Perfect for picnics, packed lunches and buffet tables these vegan sausage rolls are simple to make but SO full of flavour!

Vegan sausage rolls are the vegan snack of the moment right now.  Everyone (and by everyone I mean retailers and supermarkets as well as us food bloggers) are offering their own flaky pastry vegan version of a classic.  We’ve tried lots of them.  All in the name of research of course.

Most aren’t half bad.  Especially if you can snag one freshly baked and still warm.  Britain went into a mini meltdown when Greggs introduced their vegan sausage roll.  Mostly because it bore considerable resemblance to it’s non-vegan counterpart.  But to be honest, I was never really much of a fan of a sausage roll before I became vegan.  Much like sausages they always seemed either overly spiced or completely bland.  And we’ll not mention those strange gristly bits.

But like anything you make yourself, you know exactly what’s going in it.  There are some great recipes out there that have you simply wrapping a sausage in some puff pastry and baking it.  Perfectly acceptable.  I find most things are improved simply by enveloping in puff pastry 😉

But you’re then dependent on just the sausage for all the flavour.  And yep, there’s some pretty decent vegan sausages available now – I just wanted to be master of my own vegan sausage roll destiny and pack in as much flavour as possible.

We’ve got onion, garlic, mustard, smoked paprika, vegan cheese for a bit of tang, vegan cream cheese to help bind it all together and breadcrumbs for the bulk of the filling.  Don’t worry if you think they’re going to be mushy.  They’re a truly lovely texture and out of this world flavour.  Phil took a batch to his works fuddle* and they went down an absolute storm with all the confirmed carnivores there.

*Don’t worry I’d never heard of a fuddle either.  It means ‘food huddle’ and seems to just be a colloquial term for a buffet at work where people bring in their own food.  He also took this vegan chocolate pie and not a single person realised that it was mostly made with tofu 😉

How to make these vegan sausage rolls

There are a few steps but they’re all really simple:

• Gently saute the onions and garlic – this helps mellow but enrich the flavour
• Whizz up some bread into crumbs then whizz in the grated cheese, all the flavourings and your cooked onion and garlic
• Unfurl your pastry and divide into 3 equal strips
• Roughly divide your filling into 3 equal portions and shape into sausage shapes, laying it onto one end of each of the strips

• Roll the pastry over the filling into, er, sausage roll shapes!
• Glaze and bake
• And try not to burn your mouth because man alive the smell while these things cook.  They have me and Nooch sitting in front of the oven waiting patiently for them to bake to golden, crispy deliciousness.

The glaze I’ve used is almond milk with just a pinch or turmeric for that lovely sunny yellow colour.

Once you’ve made your sausage rolls you can keep them, unbaked, in the fridge for a few days.  They can be cooked fresh for a family picnic or cooked, cooled and packed into lunch boxes.  There’s also nothing wrong with having them on hand as an easy week night meal with some oven chips and baked beans (or even a crisp salad if you’re feeling fancy!)

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