Vegan Bake Sale For Haiti – Cupcakes!

Here’s the awesometastic cupcakes that I made for the bake sale, and were pretty much the first stuff to sell out on my end of the tables. (I have a gift. A cupcake gift.)

Root Beer Float Cupcakes – My Sweet Vegan

Root Beer cake, chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes – VCTOTW
(Chocolate Mint cake, mint buttercream, melty chocolate ganache)

Raspberry Jelly Donut Cupcakes – Veganomicon

I didn’t get to test any of the cupcakes, as I wanted to sell them all, and I had never made the chocolate mint ones before so that was sort of a disappointment. Also, I finally got a hold of some root beer extract so I got to use that in the root beer floats instead of that weirdo Torani syrup. I suppose I’ll get to taste them next time!

Also, the jelly donut cupcakes are the easiest thing in the world to make, but I keep screwing them up! When I made them for a friend for Passover, I forgot to add the sugar before dumping all the batter into the cup liners. Before I made this pictured batch, I forgot to add the oil before doing the same. Also, I had a nice chat with a customer of the bake sale that couldn’t get his jelly to sink to the middle of the cupcakes to save his life. I thought maybe it was his baking powder or soda getting inactivated, but I’m hardly a food scientist. Hell, I can barely even get it right myself – but damn, they are good.

Not pictured: The green tea walnut biscotti from Vegan Cookies Take Over Your Cookie Jar, that was a little cajun on the bottom. I’ve been commissioned by a generous donor to make another batch, along with the root beer floats – all for a $1000 donation to Doctors Without Borders. Wow.

Pasta Della California with Smoky Broiled Tempeh, Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

This is not my triumphant return to cooking – that was a batch of Mango Ginger Tofu with Coconut Rice a couple of days ago. But, seeing as that’s so much food porn leftovers, I decided to wait until I had something new to post.

This is that something new.

Pasta Della California with Smoky Broiled Tempeh, both from Veganomicon

I should just call my blog Isa Chandra Tells You What To Eat, because whenever I see a post of hers, I’m compelled to cook.

While cooking out of Veganomicon, I never really had the urge to make Pasta Della California, that is until I saw this post of Isa’s. Looks good, right? And it fends off zombies AND Republicans. Score.

It’s pretty okay. I don’t think it will go in my usual rotation, but it’s certainly different than what I’m normally drawn to. Variety is good.

Also, I didn’t marinade the tempeh for the full time because of poor scheduling, and had a bit of a hmmm moment with my broiler. It came out pretty decent though, I’ll definitely have to make it again, but correctly.

And now for the crown jewel of the evening…

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles, from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

Mmmmmmmm. Yes, I can’t even talk right now, these are so good.

Om nom nom fucking nom. Fall, I’m ready for your ass.

Get yer recipe (and instructional video) here, and then pre-order this amazing book pretty please.

Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions and Sage Breadcrumbs

Comfort food at its finest.

Even though Spring is just settling in, I decided to make this oft-fapped over Autumn recipe out of Veganomicon. Believe the hype.

It’s surprisingly simple to make, and while there are different sections to make (the ricotta, pasta, caramelizing onions, toasting breadcrumbs), it’s all timed well that while one thing is cooking, you’re preparing the next – everything gets done at once, ready to be put in the oven.

The ricotta in this recipe is a super creamy cashew ricotta. At it’s core, it’s very similar to the crumbly Tofu-Basil Ricotta out of Vegan With a Vengeance (see the Garlic Green Goddess Pizza posts), but blended with raw cashews and no nooch. It almost turns it into a whipped cream cheese type of ingredient – which by the way, this may be replacing the Tofutti Cream Cheese on my bagels (but not in my cheesecakes), it’s certainly more healthy and better tasting. Also, I think it will be replacing the ricotta on future pizzas. I am a convert.

You combine the ricotta with pureed pumpkin, a few other ingredients, caramelized onions, and the pasta, then bake with the sage breadcrumbs on top. I didn’t heed instruction and make the breadcrumbs myself, but in the future I will be sure to do so.

I took a container of the ziti (okay, so I really used penne) with a side salad to work today and I can vouch for the reheatability. Yum.

Giftmas Extravaganza

Merry Giftmas, or as the Pastafarians like to say: Happy Holiday

I’m updating from the comfort of my sickbed, which I’ve been nestled in since early on Giftmas Day.

Pro Tip: If you feel too sick to go to work, you’re too sick to go to work.

