I made a cookie jar!  Well… “made” isn’t quite the right word.  What I did was recycle an empty giant pretzel tub into a cookie jar.   A pretzel tub that looked something like this:

Pretzel Jar

And turned it into this!

Cupcake!

I won’t be putting any cupcakes in the “cookie jar,” but I thought it would be cute and get the point across.  The point being: here be awesome sweet things.

Om Nom Nom!

Yummy sweet things that make you say “Om nom nom!”

Yum!

And YUM!

Things like cookies!

Les Macarons?

One of these days I’ll make some vegan macarons… but I chose to paint them on the cookie jar just because I thought it would be super cute.  Was I right?

CUPCAKE

Yay cookie jar!  I’ve since covered it with sealer, so it’s all shiny now, too.  Shiny AND cute.  I’m pretty happy.

But, what’s a cookie jar without cookies?    Inspired by the unsweetened chocolate chunks in HEAB’s scookies, and Post Punk Kitchens Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies, I decided to make “healthy cookies” for my cookie jar.  I’m gonna blame my recent weird health craze on California living.  I used to scoff at healthy baked goods.  My philosophy was if you wanted some dessert, you should have a proper rich, decadent, fat-filled, sugarry ridiculous something-or-other, and just eat less of it if you wanted to be “healthy.”

But, lots of sugarry foods make me feel all weird and hungover the next day… Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not going to stop making ridiculous goodies all together… I’m just trying to work in the healthier options a bit as well.  So, I’m experimenting with agave and stevia and oat flour and the likes.

Anyway! I present to you,

Cookies!

Wheat-Free Low-Sugar Chocolate Chunk Cookies!   Hrm, that’s kind of a mouthful isn’t it?

inside a wheat-free cookie

They were honestly pretty damn good.  Oaty, nutty, chocolatey, with just a hint of sweet.  The chocolate chunks are unsweetened baking chocolate– dark and intense–and made palatable by the light cookie sweetness surrounding them.   Since the cookies are made entirely with oat flour, they did crumble a bit more readily than your average chocolate chip cookie.  So, in an attempt to improve the binding– and lower the fat content– I made another batch using mashed banana instead of oil.

Banana Cookie

They held together waaay better.  Also, the bananas added another couple hints of sweetness, and the result was a cookie that tasted reminiscent of chocolate chip banana bread.  Win.

Before you throw yourself into cookie making, here is a little note on “oat flour.”  You can probably buy crazy expensive oat flour at your local Whole Foods, or you can be like me and put your oats through a coffee grinder or food processor.  It’s as simple as that!   I used steel cut oats since it’s what we had on hand, but rolled oats would probably work better.

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

• 1 3/4 cups oat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 tablespoon agave
• 1 tablespoon granulated stevia
• 1/3 cup canola oil  (or 1 cup mashed banana)
• 1 Tablespoon flax meal
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
• (Optional) 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• (Optional) 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F
2. Mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.
3. Add molasses, agave, stevia, oil (or banana), flax, water, vanilla.  Mix together.
4. Chop unsweetened chocolate into small chunks.  Add to mixing bowl.
5. Drop batter onto ungreased baking sheet.  Push down to flatten the cookies if you want to.
6. Bake 10-12 minutes.

Easy Peasy.  God Bless Isa Chandra Moskowitz and her brilliant recipes.

Next time, I’m thinking of trying to make these with peanut butter.  Good idea or what?

Another breakfast post?   Jeeeeeeeez!

I’m sorry, y’all.  Breakfast is my favorite meal.  You’ll just have to bear with me.   I mean, don’t get me wrong… I love lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts as well.   I love eating in general.  But, breakfast food is just the best.  I could eat breakfast for every meal.  Sometimes I do.  Waffles for dinner?  Yes, please.

However, if you’re an early riser like I am, and you happen to have a late-riser, light-sleeper roommate, and you live in the teeniest tiniest of apartments, it can be a little difficult to whip up anything more complicated than toast or cereal in the morning.   My cooking and baking is always accompanied by a lot of clanking, banging, and whirring.   So what happens when you want something decadent and ridiculous?   Well, folks, then you’ve gotta be a little creative.

And I am creative.

