Note to Self

Long story short: my family has agreed to two totally vegan Seders this Passover* and I'm all but crapping my pants as we get closer to the holiday. I think my mother and I have finally settled on a menu, but all the handwritten notes are driving me totally batshit, so here are our menus:

Night the First:

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup from Vegan With a Vengeance
Quinoa Tabouli from Yellow Rose Recipes
Stuffed Twice-Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes**
Tomato and Roasted Eggplant Stew with Chickpeas from Veganomicon (sans chickpeas)
Roasted asparagus with a metric assload of garlic
Matzo Almond Brittle

Night the Second:

Creamy Tomato Soup from Veganomicon
Cinnamon Lime Quinoa with Apricots & Almonds from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan
Herb-Roasted Potatoes from Vegan With a Vengeance
Sweet Potato-Pear Tzimmes with Pecans and Raisins from Veganomicon**
Sauteed Spinach and Tomatoes from Veganomicon
Strawberry Rhubarb Compote with Matzo Streusel Topping

I also wanted to do some straight up vegetable salads, but my mother thinks it's unnecessary. Everyone's getting old and they just can't eat so much so late.***

For the rest of Passover, I'll probably just eat leftovers and matzo with some random spreads. I'm considering:

Tapenade (YRR)
Guacamole (VCON)
Sweet Basil Pesto Tapenade (VCON)
Asparagus Spinach Dip (VCON)

Also, ED&BV has an interesting-looking focaccia recipe and I'm considering subbing matzo for the pizza dough, just for shits and giggles. We shall see what shall be. I'll probably make truffles again too, since they were much loved last year.

Happy holidays, everyone!****



* Passover generally means no bread or grains or things involved in leavenedness. As an added bonus, my family also doesn't eat any legumes or seeds, making the whole vegan thing a nice challenge.

** We had these on Thanksgiving and the family liked them so much a return engagement was requested.

*** Speaking of everyone getting old, my grandmother is moving in with us for a while, so things are going to be pretty damn hectic. Therefore, I'm not promising any pictures when all this is over. However, I'll be sure to return in a relatively timely fashion to at least review the dishes (which will probably just involve me saying "Holy crap! Isa, Terry and Joanna are geniuses!" as usual).

**** Sorry, this wasn't really all that short.

Franzycakes V 2.0

As I mentioned last March, I have a friend who really likes Franz Ferdinand. Her birthday came around again, and lucky for me, they've come out with another album. Behold! Franzycakes: The Return!



Those are Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes with Quick Melty Ganache from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Most of the cupcakes simply said TONIGHT: YOUR BIRTHDAY



But that got boring, so I made a few hands, too:



Then I realized I wasn't actually giving her the cupcakes on her birthday. She picked them up from my office almost two weeks later and I didn't want my cupcakes to be living a lie:



The cupcakes themselves are very tasty, but were a little dry. That may have been because I couldn't get my flax seeds as well ground as I should have (I used a wooden mortar and pestle).

The decorating went easier and faster than I expected it to. I would have gone slower if I thought it would help, but it wouldn't have. As I was working on the cupcakes, I thought to myself "Wow, these look like crap. I'm going to look up the pictures of last year's Franz Ferdinand cupcakes and will see absolutely no improvement in my lettering. That fucking sucks." Then I realized "Wait a minute, I don't think I've done any writing since last year's Franz Ferdinand cupcakes. How the hell can I improve if I don't practice?!" and that made me feel a little better. What made me feel even better (and worse) was actually looking at last year's cupcakes. Go click the link in the first line of this post. I'll wait.

Done laughing yet?

Holy crap! Those were fucking TERRIBLE! How the fuck did I take those out of the house?!? CHRIST! My friends should have confiscated my pastry bag then and there. Shit.

So yeah, one quick way to improve your piping skills (and maybe even your self esteem) is to start out making something that looks like TOTAL CRAP because you couldn't get your icing the right texture. I remember those taking fucking hours to decorate, too. What the shit.

This time, the icing was the perfect consistency. I was just a lazy asshole and didn't feel like getting a second pastry bag for the orange icing, so I washed the bag in between colors and refilled it wet, making my orange icing nice and runny. YAY I'M AWESOME!

They don't look anything like professional, but they taste good, all of them were legible and two people (including the birthday girl) were able to recognize what they were supposed to be without being told. For me, that's a creative victory.



(Also: two posts in one week! What the balls?!)

Oh Hi

Wow, I'm really crap at this blog thing, huh?

Hmmm....what's happened since my last post of any substance? Let's see.



(please excuse the crappy photo. It's taken with my BlackBerry and apparently TwitPic* doesn't let you embed photos without shrinking them. This picture really isn't worth reuploading to Flickr, but we'll make do since it's all I have from the past few months and this post needs something. You can click through to see it in it's larger, overbroiled, glory.)

