This isn't a food post, but it's for the animals, so I think it's still safe for a veganism-related blog. Yes? Yes.
Taken from BrooklynVegan:
Today, we are especially happy to bring you "People Got A Lotta Nerve," the first single from Neko Case's forthcoming album Middle Cyclone (out March 3), because for every blog that reposts the song and/or iLike user who adds it to their profile, Neko Case and ANTI- will make a cash donation to Best Friends Animal Society.
The promotion will run from January 13 to February 3, 2009. Five dollars will be donated for every blog post and one dollar for every user of iLike that adds the song to his/her profile.
Everyone and their grandmama has a blog these days, so repost this and let the good people over at newmedia @ epitaph . com know you did, and the animals get $5. I admit I haven't done any research on Best Friends Animal Society, but this is kind of a no-brainer to me; after all, Neko Case kind of rules anyway.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD! WOOHA!
Showing posts with label brooklynvegan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brooklynvegan. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Condiments
I bought a 29-ounce can of pureed pumpkin to make Sunday's Tofu Pumpkin Pie. I only needed 16. I woke up Monday wondering "What the hell am I going to do with the other 13 ounces of pumpkin? It's not enough for another pie and probably won't last until Thanksgiving anyway, even in the fridge in a tightly sealed container. What a waste!" I pondered my leftover pumpkin through the morning, until I had some free time at work and was able to hit the blogs. My first two are always BrooklynVegan and The PPK. After that, I hit up Fat Free Vegan and low and behold, their fat free recipe of the week was Pumpkin-Apple Butter. Turns out they had leftovers too.
And while we all loved the pie, pumpkin pie without whipped cream is almost criminal in some parts, so I attempted a Bryanna's Best Tofu Whipped Creme on Monday night too.
Pumpkin-Apple Butter: I basically followed the recipe as is, skipping the nutmeg because I don't have any. Yes, I will be rectifying that soon. FFV used a hand blender to puree the raisins, then returned them to the pan. I'm totally lazy and used the hand blender in the pan. Is that terrible? After a while, I got even lazier and left a few raisins only semi-pureed. Chunks add character, right?
Much like the polenta, the butter thickened as it heated and bubbled and glooped along as I watched it. It didn't need nearly as frequent stirring as the polenta, though. I ended up bringing my knitting into the kitchen and giving the butter a quick stir every time I finished a round.
The butter tastes and smells very much like really good pumpkin pie, but lighter (I guess because of the apples). FFV recommends putting it on toast. I ate it with melba toast and though I enjoyed it immensely, my mouth kept thinking "This needs rice cakes!" so I've picked up two packages and am ready to rock them with pumpkinny apply goodness.
Here's the recipe as I did it:
Pumpkin-Apple Butter
1/2 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup apple juice
2 cups pureed pumpkin
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 cup natural apple sauce
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup sugar
Put the raisins in a medium-sized saucepan, and pour the apple juice over them. Heat on low until raisins plump up, adding water when they get dry. When they are plump, puree the raisins in the juice. (I used a hand blender in the pan.)
Add all remaining ingredients to the pan. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. Makes about 3 cups.
Bryanna's Best Tofu Whipped Creme: Meh. I definitely wouldn't bring it to a party and think my pie is better off without it. Maybe we'll just get a vegan whipped topping from the store. I have so much to do this week, I just don't have the time to hang out in the kitchen perfecting my whipped topping. Alas!
Instead of coming out like whipped cream, as I made it, the topping has the consistency of cupcake batter, but without all the tasty goodness my cupcakes usually have. It even leaves my mouth feeling kind of dry, like after I eat tahini. Bizarre.
If you look at the recipe on the site, it's full of "or"s. Here's how I made it, so you know what not to do. One of the other variations may work better.
Bryanna's Best Tofu Whipped Creme
Makes about 1 and 3/4 cups
1 and 1/3 c. soft tub tofu [water-packed in plastic tub]
1/4 c. raw cashews, ground very fine in a food processor or coffee grinder
3 T. very light granulated unbleached sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
Place all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend for several minutes, or until very smooth and fluffy. Scrape into a small bowl, cover tightly and refrigerate for at least four hours before serving. This will keep for several days refrigerated.
