Vanilla and chocolate thumbprints from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Birthday Baking
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Month of 1000 Birthdays
Well, just five, really. But they were all mine! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ahem.
Sorry.
Aaaaanyway...Sunday, May 10, was my birthday, but I've been fortunate enough to have it acknowledged five times this month. All with awesome edibles.
The first time was my office birthday party on the seventh. Since I like baking and finding vegan cake in midtown Manhattan is kind of a pain in the ass, I make my own birthday cake every year and my boss reimburses me $20 for it. This year, I made a giant chocolate mint cupcake (please note the phone in the background for scale):
I tripled the Chocolate Mint Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and covered it with mint icing, Quick Melty Ganache and chocolate mint lentils. It was dangerously good. The mint makes the cake seem lighter than regular chocolate cake, and this cake pan kind of keeps you from going overboard with the icing, so if you're not careful, you can just keep eating this cake until suddenly your platter is empty and you've gained twenty pounds. Twenty tasty, tasty pounds. If you haven't tried this recipe yet (and like mint), please do. But proceed with caution.
The absolute best part of making the chocolate mint cake is...well...did you ever buy the mint Girl Scout cookies? Do you remember the aroma that would waft out and hit you in the face when you opened the box? Well, when you're making this cake, your ENTIRE KITCHEN SMELLS LIKE MINT GIRL SCOUT COOKIE WAFTINGS! It's an amazing thing. If you have a really tiny apartment, you can probably hotbox yourself in minty goodness. Awesome.
In case you're wondering, I made it using this cake pan, which was a gift from the same awesome people who gave me the boat cake pan. I guess they kind of know me pretty well. If you want to see how the cake assembly works, just browse backward from here.
Then, the Tofu Takedown was on my actual birthday. Obviously, I celebrated with lots of cannoli. Then we moved the party to Curly's Lunch, followed by Lula's Sweet Apothecary, where I got carrot cake ice cream (in a sugar cone!!) which tasted like the creamiest pumpkin pie ever. It was difficult to keep my pants on (especially since I was wearing a dress).
May 16 was mostly a celebration for other people, but I received my share of birthday wishes and brought the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance. They're definitely one of my favorite things and only take about an hour to make, which is pretty awesome. I didn't take any pictures this time, but they looked just like the ones I made for Election Day.
My family and I celebrated my birthday, Mother's Day and my mother's birthday (the 8th) on the 17th because I was busy taking down tofu on the 10th. I tried to make a cake out of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but kind of failed:
Pastry creme is just not what to use when trying to stick layers together. I should have known that from my last pastry creme debacle, but no one ever said I was a fast learner. I spent a good part of my afternoon cleaning ganache and pastry creme off the door of my refrigerator. I will not tell you whether or not I licked the fridge.
Lastly, my friends and I celebrated my birthday on the 24th in Philadelphia. Thanks to an awesome friend who did all sorts of veganny research, we ate at Basic Four Vegetarian Snack Bar and New Harmony Vegetarian Restaurant. At Basic Four, I had the best freaking tofu scramble I've ever eaten that I didn't make myself. Their potatoes are really good too. Most importantly, there was vegan Philly cheesesteak. I don't have words for how good this was, so just eat it with your eyes:
Please note that the picture does not do it justice.
New Harmony was a vegan Chinese buffet of awesomeness. Even the tea, orange slices and pineapple chunks were better than most. I gave faux shrimp another try (the first time I tried it, it tasted like fish - BLECH!) and even liked that.
Another friend brought Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW. They're always wonderful and were a great pick-me-up between finding twenty (yes, TWENTY) geocaches and visiting The Mutter Museum, which is more than slightly awesome.
If you're reading this, good job with the vegan food, Philadelphia! I want to walk in your subway tunnels and eat many of your sandwiches!
Ahem.
Sorry.
Aaaaanyway...Sunday, May 10, was my birthday, but I've been fortunate enough to have it acknowledged five times this month. All with awesome edibles.
The first time was my office birthday party on the seventh. Since I like baking and finding vegan cake in midtown Manhattan is kind of a pain in the ass, I make my own birthday cake every year and my boss reimburses me $20 for it. This year, I made a giant chocolate mint cupcake (please note the phone in the background for scale):
I tripled the Chocolate Mint Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and covered it with mint icing, Quick Melty Ganache and chocolate mint lentils. It was dangerously good. The mint makes the cake seem lighter than regular chocolate cake, and this cake pan kind of keeps you from going overboard with the icing, so if you're not careful, you can just keep eating this cake until suddenly your platter is empty and you've gained twenty pounds. Twenty tasty, tasty pounds. If you haven't tried this recipe yet (and like mint), please do. But proceed with caution.
The absolute best part of making the chocolate mint cake is...well...did you ever buy the mint Girl Scout cookies? Do you remember the aroma that would waft out and hit you in the face when you opened the box? Well, when you're making this cake, your ENTIRE KITCHEN SMELLS LIKE MINT GIRL SCOUT COOKIE WAFTINGS! It's an amazing thing. If you have a really tiny apartment, you can probably hotbox yourself in minty goodness. Awesome.
