I love cooking, but when it comes to baking I’m probably the worst person in the world at it! Don’t get me wrong, vegan cakes are no harder to make than non-vegan ones. If anything they are easier because you don’t have to mess around with eggs etc. The reason I’m so bad? Well because you have to follow the recipe using proper measurements for it all to come out right. You can imagine my surprise when I just threw a load of ingredients together the other night and they actually came out ok. No scrap that, they were amazingly tasty….even if they didn’t look it.

Here’s my made up spur of the moment recipe:

¾ tub of vegan butter (I used Vitalite.)

A phone sized wedge of vegetable shortening (I used Trex.)

2 tablespoons of vanilla essence.

Half a small bottle of maple syrup.

2 tablespoons of egg replacer (I don’t normally use this stuff, but I just thought it might work for once and it was almost out of date.)

A shot of water.

10 tablespoons of self raising flour.

Method to my madness:

• Place the butter and the shortening in a bowl and mix together using an everyday fork, until it becomes a type of thick paste.
• Now add the flour, vanilla essence, maple syrup and egg replacer. Mix together with clean hands and if it becomes too dry, now is the time to add the shot of water.
• It should basically look….well like cookie dough! You can also try it now because it doesn’t have any nasty things in it that will make you sick. Do you like it? Does it need more vanilla? Then add it!
• Now grab some greaseproof paper, put it on a baking tray and spoon out small circles which will become your cookies.
• Bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees, then turn right down to 150 degrees for another 10 minutes. (This will insure the outside is crispy and the inside is soft.)
• Serve with a nice glass of plant based milk.