The recipe is slightly involved, as you need to strain the yogurt yourself, but worth the time to do so. I understand that a decent vegan yogurt can be wildly expensive depending on where you live so this might be something to make when you luck out with some on sale. I was mildly complaining to a friend in Canada that the yogurt in France was so expensive at 3€ a container (about $3 American, 4.50 Canadian) when she told me that the equivalent product costs about $12 on the West Coast there. So maybe not an everyday kind of cake but it is a nice one.

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We are currently in Denmark, in Odense at the time of writing, a cute smaller city. Another month here before we’re off again and I am rather looking forward to going back to Germany for at least a short while. I hope to write more here soon in the near-ish future.

We stayed in southern France for a few months this past winter and it was spectacular - a bit ridiculous, at times, it was a hoarder situation - but generally very, very nice. This was one of the French recipes I picked up while we were there and made this vegan version. It’s also where I took the photos, actually around the winter solstice.

This summer solstice we’re keeping the garden (and sheep, and chickens) in order for friends in (what we call) the Swedish interlake region while they headed further north for a bit of a holiday. It’s beautiful and extremely sunny, with over 16 hours a day of sunlight right now. Off to Denmark next week but we are enjoying our time here.

Thanks for reading and I hope to write more soon!

Sun Pastry Recipe

We’re now in Belgium and it’s certainly colder here than it was in Southern France so we’ll be sticking to this veg for a little while yet. I hope you like the stew as much as we do.

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A bit less long for us this year, really, as we were in Southern France until two weeks ago and were gathering oyster mushrooms, wild asparagus, and herbs during the winter months there. Now in the north of the country, we’re using three-cornered garlic (haven’t found any wild garlic yet, more’s the pity), wild sorrel, garlic mustard, and nettles.

Here are a couple recipes to keep on hand for this month or perhaps April, depending on where you live. I am hoping to share more this year but we’re on our way to Belgium next week so there will be less available there.

Garlic Mustard Pesto

A little bitter and certainly garlicky, it’s a great pesto to make with a plant that doesn’t get a lot of foraging love. It’s everywhere and considered invasive in North America, so you can feel free to pick plenty. It’s best before flowering so try to find it earlier in the season.

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Asparagus New Potato Salad

Depending on where you live, maybe you can find both wild asparagus and garlic mustard at this time of year. Any slightly spicy wild greens can be used here - garlic mustard, wild garlic, three-cornered garlic - or another hardy green like spinach if you don’t have access to wild foods.

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Wild Garlic Pesto

Made with hemp and sunflower seeds, it’s a lighter take on pesto and ideal for people who might find raw garlic hard to digest. Make sure you’re harvesting wild garlic and not lily of the valley (easy check, does it smell like garlic?). This is the early spring forager’s staple and I’m always put out when we’re living somewhere without it available locally. Fingers crossed for this year!

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That’s all that’s on OE, I’m afraid. I have a nettle soup coming down the line and hope to share some more subscriber-only recipes in the coming weeks using the abundance of wild food that can be found around us. France has been a real delight in this regard and I am slightly dreading going to built-up Beligium (mostly looking forward to it though).

Talk to you soon!

As other heritage varieties are becoming more common outside of European eco shops and readers seem to be able to find them so much more easily these days, I hope you might enjoy baking with these highly flavourful and interesting grains. Einkorn is considered the most ancient grain available and it tastes great.

This einkorn sourdough is made with whole grain flour and no mixing of high gluten varieties. It’s a bit dense, very much in line with a typical German bread, and is an excellent daily loaf. It’s a little lower hydration as all of my ancient grain sourdough recipes have been to date so it’s quite easy to work with and makes a nice bread.

Einkorn Sourdough Recipe

I hope you enjoy this loaf as much as we do!

A little heads up, starting next week my photos might start to look a little different - I took loads of pictures with my artifical lights during our last couple of months in Sweden as we knew we’d be house-sitting for several months once we left. I did enough to last up until April and took some more natural light pictures in southern France while we were there. Now we’ve decided to travel for all of this year and we’re doing some shorter term stays (currently three weeks in Brittany, then six in Belgium, etc.) so there will be a mix of my photos from southern France and in future some from my friend Sophie. The recipes are all still mine and I’ve tested and written them.

If you have any questions about this recipe or anything else, please hit that reply button and I’m happy to chat.

You do need to soak lentils for this but as I mention in the post, we always try to have some on hand in the freezer. I’m a little more hesitant to mention how we actually do it on the site, but I soak them, then freeze in any old recycled glass jar I have on hand (though canning jars would be a safer option). I fill the jar with hot water from the tap to thaw and haven’t had any cracking - yet. While I don’t really recommend doing the same for safety reasons and don’t want to be sued, I will say that they’re a nice little ingredient to have on hand.

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See you next time!

I tried several different vegan versions in Gothenburg but was never entirely happy with the whipped cream filling used. Processed vegan whipping cream alternatives are mostly fat and starch and I find that they leave an unpleasant greasy coating in the mouth, an element that I can’t seem to get past.