Breakfast win!

So I approached this meal knowing only one thing: I want blueberries!   But we only have frozen blueberries… so they’ve gotta be cooked in some way.  It’s a little too cold and rainy this week to just go around eating frozen blueberries.  So I made a blueberry sauce.  The simplest blueberry sauce known to man.

Blueberry Sauce

• 1 cup frozen blueberries
• 1 teaspoon corn starch
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Quiet Directions:

1. Very quietly empty the remainder of a small bag of frozen blueberries into a saucepan.
2. Gently place it on the stove.  Shhh!  Gently!   Turn to stovetop to medium heat.
3. Sprinkle some cornstarch into the pan.  Don’t really bother with fishing out a teaspoon.  Rummaging through the drawer makes too much noise.
4. Toss a hefty splash of lemon juice into the pan.  Is it a teaspoon?  Who cares.  It really doesn’t matter.   The proportions for this sauce aren’t important.  Just toss the ingredients together, let them cook and bubble, stir occasionally, and wait for the blueberries to do their thing.   Eventually they’ll thicken and cook down and be amazing.
5. Sprinkle in sweetener if you want to… I usually don’t.  Blueberries are sweet enough.

So.  I had a sauce.  A sauce and nothing to put it on.  What good is that?    Bah.  Breakfast isn’t solved yet!   I wanted something fast and quiet.   So I opened up a cupboard and eyed the oats.  Oatmeal?  No.  Too normal.  This is a Sunday!   You know what sounds good?   Granola.  Instant Granola.  Damn, I’m smart.

Almost Instant Granola

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• Agave or Maple Syrup
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of cinnamon

Quiet Directions:

1. Pull the oats out of the cupboard without knocking over all the other canisters.  I know, it’s hard!  They’re all lined up like dominoes.  One little “Whoops!” and down they go…
2. Pour a mound of oats onto a dry nonstick frying pan.  Does it look like it’s about a cup of oats?  Doesn’t matter.  The less dishes I use the less noise I make.  I’m not going to clank everything together just to fish out a measuring cup… especially since it really doesn’t matter with this recipe.  Add more oats if you want more “granola” … use less if you want less.
3. Drizzle on some vegetable oil and syrup, giving the oats a quick stir with your spoon.  Sprinkle on the cinnamon and salt.
4. Toast the oats in the pan for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally.  They’ll become golden brown, and smell and taste exactly like granola.
5. BAM!  Instant Granola.

Note: I’ve also done this using packs of Quaker Instant Oatmeal.  It’s even easier because you get to skip the flavoring part.   Just empty the packet into the pan, spray with a little PAM, and let them toast.

So.  Now we’ve got granola and blueberry sauce.  You know what would go great with that?  Yogurt.  Or cheesecake.  Or yogurt cheesecake.  Mmm.   But you know what I didn’t have?  Yogurt.  Nor cheesecake.  Nor cheesecake flavored yogurt.  Nor yogurt based cheesecake.  Do you know what I did have?  Silken tofu.

Silken tofu is an incredibly versatile ingredient.  It has basically no taste and can be used in a gazillion different ways.  I stared longingly at the little vacuum packed box, wishing I could use my blender.  I wanted to blend it smooth, flavor it, and bake it into little vegan cheesecakes.  I could use the granola for the crust and the berries for the topping… oh it would be so good!

But the blender was completely and utterly out of the question.  Too much noise.  So I did the next best thing.  I grabbed a fork, and I mashed that tofu as if it were a potato that gave me the evil eye.  Annnnnd…  it looked like ricotta when I was done.  Lightbulb!

Lemon Vanilla “Ricotta”

• 1 package vacuum packed silken tofu
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon agave syrup

Quiet Directions:

1. Cut open package and squish into a bowl.  Mash with fork. Not too vigorously!  Remember, we’re being quiet here.
2. Mix in flavorings.
3. Taste and adjust.
4. Done.

Holy Mother of Oats!

I put the “ricotta” in the fridge to chill, because I wanted it to be cold.  I served with room temperature instant granola and warm blueberry syrup.

Breakfast success!  All without waking up my sister!  She was so surprised to find such a fancy breakfast waiting for her.    Two thumbs up for a quiet and yummy meal!

