Hello friends! So I know Christmas is over but despite it being almost mid-January, I’m still drooling over the delicious vegan and gluten free meal I had for Christmas. Although it was an effort to cook, it was more than worth it as the taste was reminiscent of pre-vegan and pre-gluten free Christmas meals. My family usually whips up a traditional English roast during Christmas so think: Yorkshire puddings with roasted beef, roasted vegetables, and semi-mushy peas, drenched in gravy. In 2019, I opted to roast a tofurkey but the taste was more tofu than turkey which is why in 2020, I promised myself to do Christmas right.

If you’re vegan and gluten free as I am then know that you, too, can devour an entirely plant-based meal with nostalgic Christmas flavours. Finding the perfect recipes took time, though, so to save you the hassle, I’ve compiled and linked the information below. The best part about these recipes is that each can be used year-round!

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If you couldn’t figure out what exactly I cooked, it’s vegan and gluten free Wellington, Yorkshire puddings, and gravy. My sister and I made the roasted vegetables together whereas my mum made the semi-mushy peas, using vegan artisanal butter from Butter Together (a local brand), and mushroom stuffing.

My go-to website for vegan recipes would be Vegan Richa as her recipes are consistently good unlike other websites. I’ve tried her meatloaf recipe and loved the taste so knew I would enjoy her Vegan Wellington recipe. I only tweaked it a little by using yellow lentils instead of brown lentils and by substituting orange carrots for purple carrots as for the Wellington to look more ‘meaty’. It’s a fairly simple recipe but the only problem was that it required puff pastry…

After scouring the internet, I found this puff pastry recipe that confirmed that puff pastry can be made vegan – wohoooooo! As it was my first time attempting to make puff pastry, I opted for this recipe in the end purely because a video was included. It literally took me hours to make because I added too much vegan coconut butter so needed to keep adding more GF flour until the texture became acceptable. The vegan Wellington (pictured above, next to the beef Wellington) may look dry and not puff pastry like but in reality it was incredibly flaky and buttery so adding more vegan butter was a good choice after all.

With the main meal sorted, I now just needed to figure out the sides: vegan and gluten free Yorkshire puddings and gravy. Again, a similar problem occurred – finding a gluten free recipe but it not being vegan. Luckily, after more digging, I discovered Healthy Living James. His vegan and GF Yorkshire pudding recipe was even approved by my mum, a Yorkshire pudding connoisseur. The only tip I’d add is to evenly distribute the batter as some Yorkies were more dense than fluffy. A sucker for click-throughs, I followed his vegan mushroom gravy recipe as I needed some sauce to drench my meal in, anyway. I made the vegan gravy with the intention to freeze half for later use but couldn’t resist and had it all during Christmas. Needless to say, my leftovers (pictured below) were gravy-less, oops!

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Although Christmas is more than 11 months away, why not indulge in a Wellington during a socially distanced get-together? Or add some Yorkshire puddings to your meals to switch it up? Gravy is definitely (almost) every meal friendly so if you feel you’re not ready for a Wellington or Yorkies just yet, do yourself a favour and try James’ vegan gravy recipe.

I hope that by sharing these recipes with you, your vegan and gluten free Christmas tastes as authentic as possible. Don’t forget to bookmark this page or the respective recipe pages for when Christmas finally rolls around!