Bittersweet

Last Sunday was bittersweet. My friends and I got together, which is always fun. It was a happy time because it was a birthday. It was a sad time because the birthday girl is moving home (Barbados) next week and will be missed.

For dinner, I brought the Fresh Mango Summer Rolls from Vegan With a Vengeance. For dessert, I brought a big fruit tart. She loves them, but they can make her sick because she's lactose intolerant, so she asked me to veganize them. I did:



First, I made Betty Crocker's Baked Pie Crust and sealed it with an apricot preserves glaze. I filled that with the pastry creme filling of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (yes, the stuff with the amazing, non-dissolving agar flakes. This time, I doubled the recipe and got the flakes dissolved in about an hour. That's comparatively no time) and topped that with kiwi, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and more glaze. Viola!

I was lazy about skinning the kiwi, so I just cut the sides off, not realizing it would leave me with rectangular kiwi slices. I felt really stupid, but put them on the tart anyway. My brother thought it was an intentional design and he liked it, so I played along.

No one brought candles, so here's everyone getting ready for the birthday girl to blow out the matches on her cake (store bought, non-vegan, red velvet) and tart:



The Fresh Mango Summer Rolls are very nice, but the Thai Peanut Sauce is really what makes them pop. I had to omit the cilantro, which undoubtedly left them a little less flavorful (and colorful) than they should have been, but they were still very nice. And I want to put the accompanying sauce (which is incredibly fast and easy to make) on everything.

Catching Up

Last week, I did a whole mess of cooking for the holiday of Shavuot (Jewish people celebrate being given the bible. It's customary not to eat meat because supposedly meat wasn't eaten until after we received the rules for kosherness in said bible). I was also commissioned to make my boss' birthday cake. I don't have any pictures of the holiday food, but here's the cake (frankly the best part anyway):



I tried to convince my family to go vegan for the holiday (it's only fifty hours), but it didn't work so well. One of the few things my mother actually cooks is a cheese dish that she only makes this time of year and she insisted on making it. Also, someone gave her a baked ziti, so she wanted to serve that. However, it turned out to be crap, so they stuck with her dish. I made the rest of the food for the holiday and it was all vegan.

Blintzes are traditional, so I made the Veganomicon crepes and made some of them into Potato-Mushroom Blintzes. My brother hates mushrooms, so I halved them and made plain potato blintzes as well. I also stuffed some with the Tofu Ricotta, also from Veganomicon. I made the Cherry Compote from Yellow Rose Recipes for dipping.

I love the Veganomicon crepes. I'd been nervous about making crepes because everyone always talks about how delicate and easy to ruin they are, but I had been practicing making them for something else and these are really easy. At first, I was annoyed that the batter had to be refrigerated for an hour before using it, but now I love that I can make the batter the night before I want to make the crepes and just get right down to the cooking when I'm eager to get down to the eating. I don't even have a crepe pan. I use a regular little non-stick pan and it works quite well.

The potato-mushroom filling is amazing. Everyone (except my brother) loved the blintzes. And he said his plain potato ones were some of the best he'd ever had. The filling couldn't be more simple, but it's one of those things that come out tasting very restauranty and people are impressed.

The Tofu Ricotta has the ricotta texture, but definitely not the taste. Everyone liked them, with the "This tastes nothing like cheese" caveat. To me, they taste strongly of nutritional yeast, so I was surprised my family liked them as much as they did (they liked them enough to honestly say they're enjoyable - they don't spare my feelings - but not enough to take seconds).

Making the blintzes themselves takes a bit of practice. I couldn't get a nice shape going, even at the end (I made about fifteen), but only one lost structural integrity and fell apart, so that's not too bad.

The Cherry Compote is very nice. My father has been putting it on everything. It's a bit more sour than I expected it to be, so I probably just used too much lemon juice. It went quite well with the cheese blintzes. I think I'll make it again next time I have a container of vegan ice cream in the house.

My mother requested something with eggplant in it, so I made the Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream, also from Veganomicon. Dudes, that pine nut cream is so rich and awesome and...creamy. I'm always amazed by the ability of nuts to act like dairy. It's so weird. This cream is double great because it doesn't require overnight soaking or anything like some of the other nut "dairy" recipes I've seen. If you don't like eggplant and zucchini and whatnot, just make the cream and put it on...everything. I also got many compliments on the sauce. The shallots make it stand out a bit from jarred stuff. And, of course, there's nothing to not like about eggplant, zucchini and potatoes, so this recipe is a total winner.

I also made Potato Spinach Wedges, a test recipe for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming brunch book. Isa describes them as knishes without the dough, and that's basically what they are. They're tasty and easy. It's great that you can just throw it in a baking dish and be done, instead of making little, individualized items.

Dessert is the most important part of any holiday and I didn't pull any punches. I made Pain Au Chocolat (another brunch tester), Chocolate Almond Cheezecake with Graham Cracker Crust from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook and Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie from Vegan With a Vengeance.

Everyone went nuts for the Pain Au Chocolat. I stuffed them with raspberries, strawberries and blackberries and served them warm. The chocolate oozed all over everyone's faces and made a wonderful mess. This dessert is wonderful and best eaten 1. warm and 2. with other people. Make them with a few different kinds of fruit, share them around and laugh at the chocolate on each other's faces.

The Chocolate Almond Cheezecake was sort of like a really firm chocolate pudding pie. A really good, a really firm chocolate pudding pie. Serving it with cherries somehow enhanced the almond flavor. It would probably go nicely with a vegan whipped cream, but I haven't mastered one of those yet.

The Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach Pie was amazing. It really hit the spot, serving it on the first hot days of the season. This was my first time having rhubarb and it really heightened all the other flavors. I love this pie. There have been requests to make it again and I will not hesitate to fill them.

Some of you may remember my birthday cake from last month. If you don't, that's OK because my boss and office manager did. It was Blackout the Forest Cake: a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance. They requested I make the exact same cake for the office celebration of my boss' birthday. Taking advantage of any opportunity to feed people yummy vegan food, I complied. The only change was to the decoration: I halved the cherries and removed the pits so people didn't have to spit while enjoying the cake. I liked how the stems looked like candles on my cake, but I think it was worth sacrificing that for the convenience of a spit-free party. Unfortunately, I made it and carried it to work when the temperature was over eighty degrees. Ganache doesn't like to behave at temperatures like that, so it looked a little funny, but everyone agreed the taste more than made up for it.

In Recovery

After all the baking I've been doing, when it came time to cook for this week, I wanted to make something fast and easy, to give myself time to recover. Healthy would be good too, but it wasn't a priority. I just wanted to get out of the kitchen before midnight, after the Mother's Day festivities (dinner and a movie - Iron Man. The whole family loved it, even my grandmother, who went in saying "I don't like that nonsense."). Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from Vegan With a Vengeance to the rescue.



If you have a food processor, the active prep time for this casserole is probably about ten minutes. But if you have one of these, don't use the slicing blade to slice the chives. You may have better luck with the S-blade, but I don't know. With the slicing blade, I ended up with really long, thin chives. And I left them that way. It's all good.

The hardest part of this was mashing all the chickpeas because I didn't use a large enough bowl. That's it. There isn't even a fancy spice blend (though I'm sure you could add it, if you wanted to). Just olive oil, vegetable broth and salt. I didn't even have to mince any garlic!

This is probably the healthiest tasting dish I've made from one of Isa's books. It tastes very good, but it sort of tastes like how you'd expect vegan food to taste, which is not what I expect from an Isa recipe. That said, with all the crap I've been eating lately, "health food" was a welcome change.

It's not the prettiest or fanciest of dishes, but it's filling (and healthy and easy) and that's good enough for me.

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the mothers reading this. And all the wannabe mothers. And all the people who have mothers. And everyone who likes mothers. Basically, I hope everyone had a nice Sunday.

My mother's birthday was also this weekend. As I mentioned in my birthday post, she loved my birthday cake (a little too much), so I made Blackout the Forest Cupcakes for her and my grandmother for Mother's Day/her birthday.

(Note: the post behind the cut is pretty image heavy; I was finally able to take some photos in daylight and may have gotten a little carried away.)



I started out with the same recipes I used for the cake, Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance, halving them and substituting cherries for raspberries. This yielded ten cupcakes. One could probably get eleven out of it, but I tend to overfill.

The cross-hatching on some of the cupcakes is neither functional nor decorative. I just dropped them upside down on the cooling rack.



Next, I cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake, trying to keep the removed part as tidy as possible, so it could be replaced neatly:



Then I filled the hole partway with the cherry layer:



Topped that with ganache:



Topped that with the bits of the cupcakes I'd cut out earlier (trimmed down for a neater fit - and so I had something to snack on):



Then the cupcakes went in the fridge until the ganache hardened and I could be pretty certain nothing would fall off when I turned the cupcakes upside down. Once they were cooled, I covered them with cherry preserves. I covered the full size cake with more of the cherry layer I made, but I didn't think the cupcakes would be able to accommodate the lumpiness of the cherries and still look nice:



I dipped each cupcake in the still warm ganache:



Then the cupcakes went back in the fridge, joined by the ganache, so it could harden. When it was firm, I used the icing to pipe ganache-y os on the cupcakes:



That was topped with chocolate covered cherries, and when I ran out of cherries, a truffle made from leftover ganache:



The money shot:




Loads of extra pictures:

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday, and in honor of that most auspicious of occasions, I baked a cake and brought it to work for my office birthday party on Thursday. I call it Blackout the Forest Cake because it's sort of like a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance.



I started out making the Raspberry Blackout Cake, substituting cherry preserves for raspberry:



Instead of topping it with more cherry preserves, I made the raspberry layer from the Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars, substituting frozen cherries for raspberries:



All that was topped with ganache:



Then another cake and more cherries. When I moved the second cake from the cooling rack to the cake, it ripped about halfway down and I nearly shit my pants. Thankfully, all the toppings covered it up quite nicely and no one could tell:



Then, the whole thing was frosted with ganache and refrigerated along with the remaining topping to firm it up to a spreadable and pipeable consistency:



I also dipped some fresh cherries in the ganache for decoration. I kept the stems on because I thought they kind of looked like birthday candles, and because it made them easier to dip. To get a good layer of chocolate on them, I dipped them, refrigerated them, dipped them again and put them back in the fridge until it was time to use them:



I'm not so great at frosting cakes yet, so I wasn't able to completely hide the seam between the cakes when I poured on the ganache. I managed to cover the seam with the refrigerated ganache, but it didn't come out as smooth as I'd hoped. I guess I just need practice (the top isn't so smooth either, but that's to be expected with the cherry chunks on it).