The past few days have been a whirl of activity.  I was called at the very last minute to temp for the dean’s office at Stanford.   On three consecutive days.   Seriously.  I got the calls around 8:20 am, with the expectation that I could be at the office by 9.  It is extremely stressful to be lounging about, drinking your tea, filling your head with visions of shamrock sugar cookies, only to be whisked away to the land of fluorescent lights and post it notes.

I felt like some sort of lame super hero.

Alter-ego : Temp Girl.

Powers:  Answering phones, making copies, sorting mail, and smiling.

In a blink of an eye, I shimmied into a plaid pencil skirt, tucked a grey H&M sweater into the waistband, hopped into a pair of patent blue mary jane wedges (vegan, duh), and was literally running out the door to catch the train.

Shamrock cookies were out and collating was in.

I had SO many good ideas for Irish treats.  I LOVE St. Patrick’s day.  Maybe it’s because I own so much green.  Goes with the hair and skin you know.   It’s the one day a year that I can wear all green all over!    Also, I’m awfully fond of my Irish ancestors.

Anyway, I got home Tuesday night, my poor little mouth a little weary from 8 hours of receptionist smiles, and I realized I had to make something… ANYTHING… that was even vaguely Irish.

Alas, we were dangerously low on so many ingredients!  But has that ever stopped me before?  I didn’t have enough time to bike to the store if I wanted to be in bed by a reasonable hour, so I decided to just use whatever I had on hand.

My “Irish” feast:

Irish Inspired Dinner

Mashed (sweet)potatoes, topped with “Irish” stew, and farls!

Mmmmm.

Not too shabby eh?

I wanted to make a vegan version of a cross between this stew and this stew.

I love this bowl.

I originally wanted to use seitan to sub the beef, but I had just used the last of my previous batch, and I didn’t have enough time to make more from scratch.   So I borrowed a page from Isa Chandra Moskowitz and used lentils and mushrooms to give the stew a “meaty” flavor.

To further complicate matters, I had no potatoes!  We don’t keep them in the house.  Because honestly, why would you eat regular old potatoes when you can have sweet potatoes?  And sweet potatoes I had a plenty.  Sorry, Irish purists.  Mashed sweet potatoes it is.

The next stumbling block was my lack of stout.  No stout!  How can you make Irish stew without stout?   All I had in the fridge was some non-alcoholic O’Doul’s.  Well, O’Doul’s is an Irish sounding name, and a girl’s gotta work with what she’s got.  Into the stew it went!

Non-alcoholic Stew.

Verdict?  Delicious.  Amazing.  Wonderful.  One of my favorite stews.  Mmmm.

Stew!

Irish Stew

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups chopped mushrooms
• 1 bottle Irish beer (preferably stout, but work with what ya got!)
• 1 cup dry lentils
• 2 carrots, cut into chunks
• 1 large sweet potato, cubed
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon tarragon
• A dash of garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

1. Rinse the lentils and place in a pot with the beer.  Put on stovetop, cover, and let simmer.
2. Sautée the mushrooms in olive oil.  Add to lentils & beer.
3. Add vegetable broth, vegetables, tomato sauce, flour, and spices.  Cover and let simmer until everything is tender and delicious.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Bright, beautiful, and deeeeelicious.

Now we come to the Mashed Sweet Potatoes.  I’ve been known to make some pretty decadent and delicious mashed sweet potatoes.  However, lately I’ve been going a much simpler route.  I discovered that if you bake sweet potatoes in foil , they come out so moist and sweet and perfect, that you don’t even need to add butter, sour cream, milk, or any of those shenanigans. All you need to do is wrap the potato in foil, stick it in the oven at 500, pull it out when it’s super soft, cut it open with a knife (being careful not to burn yourself), use a spoon to scoop the sweet potato out of its skin, mashed it up with a fork, add a dash of salt… BAM!  Done.

