Vanilla and chocolate thumbprints from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur.
Showing posts with label ppk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ppk. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Open Letter to Bruce Banner
May I call you Bruce? No? OK, then. Please calm down, sir.
Dear Mr. Banner:
It was recently brought to my attention (by my little brother) that you've gone vegan. Congratulations on making the compassionate choice! I'm sure you'll find the vegan lifestyle to be satisfying and fulfilling for both your ethics and your taste buds. However, he also pointed out the following incident, which occurred while you were living under the name Bixby:
Friday, November 5, 2010
Picatta!
(how did I never notice how ugly this bowl is?)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Passing on the Meat
My family recently celebrated Passover and we tried a little experiment: I would cook two vegan Seders (big, traditional dinners) and my family would go vegetarian for the rest of the holiday. Eight days without any meat in the house. My plan was to cook as much as possible, since the more I cooked, the less matzo with cream cheese they ate.
I'm pleased to report that even though the holiday ended a week ago, no meat has been consumed in our house yet and both of my parents are considering going vegetarian on a more permanent basis (they're both totally cool with keeping meat out of the house, but right now, they'd still like to eat it at restaurants on occasion). Also, I think my mother now has a bigger AR soapbox than I do. It's pretty rad.
Here's a small sample of what we ate:
I'm pleased to report that even though the holiday ended a week ago, no meat has been consumed in our house yet and both of my parents are considering going vegetarian on a more permanent basis (they're both totally cool with keeping meat out of the house, but right now, they'd still like to eat it at restaurants on occasion). Also, I think my mother now has a bigger AR soapbox than I do. It's pretty rad.
Here's a small sample of what we ate:
Friday, October 30, 2009
Closing MoFo
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Bubbles Don't Squeak
This post is kind of meta-MoFo: a VeganMoFo post inspired by another VeganMoFo post.
A couple of weeks ago, Heathen Vegan posted instructions for making Bubble and Squeak, which sounded really good to me. Just coming off a detox, I didn't want to stuff my face with fried potatoes, so I attempted a baked, parsnip-based patty that I'm going to call Bubbles Don't squeak.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Leggo My Lego Part II: The Barfening
Welcome back, MoFos! Hope you're all well.
Last week, I showed off my poor excuse of an attempt at the first draft of a Lego cake. Today, I'd like to discuss the lessons I learned and let you see how they didn't help. At all.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Hot MoFos
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, to paraphrase The Zombies, it's the time of the season for MoFo.
If you're new to this blog, vegan talk, or the Internet, you may ask yourself
VeganMoFo (formally known as the Vegan Month of Food) is a play on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month), except all non-fiction. For the month of October, about 360 denizens of the Internet (including me) will try to post about food daily, with the intention of showing off the wide and varied world of vegan eats.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale Wrap Up
We held our second Brooklyn bake sale on Sunday and a wonderful time was had by all. We ate, drank, made merry, sang, danced and raised over $1000 for Farm Sanctuary and Sea Shepherd (and we're not done yet, so if you'd like to contribute, keep reading).
Oh yeah. There were also some cakes and things.
Photo by Ronit Tal
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Vegan Bake Sale Day 1
We held our first bake sale on Sunday and things went surprisingly smoothly. We started a bit late, the weather sucked, chocolatey things got a bit melty due to the humidity and we had a small coffee accident, but other than that, smooth as silken tofu.
Before I talk about the past, a quick reminder about the future:
Our next bake sale is going to be even bigger and better*, and it's this Sunday, June 28, starting around 11 AM**.
Open Source Gallery
Park Slope, Brooklyn
251 17th Street, right off of 5th Avenue, one block east of the Prospect Avenue M/R station and convenient from the B63 bus
Monday, December 29, 2008
Im a Bad, Bad Girl
Or maybe just a terrible blogger. Christmas is over (happy holidays, everyone) and I haven't even discussed Thanksgiving yet. I suck. I also suck for not getting a shot of my whole Thanksgiving table. Lacking that, I'll open this post with our centerpiece:
That there is the Edible Mayflower (higher res on Flickr).
