Venus Bars (Vegan Mars!)

[Gorilla]

Here is the recipe from the Cake Scoffer book, originally by Steve of Veggies catering (yum!) It's ok - the book says non-profit making campaigners can reproduce parts of the book.

Nougat layer:
225ml soya milk
4.5oz soya margarine
12oz sugar
2 tbsp vanilla essence
6oz dried soya milk

Toffee layer:
6oz sugar
6oz margarine
125ml soya cream
1.5 tbsp golden syrup

Plus approx 250g good plain chocolate

1. Put the first four nougat ingredients in a large pan. Heat, stirring constantly until it bubbles all over and triples in size (113 degrees C if you have a sugar thermometer). Keep at this temperature for 3 mins.

2. Remove from the heat and cool. While it is cooling, melt 100g of the chocolate and pour into a large square or rectangular cake tin lined with greased greaseproof paper. Coat bottom of tin. Allow to set.

3. Stir the vanilla essence and dried soya milk into the cooled nougat gradually, until you get a smooth, creamy paste. Pour over chocolate layer and level with spoon. (Book suggests to add a tbsp of malt extract also). Freeze until set.

4. Place all toffee ingredients in a pan and heat to same temperature as nougat. Keep at this temp for 5 mins, then pour on top of nougat. Level and freeze for an hour, then cut into 24. Freeze overnight.

5. Melt the rest of the chocolate. Separate the bars and coat with the chocolate (it's fiddly, but fun). Chill, then devour!

BTW, you can turn this into 'Topic' or 'Snickers' by adding chopped hazelnuts or peanuts.

[feline01]

That sounds fantastic but making candy, yikes!! I'm intimidated by recipes with all those steps. Looks way too complicated.

[uww27225]

I feel the same way feline01. I'm just trying to get comfortable in the kitchen. I'm such a novice chef that I don't think I should be attempting any candy recipes yet!

[cast_the_flames]

when i'm feeling ready to clean up the mess, i'll definately attempt that one. looks so good.

[Gorilla]

it does seem complicated i know, and it is kinda messy! but if you like cooking it really is worth it. i guess it'd be fun to make if you had kids.

[Marrers]

My friend had two trys at making this and neither turned out very well (either layer). We were very disappointed.

[Cherry]

I'm not desperately confident, but I want to try making the nougat layer. I had a go using soya protein powder and it was horrendously bad, but I have soya milk powder now. If I knew a bit more of the science behind nougat I could improvise, but I don't really know what I'm doing.

Has anyone tried these bars from 'Veggies' at demos? Their website suggests that they're really popular, so I'd be interested to hear how they turn out when they're made in huge batches by the creators.

[Cherry]

Well that was a disaster! It was much better with the powdered soya milk, but more like thick sauce than fluffy nougat, even when I'd frozen it. I wonder if anyone in the whole world has actually managed to get this to work, or if it's just a dud recipe. I'm sure I did exactly what they said.

Anyone got any ideas of what I can do with a trayful of nougat-sauce?! Mars bar cheesecake, perhaps.

[Marrers]

I'm sure my friend tried it a few years back. I think the nougat came out okay (maybe not exactly fluffy) but the caramel was too runny.

[Mr Flibble]

I've never seen it at a veggies stall

[Marrers]

^ Nor have I.

[Cherry]

Ah. OK. I did my own caramel as I know how to do that, it was just the nougat that was the disaster, so if your friend did that ok then maybe I did something wrong. I don't mind disasters when I'm experimenting with something, but when it's someone else's published recipe you kind of expect it to work the first time if you follow the instructions carefully. Drat. It didn't really taste like nougat either though, so I might just give up on this one.

[Gwydion]

One should never give up on anything Cherry!

If at first you don't succeed, etc, etc.

(Failed samples gladly received in the post)

[Cherry]

Thanks, Gwyd Maybe I'll try just reading the ingredients on a twilight bar and improvising!

[Gwydion]