We were celebrating tonight, so I wanted to try and make something a bit special, without doing anything too complicated. Puff pastry always feels indulgent, and as it turns out both Jus Roll and Tesco’s own ready-made pastry are accidentally vegan – hooray!

I found this recipe and adapted it. It’s basically a sheet of pastry brushed with vegan pesto and topped with roast veg. Instead of brushing with egg I used chickpea water, and I didn’t bother with anything to replace the cheese that the original recipe had. I did however add lots of babyleaf spinach.

When it came out of the oven after about 20 minutes I sprinkled on a few seeds and served it with salad topped with chickpeas and the cashew ranch dressing I had made yesterday. 

It turned out really well. Easy to make, and the pesto added lots of flavour. I’m not going to get into the habit of cooking pastry on a regular basis, but this was great for a treat.

For desert I had bought some caramel pecan vegan ice cream from Tesco, made by a company called Perfect World. I had also picked up some raspberries on special offer to go with it

I had lots of chickpea water left over so thought I would experiment with meringues to go with the ice cream and fruit. It did not go well. I was hopeful at first, they whipped up really nicely in the food processor, and even looked good going into the oven. However, after a few minutes they collapsed into a watery mess. I think the problem was that I had experimented using stevia instead of sugar, which I had read was possible for meringues. I’ll try them again sometime with sugar.

However, Perfect World caramel pecan ice cream was really good – a really good flavour, good consistency, and lots of crunchy nutty bits. It’s also low in sugar – even better! All the vegan ice cream I have tried so far has been excellent, and this was no exception.