You may ask yourself"Where is that large automobile?" "Why the crap would anyone make an edible Mayflower?!" I don't have a good answer to that question. But I do have a story.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (i.e. about a year ago, on the Internet), my friend found the Meat Ship (insert rather obvious Gross Out Warning here). I was struck by both its grossness and it's awesomeness (hello there, edible BOAT) and decided I had to make a vegan one. My friends were kind enough to gift me a pirate ship cake pan to aid me in my quest, and the rest is history (or dinner).
Once I decided to make the ship itself from cornbread, I took to the Internet to find out what people enjoyed most with the stuff. After polling the constituents, I ended up with sails made from Veganomicon style sauteed collard greens, Pilgrims made from mini Spicy Pinto Sausages wearing sauteed mushroom hats, sailing the seven seas of Yellow Rose Recipes Better Than Basic Chili. Perhaps not the most traditional of Thanksgiving foods, but damn tasty just the same.
Here's my first plate of the night. Yes, we went classy and ate Thanksgiving dinner on disposable plates. Don't judge me!
Clockwise from that poppy-seed covered ball of awesome, we have:
Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls (Vegan Brunch). Harvest Vegetable Medley (Vegetarian Times). Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans and Raisins (Veganomicon). Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes (Yellow Rose Recipes). Thanksgiving style polenta seitan (Parsnip Parsimony, The I-40 Kitchen). Gravy (my friend Sarah). Grilled Asparagus (Veganomicon).
I had another plate after that with chili, collards, stuffing, cranberry crumble and I don't even know what else. My foodbaby was enormous.
I made the Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times for Thanksgiving dinner, substituting Isa's Spicy Pinto Sausages from the upcoming Vegan Brunch for the store bought ones. Everyone loved it. My mother has some sort of sausage aversion and asked me not to put sausage in the stuffing, so I only put in two and she really liked it. Yet again, vegan food has proven her wrong!
That was my first time eating chestnuts. I don't think I'm a fan. I won't pick them out of anything, but I won't go hunting down chestnut-based recipes either.
I enjoyed the Harvest Vegetable Medley from the same magazine a lot more. Everyone loved it, even my vegetable-phobic grandmother. This was surprising because it's really just plain, old roasted vegetables. Then again, it's not so suprprising because it has almost thirty cloves of garlic in it and who doesn't love metric assloads of garlic? Please note that if you make the recipe as written, you will be able to feed at least a dozen people for two days. I suggest halving it unless you're having a platoon over for dinner and/or really love leftovers.
Thanks to Parsnip Parsimony, I now know about the joy that is polenta seitan. This is not something that would have occurred to me to make, so I'm really glad she thought of it. It's got great bite and I can easily eat a whole batch of it at once if I don't stop myself. Sadly, it's not very photogenic.
Don't let that put you off, though. It's still awesome.
Let the record show I don't like sweet potato. And I don't like tzimmes. I like my vegetables savory, my fruit sweet and never the twains shall meet. My family, however, loves both, so I made them the Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon. Since I made it, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and take a taste and actually liked it. Holy crap. That's the sort of word eating I can get behind. I think the pecans may have been what converted me. I love me some pecans.
The Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes are pretty amazing. How amazing? Amazing enough to get my little brother to eat mushrooms. That's borderline miraculous. These potatoes are stuffed with broccoli and mushrooms and win. Mine don't look so great because they're a bit over baked, but that's how we like them.
Here's a shot of the full pan of Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming Vegan Brunch. They're good for brunch or any damn time. I obviously thought they'd make good dinner rolls and I was right. However, they are crazy with the poppy seeds. Be prepared to make a mess with these babies.
No SSD family dinner is complete without grilled asparagus. Is that weird?
