Vegan nougat dumplings with plum sauce
It seems that sweet main courses divide humanity – at least that's what a survey in our office suggests. I'm a huge advocate of rice pudding, sweet rolls, or sweet potato gnocchi as a main course, so I immediately volunteered when it came to developing a sweet recipe for our dumpling week.
- For the dough:
- 40 g vegane Butter
- 250 g vegetable quark
- 150 g wheat flour type 405
- 60 g soft wheat semolina
- 1 pinch of salt
- 30 g applesauce
- 15 g agave syrup
- 100 g veganes Nuss-Nougat (Back-Nougat)
- For the sauce:
- 500 g plums or damsons
- 100 ml water
- For the topping:
- 2 EL vegane Butter
- 50 g breadcrumbs or ground nuts
- 25 g chopped nuts
- 1-2 tablespoons agave syrup
- fresh mint
- Warm the vegan butter until melted and place it in a bowl. Add the plant-based quark, wheat flour, semolina, salt, applesauce, and agave syrup, knead into a dough, and let it rest in the refrigerator for one hour.
- Form 12 small balls from the hazelnut nougat and chill them in the refrigerator. One ball is approximately 1 teaspoon of hazelnut nougat.
- Meanwhile, prepare the plum sauce. Wash the plums, halve them, and remove the pits. Place the plums and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer over medium heat for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly. Then purée until smooth. Return the sauce to the saucepan and keep warm, covered.
- Remove the dumpling dough from the refrigerator and form 12 small dough rounds, each about the size of your palm. If the dough is too sticky, simply flour your hands well. Place the nougat balls in the center, then wrap the dough around the filling and shape into a round dumpling.
- Bring salted water to a simmer in a large pot, but not at a rolling boil. Add the dumplings to the simmering water and cook for approximately 15-20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, melt vegan butter in a pan and fry breadcrumbs (or ground nuts) and chopped nuts until golden brown. Add agave syrup and let it caramelize briefly.
- Serve the nougat dumplings with plum sauce, the nut topping and some fresh mint.
Let's start with an absolute classic: everyone knows apricot dumplings! These small orange balls (outside of Austria and Bavaria, they're known as apricots) are encased in a sweet dough and served with melted butter. Also from Austria come Mozart dumplings, whose dough consists of quark, flour, butter, and egg, and whose filling... that's right, Mozartkugeln! Sweets wrapped in dough – what a brilliant idea! But Germany also has its share of sweet dumplings, such as steamed dumplings or yeast dumplings.
We couldn't quite decide between a chocolatey and a fruity version, so we combined both. The result was vegan nougat dumplings with a plum sauce. The recipe is quite simple to follow, but we still have a few tips for you.
For this recipe, you'll need vegan hazelnut nougat, which you can find in the baking aisle of the supermarket. We don't mean chocolate bars, but proper baking nougat, which is significantly chewier and made from sugar, hazelnuts, cocoa mass, and cocoa butter. Just enter "baking nougat" into your favorite search engine, and you'll find several brands. When buying, make sure it doesn't contain milk powder. Another important ingredient is vegan quark. You can now find it in many supermarkets and organic markets. There, it's often sold as "skyr" or a "quark alternative."
With this recipe, it's important to serve the nougat dumplings fresh, as they taste best warm. However, you can also let the dough rest in the refrigerator overnight and process it the next day. For the sauce, you can, of course, vary it depending on the season and use damsons or fresh berries instead of plums. We topped the dumplings with chopped and ground nuts, which we simply sautéed in vegan butter. If you (like me) are a fan of breadcrumbs, which are often sprinkled over savory dumplings, you can also substitute breadcrumbs for the ground nuts. That tastes fantastic too.
