Vegan Recipes: Almonds

Showing posts with label Almonds. Show all posts

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Marzipan with Amaretto

Assorted natural flavours and colours, including green tea, cherry syrup, berry juice, candied citrus,
and some stuffed dates too!

Last Sunday I did a demo about making Marzipan at the Auckland Art Gallery, to celebrate Italian Language week with the Dante Auckland. I have a basic recipe which I always follow (without egg white, thus suitable for Vegans too) and you can find it here. But since almonds don't have much taste in NZ (sorry... need to be said) I always add a few apricot kernels (not too much, they are poisonous!) so follow this recipe carefully! Now, apricots are not in season yet, and I made a little variation, which worked well: I added a little drop of Amaretto.

Marzapane with Amaretto

Ingredients
200g raw almonds
100g icing sugar
1 tsp Amaretto

Blanch the almonds in boiling water and remove the skins. Keep a few almonds aside for decoration, if you like, and ground the rest into a fine powder, almost like a paste. Add the icing sugar and Amaretto and mix until you get a dough. Shape into your favourite morsels, and colour with berries, green tea powder, spirulina, or anything you like. Some ideas for shapes and colours here.

Perfect for presents! Coloured with cocoa, green tea and berries

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Roasted pumpkin medallions with pumpkin and sunflower seeds, Baked zucchini, Lemon basmati and lentils, Instant hummus, Almond dukka

Brrrrr it is getting cold! Time to prepare some filling, comforting and easy dinners :-).

Greg gave us a long pumpkin from his garden, I love it as you just need to slice it and peel it and you have a nice pumpkin medallion!

Roasted pumpkin medallions with pumpkin and sunflower seeds

Slice, peel and place onto an oven tray, drizzle with olive oil, salt, smoked paprika, garlic and crushed cumin seeds. Roast until tender. Toast a few pumpkin and sunflower seeds the oven and sprinkle on the pumpkin medallions before serving.

In addition I had the last zucchini in the garden, not quite a marrow but quite big, so I sliced it and baked it too:

Baked zucchini

Wash and slice lengthwise, drizzle with olive oil and salt, bake. That all!

To serve I added some basmati and lentils

Lemon basmati and lentils

Wash and cook the basmati with a small pinch of salt, open a can of lentils, drain from the water and pour the lentils on top of the rice during the last five minutes of cooking. Turn off the heat, add two tbsp of lemon juice and stir.

And to top some instant hummus with almond dukka:

Instant hummus

Open a can of chickpeas, drain and keep half of its water. Blend the chickpeas, water, two peeled garlic cloves and the juice of half a lemon until smooth. Add salt to taste and a little olive oil.

Almond dukka

Toast half a cup of almond, a few sunflower and pumpkin seeds and 1 tsp of cumin seeds. Add a little rock salt, a pinch of paprika or the spice of your choice. Grind and use to top the Hummus.

Well, that was easy, the kids loved it and got eaten in no time!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Raw, vegan, sugar free and gluten free chocolate truffles

Yes these are raw, vegan, sugar free and gluten free chocolate truffles, but what's more they are made using only 4 Fair Trade ingredients: Trade Aid Palestinian almonds, Trade Aid cinnamon, Trade Aid Madjoul dates, and Trade Aid baking cocoa, plus one local ingredient, Hazelz hazelnut flour from Canterbury. There is no sugar, no dairy product, and no need for cooking.

I like using Fair Trade products because they are in line with the Slow Food principles of Good, Clean and Fair food. And with my philosophy. Furthermore the quality is really good! Take the Medjoul dates for example, they are so sweet and delicious, they can substitute sugar in many preparations. The baking cocoa is so good that you don't need to use it just for baking, it is perfect for puddings and hot chocolate too. The Palestinian almonds are different from my favourite Italian almonds, but they are quite unique, a bit spicy in fact. The cinnamon really aromatic, you need just a tiny bit, I like to say 'a hint' :-). And the hazelnut flour is what's keep everything together so nicely!