Soda Farl

So that left me with the Irish soda farls.  I wanted to follow this super simple recipe, subbing clabbered soymilk for buttermilk…. but we were out of soymilk!   Curses!  But I couldn’t give up on the farls.  I asked myself, “Dina, what would the Irish do?”  I know!  They’d use beer.  Right?  Hehe.  And so I present to you:

Irish Beer Farls

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 scant cup of beer
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Dash of lemon juice

Directions:

1. Preheat heavy based flat griddle or skillet on medium to low heat.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt.  Make a well and pour in beer and lemon juice.
3. Mix together and knead only very very lightly.  You don’t want to produce gluten for soda breads! Add more flour if it’s a little too sticky.
4. Place on a floured surface and flatten into a circle about 1/2 inch thick.  Cut into quarters with a floured knife.
5. Sprinkle flour on the base of the pan and cook farls for 6-8 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.

It tasted something like a beer pancake…  Quite good really.  I ate two of them right off the griddle!

How farl would you go for a farl?

Cookies, cakepops, cupcakes, brownies, candies, and shamrock shakes all would have been fun to make for St. Patrick’s day… but maybe it’s better that I didn’t have time for all that.  This was way healthier, really good, and made me feel a little more authentic.

I really love Hannah Kaminsky’s blog, Bittersweet.  Her photography is always beautiful and I have full confidence in her recipes.  Even when she says bizarre things like, “beans, they’re what’s for dessert.”

I was so intrigued and inspired by the idea of a sweet chocolate hummus spread, that I put it on my to-do list and ignored it for a couple years… hehe.  Ah but I never forgot about it!  I’d really been meaning to try the recipe for soooo long… and I finally have!

Chocolate Chickpea Spread

I could have eaten it right out of the jar, but I thought it would feel a little more nutritious if I shmeared it on a whole wheat bagel thin, comme ci:

Chocolate Chickpea Spread on a Bagel Thin

Part of this complete breakfast!

Sunday Morning Breakfast

Of course, I didn’t follow her recipe exactly… when do I ever?   I use recipes more as inspiration and jumping off points, rather than blueprints.

Without further ado, voila! La recette:

Chocolate Chickpea Spread

1 15-Ounce Can Chickpeas
1 Tablespoon Almond Butter
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Cocoa Powder (I used Raw)
1/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
2 shots Espresso
2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Directions: Drain and rinse the chickpeas.  Throw everything into a food processor.  Process until smooth!  Could it be easier?

I used Almond Butter because it has a milder flavor than peanut butter and wouldn’t be competing as much with the chocolate.   I used the raw cocoa powder because that’s what we have, and because it’s better for you than the processed kind.  I would have used agave instead of sugar, but it looks like we’re out.  Sad face!  So, I decided that I would at the very least cut the sugar in half, and then if it needed any extra sweetening, I would add a bit of stevia.  However, it was really plenty sweet for me with just the 1/4 cup of sugar, so I think next time I’ll reduce it down to 2 tablespoons and then add a sprinkle of stevia if necessary.   I subbed espresso for coffee powder because we happen to have an excellent espresso machine chez moi.  Also, using shots of espresso instead of the powder made the water at the end of her recipe completely unnecessary.  Finally,  I doubled the vanilla because pretty much everything is better with extra vanilla…

In the end, it tastes somewhere in between a mocha and my mom’s chocolate cake.  Basically, it’s delicious.   And full of all the goodness, fiber, and protein that you’d want from chickpeas… not to mention the antioxidants from the raw cocoa!

I’m going to go ahead and call it a healthy breakfast.

I can’t wait to cover everything with it.  Nothing is safe from the chickpeas now!  I’m going to get apples at the farmer’s market today, and you’d better believe I’m going to smother at least one apple with chickpea spread.  I also think it would be a delicious way to top my oatmeal, so I’m looking forward to that as well.  Heck, I could even use it to top some whole wheat muffins and call them cupcakes!

Om nom nom!

Last night I knew I wanted waffles for breakfast.  I also knew I would need to be able to crank them out fast… and so I started mixing together the dry ingredients for your standard old waffle recipe, when suddenly it came to me…  yeast! Yeasted waffles were the answer.  If I mix up some delicious yeasty batter tonight, it can rise over night in the fridge and be ready for the waffle iron in the morning!  Not only are yeasted waffles fast and efficient, but they are absolutely beyond delicious.