Vegan Brunch testing ended. Pre-order your copy today! (thus concludes the shameless plug portion of this post)

I successfully completed about a week doing Eat to Live really hardcore. During that week, I made loads of non-photogenic soup, which was not worth posting about.

I spent two months doing my own modification of Eat to Live, which basically meant making more ugly (though tasty) food and not eating any Luna Bars. Success!

I gave up fried foods for the period of time known as Lent (also chewy candy, but that's not relevant to what you see here).

I baked a lot of chocolate chip cookies. They didn't come out anywhere near as pretty as Isa's.

Testing began for Terry Hope Romero's Vegan Latina. WOOHA!

So far, I've made Tropical Pumpkin Soup, which uses Calabaza pumpkin instead of the kind you usually use on Thanksgiving. It's really good and creamy and kind of thymey. Yum.

Locro, or Creamy Potato Soup with Avocado, might be my new boyfriend. My whole family loved this. It's so thick and rich and creamy. The avocado adds a nice touch to your usual potato soup and it's garnished with lime juice and raw red onion which give it a nice kick.

Pastel de Choclo, or Sweet Basil & Corn Pot Pie, is kind of like shepherd's pie gone south o' the border. The filling is made up of vegetables, raisins, tempeh and yuca and the topping is a sort of batter made of corn instead of the usual potato. So. Good. The picture above doesn't really do it justice because I broiled the hell out of the top (I've said it before and I'll say it 74289 times more: I like my shit burnt).

In addition to getting to make all sorts of tasty awesomeness, working on this book is allowing me to try out a bunch of new flavors. In one week, I've already added two new spices to my list (annatto, which I used to flavor an oil that was to be used in the potato soup and many other things, and epazote, sort of like Latiny oregano). So much fun!

I think that's all I've got. Now that I'm testing again and Passover is coming, hopefully you'll see a bit more from me in the coming months.

So how've you been?



*Yes, I'm on Twitter, but I don't bother to link it here because I'm not one of those interesting food-related Twitterers who posts all sorts of useful links and stuff, it's mostly just my friends and I bullshitting.

Music for Animals

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!

GOAL!

[Insert mental image of me (or the dork of your choice) throwing my arms up like a referee.]

I have my first goal for 2009. This is pretty funny, since I haven't completed either of my goals for 2008 yet, but please bear with me.

The goal: To acquire and cook with a spice starting with every letter of the alphabet.

My spice cabinet has gotten pretty full over the past year, but some letters are still unrepresented and I'd like to rectify that in 2009. With your help.

After the jump, I've typed....wait for it...the alphabet. The bold letters are the ones I don't have spices for. What I ask of you, dear readers (yes, both of you), are your favorite spices beginning with those letters. And, if you've got them, recipes using those spices. Recipes don't need to be vegan for me to use them as a starting point, so please, give me everything you've got.

Actually, why not go ahead and tell me about your favorite spices, even if their letters are already taken? I'm going to be pretty flexible with my alphabetizing anyway (e.g.: Jamaican allspice counts as J, white pepper counts as W and rubbed sage as R because I already have A, P and S taken care of), so if you have something more exciting than thyme for T, let me know about it, please.

As I get my cook on for the next twelve months, I'll update this post with which spice I've used for each letter, and if I feel really motivated, maybe a link to the recipe I used it in.

Thank you and may your coming year kick copious amounts of ass.

Spice List

Anatto (03/11, Creamy Potato Soup with Avocado (Locro) - Vegan Latina tester!)
Basil (shocking, yes? 03/15 Sweet Basil & Corn Pot Pie AKA Pastel de Choclo - Vegan Latina tester!)
Coriander, cumin (01/11, Spicy Red Lentil Soup)
Dill (01/11, Springtime Soup I know it's winter. So sue me!)
Epazote (03/15 Sweet Basil & Corn Pot Pie AKA Pastel de Choclo - Vegan Latina tester! Woohoo! My first new letter!)
F
Ginger (Red Lentil-Cauliflower Curry)
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
Tumeric (01/11, Spicy Red Lentil Soup)
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

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.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

My grandmother turned 82 on Wednesday. Here's her birthday cake:



Unfortunately, with all the food I made in the last few days, that's the only picture I was able to take outside. The rest were taken at the dinner table (and some things weren't photographed at all), so take a good look at that picture. The rest are going to be crap.



See?

The cake is just the Apricot Glazed Almond Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World made into a cake, decorated with marzipan letters and dried appricots dipped in chocolate and almonds. It is tasty and moist and not too sweet, and the preserves inside make your mouth say "Why hello there!" and it's pretty damn near perfect. My whole family loved it, especially my grandmother, who normally takes two bites of cake and says she's had enough but actually ate a whole piece of this thing (and took some home with her; she normally hates leftovers. This is historic).

Now that we have the important stuff out of the way, it's story time. Because if I've made a cake, you can be pretty sure there's a story involved. Probably one involving some kind of destruction.