For dessert, we have leftover birthday cake, my friend Sarah's Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Not the prettiest desserts ever (I ran out of decorating time), but they more than made up for it in tastiness. Especially the cake. I can't get enough of it and neither can anyone I've ever made it for.
And that's a wrap. Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe. See you back here in 2009.
That there is the Edible Mayflower (higher res on Flickr).
You may ask yourself
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (i.e. about a year ago, on the Internet), my friend found the Meat Ship (insert rather obvious Gross Out Warning here). I was struck by both its grossness and it's awesomeness (hello there, edible BOAT) and decided I had to make a vegan one. My friends were kind enough to gift me a pirate ship cake pan to aid me in my quest, and the rest is history (or dinner).
Once I decided to make the ship itself from cornbread, I took to the Internet to find out what people enjoyed most with the stuff. After polling the constituents, I ended up with sails made from Veganomicon style sauteed collard greens, Pilgrims made from mini Spicy Pinto Sausages wearing sauteed mushroom hats, sailing the seven seas of Yellow Rose Recipes Better Than Basic Chili. Perhaps not the most traditional of Thanksgiving foods, but damn tasty just the same.
Here's my first plate of the night. Yes, we went classy and ate Thanksgiving dinner on disposable plates. Don't judge me!
Clockwise from that poppy-seed covered ball of awesome, we have:
Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls (Vegan Brunch). Harvest Vegetable Medley (Vegetarian Times). Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans and Raisins (Veganomicon). Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes (Yellow Rose Recipes). Thanksgiving style polenta seitan (Parsnip Parsimony, The I-40 Kitchen). Gravy (my friend Sarah). Grilled Asparagus (Veganomicon).
I had another plate after that with chili, collards, stuffing, cranberry crumble and I don't even know what else. My foodbaby was enormous.
I made the Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times for Thanksgiving dinner, substituting Isa's Spicy Pinto Sausages from the upcoming Vegan Brunch for the store bought ones. Everyone loved it. My mother has some sort of sausage aversion and asked me not to put sausage in the stuffing, so I only put in two and she really liked it. Yet again, vegan food has proven her wrong!
That was my first time eating chestnuts. I don't think I'm a fan. I won't pick them out of anything, but I won't go hunting down chestnut-based recipes either.
I enjoyed the Harvest Vegetable Medley from the same magazine a lot more. Everyone loved it, even my vegetable-phobic grandmother. This was surprising because it's really just plain, old roasted vegetables. Then again, it's not so suprprising because it has almost thirty cloves of garlic in it and who doesn't love metric assloads of garlic? Please note that if you make the recipe as written, you will be able to feed at least a dozen people for two days. I suggest halving it unless you're having a platoon over for dinner and/or really love leftovers.
Thanks to Parsnip Parsimony, I now know about the joy that is polenta seitan. This is not something that would have occurred to me to make, so I'm really glad she thought of it. It's got great bite and I can easily eat a whole batch of it at once if I don't stop myself. Sadly, it's not very photogenic.
Don't let that put you off, though. It's still awesome.
Let the record show I don't like sweet potato. And I don't like tzimmes. I like my vegetables savory, my fruit sweet and never the twains shall meet. My family, however, loves both, so I made them the Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon. Since I made it, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and take a taste and actually liked it. Holy crap. That's the sort of word eating I can get behind. I think the pecans may have been what converted me. I love me some pecans.
The Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes are pretty amazing. How amazing? Amazing enough to get my little brother to eat mushrooms. That's borderline miraculous. These potatoes are stuffed with broccoli and mushrooms and win. Mine don't look so great because they're a bit over baked, but that's how we like them.
Here's a shot of the full pan of Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming Vegan Brunch. They're good for brunch or any damn time. I obviously thought they'd make good dinner rolls and I was right. However, they are crazy with the poppy seeds. Be prepared to make a mess with these babies.
No SSD family dinner is complete without grilled asparagus. Is that weird?