Extreme closeup of the butter, for texture:
The elusive raisin:
The pie with the whipped topping:
I was actually considering not even posting that picture because it looks so unappetizing. At the risk of being dirty and taking "food porn" to a new level, this picture looks too much like a money shot for me to be comfortable serving it to others. Especially my grandmother and her contemporaries on Thanksgiving.
And while we all loved the pie, pumpkin pie without whipped cream is almost criminal in some parts, so I attempted a Bryanna's Best Tofu Whipped Creme on Monday night too.
Pumpkin-Apple Butter: I basically followed the recipe as is, skipping the nutmeg because I don't have any. Yes, I will be rectifying that soon. FFV used a hand blender to puree the raisins, then returned them to the pan. I'm totally lazy and used the hand blender in the pan. Is that terrible? After a while, I got even lazier and left a few raisins only semi-pureed. Chunks add character, right?
Much like the polenta, the butter thickened as it heated and bubbled and glooped along as I watched it. It didn't need nearly as frequent stirring as the polenta, though. I ended up bringing my knitting into the kitchen and giving the butter a quick stir every time I finished a round.
The butter tastes and smells very much like really good pumpkin pie, but lighter (I guess because of the apples). FFV recommends putting it on toast. I ate it with melba toast and though I enjoyed it immensely, my mouth kept thinking "This needs rice cakes!" so I've picked up two packages and am ready to rock them with pumpkinny apply goodness.
Here's the recipe as I did it:
Pumpkin-Apple Butter
1/2 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup apple juice
2 cups pureed pumpkin
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 cup natural apple sauce
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup sugar
Put the raisins in a medium-sized saucepan, and pour the apple juice over them. Heat on low until raisins plump up, adding water when they get dry. When they are plump, puree the raisins in the juice. (I used a hand blender in the pan.)
Add all remaining ingredients to the pan. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. Makes about 3 cups.
Bryanna's Best Tofu Whipped Creme: Meh. I definitely wouldn't bring it to a party and think my pie is better off without it. Maybe we'll just get a vegan whipped topping from the store. I have so much to do this week, I just don't have the time to hang out in the kitchen perfecting my whipped topping. Alas!
Instead of coming out like whipped cream, as I made it, the topping has the consistency of cupcake batter, but without all the tasty goodness my cupcakes usually have. It even leaves my mouth feeling kind of dry, like after I eat tahini. Bizarre.
If you look at the recipe on the site, it's full of "or"s. Here's how I made it, so you know what not to do. One of the other variations may work better.
Bryanna's Best Tofu Whipped Creme
Makes about 1 and 3/4 cups
1 and 1/3 c. soft tub tofu [water-packed in plastic tub]
1/4 c. raw cashews, ground very fine in a food processor or coffee grinder
3 T. very light granulated unbleached sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
Place all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend for several minutes, or until very smooth and fluffy. Scrape into a small bowl, cover tightly and refrigerate for at least four hours before serving. This will keep for several days refrigerated.
Extreme closeup of the butter, for texture:
The elusive raisin:
The pie with the whipped topping:
I was actually considering not even posting that picture because it looks so unappetizing. At the risk of being dirty and taking "food porn" to a new level, this picture looks too much like a money shot for me to be comfortable serving it to others. Especially my grandmother and her contemporaries on Thanksgiving.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
How it All Began
I'm starting this blog with entries about what led up to me wanting to keep it. This post is backdated to approximately the date it happened.
There are two things I love more than may be considered normal: music and Harry Potter.
Because of the former, I check BrooklynVegan about a million times daily. Because of the latter, I'm a huge nerd.
Anyway! One day last June, I noticed the "Vegan Cupcakes!" link on BV, which took me to Isa Chandra Moskowitz's blog for Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I've been a vegetarian for about thirteen years, have considered going vegan many times and really like pretty baked goods, so I fell in love immediately and ran right out and bought the book. I should probably point out that I'd never really cooked or baked at this point. I was just compelled. I got my book home, flipped through it and was DYING to try out a few recipes. But for what? I needed some kind of event if I was going to bake enough cake to feed twelve people, right?
