Vegan kiwi smoothie

I've had an exciting week so far, seen quite a few patients with signs. For those of you who are't medics, we have real patients in our exams this year with real disease signs on examination that we have to find and diagnose. Therefore patients with good signs are like gold! I saw a patient with Graves' disease, one with Parkinson's, and performed a synacthen test on another patient. Very interesting stuff!

Even more exciting - I found my dress for Final Year Dinner which is coming up soon, I'm so excited!!! Ordered it online and was quite worried about the look/ fit but it arrived yesterday and looks gorgeous!

To celebrate I made another smoothie this week (as you do) - Kiwi smoothie. Lovely pale green colour. It's the same recipe as before again (why try to fix something that isn't broken) and tasted very delicious!

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup rolled oats

3 cups soya milk

4 cups kiwi (about 8)

1 banana

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 tbsp honey (or agave nectar/ maple syrup)

Method

1. Add the soya milk to the oats and allow to soak in the fridge overnight.
2. Put all the ingredients in a blender and pulse until mostly smooth, and it's ready to serve!

Don't forget to let me know if you try any other combinations!

Week 4 Dish 2: Vegan Pineapple Pie

You know what I've learned so far from all this baking? The best bit (other than the end product and the general joy of baking) is licking the bowl when you've put the goodies in the oven. Oh so good!!! I don't think anyone can disagree...And the worst bit is cleaning up after, though I'm getting better at being tidier (my mum is very happy about this - though of course I always clean up after myself). 

Last week I managed to buy 2 pineapples with my mum for £1 - I think it's the last of the Summer wine really, I doubt we will continue to have many more tropical fruits available now! So, as inspired by this week's Great British Bake Off episode, I decided to make a pie! It's one that should be eaten cold, and turned out really well. Hope you think so too!!

Ingredients

For the cream

450 g fresh pineapple, peeled and chopped

250 g soya yogurt

100 g corn flour

100 g sugar

For the base

250 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

100 g sugar

80 ml pineapple juice

80 ml canola/ rapeseed oil

Method

1. First make the cream. Mix the chopped pineapple, yogurt, sugar and cornflour and blend.
2. Once it's creamy, transfer to a deep saucepan and heat over a medium heat, stirring constantly until it's well thickened (about 5-7 minutes). Set aside.
3. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
4. In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder and sugar. Make a well in the centre and add the juice and oil. Knead with your hands to form a soft dough.
5. Take out 1/3 of the dough and set aside. Place the remaining dough onto a piece of greaseproof paper and roll into a 1/2cm thin circle. Place into a 9 inch pie dish and cover the base and sides. Pit with a fork.
6. Roll the remaining dough to a circle large enough to cover the pie.
7. Fill the pie with the pineapple cream and cover with the rolled out dough. Cut four long lines on the top of the pie and brush lightly with 1 tbsp of soya yogurt.
8. Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes or until well browned on top.
9. Allow to cool completely, then slice and serve!

Original recipe: Low-fat vegan pineapple pie

Week 4 Dish 1: Vegan blackberry scones

Yep, more blackberry! Still have lots left in my garden so I thought I better use them to make yummy treats. There will be another jug of Pretty in Purple vegan smoothie for my family today too. Looking back at all my recipes, I've made a lot of muffins and cupcakes so I thought I need to branch out a bit. I don't really like making big cakes because smaller things are much easier to grab and go or take for lunch, which is perfect when you're quite busy. So that's why I decided to go for scones this time, though they didn't turn out exactly like scones....

(Yep they do look like muffins, explanation below)
Makes 18-24
Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
2 cups wholemeal flour
2 1/2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup oil
1 1/4 cup soya milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups blackberries (fresh or frozen)
2 tbsp agave nectar/ maple syrup/ honey if you're not vegan
Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.
2. Mix the first five ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Stir blackberries with the agave in another bowl and leave to one side.
3. In a third bowl, mix the remaining ingredients. Gently fold the wet ingredients into dry. When partially mixed, add the berries and agave and continue folding in until just combined. Try to keep the berries as whole as possible. If you used frozen berries continue to step 3, otherwise jump to step 6.
4. Flour a clean surface, transfer dough onto it and press gently with your hands to flatten it out to 3/4 inch thick.
5. Using a cookie cutter, cut out the shapes you want, place at least an inch apart on a non-stick tray and bake for 15-20 minutes. 
6. If you have fresh berries like I did, when you fold them in they will all get smooshed, making the dough a lot more liquidy. This means that it can't be cut with a cookie cutter. Instead I spooned the mixture into about 20 small muffin cups almost to the top and baked for 25-30 minutes. But remember when you eat them, they aren't muffins, they are scones so you may want to cut them in half and use a bit of margarine. 

I don't want to leave things as late as I did last week so recipe two should be coming soon! I also updated all my past posts with where you can buy the more unusual ingredients from (in the UK), so if you were struggling it should be easy now :)