So I mixed up the batter, feeling very smug and self-congratulatory, when suddenly I realized I had nothing to put on the waffles.  We are running low on peanut butter, we are out of fruit, and I generally try to go with something a little healthier than just maple syrup.   And that’s when the 2nd light bulb flicked on!  Eureka!   I had just made delicious roasted vegetables for dinner (with steamed greens and fried tofu)…

Simple and delicious

… but I had only used half of our squash for the roasted vegetables.  The other half I wrapped in foil and baked, because I figured it’d be useful to have cooked squash available.  And guess what!   I was right.    I carved out the soft, moist, orangey innards of the squash, whipped it with soymilk, earth balance, maple syrup, and pumpkin pie spice… and created a cloud of fall flavored goodness.     Tasted like a pillow of pumpkin pie.

But what kind of waffle enthusiast would I be if I just stopped at topping my raised waffles with faux-pumpkin-pie?  The waffles needed a sweet drizzly sauce, and by gum, they would have it.

Cashew Creme

I used the raised waffle and cashew cream recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Brunch, which is really and truly my favorite cookbook.   Everyone should buy a copy!

worth waking up for

The squash itself was my own idea, and really simple.  I wish I had actually bothered to measure my ingredients so I could share the recipe…   but a recipe really isn’t even necessary.  Just get some squash (or pumpkin), mash it, then mix in a couple tablespoons of maple syrup and some pumpkin pie spice, add a couple tablespoons of earth balance (or any other non-hydrogenated margarine) while it’s still warm, and add soymilk slowly until it’s reached the desired consistency.  Easy as pie!  And tasty as pie, too.

What to do with ripe bananas?  It’s the eternal question.   Normally when I have a couple of bananas lying around, browning leisurely in the sun, I whip together some banana bread and don’t think twice about it.   But the other day I was faced with some bananas and could not find it in myself to have banana bread again.  I wanted something sweet, tart, creamy, and crunchy.  There was only one thing to do.   Tart it up!

all tarted up

This little beauty has a pecan crust, a layer of blueberry filling, and a layer of a banana pudding concoction.

Yum

The crust recipe I found here.

Pecan Crust

3/4 cup pecan halves

3/4 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 pinch salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 tablespoons real maple syrup

1. Set rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly oil a 9 inch pie plate. Set aside.
2. Spread nuts over a baking pan. Toast for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the smell of nuts fills the kitchen. Set aside 16 pecan halves for garnish.
3. Combine oats, flour, remaining pecans, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and a pinch of salt in a food processor bowl. Pulse until mixture becomes a coarse meal. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Whisk together oil and 3 tablespoons maple syrup, and mix into dry ingredients to form a soft dough. Press mixture into prepared pie plate. Crimp edges. Bake for 25 minutes, and set aside to cool.

Blueberry Filling

2 cups blueberries

1/4 cup lemon juice

2 tablespoons agave

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1. Combine ingredients in a sauce pan and let simmer until it becomes thick, like blueberry pie filling–can take up to 30 minutes.
2. Set aside to cool.
3. Spread over the pecan crust.

Banana Pudding Topping

2 ripe bananas

1/2 cup soymilk

2 tablespoons agave

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons earth balance

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

pinch of salt

1. Mash bananas.
2. Combine ingredients in sauce pan and cook until it thickens.
3. Push through sieve to remove lumps.
4. Pour over blueberry layer and then place in fridge to set over night

I discovered this tart was best after sitting in the fridge for a couple of days.   To be honest, I really didn’t like the tart when I first made it, so I hid it in the fridge and didn’t so much as look at it for a couple days. This morning I was suddenly seized by curiosity and courageously went in for a bite. Lo and behold!  It was delicious.   I don’t like bananas or banana flavored things much, which is why I always hide the slimy things in bread.  For some reason, this seemed like a good idea in my head.  However, while it was fresh, the banana flavor was just too strong for me and it took me an hour to get the taste out of my mouth.  Blech.   Magically, after a couple days of chilling, the flavors have mellowed out and are now wonderful– even to an anti-banana-ist like myself.  Deeeeeelish.

Note:  The measurements for the fillings are approximations.  I have a tendency to just throw things together and add a bit of this and a bit of that until it comes together the way I want it to.   Feel free to add more or less of sweetener, spices, or whatever.

