Recipes: (Nearly) Vegan Guinness Pie & Mini Gluten-Free Cheesecakes

I have been baking, yes I have! Don't have any photos to display but I am recording these recipes here for future reference. The first one, (nearly) vegan Guinness pies I made for my household for dinner tonight, is entirely of my own devising. The second, for mini gluten free cheesecakes, is a combination of a bunch of recipes I found in various places.

Hmmm. It seems that Guinness is on the list of beers that conscientious vegans don't consume, but, well, apparently the vegans I live with are less concerned with the possible presence of animal by-products in their beer filtration than they are with tasty tasty pies. If there is good dark vegan stout out there, I'm sure it will substitute just as well.

(Nearly) Vegan Guinness Pie:
Ingredients:

• Splash of vegetable oil
• One big onion or two small ones, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, smooshed small
• Five soy veggie steaks (I used the 'peppercorn soy steaks' from Vegan's Choice on King St)
• A bunch of mushrooms, diced (maybe half a bag-full?).
• 1/2 C flour
• 3/4 can Guinness
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp beef-style vego stock powder, or similar
• Splash of red wine
• 4 sheets of puff-pastry, thawed.

Method:
Turn the oven on to 180C.

In a medium saucepan, saute the onions over a low-ish heat in the vegetable oil til they're getting transparent, then throw the garlic in, cook for a bit, add the flour, stir that right in and let it cook for about a minute, then pour the Guinness in and stir well. Add the bay leaves & stock powder. Employ a handy housemate to keep stirring that while you're busy with the other pan.

In the other pan, fry up the veggie steaks til they're golden-brown on both sides, and sautee the mushrooms til they're dark and pretty well cooked.

Pull the veggie steaks out onto a chopping board and dice them, then add steak-chunks and mushrooms to the gravy. The gravy should be nice and thick by now. Add your splash of red wine for some colour, and give it a few more stirs.

I did these pastie style, but you can encase the filling in the pastry however you choose. Here's my method: cut each sheet of pastry into 4 squares, put a tablespoon full of filling into the centre of each square, grab all four corners of the square and pinch them together in the middle, then pinch the pastry down the sides to seal. Lay the pastries on baking sheets lined with baking paper, pop in the oven for about 25 minutes, or til golden brown all over.

Eat. We greatly enjoyed these with mashed potato and a lovely salad on the side.

Mini Gluten-free Cheesecakes
Gluten-free base:

• 1/2C gluten-free flour
• 1/2C dessicated coconut
• 2T brown sugar
• 3T finely chopped pecans & walnuts
• 2T melted butter

Combine all the ingredients then press into patty-case linings on a cupcake tray. Don't make the bases too thick or you'll run out of room for the rest of your cakes. About 3-4mm is good, or a teaspoon squished in flat.

Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes, then pull out and cool (but leave the oven on).

Cheesecake:

• 2 packets cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2C raw sugar
• 2 eggs

Using electric mixers, beat the sugar and eggs til it's lightened in colour and gotten thicker. Then add the cream cheese in cubes and keep beating til smooth. This can take a while. Have patience.

Add a teaspoon full of cheesecake mix into each patty-case (which will already have a biscuit base in it). Try to get each blob of cheesecake as smooth as possible.

Pop back into the oven for 20 minutes, or til some of them are going a little golden around the edges.

The big finale:I finished mine off with a top layer of lemon & passionfruit curd that I brought back with me from the farm. Hmm. It's beyond the scope of this post to tell you how to make that, so perhaps go look it up, or use commercial lemon curd, or devise your own lovely goopy topping, or just enjoy your cheesecakes how they are.

I made these in very tiny cupcake trays, half normal cupcake width, and they're just about perfect.