In case you're wondering, I made it using this cake pan, which was a gift from the same awesome people who gave me the boat cake pan. I guess they kind of know me pretty well. If you want to see how the cake assembly works, just browse backward from here.
Then, the Tofu Takedown was on my actual birthday. Obviously, I celebrated with lots of cannoli. Then we moved the party to Curly's Lunch, followed by Lula's Sweet Apothecary, where I got carrot cake ice cream (in a sugar cone!!) which tasted like the creamiest pumpkin pie ever. It was difficult to keep my pants on (especially since I was wearing a dress).
May 16 was mostly a celebration for other people, but I received my share of birthday wishes and brought the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance. They're definitely one of my favorite things and only take about an hour to make, which is pretty awesome. I didn't take any pictures this time, but they looked just like the ones I made for Election Day.
My family and I celebrated my birthday, Mother's Day and my mother's birthday (the 8th) on the 17th because I was busy taking down tofu on the 10th. I tried to make a cake out of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but kind of failed:
Pastry creme is just not what to use when trying to stick layers together. I should have known that from my last pastry creme debacle, but no one ever said I was a fast learner. I spent a good part of my afternoon cleaning ganache and pastry creme off the door of my refrigerator. I will not tell you whether or not I licked the fridge.
Lastly, my friends and I celebrated my birthday on the 24th in Philadelphia. Thanks to an awesome friend who did all sorts of veganny research, we ate at Basic Four Vegetarian Snack Bar and New Harmony Vegetarian Restaurant. At Basic Four, I had the best freaking tofu scramble I've ever eaten that I didn't make myself. Their potatoes are really good too. Most importantly, there was vegan Philly cheesesteak. I don't have words for how good this was, so just eat it with your eyes:
Please note that the picture does not do it justice.
New Harmony was a vegan Chinese buffet of awesomeness. Even the tea, orange slices and pineapple chunks were better than most. I gave faux shrimp another try (the first time I tried it, it tasted like fish - BLECH!) and even liked that.
Another friend brought Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW. They're always wonderful and were a great pick-me-up between finding twenty (yes, TWENTY) geocaches and visiting The Mutter Museum, which is more than slightly awesome.
If you're reading this, good job with the vegan food, Philadelphia! I want to walk in your subway tunnels and eat many of your sandwiches!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Happy Birthday to Me!
Yesterday was my birthday, and in honor of that most auspicious of occasions, I baked a cake and brought it to work for my office birthday party on Thursday. I call it Blackout the Forest Cake because it's sort of like a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance.
I started out making the Raspberry Blackout Cake, substituting cherry preserves for raspberry:
Instead of topping it with more cherry preserves, I made the raspberry layer from the Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars, substituting frozen cherries for raspberries:
All that was topped with ganache:
Then another cake and more cherries. When I moved the second cake from the cooling rack to the cake, it ripped about halfway down and I nearly shit my pants. Thankfully, all the toppings covered it up quite nicely and no one could tell:
Then, the whole thing was frosted with ganache and refrigerated along with the remaining topping to firm it up to a spreadable and pipeable consistency:
I also dipped some fresh cherries in the ganache for decoration. I kept the stems on because I thought they kind of looked like birthday candles, and because it made them easier to dip. To get a good layer of chocolate on them, I dipped them, refrigerated them, dipped them again and put them back in the fridge until it was time to use them:
I'm not so great at frosting cakes yet, so I wasn't able to completely hide the seam between the cakes when I poured on the ganache. I managed to cover the seam with the refrigerated ganache, but it didn't come out as smooth as I'd hoped. I guess I just need practice (the top isn't so smooth either, but that's to be expected with the cherry chunks on it).
The next thing I did was pipe chocolate circles onto the cake wherever I wanted to place the fresh cherries. I think of them as "Ganache-y Os":
Then I pressed the chocolate covered cherries into the ganache-y os:
I probably should have done the cake assembly and decoration on the base of my cake carrier, but I didn't because I'm not so smart. I also made the even less smart move of covering my carrier with parchment paper, so that when I piped around the base of the cake, I wouldn't be doing it directly onto the carrier. Moving the cake from the cutting board to the carrier was a nightmare. I really thought I was going to wreck the whole thing. The sides ripped significantly, but I was able to hide it with icing. Then I piped a border on the top and bottom of the cake:
Thanks to the stupid parchment, the cake slid around the carrier throughout my commute (bus, train and 20-minute walk) and I thought it would certainly be ruined by the time I got to work. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, it didn't turn out too bad; the trim is just a little flat. Here's a shot of the inside:
The cake went over very well, with two people having seconds and one attempting to steal one of the pieces saved for absentees.
Since I'd never made a cake like this before, I did half a test cake last weekend by baking one cake, cutting it in half and layering the two halves instead of layering two cakes:
Here's a shot of the cherry and chocolate layers:
My family loved the testcake so much I knew it'd be good enough for my coworkers. Actually, my mother loved it a little too much: my father had to make her back away from the table and when no one was looking, she rushed the cake and took a second piece (part of a piece I was saving for a friend). She's been talking about the cake all week, so I'm in the process of turning it into cupcakes for Mother's Day (literally in the process; I'm typing this while the ganache is cooling in the fridge). If the cupcakes turn out half as well as the cake did, it will be a happy Mother's Day indeed.
