Easy vegan vanilla slice

By Tracy


This one is simple: a no-bake (stove-top & fridge), veganised vanilla slice.

Ingredients:

Packet of plain square vegan crackers
(e.g. Jacob's cream crackers)

Vegan custard made up as follows:
4 tbsp custard powder (Bird's and Orgran are vegan and have no artificial colourings)
2 tbsp sugar
1 pint (about 568 ml) plant milk (I used soy).
(Basically it's an ordinary vegan custard but made with double measure of powder, so that it's thicker)

A cup or so of icing sugar. You can either mix it with passionfruit pulp & juice to the right, spreadable consistency, or use a little plant milk plus a drop of lemon extract -- something slightly tangy or acidic to offset the thickness of the filling.


Method:

Place one layer of crackers in the base of a deep-sided rectangular tray. You may have to bevel the corners to make them fit; you can see I also used some thinner strips at the edges. On a pyrex dish, I didn't need to grease the base.

Make up your vegan custard to the thick consistency you see in the picture:

Spoon the custard as evenly as you can over the base. You have to act quickly or it will get too firm:

Place the next layer of crackers over the top of the custard and press down to get it as even as you can. It doesn't matter if your "paving" is slightly bumpy because these are the lines you will cut along to serve, anyway:

Quickly mix up your icing and spread it over the top layer of crackers. It doesn't matter if the icing is quite wet, as the crackers will soften by absorbing some of the moisture from below and above.




Place in fridge to set and chill. The longer you can leave it, the better the crackers will soften. Using the crackers is a lower-fat approach than using pastry (and no baking involved), and you virtually can't taste the difference.

All-vegan shop in Western Australia

By Tracy

Cruelty Free WA opened in Fremantle in late October.

They have all sorts of items, and everything is vegan.

Of course, you don't have to be vegan to shop there -- anyone looking for "humane" mousetraps (ones that enable you to move the mice without hurting them), or alternatives to leather, or toiletries and makeup that are not tested on animals and contain no animal products -- will find what they need here.

There's also a great range of chocolate, soy cheeses, sandwich slices, nutritional yeast (the best one, Engevita) and non-dairy cream too.

The shop is at 28A Queen Street, opposite the side of Myer that runs down to the multistorey car park (near where Queen Street meets High Street).