The next thing I did was pipe chocolate circles onto the cake wherever I wanted to place the fresh cherries. I think of them as "Ganache-y Os":



Then I pressed the chocolate covered cherries into the ganache-y os:



I probably should have done the cake assembly and decoration on the base of my cake carrier, but I didn't because I'm not so smart. I also made the even less smart move of covering my carrier with parchment paper, so that when I piped around the base of the cake, I wouldn't be doing it directly onto the carrier. Moving the cake from the cutting board to the carrier was a nightmare. I really thought I was going to wreck the whole thing. The sides ripped significantly, but I was able to hide it with icing. Then I piped a border on the top and bottom of the cake:



Thanks to the stupid parchment, the cake slid around the carrier throughout my commute (bus, train and 20-minute walk) and I thought it would certainly be ruined by the time I got to work. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, it didn't turn out too bad; the trim is just a little flat. Here's a shot of the inside:



The cake went over very well, with two people having seconds and one attempting to steal one of the pieces saved for absentees.

Since I'd never made a cake like this before, I did half a test cake last weekend by baking one cake, cutting it in half and layering the two halves instead of layering two cakes:



Here's a shot of the cherry and chocolate layers:



My family loved the testcake so much I knew it'd be good enough for my coworkers. Actually, my mother loved it a little too much: my father had to make her back away from the table and when no one was looking, she rushed the cake and took a second piece (part of a piece I was saving for a friend). She's been talking about the cake all week, so I'm in the process of turning it into cupcakes for Mother's Day (literally in the process; I'm typing this while the ganache is cooling in the fridge). If the cupcakes turn out half as well as the cake did, it will be a happy Mother's Day indeed.

This is How I Roll

I figure if I keep using that joke, someone is bound to find it funny, sooner or later.

Right?

Whatever. Even if you don't share my sense of humor, I bet you want to share my Veganomicon Home-Style Potato Rolls.



I was really nervous about making these because they were my first time working with yeast. I thought something would go wrong for sure and I'd end up with flat, hard non-rolls. And if that was the case, I wouldn't be able to make sandwiches and I'd just have to go hungry all week. Or something.

Luckily, everything went well and I now have two dozen tasty potato rolls (well, probably 20ish, by now). I didn't think the cupcake shape would be conducive to sandwich making, but didn't know if the rolls would come out OK if I just put them on a baking sheet, so I did half in the pan like the instructions said and half straight on a sheet. I also braided three to see if I could make challah rolls out of them. That didn't go over so well, but the cupcaked and flat rolls are both great.

The recipe is very easy to follow, but I had to use way more flour than indicated to get the dough to stop sticking to my hands and dough mat. And these aren't like the Vegan With a Vengeance biscuits that you can make really quick, if you're feeling sort of bready. The dough needs to sit two hours before being formed into rolls, then another 30ish minutes in the cupcake pans, then they bake for 30ish minutes. That's not including the time you spend actually working on them. They're well worth the time spent, though (and you can go out and do whatever you want while they're sitting around rising; it's not like you have to watch them the whole time).

Before they hit the oven:



The cupcaked rolls, minus a "tester":



All the rolls. The semi-failed attempts at challah are at the top:

Passover, Post the Fourth

What the hell does a vegan put on matzo? If you're me, everything.

Cream cheese was always my go-to matzo spread, but that's no longer an option. Peanut butter is out, so I tried almond butter this year but didn't really care for it (I don't like peanut butter either). Jelly made it a little better (less sticky), but I still didn't like it much, so I thought it'd be best to make my own spread and decided on the Roasted Garlic Artichoke Spread with Fresh Oregano from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Here's a picture of it on it's way into my belly:



As written, the dish should take about an hour to make and should yield great, garlicky, artichokey goodness. But I couldn't find canned artichoke hearts that were kosher for Passover (and didn't even know they can be bought frozen), so I bought ten fresh artichokes and had to prep them before making the spread.

I used this page as a guideline to prepping my artichokes, putting about half a lemon, two crushed garlic cloves and a few shakes of dried parsley in the steamer water. I was using a relatively shallow pot, so the lid was slightly ajar, filling the whole house with the fragrance of the steam. I think I should keep a pot of that on the stove at all times. Seriously. It's such a great aroma.

After they steamed for 35 minutes, I pulled off all the leaves (it didn't occur to me until I was writing this to stick them in cold water before doing that, so it was slow going since I kept dropping the hot artichokes back into the bowl), set them aside to eat tomorrow, chopped up the hearts and made the spread.



Delicious? Indubitably. Spread? Not so much. It'd make a great pizza topping (there's something very pizza-esque about the taste; I think it's the dried oregano), but doesn't really stick to things like matzo, and I wanted a spread, dammit, so I broke out the potato masher and smashed the crap out of the artichoke pieces. Viola! Instead spread.

The next day, I broke out my copy of Vegan With a Vengeance and made the Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Toasted Garlic, which was super easy and fast to make, even when I left the sprouts in the oven a longer than suggested because I like everything super well done. I thought they'd get brown, but they didn't. Weird.



They taste good, but slightly bitter and horseradishy. Maybe that's because they'd been sitting in my fridge for a while, or I just didn't cook them long enough. I'll be reheating them in the oven before I eat them next, so they'll get a bit more cook time (and brownness) that way. As they are, I don't think I'd eat a bowl full of them alone (unlike the Cornmeal-Masala Roasted Brussels Sprouts from Veganomicon), but they'll be great with dinner tonight. They're also great on matzo, over the Roasted Garlic Artichoke Spread.



