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.

All is Full of Brunch

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. Mine was great. I spent most of it cooking, then had a nice brunch picnic with my friends for Memorial Day.

SPOILER WARNING: The following post contains pictures and descriptions of testing recipes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming vegan brunch book, Crack of Noon. If you want to be surprised by the book, don't click!



(all outdoor photos below this point were taken by my friend Adrienne)

For me, the most important part of brunch is potatoes. I was tempted to bring three different types, but behaved myself and stuck with two:





First was Red Flannel Hash: a nice, smoky mix of potatoes and beets, sauteed, then baked. I still don't know if I like beets (I have trouble getting past the garden smell), but I've liked them whenever I've used them in one of Isa's recipes and that's good enough for me.

We also had Samosa Mashed Potato Pancakes, which are basically just flat, doughless samosas. All the goodness of the filling, none of the hassle of making dough. Win! They're one of those recipes that I have trouble believing came out of my kitchen because it tastes so professionally restauranty. Technically, the pancakes are fried, but don't let that put you off; look how dry my pan is:



The oil is pretty much a non-issue.

No brunch would be complete without pancakes, so we had Gluten Free Buckwheat Pancakes:



They're thick and hearty and kind of healthy. Lovely topped with agave nectar and fresh berries. As you can see at the link above, you need four different kinds of flour to make them, but don't let it put you off. They're worth it and you never know when you're going to need quinoa flour (seriously).

For protein, we had Spicy Pinto Sausages and Beer Battered Tofu.





The sausages are an adaptation of the Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausage recipe from Everyday Dish. It's super cool. You make a seitany dough, divide it up, wrap it up in tinfoil so it looks like a bunch of Tootsie Rolls, throw it in a steamer for a while, and viola! Sausages. It couldn't be any easier. And it's even forgiving of the occasional cock up (I was short one half cup vital wheat gluten). The texture is great, and the spices are serious.



The Beer Battered Tofu is a vegan twist on the fish part of fish and chips. Yup, deep frying for brunch. These were great with a bit of malt vinegar (and even without).

For something a bit more like a "normal" breakfast, we had a Mexicana Scramble. It's great, but very vegetabley. I usually think of scrambles as having more tofu than vegetables, but this is so tasty, we'll let it go.*



I felt like we should have one straight vegetable dish, so I made Poblanos Stuffed With Coriander Seed Mushrooms. If you like spicy, you'll like this. Personally, I can only eat them cold, when some of the spice is held at bay.



I also grilled up some tortillas, in case people wanted to make breakfast burritos.

For dessert, we had Pain Au Chocolat and Orange Pecan Crumb Cake.

I'm an idiot and forgot to photograph the Pain Au Chocolat. It's the easiest thing in the world to make, and it's amazingly tasty and elegant looking. It's one of those desserts that's bound to impress if you don't tell people how you did it. I filled ours with berries and I think my face died and went to heaven when I ate it.

I don't like citrusy cakes much, but the pecans and nutmeg in this one balance it out nicely. It's pretty light, so most people were able to eat a piece, even after all that brunch. Now that I'm writing about it, I'm really looking forward to the leftovers when I get home.

I used the wrong sized pan, so the shape is messed up, but you get the idea.





I had some leftover beer batter and vegetables, so I fried up some shiitake mushrooms, cauliflower and broccoli. Yum!




* After eating the Mexicana Scramble and Beer Battered Tofu, people commented that I got the texture of the tofu really firm and nice. Slimy tofu is the worst feeling in the world. The secret: if a recipe calls for either firm or extra firm tofu, go with extra firm. And if it tells you to press the tofu, press the crap out of it. Seriously. For at least an hour. If you don't have to press it, just shake it out lightly and squeeze it between your hands a bit to get out as much of the moisture as you can.

Truffle Shuffle

Here's that truffle post I mentioned earlier.

I'm sure it's not surprising that I love junk food. I love cake and chocolate and chocolate cake. Sometimes, it doesn't even have to be that great. Like Passover. The cake mixes are...edible, but definitely not great. They're far better than any cake you can buy pre-made in stores, though. Those taste like cardboard topped with sawdust. And in my opinion, making Passover cakes from scratch requires too much effort and thought to be worth it, so mixes it is.

The obvious problem with mixes is that they all need eggs. My mother tried substituting apple sauce for eggs in one cake and it came out...like crap. It was way too sweet and was softer than fudge in consistency. I was the only one that ate it and I only ate it so it wouldn't go to waste (and because it kinda sorta tasted like chocolate. Almost).