Ladies and gentleman, I have completed a daring bakers challenge for the very first time!   Granted, the reveal date was supposed to be yesterday, but I wanted to try the recipe one more time before I shared it.

This month’s challenge was donuts.  And I was super excited because of these awesome donut pans my mother gave me!  Way healthier than frying donuts.  Since it is almost halloween, I naturally chose to make pumpkin donuts. My personal challenge was to make them vegan AND sugar-free, seeing as my sister is on a sugar-free diet.  I’d be an awful sister if I went ahead and made delicious sugarry pumpkin donuts just to taunt her wouldn’t I?  But I’m a nice sister, so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work adapting this recipe.

Sugar-Free Pumpkin Donuts

Makes 1 Dozen Donuts

1 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1/4 cup granulated stevia

1/4 cup agave nectar

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

3/4 cup soymilk

1/2 cup canned pumpkin

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Combine flax seeds and soymilk in a small bowl and set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, mix together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
4. In a large bowl, combine stevia, agave, and oil.  Mix in flax seed & soymilk mixture and then add pumpkin.
5. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, a little at a time, until the dough is combined.
6. If you have a donut pan, spray it with nonstick cooking spray and pat the dough into the pan, like so:
   

   Donut pan!

7. If you do not have a donut pan , wrap the dough in plastic and let it chill for 2 hours. Press out dough onto a lightly floured surface to 1/2 – 3/4 inch thickness, and cut out donuts.  I generally use a glass rim for the outer edges of the donuts and a bottlecap for the donut holes.  Gather scraps and press together to cut out more donuts until there is no more dough.  Place donuts on a greased baking sheet.
8. Spray the tops of the dough with more cooking spray and place in oven.   After 15 minutes, take the donuts out of the oven to add more cooking spray.  This helps the outside of the donuts crisp, making them more similar to a traditional fried donut.  Return to oven for 5 minutes, putting the oven on broil for the last minute or two to make the outsides of the donuts become a little crispier.  But keep an eye on them so they don’t burn!

Here are my donuts fresh out of the oven:

Baked donuts

The next challenge was to create a sugar-free glaze to compliment the donuts.  Who ever heard of sugar-free glaze anyway?   But I was unstoppable!  I put my thinking cap on and concocted…

Sugar-free Cinnamon Glaze

1/4 cup agave nectar

1/4 cup soymilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon

1. Combine agave, soymilk, vanilla, and salt in a small pot and bring to a boil for 1 minute.  Whisk in Cinnamon and remove from heat.
   

   Happily bubbling away

   You can either drizzle the glaze over the donuts or dip them. Top with chopped nuts for an extra special treat!

Soooooo good!

And there you have it folks!  A healthier, delicious donut!   I’ve been having them with homemade cappuccinos in the morning and it is a little slice of heaven!

*If you’re not concerned with sugar and fat, you can also use real sugar (1/2 cup) and fry them instead of baking them.

I’ve moved to California!   It’s beautiful and full of delicious food and wonderful people.  I live in Mountain View so I literally see mountains every time I leave my house.  I haven’t found a real job yet (though I’ve had tons of interviews) and so I’ve found myself with lots of free time on my hands.  Free time I’ve used to go to the beach, hike up a mountain, see bands playing in San Francisco, meander around an art and wine festival, run on the nature trail next to my apartment, and, most importantly, to cook ridiculous gourmet meals almost every day.  I live with my sister so when I’m not out interviewing and adventuring, I cook up goodies while she’s at work.  The best and most challenging part is that she isn’t currently eating refined sugar.  I’ve had to be very creative with some of my confections!  A couple weeks ago I made candied blueberry pecans using only a teaspoon of agave, the blueberry water from two bags of thawed blueberries, pecans, and a dash of salt.  They were absolutely amazing.

blueberry syrup coated pecan-y goodness

Normally when candying nuts, it’s easiest to use brown sugar or to boil down some syrup until it just about hits a soft ball stage… but with these suckers I started with blueberry juice and hypothesized that if I boiled it long enough, the natural sugar in the blueberries would become more concentrated and produce a nice thick syrup.  To help it along, I added the tiniest splash of agave.  In retrospect I’m not sure the agave was necessary… it made the nuts extremely sweet… but it did help the syrup gel a little faster.   Once my blueberry juice could officially be called syrup, I lined a small baking pan with wax paper and poured the syrup over my pecans, stuck them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350… and then spent the next few days trying not to eat them all!

crazy delicious

They had a really satisfying crunch and were great on my oatmeal and on salads.  I would have added them to some oatmeal cookies if they had lasted long enough.