This recipe is made with a coconut and cashew nut cream filling that’s just lightly sweet. It is not really a whipped cream, more like a not-sweet frosting or a kind of mousse, but it’s very good. If you have a dairy-free cream alternative that you like, you can use that instead. If you are using the cashew cream please note that the nuts will need to be soaked for a couple hours before blending, and that the cream benefits from chilling for a little while.

The cardamom bun base is very light, soft, and also not too sweet. The dough has a pretty high hydration to get it to be so light but that means that you can knead it quite easily with an electric hand mixer if yours has dough hooks (and most do come with them, the spiral ones). A little flour for shaping is helpful.

One more thing. I prefer almond paste for the filling rather than marzipan and note that if you’re using marzipan it’ll be a little sweeter. If you can only get marzipan, no worries, just use that. And if you can’t find either, you can use almond flour and a little more milk, but it won’t be quite as good.

Find the full recipe below. Please keep in mind that this is a subscriber-only recipe and that it won’t be on occasionallyeggs.com.

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Cashew Coconut Cream

This is adapted from Cannelle et Vanille’s latest subscriber recipe for the dairy-free tiramisu.

150 grams raw unsalted cashews

Cream scooped from the top of a can of full-fat coconut cream or milk

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup

½ tsp vanilla powder or seeds of a vanilla bean (sub 1 teaspoon extract)

Cardamom Buns

250 ml non-dairy milk, plus more for brushing (oat, almond, etc.)

50 grams oil (I like coconut, but any light-tasting oil will work)

30 grams maple syrup or honey

2 ¼ teaspoons dry yeast (or 1/2 cube fresh)

350 grams light spelt flour

1 teaspoon fresh cardamom, coarsely ground (sub a half teaspoon pre-ground)

½ teaspoon sea salt

Almond Filling

75 grams almond paste

Bun crumbs (see instructions)

Non-dairy milk as needed, to make a paste

Instructions

Cashew Coconut Cream

1. Start by soaking the cashews. Place them in a heat-safe container and cover with boiling water. Cover with a lid or plate and soak for 2-3 hours, or until very plump and soft.

2. Once the cashews have soaked, drain them and rinse well. Add to a blender (an immersion blender also works well for this) with the coconut cream, lemon juice, honey, and vanilla. Blend until very smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. A splash of water can be added if absolutely necessary but don’t add too much.

3. When the cream is smooth, transfer it to a container and refrigerate while you prepare the buns.

Cardamom Buns

1. Heat the milk in a small saucepan until steaming. Don’t bring it to a boil.

2. Pour the hot milk into a heat-safe mixing bowl and add the oil and honey. If using coconut oil, wait until it melts. Otherwise mix well and then check the temperature with your finger - when it’s safe to add the yeast, the milk mixture should feel just warm to the touch. If it’s very hot it will kill the yeast.

3. When ready, mix the yeast in with the milk mixture and set it aside to bloom for ten minutes. It should be foamy.

4. Stir in the flour, cardamom, and salt. The dough will be quite wet. Knead, preferably with an electric mixer if you have one. As mentioned, this can be kneaded with an electric hand mixer and the one I tested with is one of the cheapest available.

5. Knead for about ten minutes, or until the dough is soft, smooth, and elastic. When you touch it lightly it shouldn’t feel too sticky.

6. Cover the dough with a plate and set aside to rise in a warm, draft-free spot for an hour, or until doubled in size. This can take a long time in a cold place so find somewhere a little warm.

7. Once the dough has doubled, punch it down and divide into 12 equal balls. Form round buns, using a light sprinkling of flour if needed to shape. Rotate the balls on a clean counter to create some surface tension (see here), then place onto a lined baking sheet.

8. Cover with a tea towel and set aside to rise again for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

9. Brush the buns with a little non-dairy milk, then bake for 18-20 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool fully on a wire rack.

Assembly

1. Cut the top off the cooled buns, just about two centimetres down from the highest point. Remove about ⅓ of the interior of each bun and place the crumbs into a mixing bowl. Add the almond paste and a little milk, then use a fork to mash this into a paste, adding milk as needed. You shouldn’t have to add much milk but the almond paste can take some time to soften.

2. Take the almond paste mixture and use it to refill the interior of the buns. Top with the cashew coconut cream (or whipped cream) and then add the hat, the little bit of bun you cut off the tops.

3. Optionally you can sprinkle the tops with a little powdered sugar but I never do. I recommend storing the buns in the refrigerator after assembling, or you can add the filling per bun as needed. The plain cardamom buns will keep for about three days in a sealed container at room temperature and the cashew coconut cream for about five days in the refrigerator.

That’s it, I hope you love these as much as we do! The cardamom buns are also well worth making on their own if you don’t really want the filling. I also tried these out on our neighbours here, both in their 70s, and they thought they were fantastic too.

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