I needed a fix, so I made truffles from the Conscious Kitchen's recipe and uploaded pictures of them to my Flickr. One of my coworkers saw them, thought they looked great, and asked me to make a batch for her to take to a family Passover dinner. I would have totally done it for free, but she offered to pay me and I had to pay my taxes last month, so we made a deal. My first sale! I was so proud that I'm sure I was really annoying to talk to for at least a day.



Make sure you check out the pictures on Conscious Kitchen, but do yourself a favor and have a drool rag handy. Don't say I didn't warn you!

I didn't make nearly as many variations as they did because I was limited by what I had in the house for Passover, but I don't think anyone got bored of mine either. For liquid, I used a splash of vanilla extract, mixed with coconut milk to make 1/2 cup total. When I made them for my family, I used cocoa powder, chopped cashews, almonds and craisins and ground walnuts as toppings. For the batch I sold, I used them as fillings as well.

My work station for the second batch:



Toppings, clockwise from the top left, I'm rolling in chopped almonds, cashews ground walnuts, cocoa powder and chopped craisins. I didn't have a food processor so all chopping was done by hand. Ew:



The truffles are incredibly easy to make. Just melt your chocolate in your heated liquid. Pour the whole mess into pan and refrigerate it until it solidifies (which took hours in the small pan I used. If you have room in your fridge, use something large and increase your surface area to cool your chocolate faster). Scoop out the chocolate a bit at a time, roll it into balls, roll the balls in your toppings. Voila! Truffles.

That said, it may take a bit of trial and error to get your aesthetic right. For example, when I tried to top the truffles with chopped craisins, no matter what I did, I ended up with loads of craisins sticking to each other, leaving bald spots in some areas and piles of fruit in others. I thought maybe rolling the truffle in cocoa powder before chopped craisin would help, but then they barely stuck at all. The next try was powder after craisin. That did keep the chocolate off the eater's fingers, but looked like crap, as you can see toward the rear of this picture:



I remedied this in the batch I sold by filling the truffles with craisin instead (I just wrapped the chocolate around a few craisins before rolling it into the ball shape - this also worked with nuts), putting one small piece of craisin on the outside to identify it and rolling the rest in cocoa powder:



Yeah, it sort of looks like a boob. And I don't have the coordination to keep the cocoa powder off the craisin bit completely, but it's still an improvement. These were the ones that went over best. There was almost a fight over them in my office. I'm not even lying.

When my brother first saw this on the kitchen table, he thought they were Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins. Somehow, he completely forgot it was Passover, I'm vegan and Dunkin' Donuts would never put real, unprocessed nuts on anything.



I love this picture. It looks like I'm building a truffle army, but the recipe actually makes about 24 pieces:



Truffles, ready for delivery to my first customer:



I'm definitely going to make these again (I say that about everything, don't I? But I mean it this time because I have a plan!). I want to try using Frangelico as the liquid, and maybe some coffee liquor (separately). I think it'd be a nice touch to roll them in red and green sprinkles and pack them into pretty boxes during the holidays. Mini cupcake cups might be the perfect size to hold them and make them look fancy and professional.

Passover, Post the Third

I decided not to spend all day in the kitchen Monday. Instead, I went for a twelve mile walk (I had no idea where I was going and ended up walking an enormous figure eight), then came home and made the Beginner's Curry from More Than Twigs and Berries. So. Good.



As I mentioned in one of my other posts, I couldn't find kosher for Passover curry powder, so I made my own. This recipe calls for chili powder too, and I couldn't get that either, so it was back to the mortar and pestle. I used the blend in post #9 as a template, but I had to omit the cumin because I can't eat it on Passover. And I somehow managed to use my red pepper flakes instead of cayenne pepper. Superfail! There were red pepper flakes in the curry and chili powders, making the curry very spicy (to me, but I'm a giant pansy).

I love curry and was hoping to make some to share with my family over the holiday (they don't eat much "ethnic" food), but all the recipes I had required beans or lentils or something. Then I checked MTTB, and viola! Bean-free curry! It's fast to make, doesn't require loads of chopping, and is crazy good, even with my bizarro spice blend. I've eaten it four days in a row and I'm not sick of it yet. Just sad I'm almost out.

