Vegan Christmas Recipes (pudding, cake & mince pies!)

Christmas pudding is one of England’s favourite desserts, and is also enjoyed throughout the year, not just during the festive season. This Christmas pudding (My Goodness Kitchen) contains medjool dates, golden sultanas, dried cranberries and brandy.

Keep dried fruits, nutmeg, citrus, chocolate and fresh dough away from pets. Read more on food safety for people and pets (also read about pet safety at Christmas).

Bin citrus scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. 

Easy Vegan Christmas is a book of around 80 simple recipes, by Katy Beskow, packed with festive recipes including mushroom thyme Wellington, sage and onion chestnut rolls, roasted pears with red onion, mulled wine and mince pie Danish pastries.

Homemade Vegan Mince Pies

Originally a savoury recipe, today the pies are made with fruit-based mincemeat, a blend of dried fruits and spices.

These vegan mince pies (The Coconut Collab) use a simple homemade pastry made with coconut oil, sweetened with maple syrup and then topped with their own delicious coconut yoghurt, then dusted with icing sugar.

Most mince pies on sale contain palm oil (the term ‘sustainable palm oil’ is just self-policed by industry, and has no legal guarantee that the forest homes of orangutans and other endangered creatures are being destroyed).

In addition, palm oil is full of saturated fat and flown half away across the world from Indonesia, before being made into mince pies that are then over-wrapped in plastic packaging. So why not instead have a go at making your own?

A quick look at a supermarket mince pie box finds a huge amount of ingredients including refined sugar, palm oil, glucose-fructose syrup (another sugar that contains sulphites which many people are allergic too), butter and milk (both likely not from free-range farming).

Recently one supermarket had to pull its own mince pie brand from the shelves, after it was found the pies contained dried glue, that had accidentally made its way into the pies from the packaging.

Although some premium vegan mince pies brands are on sale, they are only sold in a few stores and are also very expensive, so unaffordable to most people.

These vegan mince pies (Madeleine Olivia) are super-simple to make, and require no store-bought pastry. Just mix chilled palm-oil-free vegan block butter with flour, then add salt and water to make a chilled dough that you roll into pastry. Then just fill the cups with ready-made mincemeat, bake and dust with icing sugar.

Spelt Mince Pies (Doves Farm) use an ancient flour that is easier to digest than white flour, and has a mild nutty flavour.

These use a simple homemade mincemeat (grated apple and orange rind, dried fruit, brown sugar and mixed spice). Homemade mincemeat must be poured into sterilised jars.

If this is too much of a faff, then just buy readymade. Look in indie health shops for Authentic Bread Company’s Organic Mincemeat, handmade to a traditional recipe, using Herefordshire apples soaked in cognac.

Bake Your Own (vegan) Christmas Cake

Millions of people buy Christmas cakes from supermarkets each year. Making your own is tasty, cheap and free from plastic packaging. And you can make a plant-based cake to ensure it’s suitable for all your guests. You can usually make Christmas cake ahead of time, then store just before decorating with with egg-free organic icing sugar.

Vegan Christmas Cake (The Veg Space) is simple to make and bake (no-soak method). It’s packed with dried fruits, cherries, nuts, black treacle and brandy.

This recipe is from the book A Very Vegan Christmas. You can make and store this (undecorated cake) a week ahead of time, ‘feeding it brandy or rum’ until a couple of days before icing.

A Vegan Chocolate Yule Log

This vegan yule log (The Veg Space) is an ideal alternative for people who are not keen on Christmas cake. The light chocolate sponge is rolled with a chestnut brandy filling, then covered in dark chocolate ganache.

Vegan Italian Panettone

Vegan Panettone (The Banana Diaries) is a plant-based take on the popular Italian Christmas bread, usually served with vegan ice-cream. Based off the blogger’s great grandpa’s recipe, this features a dough speckled with raisins, cherries and citrus.