recipe – Bean Thinking

What packaging does your coffee come in? Is it paper, compostable? The bits of packaging here are part of an experiment to see how long they will take to break down in a worm composting bin #talesfromthewormbin

The problem is oat milk. If you are having a go at living plastic free (or even reducing your reliance on single use plastic) during Plastic Free July, you have probably encountered at least one sticking point. Something that you are finding a little tricky to let go of. There are things that are too difficult to eliminate right now (meat/fish packaging is one example although there have been efforts to change this in some locations) but these are not necessarily sticking points. No, sticking points are things that seem that they should be easy to eliminate but for some reason are not. For me this is oat milk.

For the past three years, I have been participating in Plastic Free July with the aim of trying to find ways of living that reduce my plastic waste. And for the past three years, the problem has been oat milk. It is becoming a bit of a nemesis. Although proper, dairy based milk is available in glass bottles, this does not appear true for non-dairy based milks. Although some packaging can be recycled, it is a significant contributor to my waste pile. So, how about home made oat milk? It should be easy shouldn’t it?

oat milk, kone, filtering — Oat milk filtering through the Kone filter.

You can find plenty of recipes for oat milk online (a few are here, here and here) but I’ve always found it messy and, well, wasteful. The worms have enjoyed the oats in the past but surely there’s something better that can be done with them? Well, this year, things seem a bit different. And part of that is because of a coffee filter.

Years ago I tried the coffee Kone filter as an attempt to reduce my use of paper filters in the chemex. Sadly, I didn’t get on with the Kone. Unlike a paper filter, some sediment made it through the filter leading to more of an immersion type coffee drink rather than a filter. Consequently it went to the top of a cupboard and lay forgotten for a few years. Until this June when I re-discovered it as a filter for the oat milk. Rather than a muslin bag, the Kone can be cleaned easily and the whole process is significantly less messy (and slightly quicker – stirring the contents of the Kone with a spoon is easier encouragement to get the oat milk through than squeezing the muslin bag). Although there remains significant work before this can start to be a habit rather than just for a month, this July’s oat milk is a lot more promising than previous years. I’ll keep you updated as to whether the oat milk remains being home made in August.

pitch drop oat milk — Preparing your own dairy-free milk also offers new opportunities for watching physics such as the pitch-drop experiment here.

In the meantime, do let me know how you are getting on with your own Plastic Free July. Do you have any sticking points? On the other hand, are you finding that you are enjoying taking your re-usable cup around with you when you get a take-out coffee? Also, if you have any recipes for things that can be done with these left over blended oats. I’d love to hear of your culinary experiments.

In the following recipes, because I do not know how much oat milk you are making, I’ll call the amount of blended oats X g. In my experiments X has been either 115g or ~60g.

Oat and Apple Tarts

Xg blended oat left overs

Xg sugar

X/2 g flour

Pinch cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

teaspoon baking powder

Cooking apple (peeled and cut into smallish chunks)

Mix the blended oat left overs with the sugar and then stir in the flour, baking powder and spices. Spoon onto a greased baking sheet so that they make circular blobs of about 3cm diameter. Place the apple pieces into the mixture and bake at 180C for about 15 minutes until risen and slightly browned.

Sort of Flapjacks

X g blended oat left overs

X g sugar

X/2 g flour (but this isn’t really necessary).

Oat flakes, spelt flakes, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dried fruit, whatever you would like to put in a flapjack

Mix everything together, spoon into a lined and greased baking tin, bake at 190C for 15 minutes until firm. Keeps in an airtight container for days.

Hobnobby biscuits

home made oat biscuits — Not quite there yet. If you have a better recipe or can improve this one, please let me know.

A work in progress – the quantity of oats is not right yet and perhaps they need to be toasted oats or even spelt flakes.

X g blended oat left overs

X g sugar

X/2 g flour

teaspoon baking powder.

X-2X g oats

Mix the blended left overs, sugar, flour and baking powder together. Stir in the oats. Spoon on a lined and greased baking sheet so that you get ‘biscuit sized’ portions. Bake for 25 minutes at 190C or until brown.

Creating movement at Kahaila, Brick Lane

coffee Brick Lane, against trafficking, women's project, charity — Kahaila on Brick Lane. A small shop front concealing a large interior.