It's too spicy for me to eat alone, so I'm always sure to have matzo nearby when I'm eating it. The recipe says to eat it over rice, and it'd be great over quinoa (rice is a no-no this week), but my Green-Wa is also spicy and I don't want to make more until I finish what I already have. Putting the curry on the matzo and eating it sort of like a hard, open-faced sandwich is really good too.

More Passover to come!

Passover, Post the Second

After I finished making everything I did on Friday, I pretty much fell into a coma and didn't wake up until around 6 PM Saturday and did nothing but eat and read for the rest of the day. Awesome. I got myself all rested up for the cookfest that was Sunday.



The first thing I realized was that I hadn't done anything with all those portobello mushrooms from Thursday night/Friday morning; they were still marinating. I grabbed them from the fridge, and at first I thought they'd frozen because the contents of the container was one solid block. Then I thought they went bad. Turned out the oil I used had solidified in the fridge. Whew! I stirred it all up a bit and it all broke up and was fine. Not realizing the Yellow Rose Recipes recipe makes way more marinade than the Veganomicon one does, I followed the Veganomicon instructions for roasting portobello mushrooms, doubling the cook time because the oven was set to 250 F and I couldn't change it. About halfway through, I realized I was being dumb and that the mushrooms would never really roast while sitting in the soup they were in. Maybe they'd boil, but not roast. So I ladled out about half the marinade, which improved things.

The texture of the mushrooms came out very good, but the taste was a little weird. Kind of sour. I love sour food, so that's fine. My parents tried them and decided to leave it all for me, though.

Next, I made the Broccoli Vinaigrette from The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook. Here's the weird thing about this vinaigrette: there's no vinegar in it. There is, however, plenty of garlic and a huge portion of awesome. This is another one of those did-I-really-need-a-cookbook-to-tell-me-that sort of recipes. Super easy, yet, because it's me, full of fail. I didn't have a steamer basket for Passover, so I decided to try steaming my broccoli in a strainer. A plastic strainer. Well, I hope my mother likes her new abstract strainer sculpture. Even if she doesn't, she liked the broccoli, so that's OK. My father liked it so much he asked for seconds, even though he usually can't stand to look at the stuff. My brother had to be restrained so I'd have some left to photograph. Good stuff.

Here's a mushroom, the broccoli and the Green-Wa. A very nice meal:



I also made the Diner Home Fries from Veganomicon. Those were too good. They didn't even last until I was able to use my camera! The cooked pepper made my grandmother worry about her agita again, but it didn't bother her at all and again, my brother didn't eat around the green bits. The peppers and onions cook just long enough to be tender but still maintain some crunch, which is great when mixed in with the soft potatoes. I'd eat these every day if I wouldn't have to fight my family for them.

I really pulled out all the stops for dessert.

First, there were Tea-Poached Pears in Chocolate Sauce from Veganomicon. This is the perfect dessert to make if you're cooking for someone special and/or are serving a really heavy dinner. Most people I know are impressed by desserts that come with sauce poured on the plate. There's just something classy about it (unless it's a mess). If you have the skills to make designs around the edges, even better (I don't, but when I accidentally dripped, I decided to drip all around to make it look intentional). Also, it's nice and light. It's not really rich, or fudgy or a heavy cake. It's just fruit. Really, really good fruit. It takes a few steps to make, but it's not difficult (though whoever you make it for will probably think it is).



And I made The Conscious Kitchen's truffles. They're going to get another post all to themselves, so for now, just know they're lovely. Delicious, rich, impressive-looking and easy, though time consuming.







Don't worry, I'm not done with Passover yet!

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!

How the Blog Saved Passover

Passover, the traditional holiday for matzo balls, is next week. Unfortunately, it's traditional to make matzo balls with eggs. Also unfortunately, it's traditional for vegans to replace the eggs with tofu (e.g.: the Vegan With a Vengeance recipe), one of the many foods forbidden on Passover (according to my family's tradition). I was ready to spend my first matzo ball free Passover when someone showed me Tofu Mom's recipe. I just tried it tonight and I think it made the best vegan matzo balls I've had yet.



As I'm sure I've mentioned in all my other matzo ball related posts, my family likes their matzo balls very firm and we've always found the vegan tofu-based ones to be softer than our preference, but good enough. They don't turn into a huge glob of mush in the soup (the first batch I made did!), but they don't really have any bite to them either.

Until now. This whole baking soda/potato starch thing is brilliant. As you can see in the picture above, the balls can actually be picked up and held between the fingers without oozing or denting or falling apart. Amazing. My family is thrilled. We're so pleased with the consistency, I think we may stick with these even when it's not Passover. Wooha!

