NANAIMO STORM

The pomegranate vanilla

~ In the Kitchen, Mastering Nanaimo slices

I have heard too many people say that putting togther the words vegan and dessert is a sin. To battle this unjust generalization I opted to be in charge of desserts over the festive eating marathon. When I cook vegan foods for people I don’t know, I never want others to guess that it’s specifically a vegan dish. It is a pet peeve when people say “wow this is good considering it’s vegan”. I want my food to be good for the fact that it is simply delicious full stop. I think that the Nanaimo slice achieved this.

To begin this cooking expedition I made my own spiced vegan crackers by mixing two teaspoons of ‘no egg’ (egg replacement product) with 4 tablespoons of water.

I then added:
3 Tbspof olive oil
4 Tbsp of almond milk (which I made myself)
2 Tbsp of pure maple syrup
3 Tbsp of molasses.








In a separate bowl I mixed together dry ingredients including:                                                                  

1 ½ cups of whole meal flower

2 Tbsp brown sugar, ½ tsp sea salt

1/8 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp cinnamonm

1/8th tsp nutmeg

½ tsp baking soda

I added the wet to the dry ingredients creating a soft dough. Using just a little bit of flour (too much makes the dough brittle) I rolled the dough to about 3mm and cut out the crackers. I baked these at 160 Celsius for 15 minutes.

While the crackers were baking I prepared the filling.
I whipped together:
 ½ cup olive oil butter
2 Tbsp coconut milk
A tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp custard powers
And (gasp) 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar.

Usually I try to avoid sugar. But I felt that this was the time to splurge… especially as this recipe makes A LOT of slices. I also crushed a big handful of pomegranate seeds and used the red juice as food coloring (it did not work!! Alas…. If anyone has any ideas please let me know! )

In a separate bowl I whipped together the same ingredients but replaced the vanilla extract with peppermint extract and used chlorophyll as food coloring (it worked well!) 

By this time the Crackers had finished baking and had cooled down. I crushed them in a food processor (leaving them quite rough. I love texture!!). I then mixed:



1  cup of almond meal (left over from almond milk!!)
1/3  cup of coca powder (sifted)

3 Tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp no egg (mixed with 4 Tbsp of water)

2 cups coconut milk
½ cup of olive oil butter

I spread the delicious chocolaty dough into a large baking tray covering one half with the peppermint filling and the other half with the pomegranate vanilla filling. I let this concoction sit in the freezer for about an hour while I worked on the cheese cake.

It was only after I had finished the cheese cake that I smelted 200 grams of dark chocolate with 3 Tbsp of olive oil butter. I spread this chocolatta melted mess over the top of the filling and put it back in the freezer.

I don’t usually cook with so much sugar (I always try to replace the sugar with soaked dates). Although I didn’t use as much sugar as the recipe suggested I still felt that these slices were uber sweet. I feel that next time I can use even less sugar! On the other hand, the cheese cake contains almost no sugar is packed with health!

The peppermint!

Next to come is the vegan cheese cake…

Xx Yas