I went in on the next day and left work two hours later after slumping over in my cubicle, on the verge of passing out and puking. I think I scared my boss when I called her from my cubicle, which is about four feet from hers, to tell her that I felt sick and she had to ask me if I was sitting up because she couldn’t see me. I literally couldn’t move or do anything but stay slumped over. So much for being the stoic office worker. However, since my parents were super generous and got me a brand new laptop this year (I know, I still don’t believe it), I’ve been sickbedding relatively comfortably, with the Inkernet and Team Fortress 2 (SteamID: reiliel) always within reach. Also, I’ve been reading the hell out of the Dexter novels that my guy got me for Giftmas. Nothing says love like forensics and sociopathy! ❤

You’re here for the snot tales and the blood spatter, right?

Just in case you came here for the food, I was super busy before Giftmas making all kinds of food to take to my parents for Giftmas Eve, and other food just to have to stay alive. I made it all in the same evening, and you know what that means – something had to suffer. I managed to fuck up the one recipe that I’m pretty sure that no one in the history of the world has ever fucked up before: falafel from Vegan with a Vengeance.

And how does one do that? Forget to add flour to the mix. There was an interdimensional pocket on the page between breadcrumbs and onion, apparently. What didn’t fall apart and was salvageable did taste really good, but the majority got turned to oil slurry. Yaaaaay. At least I didn’t fuck up the tahini sauce to go with it. When I’m feeling better, I’ll make another batch. Also, note to self: don’t attempt this in the blender, use the Kitchen Aid grinder until you get a food processor.

The other casualty of the evening was the Sauteed Green Beans and Mushrooms, also from Vegan with a Vengeance. Since my copy is from the first printing, there’s typos in it that I wasn’t aware of, mostly because everything I’ve made out of it has turned out perfectly. That is, until this recipe. 4 teaspoons of salt is too much for any recipe, and you should know better. The proper amount is 1 teaspoon. One. It would have been really good if I had known that, and the dish did nothing to help my mom’s opinion of vegan cooking which makes it all the more painful that it’s pretty much the first recipe I’ve really fucked up. (The falafel were made after the green beans.)

But wait, there’s good news! I prepared mashed potatoes and Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy, which my mom liked but commented that it tasted like split pea soup. Whaaaat? Neither Jake or I like split pea soup, so not only did we find this comparison to be inaccurate, it was also grody. But hey, it came out well.

And for dessert?

Individual Heart-shaped Apple Galettes

I made these quite a bit smaller than the recipe calls for – mine made something like 10 or 11 while the recipe says it makes 6. The reason is that I had a larger, heart-shaped cookie cutter that proved to be a lot easier to work with than cutting out the bigger hearts by hand. As a result, my mom kept referring to them as cookies, but I think I’d like to see them as small tarts. They’re also insanely easy to make, once you get the crust out of the way (do yourself a favor and get a $3 pastry cutter from your local Mega-lo-mart.)

I had to improvise a little with the placement of the apple, with the smaller size of the hearts (the bigger sizes allow for fanning), but I think it worked well. My mom mentioned that the way I placed them was quite visually appealing; I know that if she had said something like that, she really meant it.

Serve warm with a scoop of Soy Delicious/So Decadent soy ice cream. Nom.

Rumnog Pecan Cookies

Yes, it’s half-eaten because it was the last one and I had forgotten to take a picture after icing. I made these for our office potluck (along with the carnitas and almond cookies), and these disappeared even before everyone made it into the office. They’re popular.

And they’re very sweet. My favorite robohomo, David, said that he thought he preferred the almond cookies because they were more subtle and less sweet.

I also made them twice as big as the recipe calls for. Maybe a tablespoon of batter in California is bigger than one in Brooklyn? No matter, they still came out fucking great. And the inclusion of dark rum sent me on a reverse engineering adventure into Dremel-meets-bottle-lock Land, but that’s a story for a different day.

The icing is boozy without being gross and overwhelming, and the texture of the cookies is awesome, even if they were a little delicate after removing from the oven – they firm up. These might become a winter tradition for me.

Terry's Favorite Almond Cookies

These fuckers are huge, so when Terry says to use large cookie sheets, do it. Or just bake in batches, see if I care.  If you don’t, this happens:

Which is okay, I guess, but I crave perfection, not one big cookie.

These are exactly as promised: crispy, almondy and probably similar to what you’d find in your localish Chinatown. (But probably not in LA’s Chinatown because all you’ll find there are bootlegs of everything imaginable, and the occasional street person smelling of urine.) Make ice cream sammiches with these and the recipe for their green tea ice cream. Fucking nom.

