I love sweet bread. Cinnamon rolls, fruit buns, coconut rolls, but as a vegan have been stuck on how to make a soft, sweet bread dough. After trying out many recipes though I think I may finally have found it. You will need:

• 2tsp (or one pack of red star) active dry yeast
• 2 teaspoons sweetener (maple syrup, agave, honey, unrefined beet sugar)
• 1 cup soy milk
• 2 – 4 tablespoons shortening
• 2½ cups unbleached white flour
• ½ cup whole wheat flour
• 2  tablespoons gluten
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Flavour adaptation of choice (see below)

First warm the soy milk until hand hot, add the yeast and leave until bubbly – be careful not to overheat the milk!

Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and rub in the shortening. Pour in the milk and yeast and add the sweetener. Mix it all together to make a soft dough. You may have to add a little water, or a little flour depending on the type of flour you use.

Knead for about 5 minutes to form a smooth dough then leave in a warm place to rise to double its bulk. This should take about an hour at room temperature.

Now comes the fun part! If you want to make CINNAMON ROLLS, add 2tsp cinnamon to the dry ingredients when making the dough. Once it’s risen once, flatten out the dough into a large rectangle. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon and sugar. Roll up and cut into 9 equal rounds. Place flat in a baking tin and leave to rise again for another 40 minutes or so. Bake at 180 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped. You can eat them as they are or ice with a mixture of icing sugar, water and a couple of drops of vanilla extract.

If you’d rather have FRUIT BUNS (or hot cross buns for Easter) add a couple of teaspoons of mixed spice to the dough mix. I used 1tsp cinnamon, then mixed the following to make a second teaspoon – clove, ginger, nutmeg and a bit more cinnamon. Also add 50g of currants and 25g of orange peel (our peel needs to be soaked for a few minutes in warm water to soften it first) to the dough, knead for about 5 minutes and leave to rise for an hour or so. Separate into 9 equal sections, shape into balls and place in a baking tin. Leave to rise for another 40 minutes or so, then bake at 180 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Most recently I tried out some COCONUT ROLLS; incredibly easy and very tasty. Replace the soymilk with coconut cream, change the flour balance to half unbleached, half wholewheat and add about 1/4 – 1/2 cup shredded coconut to the dough. Knead and rise as before, shape into nine equal portions and rise again for an hour, before baking at 200 degrees for 20-30 minutes. *you may want to reduce or eliminate the amount of shortening in the recipe as the coconut cream has quite a high fat content.

If you have success with any other adaptations do let us know!