle (for 12 slices). Brush lightly with the milk.

Half-size version, oven-ready, with Sunday cocktail

 5  Bake towards the top of the oven for around 35 minutes, until well browned. Use a
       very sharp knife to slice the strudel.

And ... carve!

Alternatives
As usual, substitutions are fine. A different nut, or selection of them, will work just as well; pecans or brazils especially, and could include a few pine nuts. Instead of apricots, dried cranberries would work, no chopping required, and a festive feel. I've not tried this with capers, but that might be nice. As long as there's a mix of nuts, cheese and a little fruit, it would be hard to go wrong.

Serving
For info, I like to serve with buttered baby potatoes and a vegetable such as broccoli, cauli or tenderstem in a parsley sauce (lazily made from granules in a drum, just add boiling water or, better still, the boiling water from the veg when they're done). Red or dry white wine both go well; as it's nuts and cheese, quite strong flavours, I'd choose red. A dry cider would match, too, or apple juice.

Pushover Wheat-Free Cranberry & Coconut Biscuits

They are what it says in the title!

With my long history of sporadic reaction to wheat, I know that if I go too far then my system will complain. Many years ago, self-diagnosed after 6m of medical tests, I then went totally wheat-free for a couple of years and was immediately well. Now I'm able to get away with most things in moderation.

Must have been too devil-may-care recently, as the intolerance is back and so, therefore, are the wheat-free ingredients. My first version of this recipe was with spelt flour - I think spelt is an early ancestor of modern wheat - and it caused problems. This is the adaptation using Asda's 'free from' plain white flour, and it worked very well. It is made from rice flour and potato starch. However, I would expect the recipe to work with straight plain wheat flour too.

The recipe makes about 20 biscuits. I've called it pushover because it's quite quick and involves no 'rubbing in' or 'rolling out and cutting'. Preparation should take 20-25 minutes, and baking 12 minutes or so. Cook on a baking sheet, either a good non-stick one or lined with baking parchment.

Wheat-Free Cranberry & Coconut Biscuits
The oven should be ready at 170C.

Ingredients

130g demerara sugar
80g melted butter (20 secs in microwave, or in a pan)
270g wheat-free flour (plus a little for shaping later)
2 tsp baking powder (should be wheat-free - usually are)
Half tsp salt
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
25g dried cranberries, snipped if larger than a pea
50g desiccated coconut

Method

1  Place the sugar and melted butter in a large bowl and beat well - either with a wooden
       spoon or using an electric mixer.
2  In another bowl thoroughly mix the flour, baking powder and salt.
3  Beat the egg, vanilla and milk into the sugar/butter mixture.
4  Add in the flour mix with the cranberries and coconut and mix gently to form a soft
       dough. Make sure the cranberries are evenly distributed.
5  Using hands, roll pieces of the dough into spheres about the size of a ping-pong ball
       and place them on the baking sheet with gaps between of about 4cm as they'll 
       spread a little. Flour your hands from to time if the dough is sticking. Flatten the 
       biscuits a little with the back of a fork, leaving tine marks.
6  Bake in the centre of the oven for about 12-13 minutes but check after 10. The edges
       should be turning golden and the tops starting to firm up.

Chocolate chips - white or dark - would work well here (if they're wheat-free), perhaps with cranberries but not maybe with the coconut. Lemon would be worth a try, too: perhaps omit the milk, berries and coconut and add the grated zest of 1 large lemon and all of its juice at stage 3. That would make slightly fewer but very interesting biscuits!