Recipe from Our Magical Kitchen: Vegan Pumpkin Pasties

If you’re like us here at the Protego Foundation, you’ve probably dreamed of riding the Hogwarts Express to Hogwarts and sampling some of the delicious food sold by the Trolley witch. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for our letter to Hogwarts to arrive (when is that darn thing going to get here?!), so for the time being we have come up with a recipe that will satisfy your Honeydukes-dreams while also utilizing ingredients that are kind to animals!

This recipe uses ingredients that have no animal products in them and are vegan, including the products that would ordinarily be made from milk. The reason why is because cows are abused and exploited on factory farms for their milk. Like humans, cows produce milk when they have babies. In order to keep milk flowing, farmers artificially inseminate cows every 6-9 months. Once the mother cows give birth, the babies are taken away—never to see their mothers again. If the baby is a girl, she will follow in her mom’s footsteps and be forced to give birth over and over. If the calf is a boy, he will be sold to the veal industry (which I think we can all agree is horrible). The mom is then hooked up to milking machines that suck her udders dry of the milk that would’ve been for her baby. For more info, click here.

Luckily, we have wonderful vegan milk-product alternatives that don’t contribute to this cruelty—from soy and almond, to hemp and coconut. You can get all of the delicious flavor of milk-based foods without the cruelty that comes with the dairy industry.

RECIPE:

Pasty Crust
-1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour or gluten-free baking flour
-1 tablespoon granulated sugar
-1/4 teaspoon salt
-5 tablespoons cold vegan butter, cut into chunks (Try Earth Balance Vegan Butter)
-3 tablespoons vegetable shortening, chilled and cut into chunks
-4-6 tablespoons ice water

Filling
-1 ½ cups canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling
-1/4 cup granulated sugar
-1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
-1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Place the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 3-4 times to mix all of the ingredients together. Place the chunks of vegan butter and vegetable shortening on top of the flour mixture. Pulse about 15 times until the mixture looks like coarse yellow meal with no white powdery bits.

2. Transfer the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of cold water over the mixture. Toss the mixture together with a spatula until it starts clumping together. If it’s too dry, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time (better too wet than too dry). Gather the dough into a ball and pat it down into a disk. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour.

3. Combine the pumpkin, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Mix well. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out the dough until it is 1/8 of an inch thick. Use a saucer or cutting tool to cut into 5-inch circles.

4. Put 1 to 2 tablespoons of pumpkin filling in the center of each circle of dough. Lightly moisten the edges with water, fold the dough over the filling, and crimp with a fork to seal the edges. Cut slits to make vents. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 30 minutes or until browned.

Makes about 7 pasties

Thanks to The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dinah Bucholz for inspiring this recipe.

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