For dessert, we have leftover birthday cake, my friend Sarah's Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Not the prettiest desserts ever (I ran out of decorating time), but they more than made up for it in tastiness. Especially the cake. I can't get enough of it and neither can anyone I've ever made it for.
And that's a wrap. Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe. See you back here in 2009.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Menu Planning
It's the time of the season for cooking.
Thanksgiving is upon us and we're doing it at our house this year. And I'm in charge of the cooking. The family is still undecided about whether or not my mother will make some turkey parts for the two people who will actually eat it, but there definitely won't be a whole bird on the table and that counts for something. Also, my whole family goes vegan for the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm cooking for that too. And the day before Thanksgiving is my grandmother's birthday, so I'm also making her cake.
I've decided to post my planned menus for the next few days, in order to keep myself from giving up on anything. And so if I completely destroy any of the recipes, I won't be able to deny it.
Wednesday
Apricot Glazed Almond Cake based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
Thanksgiving Dinner
Note: I was told we don't need soup, salad, gravy or rolls, so they're not missing because I'm lazy.
Grilled Asparagus
Harvest Vegetable Medley from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes
Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch
Polenta Seitan from a recipe that will hopefully be posted on Parsnip Parsimony soon, with seasoning suggestions from The I-40 Kitchen
Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon
My friend Sarah's gravy
My mother's Cranapple Crumble, which I made into mini pies for last winter's challenge
My friend Sarah's pumpkin pie
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
And something I'm pretty certain I'm going to screw up, so I won't talk about it yet.
Friday Brunch
Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Grape Tomatoes
Paprika Rosemary Potatoes
Raised Waffles with Baked Cinnamon Apples all from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch
Friday Dinner
Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons
Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits both from Veganomicon
Leftovers and fresh fruit for dessert
And if I have nothing else to do, I think I'm going to attempt home made English Muffins on Sunday. One more thing from Isa's amazing book of amazingness (AKA Vegan Brunch).
Happy holidays!
Thanksgiving is upon us and we're doing it at our house this year. And I'm in charge of the cooking. The family is still undecided about whether or not my mother will make some turkey parts for the two people who will actually eat it, but there definitely won't be a whole bird on the table and that counts for something. Also, my whole family goes vegan for the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm cooking for that too. And the day before Thanksgiving is my grandmother's birthday, so I'm also making her cake.
I've decided to post my planned menus for the next few days, in order to keep myself from giving up on anything. And so if I completely destroy any of the recipes, I won't be able to deny it.
Wednesday
Apricot Glazed Almond Cake based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
Thanksgiving Dinner
Note: I was told we don't need soup, salad, gravy or rolls, so they're not missing because I'm lazy.
Grilled Asparagus
Harvest Vegetable Medley from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes
Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch
Polenta Seitan from a recipe that will hopefully be posted on Parsnip Parsimony soon, with seasoning suggestions from The I-40 Kitchen
Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon
My friend Sarah's gravy
My mother's Cranapple Crumble, which I made into mini pies for last winter's challenge
My friend Sarah's pumpkin pie
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
And something I'm pretty certain I'm going to screw up, so I won't talk about it yet.
Friday Brunch
Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Grape Tomatoes
Paprika Rosemary Potatoes
Raised Waffles with Baked Cinnamon Apples all from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch
Friday Dinner
Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons
Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits both from Veganomicon
Leftovers and fresh fruit for dessert
And if I have nothing else to do, I think I'm going to attempt home made English Muffins on Sunday. One more thing from Isa's amazing book of amazingness (AKA Vegan Brunch).
Happy holidays!
Monday, September 8, 2008
Duhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuh BATCAKE!
I promised a cake, and here we are. Thank you to the birthday girl for providing the pictures.
My friend loves Batman. Her birthday was last month, so I made her a Batman birthday cake. Yum.
