vegan coconut shortbread with chocolate drizzle.

A tasty treat that happens to be dairy free and egg free too! This melt-in-the-mouth vegan shortbread recipe is scattering with coconuts and baked before being drizzled with heavenly dark chocolate. A naturally vegan sweet recipe which is perfectly bitesize.

baked spinach arancini stuffed with mozzarella cheese.

Arancini; a resourceful (and delicious) way to use up leftover risotto. There isn't often leftover risotto in my house, so in this case I deliberately made too much and used a lot of will power to save it until the next day. Plus, you only need two extra ingredients to make them - flour and cheese. This simple baked arancini recipe is made from a simple spinach, onion and white wine risotto, before being stuffed by mini mozzarella balls and cooked until golden. My theory is, if they aren't deep fried then you're allowed to have more cheese...

5 easy vegan recipes that I love

 

This year was the first year I tried Veganuary. Not only did it mean we reduced our meat intake for a month, we also found so many new recipes and meal inspiration that we still try weeks later. It was interesting to say the least to try out the dairy free cheese, with varying success. The meat substitutes were much better and I found a new love for oat milk and vegan chocolate However bringing more vegetables to our dishes was the best bit. 

If you're looking to try a month of being vegan, I really recommend The Vegan Kind supermarket and trusty BBC Good Food as well as these Olive Magazine favourites or pick yourself up some bargain vegan recipe books from The Works. Here are a few of my favourite vegan recipes, which all bring out a rainbow of vegetables and pulses, with no meat alternatives in sight.