Speaking of Passover, I don't know how much activity this blog will see over the next couple of weeks. I've cleaned out the fridge and probably won't be cooking again until the holiday. I've already got my menu planned and will be cooking up a storm (think roasted portobellos, stuffed eggplant, matzo ball soup, braised cauliflower, green-wa, diner home fries, broccoli potato soup, herb-roasted potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts with toasted garlic, roasted garlic artichoke spread, beginners curry, broccoli vinaigrette, baked apples, tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce, and raw apple pie), but photography will be limited since I'm not allowed to use a camera (or a computer) for about half the holiday. I'll be sure to review all the recipes when I'm done, though (and since most are from Veganomicon and Yellow Rose Recipes, I'm prepared for loads of positive reviews).

Happy Purim!

I'm still not being a good little Blogger-Bee and I'm nowhere near caught up with all I've made lately, but I've decided to Skip to the End (and go back later) because this is time-sensitive.

Purim is tomorrow. If you don't know what that is, and don't feel like clicking the link, it's one of the many Jewish "Hooray! We Weren't Genocided!" holidays. It's customary to eat a metric assload of junk food on Purim, including (but not limited to) hamentashen. Hamentashen are a BFD for me. I look forward to them all year. When I realized they all have egg in them, I wondered if I might actually be tempted to cheat on veganism.

Then I remembered I know how to bake. Behold!



I stole my mother's recipe, looked up egg replacement suggestions in Papa Tofu and got to work. This was my first time veganizing something without asking for help from The PPK and they came out really good, if I may say so myself. Too good. I ate SIX yesterday. Thank goodness I have many friends, coworkers and family members willing to take the rest off my hands. I don't know why, but they taste sort of buttery and the buttery + the preserves = good times.

On to the recipe!

Hamentashen

Makes about 33 3" cookies

Note: This is how my mother wrote up the recipe (except for the eggs). The flour measurement is kind of wrong. By a lot. Unfortunately, I didn't measure how much extra flour I added. You'll know you have enough flour when your dough is firm, dry and easy to pass from hand to hand without sticking. And it shouldn't leave any moisture on your rolling pin. Sorry about that.

Also, be generous with your filling. Don't go crazy with it, but I think it's better to have too much than too little. If you're having trouble closing your hamentashen, just scrape some off. That beats having bald spots. If you use jam/preserves, use the thickest, fruitiest one you can find (I used raspberry and apricot Hero preserves, available at Whole Foods). It will boil during baking and if it's too thin, you'll end up with glaze on the bottom of your cookie instead of filling (underfilling can also lead to a glazey cookie).

Ingredients
3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup soy yogurt
1 1/2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer dissolved in 2 tbsp warm water
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp orange juice
2 1/2+ cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Fillings of your choice

Preheat oven to 375 F. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In mixing bowl, blend sugar, yogurt, Enger-G, vanilla and OJ well with fork. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix until it gets doughy, then knead it until all flour is blended and dough is desired consistency (see note above). Split dough into two halves. Roll out one half of the dough until it's a bit more than 1/8" thick. It should be thick enough to be able to support the filling, but thin enough to fold easily. Using a glass or cookie cutter, cut the dough into approximately 3" rounds (I used a plastic mug and the diameter was probably closer to 3.25").



Place a spoonful of filling in the center of each round.



Fold the dough up around the filling and pinch the edges together into a triangle.



Repeat with second half of dough. Place hamentashen on parchment-lined cookie sheet. They don't expand much, so it's OK if they're close (though if some of your hamentashen are overfull, they may ooze over onto their neighbors). Bake for about 25 minutes or until browned to your liking.

The variations for these things are practically endless. Other popular fillings are prune, poppy seed and chocolate. If you want to get creative, dip one corner in some melted chocolate. Make it fancy by dipping the chocolaty end in colored sprinkles, chopped nuts or shredded coconut.

That's it. Try it, you'll like it. Have another, you're too thin!*



*That'd be my Jewish grandmother impression.

Three-Day Weekend

I'd like to thank Martin Luther King, Jr. for the current three-day weekend. And for all that civil rights stuff. That stuff rocks. We've still got work to do, though.