Ingredients:

4 Trade Aid Madjoul dates

20 Trade Aid Palestinian almonds

50 ml water

1 hint (i.e. a tiny pinch) Trade Aid cinnamon

1 tbsp Trade Aid baking cocoa, plus more to dust

2 tbsp Hazelz hazelnut powder, plus more to dust

Makes 12 truffles

Remove the stone from the dates and break up in rough pieces. Place in a cup with the almonds and 50 ml of water. Wait for 30 minutes to let the fruit soften a little and then blend with an immersion blender.

Add the cinnamon, cocoa and hazelnut powder and mix with a spoon. Shape into 12 balls and roll half in cocoa and half in hazelnut flour. The best way to do this is roll the truffles first in cocoa or hazelnut flour, and then pass them between the palms of your hands quickly a few times so that you will get an even coating, and not too much of it, just the right amount. No need to refrigerate, just let them dry a bit on a tray before piling them into a serving bowl or glass.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Friday, December 19, 2014

Raw, vegan and gluten free sweet for Christmas? Homemade marzipan!

Marzipan is the perfect sweet for the Holiday Season, and this is RAW, VEGAN and GLUTEN FREE, so it seems to cover most of the current food trends :-). Click here to see the recipe and step by step images (including how to use apricot kernels). Note that for colouring this time I didn't use berry juice but Fresh As raspberry powder, and also quite a bit of spiraling powder for a darker green hue. The nuts on top are optional, of course.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

almond, sesame, cumin, smoked paprika, and fennel dukka

I love dukka, my base recipe is in my book Savour, yet the beauty with dukka is that it can be personalized each time, and it is always good. For this one I toasted 100 g of almonds (not blanched) in the oven for 10 minutes, then I added one tbsp of sesame seed, one tsp of cumin seeds and half tsp of fennel seeds and put everything back into the oven for 4-5 more minutes.

All in the food processor, and then grind until fine but still a little chunky.

At the end I added some smoked paprika and some salt. Dukka can be used as a rub, a topping (great on hummus) and as a dip. And it can be made with a variety of nuts, seeds and spices.

The best way to eat it, for me, is to use it with bread: dip some bread in extra virgin olive oil first...

And then in the dukka!. Quite addictive, and the perfect party food. It lasts a few days in a sealed tin container.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Year of the Rabbit, Fondant and Marzipan Rabbits

Next year will be the year of the Rabbit: a very important year for our family as my daughter is a rabbit! I made some little bunnies, the white one is made with fondant, and the cream bunny is made with marzipan.

To show you the sizes I put a cherry next to them :-). I thought I did a pretty good job, and them my daughter showed me the rabbit she had made...

What do you think? Isn't it cute!!!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

How to make Marzipan Fruit

It is raining in Auckland today, but the bush looks happy and green, and the water tank is filling nicely (yes, we drink rain water!). It is also the last day of school for my daughter, holiday mood in the air, Xmas trees alight. The boy is already home, with a friend who is staying for a sleep over. They are playing with lego: domestic bliss for me!

Yesterday I posted about making your own marzipan, and today I'll show you my little fruit.

For the marzipan recipe click here, and for the colours I used some spirulina powder dissolved in hot water, and some juice from berries.

Shape the fruit with your fingers, you can either colour the marzipan before, or you can paint it later using a small brush, or opt for a combination of the two for a stronger colour.

For the stalks I used the smallest cloves that I could find, but this is because I made some miniature fruit! I like miniatures, in a past life I am sure that I belonged to a Jane Austen world where ladies painted miniatures and embroidered delicate patterns (or so I wish!).

To show you the scale of the fruit I put a NZ dollar coin in the mini basket. The kids didn't have the heart to eat the fruit yet: they told me that it is too pretty! But they will get over that soon!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

How to make marzipan sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As, and something that I love to make for Xmas.

I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds.

Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry.

To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need:

200 g almonds

100 g icing sugar

5 apricot kernels.

As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels.

The apricot kernels too need to be blanched, in fact the skin is poisonous! And you should not eat too many, 5 for 200 g of normal almonds is what I use, and they give the marzipan a nicealmondy taste. In the photo above you can see an apricot kernel (left) , and a normal almond (right). Try and taste an apricot kernel, they are bitter, but more aromatic.