It's quite possible that this may be my last Passover post (four posts for eight days - not bad), but I'm not sure yet, so I'll leave you with the suspense of not knowing. Ha!

Passover, Post the First

According to Gothamist, hospitals see "an uptick in total patient volume during Passover...[largely due to] Dizziness from [cleaning] fumes, slips from highly buffed floors or wet bathroom tiles...knife wounds from cutting food, burns from stovetops, and even fingers chopped up in blenders." I only have two cuts and a burn, so I consider myself lucky. Doubly lucky since I did most of my cooking while half asleep.

I'm a sabbath observer, so I had to make sure most of my Passover food was ready by Friday night. I took Friday off from work and started my food prep Wednesday night. And, like all responsible people would, went to see Colin Meloy Thursday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg (side note: he is the cutest thing on two feet. I stood there the whole time wishing I'd baked him cookies). Due to transport issues and my inability to shut up and leave when I'm hanging out with friends, I got home at 2 AM. In case that wasn't bad enough, my mother was still in the kitchen, so I wasn't able to get to work until 3. I ended up not sleeping at all until after dinner Friday night. Oy vey!



Almost every recipe I picked for the holiday used vegetable broth or stock, so the first thing I had to do was make the vegetable broth. Naturally, I made the one from Vegan With a Vengeance. It's such a staple in our house that even my mother made a double batch of it to feed the family and to use in all her cooking (Wednesday night was dedicated to chopping vegetables for all the broth). You'd think after making the broth over a dozen times, I'd be able to make it without screwing it up, right? Wrong. Somehow, I'm unable to tell the difference between parsley and cilantro and ended up accidentally substituting the latter for the former. I didn't even realize it until it was time to use the cilantro in another dish and I didn't have any. D'oh! Thankfully, I like cilantro, and I was just using the broth as an ingredient, not eating it straight, so it didn't make a huge difference when combined with the other ingredients in my dishes.

While that was simmering for 90 minutes, I grabbed Tofu Mom's recipe and made matzo balls. Lots of lots of matzo balls.



And started the crust and the filling for my Raw Apple Pie. I don't have a Passover blender or food processor, just a Smart Chopper, and trying to do all those dates in there nearly made me want to stick my head in next. I hate that thing. Definitely getting something better for next year. But I got it done and had plenty of time to let the filling soak and the crust firm up in the fridge. I tried to get all decorative with a flower in the middle and some golden raisins to garnish, but I don't think it worked so well. It didn't really matter since it completely fell apart when we cut into it, but it was still tasty, which is the most important part.



And I prepped my portobello mushrooms, prepared my marinade and put everything together for Yellow Rose Recipes' grilled portobellos. It was so easy to put together that I forgot I don't have a grill pan for Passover. I decided to roast them instead, after they marinated for 24 hours.



While I'm on the subject of Yellow Rose Recipes, I need to talk about the Braised Cauliflower. I know I say this about everything, but it's really the easiest recipe ever. The aroma when the cauliflower was cooking in the margarine was amazing. My mother kept asking what was in the pan and refused to believe it was just cauliflower and margarine. I was almost disappointed when I added the broth and everything started smelling like it instead of yummy, popcorny, cauliflower. As the broth cooked off, the fragrance came back, better than ever, and joy was had. My family really enjoyed this. It's a side dish that's so simple it compliments everything. Even my grandmother ate one floret and deemed it good. She never eats vegetables, so that's high praise indeed.



I wanted to make the Indian variation of the Yellow Rose Recipes Green-Wa, but couldn't find kosher for Passover curry powder. Instead, I found this handy guide to making your own spice blend that could be deemed "close enough" by some people. Those people don't include me. Not because I'm so discerning, but because I only had red pepper flakes and no matter how much grinding I did with my new mortar and pestle, I just couldn't powder them.



I used that "curry powder", substituted the coconut milk for the soy yogurt and was about to start chopping my herbs for the Green-Wa, when lo and behold! I didn't have any cilantro! Oh yeah, it was all in the soup. So I chopped up the parsley and stuck that in the quinoa instead. And I completely forgot to even add the curry powder until the very last step. I made numerous mistakes with this recipe, but it's very forgiving. The current dish is somehow almost bland, in a good way, but still burns my tongue. My brother ate loads of it; he especially liked putting it on chicken. I can't say I love the recipe as I made it, but it gave me an idea of how it would taste if I didn't completely screw it up. Will definitely try again when I'm not completely out of it.



The last thing I made before the sun set on me was Herb Roasted Potatoes from Vegan With a Vengeance. Holy crap, those are good! I took the time to chop my herbs up nice and fine and got them really well done and my family went crazy for them. Even my grandmother ate a significant portion of them, and usually just looking at spices gives her "agita", and my brother didn't even pick out the onions. Victory!



A couple more pictures from Day One:






Stay tuned for Passover Cooking: Day Two!

Lucky, Lucky, Youre So Lucky

OK, I don't actually know if you're lucky or not (though I hope you are!), but some would consider my friend Lauren lucky because I baked Franz Ferdinand (the band, not the archduke) themed Fauxstess cupcakes, from Vegan With a Vengeance, for her birthday.




This was my second time making the Fauxstess cupcakes and I encountered the same problem I did the first time: I can't get the damn royal icing for the squigglies right.

For some reason, the "red" came out great, but the green just wouldn't loosen up. Even though I skipped the soy milk powder this time. I kept adding water and it just went right on being thick. I ended up giving up, picking the icing out of the pastry bag with my fingers, rolling it like clay and pressing it onto the cupcake tops.