I think we should work it out so I have a three-day weekend following Giftmas every year so I have time to break in my new cookbooks. For instance, my friend Sarah sent me The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook and I made the Traditional Macaroni and Cheez last night. I also made the Frittata di zucchine e pinoli al forno (baked zucchini and pine nut frittata?) from BioVegan.



I have to be honest: I don't love nutritional yeast. I know it's good for me and I think it tastes OK, but I don't want to marry it. When I'm using it without a recipe, I always add just enough to add texture, but no flavor. When I was making this, all I could smell was olive oil and nutritional yeast. It didn't smell like macaroni and cheese to me at all. Then my brother came downstairs and asked "Who's making macaroni and cheese?" It took me a second to realize the correct answer was "Me."

The recipe says "The sauce should continue to bubble as you add the milk; if it doesn't, you are adding the milk too quickly." My sauce bubbled very rarely and spent quite a bit of time looking like cheez dough, not cheez sauce. It wasn't until I added about half the milk that it started to loosen up. And I certainly didn't have to heat it longer to thicken it up. If anything, adding the hot macaroni helped get the sauce off my whisk.

When it was all done, the consistency was near perfect and the taste was pretty good too, but I certainly haven't found my go-to mac 'n cheese yet. There's another recipe in the same book that uses slightly less nutritional yeast that I think I'll try next. There's also the Mac Daddy in Veganomicon, one the same Sarah sent me, and a multitude from the Internet. It seems like everyone wants to recommend the best vegan macaroni and cheese EVAR, making it even harder to figure out which one actually deserves that title.





I was intrigued by this frittata because unlike most recipes, it used a mix of flours for its "eggy" base instead of tofu. I think I need to mess with the cook time a bit more, but it's really tasty. I'm going to try it again for sure. I don't know Italian, so thanks to my friend Shawn for the translation.

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!).

All You Need is Smlove

Smlove is all you need.

Happy holidays!

I'm Jewish, so I didn't have plans for Christmas beyond spending 4.5 days knitting and cooking with the music up really loud while everyone else was at work. Then a friend invited me over for the holiday. Friends from out of town were going to come by for a while, then we'd go visiting with her assorted family in the area. And we'd get to play in the kitchen. How could I say no?

We made the Smlove Pie from Veganomicon to bring to her aunts and made some Vegan Bailey's (recipe in post #22 and below) for ourselves. Guh!



I'm so proud of that pie. It looks...like a PIE. Like a real pie you can get in a store. If you've read more of this blog than this post, you know that while my food may taste good, I haven't really been able to get presentation down yet. Obviously, making a pie with someone with a degree in art helps there.

The pie is delicious, but very rich. You can easily be satisfied with a super-small slice, making the fact that we brought one pie for roughly 30 people not so much of a problem.

The most fun part of making this pie is drizzling the chocolate over top. The most impressive part, to me, is that we candied our own pecans. Who the hell candies pecans?! We do! And we had about half of them left over, so we got to eat them plain as well, which was a real treat. We also had plenty of chocolate drizzle left. Candied pecan/chocolate drizzle sandwiches with a side of homemade gingerbread men (I made those the day before, but didn't take any pictures because it was just practice for later) is the breakfast of champions.

This is a great pie to bring to a gathering, vegan or omni. It looks so much like a real pie that people will be impressed just by looking at it. Add the taste, and they'll worship you. I don't know which they'll have more trouble believing: that it's homemade or that it's vegan.

The Bailey's was a little strong for me (I don't really drink), but we cut it with some of the Frangelico we bought for the pie and then it was nice and tasty. And there's something inherently funny about whisking whiskey. Bring it to a holiday party and you won't feel bad at all about not being able to partake of the nog.

Naked pie:



With peanut butter caramel and candied pecans:



Macro!



Sliced:



The slice:



Showing off:



Bailey's, in an appropriately festive cup:



Vegan Bailey's

1 can coconut milk
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs chocolate syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup whisky

Whisk it all together with a whisk. That's it.

The Merry Vegan

Last Thursday, I attended The Merry Vegan Holiday Survival Workshop with Jasmin Singer and Marisa Miller Wolfson. It was great. Entertaining and informative. And I got to eat good food. Isa taught us how to roll our eyes and sneer at people who offer us turkey on the holidays just to be rude. Good times.