I started out making the Raspberry Blackout Cake, substituting cherry preserves for raspberry:
Instead of topping it with more cherry preserves, I made the raspberry layer from the Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars, substituting frozen cherries for raspberries:
All that was topped with ganache:
Then another cake and more cherries. When I moved the second cake from the cooling rack to the cake, it ripped about halfway down and I nearly shit my pants. Thankfully, all the toppings covered it up quite nicely and no one could tell:
Then, the whole thing was frosted with ganache and refrigerated along with the remaining topping to firm it up to a spreadable and pipeable consistency:
I also dipped some fresh cherries in the ganache for decoration. I kept the stems on because I thought they kind of looked like birthday candles, and because it made them easier to dip. To get a good layer of chocolate on them, I dipped them, refrigerated them, dipped them again and put them back in the fridge until it was time to use them:
I'm not so great at frosting cakes yet, so I wasn't able to completely hide the seam between the cakes when I poured on the ganache. I managed to cover the seam with the refrigerated ganache, but it didn't come out as smooth as I'd hoped. I guess I just need practice (the top isn't so smooth either, but that's to be expected with the cherry chunks on it).
The next thing I did was pipe chocolate circles onto the cake wherever I wanted to place the fresh cherries. I think of them as "Ganache-y Os":
Then I pressed the chocolate covered cherries into the ganache-y os:
I probably should have done the cake assembly and decoration on the base of my cake carrier, but I didn't because I'm not so smart. I also made the even less smart move of covering my carrier with parchment paper, so that when I piped around the base of the cake, I wouldn't be doing it directly onto the carrier. Moving the cake from the cutting board to the carrier was a nightmare. I really thought I was going to wreck the whole thing. The sides ripped significantly, but I was able to hide it with icing. Then I piped a border on the top and bottom of the cake:
Thanks to the stupid parchment, the cake slid around the carrier throughout my commute (bus, train and 20-minute walk) and I thought it would certainly be ruined by the time I got to work. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, it didn't turn out too bad; the trim is just a little flat. Here's a shot of the inside:
The cake went over very well, with two people having seconds and one attempting to steal one of the pieces saved for absentees.
Since I'd never made a cake like this before, I did half a test cake last weekend by baking one cake, cutting it in half and layering the two halves instead of layering two cakes:
Here's a shot of the cherry and chocolate layers:
My family loved the testcake so much I knew it'd be good enough for my coworkers. Actually, my mother loved it a little too much: my father had to make her back away from the table and when no one was looking, she rushed the cake and took a second piece (part of a piece I was saving for a friend). She's been talking about the cake all week, so I'm in the process of turning it into cupcakes for Mother's Day (literally in the process; I'm typing this while the ganache is cooling in the fridge). If the cupcakes turn out half as well as the cake did, it will be a happy Mother's Day indeed.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
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 and looked at the package. Puff pastry. Great. And, of course, we didn't actually have any phyllo dough, so I just followed the instructions using the puff pastry instead.
Obviously, the cupcakes looked nothing like mummies. Some looked like roses, the rest looked like shit. The edges puffed up nicely, but I was afraid to keep the cupcakes in the oven too long, so the centers and other areas where the dough was really thick ended up nearly raw.
Personally, I liked them, raw dough and all. Maybe I'm weird. Nobody but my mother complained about them, so I guess they couldn't be that bad, but only eight of twelve were eaten (compared to eleven of twelve of the vampires) so maybe they were that bad. The raw dough peeled off the top of the cupcakes easily and I wouldn't have been at all offended if people did that if it allowed them to enjoy the cupcake below, but no one except my mother did. Also, I think the cupcakes turned out a bit more muffiny than usual because the margarine from the topping seeped in as they were rebaked. Still tasty, but muffiny.
(And yes, I did intentionally wait until after midnight to post this so it could count as Sunday's VeganMoFo post.)
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 and looked at the package. Puff pastry. Great. And, of course, we didn't actually have any phyllo dough, so I just followed the instructions using the puff pastry instead.
Obviously, the cupcakes looked nothing like mummies. Some looked like roses, the rest looked like shit. The edges puffed up nicely, but I was afraid to keep the cupcakes in the oven too long, so the centers and other areas where the dough was really thick ended up nearly raw.
Personally, I liked them, raw dough and all. Maybe I'm weird. Nobody but my mother complained about them, so I guess they couldn't be that bad, but only eight of twelve were eaten (compared to eleven of twelve of the vampires) so maybe they were that bad. The raw dough peeled off the top of the cupcakes easily and I wouldn't have been at all offended if people did that if it allowed them to enjoy the cupcake below, but no one except my mother did. Also, I think the cupcakes turned out a bit more muffiny than usual because the margarine from the topping seeped in as they were rebaked. Still tasty, but muffiny.
(And yes, I did intentionally wait until after midnight to post this so it could count as Sunday's VeganMoFo post.)
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