Ask me anything
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east coast apple crisp
last weekend i drove a few hours to a friends place in upstate new york for a bit of relaxation before hitting the big city. he works at a local U-pick apple orchard and we spent some time wandering through the halls of giant fruit laden apple trees, harvesting the best cortlands we could find to make a vegan apple crisp for a family meal. we got the recipe for the dish here and it was a total success. instead of using apple juice, we used some fresh pressed apple cider from the orchard, and we doubled the quantity of the crisp part, since thats my favourite part of the dish. im not a huge fan of warm fruit, but this fresh apple crisp was the bomb, especially on a cozy chilly rainy night in the woods.
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baking for twenty!
Last weekend the volunteer count at the farm where im staying increased dramatically which has thrown our food/meal system for a spin. Now, when we cook, its for 20, which can be a challenge. Today Kyle and i had a baking morning, where we made peanut butter and jelly cookies (recipe for the cookies here) and some carrot pumpkin apple muffins, which were an adaptation of my previously posted zucchini bread recipe. For each one we had to multiply the recipe by like 4, so we could bake half the batch to feed 20 and then freeze the other half, which is a good way to ensure youve got some fresh baked goodies on hand even when you dont have time to make something from scratch. all the non vegans here approved of todays vegan treats, naturally.
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rosemary french bread
i made bread! ok well, Kyle made bread and i helped. we’ve run out of bread on the farm and have to wait for a delivery later in the week, so the bread baking has begun. We made these two loaves to compliment a curried lentil stew and they were perfect and took very little time or effort, just a few flour mixings during the day. Im definitely interested in learning more about the world of bread baking. if you are too, the vegan dad baked his way through the Breadbakers Apprentice and veganized all the recipes and has alot of great posts about advanced vegan bread baking.
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bomb zucchini bread
the owner of the farm here buys everything in mega bulk sizes so this week we had like way too many zucchini and found a few creative ways to make use of it. we baked a loaf of zucchini apple bread and i was so surprised by how good it was. i found the recipe here and couldnt recommend it more.
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last weekend in berlin
this weekend was my last one in berlin (more on that later) so i did lots of sunshine funtime activities, but i also did a BUNCH of cooking. i finished off my new batch of TWIX bars (recipe coming soon), baked some pumpkin muffins from the PPK website, whipped up some garlic black bean burgers for my going away BBQ (that kind of look like cookies but definitely didnt taste like them), brunched on roasted potatoes with vegan sausages and mushroom gravy (not pictured), and finally baked some little chocolate muffin-cakes with raspberry frosting from Vegan with a Vengeance for my pal Brents birthday. goodbye kitchen! ill see you in the fall!
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snickers recipe
Once i conquered the salted caramels challenge i gave myself a few weeks ago, and ran across this overview of candy bar recipes on Chow.com, i felt like i was ready for some candy bar making! since the snickers rip offs were rated as the hardest i naturally started there. i basically just veganized their recipe, with some help in getting the vegan nougat right from this recipe, for vegan mars bars. Making your own snickers is the best, not just because its fun and challenge and vegan but also cause theyre sort of healthy, in comparison. I used mostly organic ingredients so instead of containing corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and “artificial flavour”, theyve got real vanilla, organic cane sugar, coconut milk, agave nectar, and dark chocolate. bonus.
heres the recipe i used for these little gems:
Nougat:
1 cup soymilk
4.5 ounces margarine
12 ounces sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
6 ounches dried soymilk powder
2 tablespoons smooth or crunch peanut butterAdd the milk, margarine and sugar into a thick bottomed saucepan and heat, without stirring, on a low heat until it bubbles all over and triples in size (much like making caramel if youve already done this once before) Keep at this heat for about 2 minutes at about 113 Celcius.
Cool. Add the vanilla essence and the dried soya milk and beat till creamy. pour into a 9 x 13 inch baking tray lined with parchment paper and cool in the fridge.
Caramel:
1 cup sugar- 3/4 cup coconut milk
- 1/2 cup agave nectar
- 4 tablespoons Margarine (1/2 stick)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups roasted salted peanuts
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients except peanuts and vanilla extract in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and place over medium-high heat. Stir mixture until sugar completely dissolves, about 2 minutes. Boil mixture, swirling pan occasionally (but not stirring), until syrup is at 120 Celcius, about 8 minutes (if it gets any hotter itll start to quickly turn a darker color and when it cools it will become hard, like a peanut brittle instead of caramel. if that happens, go with it, it kind of happened to me and it added a nice crunch to my candybars). Remove from heat and add peanuts and vanilla extract. Use spatula to pour onto the chilled nougat, and spread out as evenly as possible. Refrigerate.
