Baked: Pfefferkuchen (Spiced Cookies)

I'm a Christmas freak and love to spend December baking tasty treats for ourselves and to give as gifts. These German spice cookies are a cross between traditional gingerbread and lebkuchen. My recipe is based on the one in Another Dinner Is Possible, with some amendments. 

Ingredients:
150g dairy-free margarine (at room temperature)
150g soft brown sugar
100g caster sugar
3 tbps golden syrup
2 tsps ground cinnamon
1 tsp each ground ginger, ground cardamom and ground cloves
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
500g plain flour
Warm water

1. Beat the margarine with the sugar and golden syrup until creamy.
2. Add the ground spices and bicarbonate of soda to the flour and mix.
3. Add the flour mixture to the margarine bit by bit, kneading until you have a good dough. At this point, you may need to add a small amount of water to bring the dough together.
4. Wrap the dough in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for 12 hours, then take out and leave in a cool place for another 12 hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6.
6. Roll the dough out to 2-3mm thick and use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Lay on baking paper or a greased baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes.
7. Leave to cool on a wire rack. They should keep for a few days in an air-tight tin, or they will make a lovely gift popped in a cellophane bag and tied with festive ribbon. The dough will also keep in the fridge for longer than 12 hours if needed - I usually bake half the dough and save the remainder for later in the week, when another batch makes a welcome addition to the empty biscuit tin.

V Revolution, Manchester

Great vegan food is becoming ever easier to find in the UK, and Manchester is at the forefront. On a recent weekend trip we ate a delicious evening meal at Ning, a Malaysian restaurant in the Northern Quarter (a menu that specifies vegan options and has great cocktails? Count us in) and visited V Revolution not once, but twice.

In all honesty, this place was the main reason for our trip to Manchester in the first place. Part-food store, part-record shop and punk hangout, part-American diner-style eatery, V Revolution is all-awesome. From the cute booths to the good value menu, it makes a great place to hang out and have a quick bite to eat.

Deliberately focusing on vegan versions of junk food - from hot dogs to 'chicken' burgers to ice cream floats - V Revolution reminds me of the many vegan fast food joints in Berlin. The menu is restricted to burgers, hot dogs and grilled sandwiches, but there's plentiful choice within those categories and the prices are extremely reasonable. My tasty and filling Chicken Royale burger (served with a side of tortilla chips and piled high with lettuce, cheese and mayo) was only £4, which is excellent value for the quality of the food. Next time you find yourself in Manchester, do take a walk to the far end of Oldham Street to check out V Revolution: you won't regret making the journey.

Baked: Vegan Earl Grey tea loaf

Now that the weather is cooler, I'm more inclined to potter in the kitchen for hours experimenting with new recipes. I drink industrial quantities of Earl Grey tea so when I saw Gwen's recipe for an Earl Grey tea loaf, I was on board immediately and started looking for ways to veganise it.

After scouring cookbooks and the internet I settled on this recipe, making a few minor changes because I can never just follow a set of instructions like a normal person. The result was a deliciously sweet and moist cake with a generous hint of spice: I actually preferred it to the non-vegan version. This is also low in fat and, of course, egg and dairy-free, so perfect for people with allergies.

Ingredients
2 Earl Grey tea bags
1 cup water
1 cup dried fruit (I used sultanas)
A handful of dried mixed peel
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup oil (sunflower or vegetable work best, and are cheapest too)
2 cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
A generous tablespoon brown demerara sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180c or gas mark 4. Grease and line a loaf tin.

2. Combine the tea bags, water, oil,lemon juice, dried fruit and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to the boil then remove from heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes for the tea to infuse.

3. Squeeze tea bags and discard them, transferring the rest of the mixture from the pan into a bowl.

4. Sift together the flour and spices and add to the bowl, mixing well. The batter will look a little aerated at this point.

5. Pour the batter into the lined tin, smooth down and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

6. Cool slightly before removing from the tin, then slice and serve with a hot cup of Earl Grey tea.

All measurements are given in cups - use a proper set of baking cups to ensure quantities are accurate.

The Lansdowne, Leicester

The Lansdowne is a large bar on London Road, about 10 minutes walk from the city centre. It's a favourite of ours for numerous reasons: great music (when we were last there, the playlist veered from Johnny Cash's Boy Named Sue to Fleet Foxes to the Sam Cooke soul classic You Send Me in the space of minutes), a wide range of lagers, ciders and ales - including plentiful vegan drink options - and incredible retro furnishings.

The Lansdowne always delivers on atmosphere, with friendly and helpful staff.  As it's very close to the city centre and train station, but also to the university and Clarendon Park, it tends to have a nice mixture of customers, from young families eating lunch to groups of office workers, lecturers and students, or people killing time before their trains.  Most importantly, The Lansdowne always has at least four vegan, and numerous more vegetarian, options on the main menu, plus regular veggie or vegan specials. It's fantastic that pubs and bars in Leicester - and around the UK - are becoming more conscious of catering to vegans. Just in the two years T & I have been together, we've noticed a sea-change in the amount of options we have when eating out.

Minus one half of the sandwich - we'd already tucked in by the time I remembered to get my camera out.

On our recent visit, T opted for the houmous and roasted vegetables ciabatta with potato & sweet potato wedges, which was the weekly sandwich special. Other vegan options currently include vegetable pie, Mediterranean stew with mashed beans, and a smoked tofu and rice pilaf. 

However, once you deviate from the sandwich and burger menus (and their current veggie burger is sweet potato and halloumi, so not vegan-friendly), we find that the vegan offerings - although tasty, inventive and interesting - come in small portion sizes. As T is 6'4" and with the hearty appetite of a lumberjack, they just don't fill him up. This tends to be a common issue with vegan food - especially when made by non-vegans. The movement seems to be connected in non-vegans' minds with concepts of health and 'clean' eating, and an assumption is made that vegans don't want a big plate of hearty food. And having seen T polish off six vegan enchiladas in a row, I can assure you that's not the case!

The food is reasonably priced for the non-vegan main meals, with a sandwich costing around £6, plus a bit more if you want wedges, and main meals hovering around the £9-£11 mark. But with portion sizes so tiny for the vegan mains, we can't really say they offer value for money.