The workshop was at Bonobo's and I thought my dinner was both tasty and hilarious because I'm incredibly mature:



Here are some of the helpful links we dicussed:

Cruelty-free/ More Eco-friendly/ Fair-trade Retailers
MooShoes.com
Gaiam.com
OrganicAvenue.com
Kaightnyc.com
Downbound.com

Cool Product Ideas
Vegan cookbooks like those from The PPK ladies
Solio charger
faeriesdance.com
Reusable shopping bags
For kids: veg-friendly children’s books & computer game

Experience/Services Gifts
Yoga or dance classes, cooking class at Natural Gourmet Cookery School
Gift certificate to fave vegan restaurant or an eco-spa
Membership to an arts or theater organization (the ballet, symphony,
etc.)
Subscription to Netflix or Fandango Bucks
Subscription to VegNews magazine
41pounds.org
Personal services: cooking, massage, sexual favors, etc.

Charitable Gifts
Trees from Arbor Day Foundation
Adopt a turkey or sponsor a farm animal
Food for Life Global
Trees for Life Global
Sponsor a cat or dog through Best Friends
Adopt a Creature through Oceana and get a cookie cutter of creature.
Globalgiving.com

We also discussed how to keep the commercialism and environmental impact down during the holiday season:

Shop thrift stores (and donate too!)
Used items from your own home and/or re-gifted items
Homemade recipe books, bath salts, baked goods & knit items
Send e-cards
Go through your junk drawer of old cards and spruce them up
Write a note instead of a card
Cut last year’s cards in half and send the top page as a postcard to
someone else
Reuse paper and gift bags from past years
Use old calendars, books, magazines, comics pages as gift wrap
Hemp wrap & biodegradable soy-ink-ribbon
Recycled wrapping paper
craigslist.org
freecycle.org
vivaterra.com

I'd never heard of quite a few of those before, so it was nice to come across some new resources. I hope they do another workshop like this at some point. It was quite enjoyable and I'd recommend any vegans in the area to attend. You might even like to attend if you're not a vegan, but close with someone who is. Or just want to lessen your impact on the environment. Just realize that you will probably hear some comments made about meat-eaters.

Holiday Cupcakes

This blog is significantly behind my bloggable life, and for that, I apologize.

Let's rewind to Saturday, December eighth, shall we?

I spent the evening baking two dozen of the Veganomicon's Jelly Donut Cupcakes for my family's Channukkah party Sunday.



These cupcakes are SO easy to make. And so unique! Also, they don't use a mixer, so you can make them at 3 AM without waking anyone. And they're so fast to make that you can bake them at 3 AM without killing a whole night's sleep. Most of my cupcakes were left with holes in the top, but most jelly donuts have holes in the side, so people actually preferred them that way. The texture and flavor were very different from the previous cupcakes I'd made (all from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World). They were a bit more dense, and definitely donuty.

When I finished making the cupcakes, I met up with some friends to go to Strawberry Fields. On my way to see them, I got the idea to add a butternut squash to my vegetable menorah, but didn't think anything would come of it because I was out. When we got together, we realized we hadn't brought anything for John, so we stopped at Whole Foods for onions. I also bought a ten-pound butternut squash. And carried it around ALL NIGHT. I think it enjoyed Barcade.

I also brought the Veganomicon Spiced Yogurt Sauce to the party as an alternative dip for the veggies (someone else brought one with a sour cream base).

Cupcakes: ready for the jelly



Jellied



Baked



The Cavern O' Jelly



Powdered



From the inside



My date for the evening: the butternut squash

Happy Channukkah!

I still have food from last week to discuss, but the holiday is almost over and I want to post this before I miss it.



Vegetable Menorahs! A cute idea, executed less than skillfully. I probably should have asked someone who can cut in a straight line to do it.

Made of butternut squash roasted with rosemary and thyme, zucchini roasted with garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and asparagus grilled with garlic and salt, according to the recommendations in Veganomicon.

And in case anyone's wondering, my parents got me a food processor for Channukkah and I love it. My life has changed already!

(kinda)

Sunac Sushi

This isn't really related to the point of this post, but I'd like to share an observation: around Thanksgiving, soft tofu is the first thing to sell out in this town. During the past two weeks or so, I went to Pathmark, Stop N Shop, Cross Island Fruit (Long Island), Sunac (Brooklyn), Klein's, Whole Foods Chelsea, Whole Foods Union Square, Trader Joe's and some other grocery store (Manhattan) before finding it in the Union Square Food Emporium. If you want soft tofu this week, get there by noon.

Anyway, I've obviously been cooking for myself lately and haven't really been eating much preprepared or restaurant food. However, when I went to Sunac for the tofu on Monday, I saw this sushi and it called me.