Also, the icing that's not green was made using the food coloring called "Red Red". I don't know who those Wilton people think they're fooling, because that's pink pink.

I finally got to taste one of them this time. SO CHOCOLATEY. Needs more filling, though. Next time, I'm going to try making the hole with my thumb instead of my pinky, so there's more room.

There will certainly be a next time.



The restaurant was nice enough to provide a candle:



Mmmm...creamy filling.

Muffin Tops

Have I ever mentioned that any gathering of four or more people is an excuse for me to bake? It is. So when my friends and I got together to teach other to knit and make blankets for charity, I simply had to bring something. I'd never made muffins before, so I decided that was the way to go and ended up with the Best Pumpkin Muffins from Vegan With a Vengeance. If they weren't actually the best pumpkin muffins, it's only because I don't have proper muffinning skills yet.



I made these muffins twice: once for the knitting and once for my grandmother; she loves pumpkin and I had half a can left over.

The first time I made them, I left them in about ten minutes longer than the recipe indicated and they were still quite underdone. They tasted fine, but were chewy on the inside. I brought them to the party anyway, because it wasn't like there were eggs or anything in them that could make people sick.

The second time, I left them in forty extra minutes and they were overdone. Not burnt, just very well done. My family loved them (they love everything borderline burnt). The above picture is from the second batch.

The recipe was really easy and really tasty. For some reason, my oven just isn't very compatible with muffins, I guess (the cook times for other recipes from the same book are usually spot on and my oven timer was fine). There's only one solution to that: practice, practice practice!

Anyone care for a muffin or five?

First try:





Second try:

Any Excuse to Bake

One of my friends recently moved into his first NYC apartment. This meant a housewarming party. This meant baking. Behold Strawberry-Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Veganomicon.



As written, these are supposed to be Raspberry-Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars, but I've been reading articles about raspberry insect infestations and bugs are neither kosher nor vegan, so I went with strawberries instead.

These things are great because even without taking the jam shortcut, they were easy and fast enough to make at midnight after a concert (Ambulance LTD is doing a residency at Union Hall under the name Impervious. Two dates left: 1/31 and 2/7. Be there!). There's no blender, food processor or beaters required either, so they can be made quietly in the middle of the night, too.

These made me kind of nervous because I like everything really well done, so I left them in the oven significantly longer than indicated in the recipe because I wanted them to get brown...even though blondies aren't usually all that brown. Despite that, when I cut them into bars, they were still so gooey I thought they might be underdone. Before bringing them to the party, we had taste tests at home. They definitely didn't taste raw! They tasted like sweet chocolate strawberry goodness. People at the party seemed to like them too, which was cool since it was almost all omnis. I believe we can call these bars a success.

Hooray for yummy baked goods that aren't cupcakes!

Happy Holidays! Kinda.

Like all normal people, my friends and I had our gift-giving-holiday get together on Sunday, January 13. This year, all of my gifts were homemade (baked or knit - I forgot to photograph the knit. I suck). But you can still behold the baked goods in all their questionable glory:



First, I made two dozen Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and one dozen Fauxstess Cupcakes from Vegan With a Vengeance:



Then the fun began.

Fauxstess cupcakes are so fun to make. Once they're cool, you poke a hole in them with your finger and pipe it full of fluffy frosting. If you're me, you fill some of them with pink fluffy frosting.



Then you dip them in warm ganache, which I believe is French for chocolategasm.



Then it's time to turn the cupcakes into records. Using a small, circular thing I found at NY Cake Supplies which may or may not be a cookie cutter, I cut a hole in the ganache and scraped it off. In two cases, I cut a little too deeply and removed some cupcake too. It was tasty. I replaced the disc of ganache with a disc of colored marzipan: the label.



Then I used royal icing to write the band names on the labels and to do the regular Fauxstess squigglies. My royal icing was WAY to thick and I had a lot of difficulty getting it to pipe. All my lettering was completely illegible. So I added water when I added the pink food coloring, scraped off the old letters and rewrote the names. The icing was too runny, and the letters were all over the place. But I was at the end of my tether, so I decided to leave them alone and translate if necessary (for the curious, they say !!!, Interpol, The Beatles, CYHSY [Clap Your Hands Say Yeah], Ben Folds and Ambulance [LTD]). I also used dabs of ganache to make the spindles.



The first half dozen Crimson Velveteen cupcakes were for my friend who loves red velvet (and sweets in general), so I topped them with a brightly colored swirl of Old Fashioned Velveteen Icing from VCTOTW and silver dragees.





The next set of Velveteens were for someone who loves Star Wars, so I dyed the icing and some marzipan green and made Yoda cupcakes. They came out way better than I expected them to and made me very happy.





The next set were for one of the people who taught me to knit, so I stole VeganYumYum's knit cupcakes idea. Unfortunately, her site was down when I was working on these and I'd only printed out the pictures, so I didn't know how to keep the marzipan from cracking. Fail. These and the vinyl took the most time. The vinyl because I think I spent two hours just fucking around with the royal icing and these because I had trouble getting the marzipan to stick to itself and stand the way I wanted it to (I ended up making little marzipan "pillows" to hold up the fabricy looking pieces).