I didn't get to take any pictures right when it was done, so please excuse the wax drip and candle holes. And general squashiness of the cake. As we all know, I can't make a birthday cake without some sort of drama:
I work next door to a box and paper store and not far from a cake supply shop but could not find a box the right size for a 9", two layer cake. So I used a box that was slightly too small with toothpicks taped into the corners to hold it up. It looked more like a shirt box than a cake box, but I figured it would do. Guess who was wrong!
The cake left my house in perfect condition, I swear. Halfway to the party, some guys on the train started talking to me and asked to see the cake (don't ask me how they knew it was a cake). I showed it to them and it was fine. The cake was still totally intact. Somewhere between Queens and Brooklyn, the toothpicks fell off and the lid fell in. When I got to the restaurant and took the top off the box to show the birthday girl's husband the cake, half the bat symbol came off on the inside of the top of the box. And some the ganache was stuck to the sides. The cake was ruined! It was so bad the staff couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be (the husband could, though). I stood there shaking and shitting my pants (well, dress) while the staff brought us some chocolate sauce. The husband was able to fill in the outline left by the original bat with the chocolate sauce* and still get the basic look I had been going for. I didn't do it myself because my hands were shaking and they said the chocolate was at about 100 degrees.
We brought in the cake, everyone loved it and no one seemed to notice anything was wrong with it until I told them the story.
The cake is a doubled recipe of the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Like the book suggests, I heated the soy milk and whisked in some tumeric, to get it really yellow (I was too lazy to do this for the Iron Man cake). I made this cake multiple times, because in my effort to get it good and yellow, I kept adding too much tumeric, and you could taste it. Blech.
I needed the cake nice and flat to get my stencil to sit on it, so I asked for suggestions on the PPK and got the idea to make my own cake rings:
They say cakes dome because the edges cook faster than the center. The slower cooking center puffs up, leaving the more done edges low. Cake rings are supposed to keep the edges from baking so quickly. I made mine by soaking some newspaper in cold water, wrapping it in tinfoil and taping it closed around my cake pans. I think the cakes were a bit straighter than usual, but it was hard to tell since one broke in half right out of the pan (I should have known that was an omen). Obviously, that was the bottom cake. I wonder if anyone noticed the break while they were cutting (if not, they'll know if they read this!).
I topped and filled the cake with the Fauxstess ganache from Vegan With a Vengeance because I think that one comes out closest to black. I printed the bat symbol out from the Internet, traced it onto cardboard and used that as a stencil for the icing.
Here's the cake with candles:
And the birthday girl blowing them out:
The birthday girl also loves Harry Potter. As a super nerdy bonus, this doubles as a Hufflepuff cake from the inside (assuming we keep pretending the ganache is actually black):
After this, the Iron Man cake, the Indiana Jones cake and the Yoda cupcakes, maybe I should change the name of this blog to Seitan Said Bake Dorky Things.
*Two days later, I realized I had no idea what was in that chocolate sauce and I just used it because I was desperate to save the cake. I doubt it was vegan, but such is life. It honestly didn't even occur to me at the time. I was the only vegan there, though, so with luck, my piece only had ganache on it.
My friend loves Batman. Her birthday was last month, so I made her a Batman birthday cake. Yum.
I didn't get to take any pictures right when it was done, so please excuse the wax drip and candle holes. And general squashiness of the cake. As we all know, I can't make a birthday cake without some sort of drama:
I work next door to a box and paper store and not far from a cake supply shop but could not find a box the right size for a 9", two layer cake. So I used a box that was slightly too small with toothpicks taped into the corners to hold it up. It looked more like a shirt box than a cake box, but I figured it would do. Guess who was wrong!