Once upon a time (AKA last Wednesday, AKA Grandma's birthday, AKA day before Thanksgiving), I took the day off to cook. As an added bonus, in order to keep myself (and my friends) entertained (and distracted), I set up a webcam in my kitchen and broadcast my wacky shenanigans live to the whole Internet.

This cake was the very first thing I made, bright and early Wednesday morning. Everything went fine until it was time to decorate. I toasted and chopped my almonds, melted my chocolate, dipped my apricots and everything was fine. Then I popped the top of my can of marzipan to discover it was...Chocolate Schmear. What the crap is Chocolate Schmear? I didn't know, didn't want to know and just wanted it the fuck out of my kitchen. There was much swearing and stomping around, until I remembered I keep an emergency tube of marzipan on hand (when the world comes to an end, I'll be ready to bake. Will you?), grabbed it and made with the decorating. The marzipan letters were great in theory. In practice...not so much. I couldn't get the marzipan out of the damn cookie cutters without poking it with something, which is why all the letters are nicked and strange.

But let's be honest. That's hardly up to my usual standard of cake tragedy. Something else had to go wrong, right? Much to the amusement of my friends quietly watching from their offices, it did.

When the cake was done, I got out my Official Food Photography Table and showed it to whoever was still watching, before taking it outside to take pictures. Somehow, the table slipped out of my hands and INTO THE CAKE. Suddenly, my beautiful cake said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRAND*CRATER*"! After the obligatory freakout, I picked the crushed letters out of the cake, moved the rest of them over, made a new "MA", picked one of the apricots off the side of the cake, used it to cover the crater, then redistributed the apricots so it wouldn't be so obvious one was missing. Viola!

In retrospect, I'm pretty pissed at myself for not taking a picture of the cake with the visible crater. I need to get better at documenting my failures.

I usually share the story of how my cakes go wrong while we're eating them, but I didn't this time. Now the whole Internet knows what happened to the cake, but my family is none the wiser. Let's try to keep this between the 7382193719037812738 of us, OK?

And we'll all live happily ever after, the end.


PS: Chocolate Schmear tastes like ass.

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!

Ummm...Hi

It's been a while. My only excuse is that I'm lazy. That, and most of what I've made over the past couple of months hasn't been all that photogenic. How can one possibly read a post without pictures in it, right? Over the weekend, I was actually rebuked by a friend for slacking off on this whole blog thing, so here I am.

So what's been cooking lately? Good question. I barely remember.

I've tested some more recipes for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch, and they pretty much rule. Hopped on and off the raw bandwagon a few times (currently dangling off the side). Baked some brownies. And some blondies. And some brandy fruit cake stuff. And some cookies. In short: lots of baking happened.



That there is a Lemon Poppyseed muffin from the aforementioned brunch book. I don't usually like lemon baked goods, but these muffins are great. They're both sweet and lemony and the crumb is perfect and I love them. While this may not be saying much, these are probably the best muffins I've ever made. My mother went so far as to say they're the best things I've ever made. Seriously good stuff.



I baked for Election Day. I decided to be non-partisan and just go with a patriotic red, white and blue...ish. Red and white came from the Raspberry Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance and the blue came from the Veganomicon Fudgy Wudgy Blueberry Brownies. Yes. I know. They're brown, not blue, but they have "blue" in the name and they're tasty and one of the many things we've all learned from this election is that color does not limit what one can do or be.

Also, I think I've said this before, but I love those blondies SO. DAMN. MUCH. I've made them with different berries and they're always great. It pains me to share them. Really.

(OK, not really. The fun part of baking is the sharing.)

Close up shots of the brownies just looked like a load of brown (not so appetizing), so here are the blondies in all their chocolate raspberry glory.:



And then there's this: Sticky Spiked Double-Apple Cake with a Brown Sugar-Brandy Sauce. It's kind of ridiculous.



Baked in honor of my friend passing the bar (actually, Little Miss Genius Pants has now passed not one but two bars).

It was really easy to veganize. I used one tablespoon ground flax seeds dissolved in three tablespoons water and 1/4 cup applesauce to replace the eggs and MimicCreme for the heavy cream in the sauce. The recipe made me kind of nervous. When it said "Add the eggs and beat on medium speed until thickened and pale" I got jumpy. What if flax and apple sauce won't make it thicken and pale? What if I end up with a thin, dark mess of grossness? No worries, though, it totally worked. The cake was really interesting to make because it was more like a pan full of batter covered fruit and nuts than a batter with some fruit in it. It was cool to see how it all expanded as it baked and turned into a cake, not a mess. I didn't think I would like this much because I'm not a fan of brandy, but I was wrong. Some of it bakes off and the fruit and nuts overpower the alcohol enough for it to be tasty goodness.

I think that's all for now. Thanksgiving is coming and I'm in charge this year, so all of my food-related thought is going into that at the moment. I will report back on that before January, I swear.

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.