To get all of these done before our party, I actually ended up baking and cooking through the night. While I was working on one of these knit cupcakes, I realized it was after 10 AM, I hadn't been to bed and I still had gingerbread to decorate. Guess which cupcake I was working on when the realization hit:



A work-in-progress in an ugly colorway:



A ball of yarn:



A fringed scarf:



Yarngut:



Ball of yarn with needles:



Lastly, I made gingerbread hipsters with the recipe from The PPK. When I made a test batch of gingerbread, I used an eight inch cookie cutter which made gingerbread men the size of small children. Seriously. The heads were bigger than my fist. Awesome as that was, I wanted something slightly smaller for this, so I got a five inch cookie cutter. It worked much better.

I had hoped to decorate these in loads of different colors and get all fancy and detailed, but I was tired, my icing was runny and my brain wasn't working, so I ran out of cliches after about two. Damn. I suck.



Left to right:
Top row: asymmetrical hair and a stud belt, fauxhawk and eyeliner abuse, asymmetrical hair and bling, a MisShape.
Middle row: obscure band t-shirt, sideburns and what may be pinstripe pants, asymmetrical hair and stud belt, I don't know what the last one started out as, but now I think it's a bald Carlos D.
Bottom row: my Chucks failed so they became Uggs. I think the last speaks for itself.

Despite how sloppy and unprofessional the cupcakes and cookies looked, everyone seemed to like them, and that's what counts. I received many a food-related gift this holiday season and look forward to using them to make food for others (especially if I'm baking. Everyone but me should eat the baking!).

Chili Wili

It currently feels like 7 degrees in NYC. I'm fucking cold. Obviously, the only things to be eaten in this weather are soups, stews and (now) chilis. My copy of Yellow Rose Recipes came a couple of weeks ago and the first recipes I tried were the Better Than Basic Chili and Buttermilk Biscuits.



I know the proper accompaniment for chili is cornbread, but biscuits are like gold in my house, so as soon as I saw the recipe, I knew I had to try it.

Before this, I don't think I'd ever really had chili. I stopped eating meat when I was around 13 and was a fan of neither beans nor spicy food before then. I wasn't even much of a fan of them after I stopped eating meat. I didn't really get into beans until a few years ago, and even then, if they looked funny, I wouldn't go near them. I made this chili because my mother asked me too. Yes, my omni mother asked me to make vegan chili.

This recipe couldn't be easier to make. It has a jalapeño pepper in it, so I thought it was going to be too spicy and I was going to cry, but it had just enough bite for me to call it "hot", without actually being uncomfortable. The onions are added in two parts: one in the beginning, to flavor everything, and one at the end to add crunch. The crunchy onions rule.

Yellow Rose Recipes has two chili recipes in it. This one, and one that calls for TVP. I was out in the suburbs when I decided to make the chili, so TVP was out of the question, hence I went with this chili. But I know my mother likes her chili meaty and "gets a kick out of" the meat substitutes, so I kind of cheated and pinched in a package of Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style. And I really did feel like a cheater. I had to tell every person that tasted it that the "meat" was store bought and ask if it seemed too "fake", like it was trying too hard because of the meat. What have I become?!

I LOVED the chili, but here's the big test: What did the omnis think?

Dad: Took one bite (was going out to dinner), grinned and exclaimed "Meat is overrated. This is damn good chili!"
Mom: Took one bite (was going out to dinner). "This is damn good chili!"
Brother: Ate a giant bowl of it. "I don't need Dougies anymore! If you learn to make Fire Slammers, I'll pay you!"
Three friends: All ate hearty portions and said it was good. One thought it should be spicier, but I made it and I'm a wuss.

There you have it. Not a single complaint about the lack of meat.

The biscuits went over really well too. I think I like them even better than the Baking Powder Biscuits from VWAV. These are butterier, more flavorful and also a bit more moist, I think. But that's kind of to be expected when they're called "Buttermilk," not "Baking Powder." Right? Right.

Victory!

Kinda.

I completely ruined the matzo ball recipe from VWAV last month. Last week, it was finally time for a rematch.

I took the advice of Jewish Vegan and Isa and made smaller balls over lower heat. I also used a food processor instead of a blender this time. It worked! They stayed solid! The masses rejoiced!

They still weren't as firm as my family likes them, but it's a start. Next time, I'll add an extra dash of matzo meal.

Before and after (not that you can really tell much of a difference at this resolution. Higher res at my Flickr):

Beets Dont Fail Me Now!

I once said beets freak me out and challenged myself to try them this month, so I did. I made the Autumn Latkes (page 53) with Horseradish-Dill Sour Cream (page 208) from Veganomicon, with a side of Sauteed Beet Greens.



I knew beets would be an adventure from the time I picked them up at Whole Foods: they were wet and muddy and pretty damn gross. I try to use as few plastic bags as possible when I shop, but I had to bag them all by themselves to keep everything else from getting filthy.

Despite their drippy nature, they didn't smell or anything, which was awesome...until I rinsed them off and started to peel them. As soon as the peel broke, I smelled garden (to put it nicely, or dirt if you want to be blunt). That kind of freaked me out because it meant the smell was coming from the beet itself, not the dirt or the peel and they'd therefore taste like shit (logic!). Thankfully, they didn't smell dirty enough to make me give up on my cooking plans for the day.

Autumn Latkes (AKA Beet Cakes): YUM! I don't own a food processor, so I had to shred the beets, carrots and sweet potato and chop the shallots by hand. Ow. Each beet took a little under fifteen minutes to shred and the other things were even faster, but it was still unpleasant. After that, the recipe went smoothly and was done pretty quickly.