Blend the blanched almonds and apricot kernels, still wet from blanching, until they are very fine, almost a paste. You may need to do this a few times, scraping the sides of the food processor.

Place in a bowl with the icing sugar and mix, first with a spatula, and then with your hand, like for a dough. At first it will seem dry and crumbly, but then it will all come together in a paste.

And here you have it, almond paste to work with. If you like you can also add a little grated lemon zest, or use vanilla sugar for a delicate floral hint.

You can colour your marzipan. I like to go for natural colours, so I made green with spirulina powder dissolved in water, and red with berry juice.

Roll and cut, like for gnocchi, and then shape with your fingers. For my main sweets I made simple shapes, but you can make fruit (on the blog tomorrow!!).

To top the marzipan with fruit I used more blanched almonds and pistachio, plus some walnuts. I made a syrup with a little sugar and water, and when hot I put the nuts into it to coat them and make them shiny and sticky. Then I placed a nut over each little marzipan sweet (I used tweezers for this, as the sugar was still hot!).

Ready to be eaten, and pretty too! A perfect Vegan and gluten free Christmas treat! And you can also use it to stuff dates and dried figs, or cover it with bitter dark chocolate.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Vegan Panforte, an Italian Christmas Treat!

As a child I always had panforte for Christmas. It came in a packet, and my brother and I loved it: it was special. Then I moved to London, and panforte became an even more expensive luxury. Let's not talk of Japan and New Zealand! So about a decade ago I decided to make my own.

A made a few variations this year. In a recent comment Yari from Il cucchiaio di legno blog told me that industrial Vegan Panettone is not exactly 'nice'. I thought that it is hard to be a Vegetarian or a Vegan at Xmas. Panforte is almost Vegan.... it has honey in it. It may be interesting to know, for some of you, that in New Zealand there are some Vegans who eat honey, in fact they are bee-keepers. They say that they don't kill the bees when collecting honey, and that the insect are vital if we are to get fruit in this country. But NZ must be an exception, for all I know Vegans in other parts of the world do not eat honey, so I decided to make this panforte with golden syrup, for Yari :-)

Ingredients

Golden Syrup, 2 tbsp

Vanilla flavoured sugar, 2 tbsp
Vanilla Icing sugar, 2 tbsp, plus more for dusting

Almonds (natural), 150 g /5½ oz

Citrus peels, 150 g / 5½ oz

Candied Fruit (I used a mixture of papaya, melon, and mango) 200 g / 7 oz

Plain flour, 100 g / 3½ oz

Powdered coriander, 1 tsp

Powdered cinnamon, 1 tsp

Powdered nutmeg, ¼ tsp

The vanilla flavoured sugar is white sugar kept in a sealed jar with a vanilla stick in it.

Put the golden syrup, vanilla sugar and icing sugar in a bowl with two tbsp of water, and dissolve on low heat in a pot of water (Bain Marie or double boiling).

Remove from heat and add fruit, almonds and all the other dried ingredients. At this point you will start to fill the aroma of the spices, it really feels like Christmas!

Line a 22-23 cm round tin with baking paper and, if you have it, line it with some rice paper. Fill with the mixture and cover with more rice paper, pressing down well. Wet the top rice paper with water so that it will not burn.

Bake at 160°C (325ºF) for 30 minutes, Remove from the oven, but leave in its baking tin, and cover with a thick layer of icing sugar. Serve cold, and only small slices (it is quite filling!).

Vegan Recipes

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Sunday, January 20, 2019

Marzipan with Amaretto

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Roasted pumpkin medallions with pumpkin and sunflower seeds, Baked zucchini, Lemon basmati and lentils, Instant hummus, Almond dukka

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Raw, vegan, sugar free and gluten free chocolate truffles

Friday, December 19, 2014

Raw, vegan and gluten free sweet for Christmas? Homemade marzipan!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

almond, sesame, cumin, smoked paprika, and fennel dukka

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Year of the Rabbit, Fondant and Marzipan Rabbits

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

How to make Marzipan Fruit

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

How to make marzipan sweets

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Vegan Panforte, an Italian Christmas Treat!

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