Come Dine With Me.

This Saturday two of my bff's Sal & Kip came over for my turn at our Come Dine With Me challenge. If you haven't heard of Come Dine With Me it's a UK television show where 4 people each take turns at cooking the others a three course meal. Everyone gives the chef a score out of 10 and at the end of the four dinners the winner wins £1000...now there's no £1000 up for grabs here and we've been slacking off at the scoring each other part too but it's a great excuse to get together for a fancier-than-usual dinner!

To start I whipped up the Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes from Vegan Brunch.

I love these, the crispy panko, steamed tempeh and nori make a perfect sea cake and I'm officially in love with the caper filled remoulade; I did quarter the amount of hot sauce though! If you don't have Vegan Brunch yet you should really get a copy but in the meantime the lovely Isa has put the recipe for these tempeh cakes up here.

For the main course I pulled out my copy of Vegan Diner and decided to make both the Barbecued Seitan Ribz and the Cheesy Mac.

The recipe for the Barbecued Seitan Ribz originally comes from the blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen & I've made them once before, during Vegan MoFo on Football Food Sunday. They were so good then that I made them again but this time with more barbecue sauce and a different Mac & Cheese. The Cheezy Mac from Vegan Diner has become my very favourite Mac & Cheese recipe. It's so easy to make because you pretty much just need to mix everything together in your blender before heating it through in a pan to thicken it. It's also insanely delicious thanks to the smoked paprika and I think the consistency is spot on.

I was a little unsure what veg to serve with a meal like this but Coleslaw seemed to fit. I'd actually never eaten a coleslaw that I liked before Saturday so I'm pretty happy with my made-up-on-the-spot 'recipe'.

To make the coleslaw I just grated 1/3 of a red cabbage, 1/3 of a white cabbage and two medium carrots. I then mixed all of my grated veg together in a bowl with 4 TBS of Plamil Mayonnaise, 1 TBS of Wholegrain Mustard and a little salt & pepper. Easy.

Dessert was the course I was most excited about making and serving to my guests. I made my favourite fancy dessert, the Silken Chocolate Mousse Cake from My Sweet Vegan, and garnished it with a deep fried Oreo cookie!

The Mousse Cake is probably my favourite dessert to make because it's super easy and you don't even need to turn on your oven! It has an almond meal base and the mousse is made with silken tofu, about a tonne of melted chocolate chips and corn syrup to sweeten it. I've never found corn syrup here so I used a mixture of brown rice syrup, agave and golden syrup. I've spotted deep fried Oreo's on non-vegan blogs before & I've been wanting to try them myself for a long time. I decided that this was the perfect opportunity because being left alone with a packet of Oreo's and my deep fryer would probably just end with me feeling really sick!

To make these I mixed up a quick light batter from 1/3 cup soda water, 1/3 cup plain white flour and a pinch of salt & pepper. I then dredged the Oreo cookies in the mixture and popped them into the deep fat fryer until the batter turned golden brown. The trick to stop them sticking to the fryer basket is to put them in sideways not flat and to jiggle them with a spoon a couple of seconds after they hit the oil.

The cookies got all warm and melty in the middle and I really really wished that I had had room for a second one. It was such a fun evening, these ladies (and Nick of course) never fail to make me laugh and if I do say so myself the food was pretty great!

I'm off to Barcelona tomorrow morning to spend a week eating & sightseeing with my awesome lady friends Melanie & Carmen. I'm SO excited! I've just realised that we're staying almost next door to this amazing looking vegan bakery so expect loads of cake pictures soon!