The cake left my house in perfect condition, I swear. Halfway to the party, some guys on the train started talking to me and asked to see the cake (don't ask me how they knew it was a cake). I showed it to them and it was fine. The cake was still totally intact. Somewhere between Queens and Brooklyn, the toothpicks fell off and the lid fell in. When I got to the restaurant and took the top off the box to show the birthday girl's husband the cake, half the bat symbol came off on the inside of the top of the box. And some the ganache was stuck to the sides. The cake was ruined! It was so bad the staff couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be (the husband could, though). I stood there shaking and shitting my pants (well, dress) while the staff brought us some chocolate sauce. The husband was able to fill in the outline left by the original bat with the chocolate sauce* and still get the basic look I had been going for. I didn't do it myself because my hands were shaking and they said the chocolate was at about 100 degrees.
We brought in the cake, everyone loved it and no one seemed to notice anything was wrong with it until I told them the story.
The cake is a doubled recipe of the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Like the book suggests, I heated the soy milk and whisked in some tumeric, to get it really yellow (I was too lazy to do this for the Iron Man cake). I made this cake multiple times, because in my effort to get it good and yellow, I kept adding too much tumeric, and you could taste it. Blech.
I needed the cake nice and flat to get my stencil to sit on it, so I asked for suggestions on the PPK and got the idea to make my own cake rings:
They say cakes dome because the edges cook faster than the center. The slower cooking center puffs up, leaving the more done edges low. Cake rings are supposed to keep the edges from baking so quickly. I made mine by soaking some newspaper in cold water, wrapping it in tinfoil and taping it closed around my cake pans. I think the cakes were a bit straighter than usual, but it was hard to tell since one broke in half right out of the pan (I should have known that was an omen). Obviously, that was the bottom cake. I wonder if anyone noticed the break while they were cutting (if not, they'll know if they read this!).
I topped and filled the cake with the Fauxstess ganache from Vegan With a Vengeance because I think that one comes out closest to black. I printed the bat symbol out from the Internet, traced it onto cardboard and used that as a stencil for the icing.
Here's the cake with candles:
And the birthday girl blowing them out:
The birthday girl also loves Harry Potter. As a super nerdy bonus, this doubles as a Hufflepuff cake from the inside (assuming we keep pretending the ganache is actually black):
After this, the Iron Man cake, the Indiana Jones cake and the Yoda cupcakes, maybe I should change the name of this blog to Seitan Said Bake Dorky Things.
*Two days later, I realized I had no idea what was in that chocolate sauce and I just used it because I was desperate to save the cake. I doubt it was vegan, but such is life. It honestly didn't even occur to me at the time. I was the only vegan there, though, so with luck, my piece only had ganache on it.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Things Fall Apart
The centre cannot hold.
Especially when said centre is made of crepes and pastry cream. Behold! The crepe cake!
Doesn't that look lovely(ish)? It's rather a pity that that's not how it looked when it got to the table. This is:
Back in January, my friend challenged me to veganize this cake. It looked complicated, so I decided to wait a while, until I was a bit more comfortable in the kitchen. A while turned into months and then her birthday was coming, so I decided to figure it out and make it her birthday cake. I really wanted to get it right, so I started working on it over a month in advance because the filling kind of freaked me out. This wasn't merely a case of substituting margarine for butter and a little bit of soy yogurt for an egg and I didn't know what to do, so I took it to The PPK. As always, they were very helpful and directed me toward the pastry cream filling of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I decided layering that with a few batches of the sweet crepes from Veganomicon would do the trick and set to work.
Here's my first attempt:
Failure. The crepes were too thick and not browned enough and the pastry cream was too loose. The reason? I couldn't get my agar flakes to dissolve. I officially hate agar flakes.
A few days later, I tried again:
Per the suggestions of the lovely people on The PPK, I reduced the crepe batter from 1/2 cup to 1/3 per crepe and dissolved the agar flakes in the microwave (which still took HOURS). The crepes still weren't brown enough, but it was only a test, so I was going for speed (as you can see by my ever-so-smooth filling job). It looked good enough to me. The cream was thick and the crepes were thin, so the cream was able to support the crepes, instead of the other way around. With eight crepes, I called it success. But the recipe called for 25 crepes and it never occurred to me that the number would cause a problem.
