A vegan Christmas centrepiece

A vegan Christmas centrepiece to appease all the family. I have vegetarians in my family so I like to think I know my way around a few veggie dishes - handy enough as I tend to do the cooking at Christmas. to be honest. Every year I try and think of an alternative meat free dish but usually I just throw something quite simple together. This year, however, I thought I'd try something a bit different and yet it's still pretty straight forward. I've created a sweet and savoury vegan cake which is a take on a traditional nut roast, and this one will stand up to any meaty centrepiece. It contains sweet potatoes, parsnips, chestnuts, cranberries, rosemary as well as the usual yuletide ingredients you expect at that time of year. One serving is around 350 kcals which will give you around 40g of carbs and 8g of protein. With it being more carb heavy, why don't you utilise the leftovers as a pre-workout snack for the days after Christmas?

Method -

• Peel your sweet potatoes and parsnips, then cut thin slices (1-2cm thick discs) off the ends of the sweet potatoes to place on the bottom of your baking tray. (as pictured below)

• Line the baking tray with 1 cal butter spray before lining it with baking paper. Then spray the baking paper with more 1 cal spray butter. Now add the thin potato discs to the tray.

• Finely chop 3 garlic cloves and dice the 2 large onions. Fry the onions and garlic in coconut oil for around 8-12 minutes and add a few sprigs of rosemary plus 1 tbsp of cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. (to taste) Once cooked, leave to cool.

• Chop the rest of the sweet potatoes and parsnips into cubes then roast in the oven for 20 mins at gas mark 6 200 degrees C 180 fan assisted with 6 sprigs of rosemary, 4 whole garlic cloves and 1 tbsp of nutmeg

• Add 10 tbsp of water to your 5 tbsp on Chia seeds, leave to sit for a few minutes before adding this mixture to your onions.

• Then add the chestnuts to a blender aiming for a fine consistency with some bigger parts in there for texture.

• So now that you have your onions with Chia, blended chestnuts and roasted veg. These can all be added to a large mixing bowl. At this point you should add everything else. This includes your lentils, cranberries and seasoning (Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Rosemary and salt to taste)

• Mix and mash everything together, before spooning the mix into your baking tray and leaving in the fridge to set for 24 hours. Please ensure you fully wrap the cake in tin foil.

• The next day bake for 1 hour at gas mark 6 200 degrees C 180 fan assisted. Then enjoy! Please note the above recipe is enough for two cakes if using 2 8 cm tins (which I did)

  
  
  

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