Bo's Kitchen

Plant based recipes made with love

baking

Blackberry aquafaba muffins

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Blackberry season is in full swing here. Muffins are always in season though, right? That’s why I had to make these seasonal sweets extra special with my fave vegan magic, aquafaba. Aquafaba is the brine from a tin of chickpeas, and when whipped it creates a beautiful fluffy egg substitute, just like egg whites for meringue. I’ve used it a lot in waffles lately, but I’m really enjoying trying it in baked recipes too. Next time you open a tin of chickpeas, save the brine! You can also make your own if you soak and cook your chickpeas at home.

Feel free to sub the flours for gluten free, a good all purpose gluten free would work well. I used a combination of plain and rye flour in these, I really love the flavour of rye flour.

These are refined sugar free, favouring coconut sugar over traditional cane sugar. I haven’t used white sugar in what feels like years now and to be honest, I don’t miss it at all. Coconut sugar adds just the right amount of sweetness without overpowering the flavour of blackberries. I like to enjoy a muffin with my cup of coffee for breakfast, so I prefer them to be naturally sweetened. I like to sprinkle a little coconut sugar over before baking to give them deliciously crackly muffin top. I’ve also added cinnamon and a little lemon zest, which just brings these muffins to life.

I’d love to hear what you think if you make them, or if you did anything differently. Please comment below or take a snap and tag me on Instagram! I always love to see your creations.

blackberry muffins

Blackberry muffins
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 12 muffins
Ingredients
  • 1.5 cup plain flour
  • 1 cup rye flour
  • 2.5 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tbsp lemon zest
  • pinch salt
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 5 tbsp aquafaba
  • ½ cup oil, coconut, rapeseed or avocado
  • 1 cup coconut sugar plus 4 tbsp, for topping
  • ¾ cup almond mylk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups blackberries
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 180•c. Line a muffin tin with paper cases or coat with oil.
  2. Add all dry ingredients to a large mixing bowl and stir well.
  3. In a well cleaned medium bowl, add aquafaba and whisk with an electric whisk until frothy and foamy, for about 3 minutes. Add in the oil slowly whilst whisking, followed by the sugar. Whisk through almond mylk and vanilla and everything into the dry mix. Use a wooden spoon to combine and mix until just combined, it's okay if there are some lumps.
  4. In a small bowl, mash ¼ cup of blackberries to a pulp. Add to the batter and fold through the remaining blackberries, holding some back for topping.
  5. Fill lined muffin in with the batter and top with blackberries and a few tbsp of coconut sugar.
  6. Bake for 20-22 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing. Enjoy right away or cool completely before storing in an airtight container. Will keep for two days, but best eaten when fresh.

Ultimate pizza dough

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ultimate pizza dough

I love pizza. Who doesn’t though? It’s one of life’s great pleasures. I really enjoy making my own pizza dough, there’s something incredibly therapeutic about the process. I’m fairly fussy about the recipe though. Fluffy, puffy dough is where it’s at, just like you get at a proper pizza place. Don’t get me wrong, the gluten free, cauliflower crusted ones are yum too, but more often than not I’m drawn to the real thing.

I recently invested in a pizza stone so needed to find a worthy recipe for it. This one doesn’t disappoint, it really is the ULTIMATE pizza dough. It’s a wonderful texture, full of flavour and gives a satisfying amount of puff when cooked on a stone. You can make several small medium to thin crust pizzas, or a few large, thick based pizzas, I’ve included instructions for both. If you haven’t tried making your own yeasted dough, give this recipe a whirl and I promise you’ll want to make it again and again.

The reason this recipe works so well is due to the very small amount of yeast used, the high water content and the long proving time. Although the first batch will take you the best part of a day to make, I tend to whip up a big batch and freeze several dough balls so I won’t have to make it again for a few weeks. Using less yeast is easier on your digestion too, so there are some benefits to taking your time with this one!

If you’re into bread making, you’ve probably already got a dough scraper, but if you haven’t I can’t recommend one enough. My Mum surprised me with one in the post a few years ago now and told me it ‘only costs 20p’ but will ‘probably be the most useful thing you’ll ever receive’. I had no idea what it would be of course, but I soon realised how invaluable this little bit of plastic was. You can use it to knead very wet dough, saving you time washing off sticky dough from your fingers. It also removes any excess dough from your kitchen counter tops in a jiffy (if you’ve ever tried to scrub off dried dough from the counter you’ll know how time consuming this can be). If you want one, this is the exact one I use. The pizza stone I use is here, it even comes with a peel – essential for quickly transferring your pizza to the oven.