Though it looked good, I found the taste slightly lacking. It tasted good and it was nice and sweet, but it didn't taste like anything. Just sweet. I wanted to layer in some thinly sliced strawberries, but I thought that would be too much of a variation (read: cheat) from the original recipe, so I decided to substitute chocolate extract for vanilla in the final cake, top it with powdered sugar and write on it in melted chocolate (at first, I wasn't going to write on it at all, then I was thinking of using royal icing or something similarly generic).
The birthday dinner was on Wednesday, so I planned my week accordingly. Monday night, I went home early and made the crepe batter (four times the written recipe) and the pastry cream (six times the written recipe). I knew I'd have the agar issue, so I did that first, working on the batter while the agar sat in the warm/hot soy milk slowly dissolving, then whisking it for five minutes at a time. For hours. My right arm is currently on strike.
This is a lot of crepe batter:
Please notice the box of soy milk in the background. It's right side up, but I'm pretty sure the text on the back is upside down.
More pastry cream than I ever want to see again:
Tuesday night, I went to see The Futureheads do their first US show in two years (which was superawesome. Expect a fall tour. Run, don't walk for tickets!), then went home and made the crepes and put it all together.
Thirty crepes:
I only needed 25, so I put aside the uglier crepes and the best one (for the top) on a cutting board as I worked. I got to 18, paused to wash my hands, looked over at the cake and it looked like a landslide. As I stood there, the crepes were sliding off of the cake, onto the table, then almost onto the floor! I ran over and caught them (part of them were already hanging off the table), then grabbed up the whole cake and dropped it down on the cutting board. Right on top of the nicest crepe. Crap.
Once I got the pastry cream of of myself (and the table) and convinced myself I was neither going to cry nor throw the crepes around the room, I started reassembling the cake crepe by crepe, using my hands to smooth the filling, instead of my spatula. Since half the filling ended up on the table, cutting board and me, I thought the cake might hold together better with the thinner layers of filling. Since it was already covered with pastry cream, I included the "best crepe" in the cake and topped it off with a clean one, so the cake ended up being twenty crepes instead of 25. That was good enough for me, so I dusted it with powdered sugar and wrote on it with the melted chocolate.
That's how it looked when I put it away. This is how it looked when I woke up:
Appetizing, isn't it? (No)
I IMed the birthday girl when I got to work and basically apologized for completely ruining her birthday (because that's how it felt to me) and tried to brainstorm how to fix it. A coworker noticed I was upset and when I showed her why, she laughed at me. When she was done laughing, she suggested I just move the top of the cake to the center of the pile and trim it around, so that's what I did.
Here it is, with the trimmings my coworkers and I ate throughout the day:
And here's the finished product:
Obviously, it's not nearly as attractive as it started out, but it was presentable enough. And everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even the wait staff at the restaurant tried some, but they didn't tell me what they thought of it, so maybe that was their polite way of not telling me they hated it.
Wow, this post is sort of epic (read: too damn long). Sorry about that. But if it took you this long to read it, think of what it must have been like to do it!
And if you're reading this, happy birthday, Shar! (that's what the cake says, in case you can't tell)
Especially when said centre is made of crepes and pastry cream. Behold! The crepe cake!
Doesn't that look lovely(ish)? It's rather a pity that that's not how it looked when it got to the table. This is:
Back in January, my friend challenged me to veganize this cake. It looked complicated, so I decided to wait a while, until I was a bit more comfortable in the kitchen. A while turned into months and then her birthday was coming, so I decided to figure it out and make it her birthday cake. I really wanted to get it right, so I started working on it over a month in advance because the filling kind of freaked me out. This wasn't merely a case of substituting margarine for butter and a little bit of soy yogurt for an egg and I didn't know what to do, so I took it to The PPK. As always, they were very helpful and directed me toward the pastry cream filling of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I decided layering that with a few batches of the sweet crepes from Veganomicon would do the trick and set to work.