Please allow me to elaborate on the awesomeness of this sushi.

I was probably the only barbarian left who'd never had brown rice sushi before. It was SO GOOD. Despite being in the fridge case (probably all day), the rice was still fairly tender...or they put enough sesame seeds on it to hide what wasn't.

I love inari so much. The bigger the inari, the happier I am. Look at how big and puffy those things are! And they were full of brown rice too! I was ever so much the happy camper.

I adore asparagus in sushi (and other things, but especially in sushi). After avocado, it's probably my favorite sushi filling, so consider me joyed. I'd never had sprouts or broccoli in it before either. The sprouts were a nice touch, but the broccoli was a little dry (and I don't use soy sauce on sushi. I'm considering trying Nama Shoyu on it one day, but really, I like it as is, so why add the salt?).

Two points for cheap, tasty, healthy, fast convenient vegan food.

Tis the Season

I didn't mention this yesterday because I wanted to have something to write about today, but after I finished cooking all that food (yes, I know that's like nothing for some people, but to me, it's a whole lot) Sunday, I did a trial run of Tofu Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving (we're going to family in New Jersey. If all goes well, I'll be bringing Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Raw Apple Pie. My mother is bringing a huge salad and Cranberry Crumble (both vegan) and my grandmother will bring a fruit platter. I'll have plenty to eat just from what's coming in our car. Holiday traffic, I laugh at you! I have the desserts! - That's all that counts, really, isn't it?)



When I first started looking into the whole vegan thing, there were several dishes I found approximately 473829 recipes for. Macaroni and cheese, butternut squash soup, pesto sauce and pumpkin pie are a few of them. Lucky for me, I love all those things. I mentioned the multitude of pumpkin pie recipes to my friend Sarah and her reply was something like "Fuck them. I have the best pumpkin pie recipe EVAR. I make it every Thanksgiving for a whole load of omnis and no one ever knows it's vegan until I tell them, and when I do, they say they like it better than regular." This sounded like my kind of pie.

The recipe calls for "1 can (16 ounces) pureed pumpkin". I've been on a natural, real foods kick, so I wanted to use a real pumpkin and puree it myself and somehow could not find a pumpkin at the regular supermarket that wasn't a jack-o-lantern pumpkin. In November! I didn't have time to go to the farmer's market, so I made the test pie with canned pumpkin. This probably means I should make the real pie with canned too, since I already know how it'll come out. Bah.

It also requires "1 9-in unbaked pie shell (buy a frozen one with no offensive ingredients, or use the classic Betty Crocker recipe substituting vegetable shortening or soy margarine)". I obviously wanted to make my own, so I searched bettycrocker.com for pies until I found Ms. Crocker's recipe and made the appropriate substitutions.

I have to give Sarah credit; the pumpkin pie filling is definitely one of the best I (and my testers) have tasted. My brother doesn't even want to look at Entenmann's now (which is a good thing!). However, after leaving the pie in the oven for an hour, the pumpkin was starting to crack (you can see that pretty well in the picture of the slice below) and the crust turned out to still be kind of raw (oddly, my brother prefers it that way), so I guess I'll have to experiment with the crust a bit to get it to bake at a lower temperature (the baked crust wants to be done at 475, but this pie bakes at 350).

Tofu Pumpkin Pie

Unbaked One-Crust Pie Crust:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

Filling:
1 can (16 ounces) pureed pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 package (10-12 ounces) tofu, any kind does but firm if you can get it

Pre-heat oven to 350.

Mix flour and salt in medium bowl. Cut in shortening, using pastry blender (or pulling 2 table knives through ingredients in opposite directions), until particles are size of small peas. Sprinkle with cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost leaves side of bowl (1 to 2 teaspoons more water can be added if necessary).

Gather pastry into a ball. Shape into flattened round on lightly floured surface. Wrap flattened round of pastry in plastic wrap and refrigerate about 45 minutes or until dough is firm and cold, yet pliable. This allows the shortening to become slightly firm, which helps make the baked pastry more flaky. If refrigerated longer, let pastry soften slightly before rolling.

While waiting for pastry to cool, blend tofu in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend well.

After 45 minutes, roll pastry, using floured rolling pin, into circle 2 inches larger than upside-down 9-inch pie plate. Fold pastry into fourths; place in pie plate. Unfold and ease into plate, pressing firmly against bottom and side and being careful not to stretch pastry, which will cause it to shrink when baked.