I topped this pizza with a basic marinara sauce, sweet bite peppers, red onions, courgette ribbons and fresh thyme and basil. I really don’t miss the cheese at all, but if you’re looking for a great plant based cheese you can make at home, check out my friend Nathalie’s fabulous chèvre cheese recipe here.

ultimate pizza dough

If you try this recipe, I’d love to hear what you think! Please do leave me a comment below, or take a snap and tag me on Instagram (@bos.kitchen).

Happy pizza making,

Bo

xoxoxo

Ultimate pizza dough
 
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Serves: 6 small pizzas, 4 large ones
Ingredients
  • 1kg strong white bread flour
  • 700g water
  • 15g salt
  • 2g yeast
Instructions
  1. Throw all ingredients into a bowl and knead well for around 10 minutes. Use a dough scraper to knead it if you have one. Turn and knead briefly for a couple of minutes every 10 minutes for an hour.
  2. After an hour, stretch dough out with your hands and return back to the bowl. Leave to rise for at least 4-6 hours.
  3. Divide dough into 6 balls to make individual medium base pizzas, or 4 balls to make larger pizzas. Leave shaped balls for another hour to rise.
  4. Wrap any dough balls you aren't using up in oiled clingfilm and freeze. Heat up pizza stone or baking tray for at least 15 minutes in your oven, at the hottest temperature (mine will go to about 220•c).
  5. If you have a pizza peel, dust well with flour and stretch the dough out with your hands to form a rough base. Try to get the dough under 1.5cm thick for a medium base pizza. Top pizza and use peel to slide onto preheated pizza stone. Cook until golden and puffed up, usually about 8 minutes.

 

 

 

 

Chocolate and peanut butter marble cake

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Chocolate, vanilla and peanut butter marble loaf

Do you like cake? Do you like chocolate and peanut butter? Yes? Well you’re in the right place, my friend. This chocolate peanut butter marble cake has been sent to satisfy your cake cravings. This was actually a treat for my boyfriend, who has been rambling on about a special cake for the past few weeks. He kept saying he doesn’t want anything fancy, just a ‘marble cake’. I dread to think what I’m going to have to make when he tells me his idea of ‘fancy’!

This baby is so easy to prepare but looks like it takes a lot of skill to bake (perfect for wowing that special someone). You can make it in a loaf tin, or two sandwich tins for a traditional cake. I bet it would be lush with a peanut butter cream in the middle. It’s made with spelt and plain flour, but feel free to sub with all spelt if you prefer, or a gluten free plain flour. I used ‘aquafaba’ for this cake too, which is basically the liquid from a tin of chickpeas or white beans. Sounds gross, but works amazingly well as an egg substitute and I promise it doesn’t leave any chickpea flavour at all.

Do you have a favourite cake? Please let me know if so in the comments below as I really enjoy veganising cakes. This cold weather has got me craving baking time too, so I’m on the lookout for new baking adventures!

 

Chocolate peanut butter marble cake

Dry 

  • 1 cup plain flour
  • 2/3 cup spelt flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup avocado or coconut oil (melted)
  • 1/2 cup coconut sugar
  • 1/4 cup cacao powder

Wet 

  • 1/4 cup aquafaba liquid
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup nut mylk (I used almond)
  • 1/3 cup peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup boiling water
  1. Preheat oven to 180•c and line a loaf tin or two sandwich tins with greaseproof paper.
  2. Mix all dry ingredients apart from the cacao together in a bowl. Add all wet ingredients to the mix apart from the boiling water and stir well to combine. Add a little more almond mylk if you need to loosen the peanut butter.
  3. In a medium bowl, mix 1/4 cup cacao with 1/4 cup of boiling water. Now add half the cake mix to this bowl and mix to incorporate.
  4. To the remaining batter, add in 1/4 cup boiling water and mix. Now you should have one bowl of chocolate batter and one bowl of plain batter.
  5. Spoon dollops of each mix into your prepared tin. Once complete, swirl through with a chopstick to create the marble effect.
  6. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Stores well in an airtight container for up to 4 days.