The event and inspiration came the next month.
Having absolutely nothing more interesting to do at work, I was poking around online when I found skull shaped cupcake pans on pushindaisies.com. First I laughed at the idea of gothcakes, then I had a brainfart: my friends were having a party to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! How awesome would Edible Dark Marks be? Very awesome, indeed.
I decided to go with the Golden Vanilla and Basic Chocolate Cupcake recipes from VCTOTW with the Rich Chocolate Ganache on top. For the cupcakes, I used half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat, canola oil instead of margarine and vanilla extract instead of almond or caramel. Since this was my first time baking, I thought it'd be a good idea to do a test run of each recipe. I did and all the cupcakes came out lovely and skull-looking. Fabulous.
So I got some green sugar and sour gummy worms (OK, I actually got all the colors, used the greens and ate the rest) for garnish and stayed up baking almost all night before the book release (which was just a splendid idea considering I planned on staying up all the following night reading the book at getting in good and late the night after since I had tickets for Gogol Bordello, who were just awesome, by the way).
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe I just couldn't make good twice in a row, because almost all the cupcakes I made that night stuck to the pan and failed. I had skulls without chins and foreheads and some were just cracked right in half. Naturally, most of the ones that broke were the chocolate, which were far more aesthetically pleasing, since the ganache blended in with the cake and all you saw was bright green on the dark background. I salvaged what I could, decorated them according to plan and...they looked like a first attempt at baking. Not terrible, but certainly not on par with anything you'd see in the blog linked above. However, they were still crowd pleasers, so I guess that's all right. It was a start, anyway.
There are two things I love more than may be considered normal: music and Harry Potter.
Because of the former, I check BrooklynVegan about a million times daily. Because of the latter, I'm a huge nerd.
Anyway! One day last June, I noticed the "Vegan Cupcakes!" link on BV, which took me to Isa Chandra Moskowitz's blog for Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I've been a vegetarian for about thirteen years, have considered going vegan many times and really like pretty baked goods, so I fell in love immediately and ran right out and bought the book. I should probably point out that I'd never really cooked or baked at this point. I was just compelled. I got my book home, flipped through it and was DYING to try out a few recipes. But for what? I needed some kind of event if I was going to bake enough cake to feed twelve people, right?
The event and inspiration came the next month.
Having absolutely nothing more interesting to do at work, I was poking around online when I found skull shaped cupcake pans on pushindaisies.com. First I laughed at the idea of gothcakes, then I had a brainfart: my friends were having a party to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! How awesome would Edible Dark Marks be? Very awesome, indeed.
I decided to go with the Golden Vanilla and Basic Chocolate Cupcake recipes from VCTOTW with the Rich Chocolate Ganache on top. For the cupcakes, I used half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat, canola oil instead of margarine and vanilla extract instead of almond or caramel. Since this was my first time baking, I thought it'd be a good idea to do a test run of each recipe. I did and all the cupcakes came out lovely and skull-looking. Fabulous.
So I got some green sugar and sour gummy worms (OK, I actually got all the colors, used the greens and ate the rest) for garnish and stayed up baking almost all night before the book release (which was just a splendid idea considering I planned on staying up all the following night reading the book at getting in good and late the night after since I had tickets for Gogol Bordello, who were just awesome, by the way).
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe I just couldn't make good twice in a row, because almost all the cupcakes I made that night stuck to the pan and failed. I had skulls without chins and foreheads and some were just cracked right in half. Naturally, most of the ones that broke were the chocolate, which were far more aesthetically pleasing, since the ganache blended in with the cake and all you saw was bright green on the dark background. I salvaged what I could, decorated them according to plan and...they looked like a first attempt at baking. Not terrible, but certainly not on par with anything you'd see in the blog linked above. However, they were still crowd pleasers, so I guess that's all right. It was a start, anyway.
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