Banana Nut Waffles

This just in! I made waffles again, and didn’t fuck up any of them! No more sink waffles.

This is what the first try looked like.

By the end of the batter, I was an old pro. Amazening.

I think that the bananas I used were a little on the small side, so I let them get really ripe before I used them. In the future, though, bigger bananas. The chopped walnuts in these give a really neat crunch and the banana is an awesome egg replacer in this. Nom.

Lemon Bars and Almost All-American Seitan Pot Pie

I had planned on making lemon bars and panko-stuffed mushrooms for this last weekend’s PPK meetup out in LA, but an old derby injury had flared up (from Thursday until this morning, when I procured some delicious Vicodin) and I ended up in bed all weekend. I started feeling a little frisky on Saturday night, so I decided to go ahead with the lemon bars, and make a big ass pot pie while I was at it.

Lemon Bars:

Do not over bake your shortbread. Repeat, do not overbake your shortbread.

If this happens to you and you have the time and patience, just go ahead and make a new batch. If you’re like me and impatient enough to roll with it, it won’t fuck up the lemon bars, but it will make the shortbread a little too crunchy to really play all that nicely with the filling.

But, it doesn’t matter because these are orgasmic. Yeah, I “went there.”  Just make them already.

Almost All-American Seitan Pot Pie:

Straight outta Compton the oven.

Oh boy, did I fuck up on this one, but I don’t think it really affected the outcome. Note to self: turn your fucking burners down. Listen to Emeril just this once and USE THE KNOB.  So, in short, I burned the hell out of the chickpea roux because the heat was too high and there was a coating of seitan chunks in the bottom of the pan to facilitate. So, I rescued the onions in the pan, pulled it off of the heat, scrubbed it out, and tried again. Success.

Also, I felt damn proud of myself on my apparent newfound skill of rolling up dough on a rolling pin to place over a dish, like how my favorite buttercream slingers do with fondant on Ace of Cakes. Okay, so I’m clearly a nerd.

The next time I make this, I’m going to use chicken-style seitan and figure out how to keep the spices from being beefy, because even as an omni I wasn’t into that. Also, double the crust, because the best part of a pot pie is the gooey bottom crust. Maybe invest in some small pie pans to make individual pies for freezing? In fact, I’d really like to replicate the Creamy Mushroom Chicken pot pies that Marie Callender’s sells, vegan-style. It can’t be that hard – chicken style chunked seitan, creamy mushroom gravy, portabellos, corn, carrots, broccoli… easy as, erm, pie. Note to self: maybe some agave in the crust to give it that slight sweetness in the Marie Callender’s shit. Mmmm… vegany goodness.

Take a look at mah insides:

And, because pot pies are always, always eaten out of bowls, here’s the proper bowl rearrangement:

Notice the open Veganomicon in the background. I loves my Isa and Terry.

Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh and Messy Rice

From the Omnomnomicon. Or Veganomicon, take your pick.

I like my food to be spicy, as in blow-your-ass-out hot. This tempeh fits the bill, big time. Of course, it makes a difference in what kind of hot sauce you buy to marinade it in – I went with the extra hot habanero kind. Side note: I remembered seeing a Louisiana-style hot sauce in one or several of the natural food stores out here, and when I went shopping for it? Mysteriously disappeared from every single one. What the fuck. If I had known that, I would have bought some when I was just in Louisiana.

I think I may have not boiled the tempeh quite enough before marinading, because it wasn’t quite as tender as the rave reviews have mentioned.  The messy rice is good and offsets the spice of the tempeh well, but I do recommend that you make some sort of non-spicy vegetable dish to go along with this set. I always forget the vegetable side dishes. The recipe says that a serving size is two triangles of tempeh, but Sweet Baby Zombie Jesus, that’s a lot of food – and this is coming from a fatty.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure if this is something that I’d serve an unsuspecting omni, but it’s worth the (little) effort to make. I’m not necessarily in love with it, but it’s respectable.

Vodka Penne

Trader Joe’s did me a total disservice by introducing me to vodka sauce as an omni, mostly because theirs is super creamy – it should be, it’s got both romano and cream cheese in it. Well, fuck that. This is better.

This is the first “real” recipe I’ve made out of Veganomicon and it’s fucking nummy. It’s got a little heat to it, and the creaminess comes from almonds, courtesy of an immersion blender. I could probably eat the whole batch, but I probably shouldn’t.