Here's my first attempt:
Failure. The crepes were too thick and not browned enough and the pastry cream was too loose. The reason? I couldn't get my agar flakes to dissolve. I officially hate agar flakes.
A few days later, I tried again:
Per the suggestions of the lovely people on The PPK, I reduced the crepe batter from 1/2 cup to 1/3 per crepe and dissolved the agar flakes in the microwave (which still took HOURS). The crepes still weren't brown enough, but it was only a test, so I was going for speed (as you can see by my ever-so-smooth filling job). It looked good enough to me. The cream was thick and the crepes were thin, so the cream was able to support the crepes, instead of the other way around. With eight crepes, I called it success. But the recipe called for 25 crepes and it never occurred to me that the number would cause a problem.
Though it looked good, I found the taste slightly lacking. It tasted good and it was nice and sweet, but it didn't taste like anything. Just sweet. I wanted to layer in some thinly sliced strawberries, but I thought that would be too much of a variation (read: cheat) from the original recipe, so I decided to substitute chocolate extract for vanilla in the final cake, top it with powdered sugar and write on it in melted chocolate (at first, I wasn't going to write on it at all, then I was thinking of using royal icing or something similarly generic).
The birthday dinner was on Wednesday, so I planned my week accordingly. Monday night, I went home early and made the crepe batter (four times the written recipe) and the pastry cream (six times the written recipe). I knew I'd have the agar issue, so I did that first, working on the batter while the agar sat in the warm/hot soy milk slowly dissolving, then whisking it for five minutes at a time. For hours. My right arm is currently on strike.
This is a lot of crepe batter:
Please notice the box of soy milk in the background. It's right side up, but I'm pretty sure the text on the back is upside down.
More pastry cream than I ever want to see again:
Tuesday night, I went to see The Futureheads do their first US show in two years (which was superawesome. Expect a fall tour. Run, don't walk for tickets!), then went home and made the crepes and put it all together.
Thirty crepes:
I only needed 25, so I put aside the uglier crepes and the best one (for the top) on a cutting board as I worked. I got to 18, paused to wash my hands, looked over at the cake and it looked like a landslide. As I stood there, the crepes were sliding off of the cake, onto the table, then almost onto the floor! I ran over and caught them (part of them were already hanging off the table), then grabbed up the whole cake and dropped it down on the cutting board. Right on top of the nicest crepe. Crap.
Once I got the pastry cream of of myself (and the table) and convinced myself I was neither going to cry nor throw the crepes around the room, I started reassembling the cake crepe by crepe, using my hands to smooth the filling, instead of my spatula. Since half the filling ended up on the table, cutting board and me, I thought the cake might hold together better with the thinner layers of filling. Since it was already covered with pastry cream, I included the "best crepe" in the cake and topped it off with a clean one, so the cake ended up being twenty crepes instead of 25. That was good enough for me, so I dusted it with powdered sugar and wrote on it with the melted chocolate.
That's how it looked when I put it away. This is how it looked when I woke up:
Appetizing, isn't it? (No)
I IMed the birthday girl when I got to work and basically apologized for completely ruining her birthday (because that's how it felt to me) and tried to brainstorm how to fix it. A coworker noticed I was upset and when I showed her why, she laughed at me. When she was done laughing, she suggested I just move the top of the cake to the center of the pile and trim it around, so that's what I did.
Here it is, with the trimmings my coworkers and I ate throughout the day:
And here's the finished product:
Obviously, it's not nearly as attractive as it started out, but it was presentable enough. And everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even the wait staff at the restaurant tried some, but they didn't tell me what they thought of it, so maybe that was their polite way of not telling me they hated it.
Wow, this post is sort of epic (read: too damn long). Sorry about that. But if it took you this long to read it, think of what it must have been like to do it!
And if you're reading this, happy birthday, Shar! (that's what the cake says, in case you can't tell)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