It’s always great to find an independent café selling good coffee (and cake) while giving something back to the community. It’s a reason to seek out small businesses rather than chains. Kahaila café on Brick Lane absolutely falls into this category. Although I had visited Kahaila previously, on that occasion the beigels (almost) next door were ‘calling’ and I did not give this space the time it deserved. This time however, the beigel shop had come first allowing us plenty of time to sit and ponder in this spacious café.

I had an espresso (toffee notes) together with a raspberry topped vegan chocolate cake (confidently nut free). There were a large variety of alternative cakes on offer at the counter along with cold drinks should you want them in summer. The espresso was a very enjoyable accompaniment to the cake (or should the cake be an accompaniment to the coffee?). The large room at the back of the café offered plenty of seating and was well lit by sunlight streaming through a window built into the roof.

coffee cake, Kahaila, Brick Lane — Raspberry vegan chocolate cake with espresso. The blue cup can affect the way the coffee is experienced.

One thing that immediately makes this café different from many others, is the fact that there is a donation box on the wall. Information cards on the table tops explain that Kahaila works as a charity providing education and support to women prisoners, helping women who have experienced abuse or are vulnerable in other ways to learn skills in a bakery and also offering a safe house for women who have been victim to exploitation and trafficking. All in all a café in which it would be good to spend more time (if only it were closer!). And assuming that the cakes are from the bakery, it forms a giving-circle with some great bakes on offer.

The vegan chocolate cake was a case in point. Beautifully presented, balanced in taste, in a perfectly sized portion to enjoy with a coffee. Ordinarily cakes require butter and eggs, how did the bakers manage it? Of course, a recipe was not given at the counter, nor would it necessarily have been particularly helpful to answer the question. Because the answer, if one exists, is a mix of their experimentation with flavours and textures together with an advancing knowledge of what each cake ingredient does.

sugar in a jar, Kahaila — The way these sugar cubes stacked in the jar and the sugar granules at the bottom reminded me of something. I was not able to put my finger on what it was…

Consider the egg yolk. In addition to adding mouth feel and texture to the cake or biscuit, the yolk contains emulsifying agents, such as lecithin, which act to stabilise suspensions of oil in water¹. With a hydrophobic section at one end of the molecule and a hydrophilic section elsewhere, the presence of lecithin molecules in the mixture prevents droplets of oil from grouping together and coalescing so as to separate into oil/water layers. By experimenting with non-egg based lecithin, a baker can combine different flavours and textures to produce a vegan cake.

A few years ago, a somewhat similar problem was vexing materials scientists: how to remove toxic lead from piezoelectric devices. Piezoelectric devices expand or contract when they are subjected to an electric field. This makes them useful for moving mechanisms such as watches and even as a way to open/close hot water valves in coffee machines. The problem was that one of the best piezoelectric materials we had was lead zirconate titanate (or PZT for short). In order to make the PZT material, the lead had to be sourced in quite large quantities and yet, being toxic and environmentally damaging, it was considered advantageous (even necessary) to remove the lead.

doorway in Kahaila — A painted doorway inside Kahaila in combination with flowers in front suggests a thought train about the way bees see.

However, just like the egg yolk in cookie recipes, you cannot just remove it and produce the same sort of effect in the finished product. You need to understand what role the lead was playing in order to be able to substitute it properly and even then, the effect may not be as good as the original ingredient (without some tweaking elsewhere in the recipe also). Consequently a lot of research has been undertaken in order to find new piezoelectric materials and to understand them so as to optimise the piezoelectric effect. Partly this involves adding the new ingredients slowly to understand their role. Partly it involves changing the growth conditions (somewhat equivalent to the baking temperature) in the crystals that are made. Always it involves experimenting and understanding the role that different ingredients play in our final devices.

Research is still ongoing to find a good substitute for lead in piezoelectric devices. But it goes to show that there are many connections between diverse areas of our experience. Unlike research into piezoelectric materials though, the advantage in experimenting with cakes is that the test of the result is in the eating. Now to experiment with some biscuit recipes…

Kahaila is at 135 Brick Lane, E1 6SB

¹On Food and Cooking, the science and lore of the kitchen, Harold McGee