This was my first time frying since I started all this cooking stuff and I was shocked by the amount of oil (and paper towels) I used. I ended up having to pour some down the sink when I was done, which made me feel wasteful, but better in the sink than in my belly!

The sweetness of the beets is countered really nicely by the fennel (which I don't think I chopped small enough for my taste) and frying them with the exact timing indicated in the book gave the latkes really crispy edges and nice, chewy centers (just how I like them). I still have one beet and most of the other ingredients left, so I think I may do a half batch baked this weekend.

Horseradish-Dill Sour Cream: Not my favorite thing I've made so far. It's OK, but I think I may not have used enough dill because it had started to turn. Despite the fact that this doesn't really count as giving it a fair chance, I don't think I'll make it again, just because I'm kind of meh about horseradish, like dill and hate sour cream. There's nothing about this recipe that made me jump up and think I needed it ASAP; I just made it because it was recommended with the latkes.

Sauteed Beet Greens: I don't think it's possible to go wrong with greens, garlic, onion and olive oil, do you?

Autumn Latkes, AKA Beet Cakes:

Makes about 2 dozen beet cakes

I serve these with an apple chutney or horse radish sauce but I don’t have those recipes handy, I just wing it so make up an apple sauce (the roasted apple sauce in VwaV will do nicely) or serve with apple sauce or tofu sour cream. I also sauté the beet greens in sherry and garlic. Yums.

2 cups peeled shredded beets, (about 3 average sized beets)
1 cup peeled shredded carrot (about 1 average sized carrot)
1 cup peeled shredded sweet potato (you guessed it, 1 average sized sweet potato)
1 shallot, finely chopped (about ¼ cup)
½ cup flour
¼ cup corn starch
½ teaspoon salt
several dashes fresh black pepper
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, chopped
1/4 cup water
Olive oil for pan frying

Combine the shredded veggies in a large mixing bowl and mix them up. Add the onion and combine. Add the corn starch, flour, salt, black pepper and fennel seeds. Use a wooden spoon to combine everything, the flour should coat all the veggies. Add the water and combine again, until all the flour is dissolved.

Preheat a heavy bottomed non-stick or cast iron skillet on the low side of medium high heat. Add about ¼ inch layer of oil. Let the oil heat up for about 2 minutes.

Form the beet mixture into quarter sized balls, then flatten out into 1 ½ inch medallions. Add to the oil, and fry for 5 minutes, flip the beet cake, flatten a bit with the spatula and fry for another 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel or paper bag to drain. Serve!

Sauteed Beet Greens

1 bunch beet greens
2 tablespoons oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped onion
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and onion, and cook for a minute. Tear the beet greens into 2 to 3 inch pieces, and add them to the skillet. Cook and stir until greens are wilted and tender. Season with salt and pepper.

My shredded and chopped vegetables. Oh how stratified!



Shiny, garlicy greens:

Flesh-Free Friday

I may want to revisit Thanksgiving at some point and write a bit about how that all went down (quite well), but at the moment I want to write about a tradition my family started this year: Flesh-Free Friday. From now on, my immediate family will go vegan for the Friday after Thanksgiving (I will do all the cooking, obviously). This time, we brunched on three dishes from Vegan With a Vengeance: Asparagus, Olive and Mushroom Frittata (page 14), Baking Powder Biscuits (page 26) and Tempeh Bacon (page 23). We dined on two from Veganomicon: Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons (page 81) and Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans (page 137). We obviously love garlic.



My mother loves biscuits. Almost more than she loves her children. When I first started cooking and baking, her reaction was almost "Pretty cupcakes are great. Yeah. Whatever. Can you make biscuits?" So when we decided we were all going to finally sit down and have a vegan meal together, I knew I had to include biscuits. She loved these babies before they even went in the oven. She just sniffed the raw dough and deemed them worthy (by comparing them to a memory of the Pillsbury dough, I believe). By the time they were ready to come out of the oven, she and my brother were practically dancing around in front of it waiting. They weren't disappointed. She said these fulfilled her biscuit craving perfectly, while my brother deemed them "professional quality". My father liked them as well.

Not only are they tasty but the texture came out absolutely perfect and they're so easy to make they're almost impossible to mess up. Fast, too. And you don't need a food processor or blender or anything. I think I'm going to make them with whole wheat flour soon (I like to follow recipes exactly the first time I make them, if possible).

Tempeh isn't bacon. However, after being marinated per the VWAV instructions, it's damn tasty. It's also thick, chewy and definitely "meaty". Almost the entire plateful disappeared before I finished making the frittata!

Speaking of the frittata, I lost my tumeric so I made it without. I also kept it in the oven quite a bit longer than indicated. I baked it in Pyrex and just kept it in the oven until bubbles stopped coming up the sides. My family likes things very well done. So well done that I have a friend who used to joke that because of how I prepared food, he thought the only way to give kosher, vegetarian food flavor was to burn it.

I made it with asparagus, fresh cremini mushrooms and black olives. My brother is deathly afraid of mushrooms, but he finished his portion anyway. He said it was the first thing I'd made that wasn't fantastic (but it was still edible, so I consider that a victory). My father said it was a winner (it was his first time eating olives) and my mother loved it and would like to eat it again.

Just like with the biscuits, the bacon and frittata are incredibly easy to make (but take a bit more time) in addition to tasting fabulous. It's the sort of food that people will assume you totally stressed out over, which earns you points when you don't feel like taking out the trash.