Pour blended mixture into a 9" unbaked pie shell. Bake for approx. 1 hour. Filling will be soft, but will firm up as it chills.

Chill overnight and serve.

Per serving: (1/8 Pie, filling only) 122 calories, 0.9g fat, 4g protein, 0mg cholesterol, 49mg sodium, 26g carbs.

I made the pie exactly as written above, but Sarah says: "I usually reduce the sugar, and you can also mess around with the spices. Try allspice, but maybe leaving out the cloves." I also ended up with a bit of extra dough (which probably wouldn't have happened if my board wasn't so small; I'm ordering a pastry mat today in the hopes of getting it by Thanksgiving), so I stuck some vegan chocolate chips in it and made a nice, crispy cookie.

Crust:



Raw:

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the Office

Halloween (like most other holidays) has never been that big of a deal for me, but right now, I look at pretty much everything as an excuse to bake. My office had a small celebration and my friends had a gathering as well, so this was a two-dozen cupcake holiday.

I made one batch of Vampire Bites and one of Mummy Cakes. I saw recipes for these posted on Curious Cupcakes this summer and knew I just HAD to have them. Then, Vegan.Chicks.Rock. posted a veganized version of the Vampire Bites last week, saving me the trouble of sorting it all out myself. Win!

So in the end, all I needed was:

A double batch of VCTOTW's Golden Vanilla Cupcakes
A batch of VCTOTW's Old Fashioned Velvet Icing
A can of cherry pie filling
Some phyllo dough, margarine and brown sugar

Sounds easy enough, right? Ha!



I was so in the mood to make something that I actually prepared the icing a day in advance and stored it in an airtight container in my fridge just to have something to do on Monday night. I just couldn't stay out of the kitchen last week. Craziness, I tell you!

Vampire Bites: These came out pretty well and were really fun to make since they're kind of an "advanced" cupcake. Once the cupcakes cooled, I cut a cone out of the center of each, spooned in some cherry pie filling and put the top, flat part of the cone back on, so I had a bunch of closed, cherry-filled cupcakes. Of course, I didn't pay attention to which cones came out of which cupcakes, so none of them fit back on properly, but I think the discrepancy only caused a real problem a couple of times (problem = cherry mixing in with the icing, making the whole cake look like a bloody mess). Icing them was kind of tricky because of the wobbly tops, but I quickly discovered a messy yet practical solution: fingers. I think I've seen other recipes that call for cutting, filling, re-topping and icing cupcakes, so here are my personal steps for icing wobble-top cakes:

1. Spoon the icing onto the cupcake in your usual way.
2. Hold the cupcake in your non-writing hand, with one finger holding down the wobble top.
3. Spread the icing using a finger or two on your writing hand, turning the cake as necessary until your icing is relatively smooth.
4. Repeat as necessary for all cakes.
5. Lick your fingers clean.

DO NOT SWITCH THE ORDER OF STEPS FOUR AND FIVE!

Also, please do everyone a favor and wash after you lick.

After that, wiggling a toothpick around in the icing made the holes and I wiped a bit of cherry pie filling below each hole to look like the dripping puncture wounds left by a vampire on the prowl. Yum!

I cannot tell you how much cherry pie filling and icing I ate without the cake while preparing them. It's gross. After that, I thought the cupcakes would be too sweet for me to stomach, so I let all my coworkers and friends eat them first. Once they assured me they weren't disgustingly sweet, I ate the last one and loved it. It's a shame I'm the sort of person who won't make the same dish for the same holiday ever again if I'm celebrating it with the same people. I mean really. Who wants to be known as Vegan Vampire Cupcake Girl?

Mummy Cakes: These were far easier and plainer than the Vampire Bites. Once the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes were done baking, all I was supposed to do was cut some phyllo dough into strips, soak it in a marinade of 1/4 cup melted margarine and brown sugar, "wrap the strips around the top of the cupcakes, starting from the center and moving out to the sides and put them back into the oven for 5 to 10 minutes, until the filo strips are crisp and golden." No one but me could possibly fuck that up.

Apparently someone in my house (I'm not naming names) doesn't know the difference between puff pastry and phyllo dough. I was told there was phyllo dough in the freezer, found some dough with "P..." on the packaging, assumed it was phyllo and started cutting it up and soaking it. It wasn't until I was actually wrapping it around the cupcakes that I realized just how thick it was a