Query for cooking-type people

[juliet]

Vegan cooking query!

I would like to be able to make a vegan equivalent of cheesy flapjacks (where by 'equivalent' what I really mean is any kind of savoury flapjack; I'm not that picky). The basic problem here is that in cheese flapjacks the oats are held together by the cheese (and by egg if you use that, although it works OK without). What can I use to substitute for this that's vegan?

Tried so far:
- just using vegan marg, nutritional yeast, and some mustard mixed into the oats. Tasted great, but did not hold together AT ALL and had to be eaten with a spoon.
- as above but with some soya milk to hold the oats together. Tasted OK but consistency all wrong; what I like about flapjacks is their crunchy nature. This was more like solid porridge.

I've seen flour suggested, but fear that that will also bugger up the texture (making it too cakey/bready). Any other ideas?

Comments

[laughingrat]

Have you tried using chickpea flour at all? In India (and, apparently, France?) that's often used to make delicious savory things one fries. It might not provide the right consistency for a flapjack, though, since the flatness of those makes the weight be an issue as you flip them...

[juliet]

I normally bake my flapjacks -- but in fact gram flour (which wikipedia tells me is the same thing as chickpea flour) did work quite well in yesterday's experiment! I will try again with slightly different quantities to see what happens.

[nanaya]

What about using ground flax seeds whisked with water to make a binder? Little bit of chickpea flour as well would make it nicely savoury.

[juliet]

Hadn't thought of flax seeds -- thanks, will give that a go at some point! Gram flour did do the job fairly well.

[samvara]

No idea but we're dead keen to hear about it if you do find an alternative, our vegan says most pancake alternatives are too much like glue to be worth eating.

[juliet]

A little gram flour was helpful. Still all a bit dry, though.

For pancakes, fwiw, I usually just use flour & soya milk -- but then, the sort of pancakes I make are the v thin crepe-style British ones, not the thick doughy US (and Aussie?) ones. Last Pancake Day we experimented with extra gram flour & something else to make the batter more like regular pancake batter, but it was much more complicated & tbh I preferred the ones I usually make.

[samvara]

Those are the ones we need to make! V. thin crepe style :)

[juliet]

Soy milk & flour it is, then! They come out slightly crispier/thinner than the egg variety, and don't get bubbles/holes in quite the same way, but (IMO) tasty, and reasonably flippable. Certainly by the time one has put pancake toppings on them they are lovely!

They need to be cooked a bit hotter than the eggy ones. I think I use the heat kind of as a binding agent, if that makes sense?

(I can experiment to check quantities if you want -- I normally just put milk into the flour until the consistency seems about-pancake-batter-ish, so don't know off the top of my head.)

[samvara]

Thank you - I'll do some experimenting next time I need to provide comfort food.

[littleboot]

i've used things like linseed meal whisked with milk (soy/almond for you?), mediocre results. maize flour is ok too, beware it absorbs about 1.5 times as much water as wheat flour. different flavours, of course.

hmm. maybe psyllium husks?

do vegan cheeses melt?

[juliet]

Some vegan cheeses melt, but I kind of see vegan cheese as not actually qualifying as food :) (the ingredients list is usually moderately terrifying)

Gram flour worked quite well! Think we have maize flour somewhere, may try that too. I have never even encountered psyllium husks so will keep an eye out.

(in other news: hello! xx)

[littleboot]

yehi! xxx

glad you found a solution. highly relieved vegan cheese isn't considered food even by vegans.

Found you via clicking around DW

[jumpuphigh]

Have you tried rice milk instead of soy milk? I have found that it cooks much better. I'm not usually vegan but I use it for things like french toast and pancakes and it is quite nice in those things.

Re: vegan cheeses
There are some nut cheeses that are nice and that melt well. You may be able to find them somewhere. I also once used a cheese made from brown rice that was excellent. Alas, I never found it again. Other than those, I agree that most vegan cheeses are scary.

Re: Found you via clicking around DW

[juliet]

Ooh, no, I haven't tried the rice milk - thanks for the tip! Will put it on the shopping list.

The trouble with vegan cheeses is that the effort cost of trying them out is high enough to put me off, especially when I don't miss cheese *that* much (& the cheese I miss most is the sort that won't be faked well even by decent cheeses). But they do have their place for cooking, so thank you for the nut cheese tip - might see if the health food shop can provide.

Re: Found you via clicking around DW

[jumpuphigh]

Yeah. They are pretty pricey as a category and I've had enough bad experiences with some that I am mostly unwilling to try new ones. I was using them because of a dairy allergy which I have since discovered only applies when it is pasteurized from a cow, not a goat, so I now buy goat cheese or raw cheese instead of the vegan cheeses.

[htfb.livejournal.com]

Laver? The usual laver bread recipes have only enough oats to act as a filler to the seaweed, but it does bind together even with much more oatmeal present.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Hmm - I think the usual texture of flapjacks is down to a combination of oats cooked hot in oil, and the gooeyness of syrup. I have never even heard of - yet alone tried - savoury flapjacks before! So I can only guess wildly ... flax eggs? .... xanthan gum? ...

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Judging by the stickyness of the bhajis I made with buckwheat flour, that might work in smaller amounts than those needed for wheat flour. Gram flour might be worth a shot as well, will certainly reduce the potential for breadiness.

[juliet]

I tried gram flour yesterday & that worked pretty well! I didn't bother melting the marg first which was I think an error (was just in a hurry...). Definitely much more coherent, though (if still a little crumbly), and nicely crunchy. I will experiment further with quantities, and might try buckwheat flour if I can get hold of some. Cheers!


(note to self before I forget: 5 tbsp oats, 1-ish tbsp seeds, 2 tsp gram flour, 2 tbsp-ish marg, 1 tsp mustard, 1 tbsp nut yeast. Needed more mustard/salt.)

[juliet]

5 tbsp oats, 1 tbsp sunflower seeds. 0.5 tbsp marg, 1.5 tbsp oil, 1 tsp mustard, 1 tsp Marmite (all melted together). Stir in 1 tbsp nut yeast, 1 tbsp gram flour, then add to dry stuff. Bake 20 min.

[juliet]

too much gram flour! But held together OK.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I hold together everything with bananas. You should see my DIY.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Apologies if I've misunderstood and this is what you've already tried...

You could try heating the vegan marge (and maybe a bit of rice/soy/oat milk) and adding the nutritional yeast to it, to make a gloopy paste? That might replicate the stickyness of syrup?

[juliet]

I might try a tiny bit of milk in with the marg when I melt it (I usually do, although with yesterday's gram flour experiment (see above) I didn't bother). Last time I mixed the soya milk in with the oats & that definitely didn't work (too porridgey). Also, yes, hadn't thought of treating the yeast as a sticky-stuff constituent rather than a dry constituent. Thanks!

[abi]

You need something to act as a binding agent, so a small amount of a really starchy kind of flour would probably do the trick (corn, potato, something like that). Make a faux-white-sauce and mix everything else into it.

Adding oatmeal is also a Good Thing for cohesion of flapjacks, but this tends to make them more squidgy and sticky (which is the way I like them).

[juliet]

Cheers -- I tried gram flour yesterday with moderate success. Will continue experimenting...

I like my flapjacks not too squidgy, so I think oatmeal wouldn't work so well for me.