My brother loves Caesar salad almost as much as my mother loves biscuits. He's had it in so many different places, I consider him a bit of a connoisseur on the subject. He loved the strong dressing and the spicy croutons, doing everything but lick his plate to get the last of it. My mother is still raving about the croutons. I'm just angry at myself for serving it with romaine lettuce only; my spinach was old and I thought my arugala was basil.

I've already discussed the soup, so I won't go into much about that here, but just know that my family absolutely inhaled it. I swear, I dished out the soup, blinked, turned around and all the bowls were empty and mouths were smiling.

So yeah, if you're ever looking for a few easy, omni-approved vegan recipes, look no further. Here's your salad, your soup, your protein and your carb, all in one place (well, two books, really).

Seventeen biscuits go into the oven:



I take them out, blink and there are fourteen left:



Bacon:



Extremely well done frittata:



Mmmmmm....croutons:

Seitan Said Survey

Thanksgiving may be over, but I'm still cooking more than ever before. I have a mteric assload of vegetables to shred without a food processor tonight (I'm making the Autumn Latkes from Veganomicon), so instead of taking time to upload pictures and write real things, I give you the Food Snobbery survey (and apologies for not writing anything yesterday; when the sun sets early and I'm cooking all day, there's no time to blog before the sabbath!).

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

I never drank milk, so I haven't really tried many non-dairy milks. Most recipes I make call for soy milk and Silk is the easiest to find, so I usually get that, so I guess that's my answer.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

a - Autumn Latkes

b - Mac Daddy, also from Veganomicon

c - I think it's time for jerky, AKA left over tofu + an experimental marinade + my dehydrator = an accident waiting to happen.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

I like it plain.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

I haven't had any serious disasters yet, unless you count things that are ready about six hours after I expect them to be. The thing that's come out the worst so far would probably be the VWAV matzo balls, though.

5. Favorite pickled item?

Cucumbers! (Yes, I'm boring)

6. How do you organize your recipes?

An email draft full of links.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

Trash.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

Jerquee, bread and....something sweet. Cupcakes? Cupcakes.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?

Finally getting to order food for myself at a fancy restaurant. I wanted fettucini alfredo and asked for "fettucini al-scaredo" (alfredo sounds like afraido in Brooklynese).

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

I've only had Tofutti. It's OK.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

Blender. Makes me think I maybe don't need a food processor.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

Garlic.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

Jewish Vegetarian Cooking by Rose Friedman. Have never used it.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Strawberry, I think.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

Tofu Pumpkin Pie.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

Tofu. I still haven't tried to cook seitan (which is stupid since it's in my blog name, I know. Sorry).

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

Brunch.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

Asparagus and onions.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

A tofurkey, leftover VWAV vegetable broth and leftover Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans from Veganomicon.

20. What’s on your grocery list?

Tumeric, black cocoa powder, soy milk powder and golden raisins.

21. Favorite grocery store?

Sunac in Williamsburg.

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

After reading this, egg rolls.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?

I kind of go with ones with easy to remember names, so I check Fat Free Vegan, Vegan Chicks Rock and VeganYumYum nearly (and sometimes more than) daily.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?

Any!

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?

McClure's pickles. $12 for a jar of pickles! I will use everything in that jar (and the jar itself), I swears it!

26. How did you get so pretty?

That's how my mommy and daddy made me! (Note: that's the actual answer I used to give when I was little and people asked me how I got so smart).

Babys First Failure

I've finally done it. I took a perfectly good recipe and completely fucked it up.

Tuesday night, I attempted to make Vegan Matzo Balls for my family's Friday night soup.

As far as I know, I did everything according to the instructions. I did all the blending and pureeing in a blender. I did all the mixing with a silicon spatula. I covered my bowl with saran wrap and let it refrigerate for an hour. I put all the balls on a parchment-covered cutting board and dropped them in one by one using a slotted spoon (when doing the non-vegan balls, we just use our hands, not a blender, maybe a fork for the initial mixing, the batter just sits out at room temperature for twenty minutes to firm up and we drop the balls into the boiling water by hand as we make them). The only way I varied from the instructions was to make them a bit larger than written.

Unfortunately, the photos don't tell you where I goofed:



The whole ball-making process went fine. They even floated up to the top of the pot when I removed the lid, then sank again just like the VWAV said they would, which I thought was a good sign. Yet when it came time to take them out of the water, they were seriously mushy. About half were just sludge. This is especially bad since, as my grandmother would say, in my family "We like our balls big and hard" (to be 81 and have the sense of humor of a thirteen-year-old boy!).

I'm not giving up, though. According to the Internet, this recipe has worked for people other than Isa, so I will try again. I think I'll add a bit of extra matzo meal and leave the mix in the fridge overnight instead of for an hour, though.

A Flock of Firsts

I achieved many culinary firsts yesterday. I:

1. Cooked tofu.
2. Made a "real" meal (a protein, a grain and a vegetable all on a plate together).
3. Plated the food after cooking it and actually sat down and ate it while it was still hot.
4. Had polenta.
5. Worked with poppy seeds.
6. Got my entire family to eat (and like!) asparagus.
7. Made recipes from Veganomicon.



I started with the asparagus, following the incredibly easy Veganomicon grilling instructions: cut off the ends, throw in a bag with garlic and olive oil, rub, let sit for at least ten minutes. I let mine sit while I made the rest of the food.