Ok, so that was the hard part. now you just wait for the nougat caramel peanut mix to cool completely, then remove it from its 9 x 13 inch pan, cut it into snickers sized bars, and cover in chocolate. Couveture is super easy to get vegan (most brands are automatically vegan if you dont go for the milk chocolate version) and theres a tutorial on tempering chocolate here but i actually didnt have the proper thermometer so i didnt do this and my chocolate worked out regardless. I just melted the choco (still making sure it didnt get hotter than 47 Celcius, as chow recommends) took it off of heat, and dipped my snickers in, rolled them around, then set them on parchment to dry. Theyre best straight out of the freezer. enjoy!
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raspberry birthday cake
This weekend Hendriks mom came to town for her birthday to hang out and we made her a fancy cake! i dont usually mess with cakes cause ive never really been super impressed by vegan ones, but we gave it a try and it came out great… on the second try. the first recipe i used was one for cupcakes and it stayed super dense and after an hour of cooking it we gave up. the second recipe worked out much better and can be found here. the frosting is dead simple but we added fresh raspberries which gave it a very impressive pink color and a great berry taste, and we put a layer of raspberry jam in the center. i really like this cake cause its kind of scrappy looking and imperfect, it looks like something special that was made with luv.
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Pineapple upside down cake
while staring at pictures of food this week on the internet i was reminded of the existence of pineapple upside down cake. i havent thought about this cake for like 10 years but when i saw it, i had to have it. this dish is a little more wal-mart-esque than what im used to.. i mean, cooking with cocktail cherries and canned fruit? but i got into it real quick, and the recipe is vegan-ised really easily, its basically just a normal yellow cake with a trashy top. recipe as follows, if you can call it a recipe…
1 can pineapple rings
1 jar maraschino cherries
half cup brown subar
half cup vegan margarine1 cakes worth of vegan yellow cake batter
melt the margarine and brown sugar in a dry skillet. once margarine is melted and brown sugar is incorporated and mixture begins to bubble remove from heat and set aside to cool.
now mix the yellow cake batter and ready your chosen baking form by oiling and flouring the sides (but not the bottom, as thats where the brown sugar mixture gets poured).
to assemble the cake just place the rounds at the bottom of the baking form in a decorative manner, then fill the blank areas with maraschino cherries. you can also cut up some of the pineapple rounds and put them up the sides of the cake for extra pineapply goodness. once all the pineapple fun is over pour the liquid brown sugar mix over it all, then in goes the cake batter. Cook the cake as directed for the batter and pow! done!
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more cookies!
after my last posts cookies were baked i still had so much dough that i stuck it in the fridge for later. when i pulled the dough out today to bake the rest i thought id take advantage of the fact that the dough is chilled and bake the cookies in a different style.
while the dough is cold, roll a little ball of it in your hands and then drop it in a bowl of powdered sugar, then plop them on parchment paper and in the oven and bake as you would normally. The process has to happen kind of quickly or the oils in the dough will suck up all of the powdered sugar, as happened to most of my cookies, which makes the white areas less white and pretty.
in a perfect world theyll look like these beauties, and ofcourse taste great! -
choco choco chip
why are cookies so beautiful?
theyre like little tasty mountain ranges of chocolatey crunchy sweet goodness.
so much texture, so many peaks and valleys for my tastebuds to explore.
I made these little masterpieces from a recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance that for one reason or another completely failed me, so i had to freestyle and add some extra ingredients, which inspired me to throw some cocoa powder in the mix as well, transforming these guys from ‘chocolate chip cookies’ to the next level; chocolate chocolate chip cookies. thanks be to the cookie gods cause they worked out and produced some bomb ass results.
thanks cookie gods -
chili + choco chip cookies
last night i had some pals over to watch the season finale of real housewives of beverly hills (no shame) and for it i made a big pot of vegan chili and some “healthy” chocolate chip cookies.
the chili wasnt from a recipe and its pretty traditional but the one twist i was excited about was the addition of whole wheat berries. I had a bunch in my pantry from the rejuvelac process and i thought they would add a chewy nutty carb to the chili which it totally did, i highly recommend giving it a try.
the cookies are “healthy” because they contained rice flour instead of wheat flour, agave nectar instead of sugar and rapeseed oil instead of butter. theres also puffed amarinth, some oats, and sunflower seeds thrown in.
the original recipe can be found here. -
peppermint melting moments
i was wooed by this cookie recipe cause a: the cookies are green,and b: they (are supposed to be) little sandwiches, which is cute as hell.Maybe due to the miami weather or the brand of agave nectar i used, the frosting in the middle turned the melting moments into melting nightmares and i gave up on the sandwich concept.but the cookies alone are really great, theyre melty and crumbly and very peppermint-y.
original recipe here: http://fragrantvanillacake.blogspot.com/2010/12/minty-melting-moments.html
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