My sister is really glad to have me living with her.  :)  She says it’s like having a wife.   Hah!

Dear friends,

I’ve got some good news and bad news.  The bad news is that my lease ran out and I no longer have an inspected kitchen, therefore I cannot legally sell my baked goods anymore.  The good news is that now I can post recipes!  If I’m not trying to sell the yummy things I make, there is no reason why I can’t tell you how to make them, right?  To be perfectly honest I prefer giving things away to selling things anyway, so this really suits me more.

What I want everyone to know about right now are these amazing amazing brownie recipes by Hannah Kaminksy.  I normally like to make my own recipes, but I came across these and are they are so fudgy and dense and chewy and chocolatey and perfect that I’ve just got to give her major props.   It was love at first bite.  Believe me, I am picky about my brownies.

Best Brownies Ever

Yes those are oreos in there.   I think it’s the oreos that push them into the realm of beyond perfection.  They call for vegan sour cream, which can be a bit pricey, but you can substitute puréed tofu and it’ll give it the same fudgey density.  Also, if you can’t find the bittersweet chocolate it calls for, use half unsweetened bakers chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate chips, and it will result in the most perfect dark chocolate flavor that will have you yearning for a tall glass of soymilk.

I’ve been modeling lately and I brought a batch of these fabulous brownies in for the models and crew at School House.  Pretty sure the crew ate more than the models did…  Incidentally, although it isn’t food related, I feel like the School House line fits in perfectly with the ethics of many vegans in that the factory workers are paid living wages in Sri Lanka.

A friend of mine just turned 21 and although she requested chocolate cupcakes with latté frosting, I felt like a more boozy cupcake would be more appropriate for the day.   I happened across a recipe for Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes on Confessions of a Tart, (who apparently got it from Smitten Kitchen) and had no choice but to make it.  For those of you unfamiliar with the drink, this is what Wikipedia has to say on the matter:

An Irish Car Bomb is a beer cocktail similar to a boilermaker made with Irish stout, Irish Cream, and Irish whiskey.

The name refers to the drink’s Irish ingredients – typically Guinness stout, Baileys Irish Cream, andJameson Irish Whiskey – and the car bombings notoriously used by the Provisional Irish Republican Army(PIRA) during the Troubles. The whiskey is floated on top of the Irish Cream in a shot glass, and the shot glass is then dropped into the stout. Once mixed, the drink must be consumed quickly because it will curdle.

However, the name is considered offensive to some bartenders (and rightly so), and thus they refuse to serve it.   Probably the same rational behind why the Confessions of a Tart girl referred to her cupcakes as “Guinness Cupcakes with Bailey’s Frosting.”

Anywho, I’m thinking of it as the marriage of cupcake and beer.

You may now kiss the cupcake.

You see, the Guinness groom is wearing the bow-tie, and the cupcake bride is wearing the garter.   Now, you may be wondering why I have a sparkly green polka dotted bow tie, or even a green garter…  well, I like to be prepared for St. Patrick’s day.  Come to think of it, perhaps I should have saved this post for then… too bad the birthday girl couldn’t have had her birthday on the blessed day of green, eh?

Here is my veganized version of the recipe:

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes
Makes 20 to 24 cupcakes

For the Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes

• 1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
• 1 cup (2 sticks) non-hydrogenated vegan margarine
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon oil
• 1/3 cup soymilk
• 2/3 cup soy sour cream (or yogurt)

Ganache Filling

• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 1/2 cup soymilk (use 2/3 cups soy cream if you can find it)
• 2 tablespoons non-hydrogenated margarine, room temperature
• 1 to 2 teaspoons Irish whiskey (optional)

Baileys Frosting

• 3 to 4 cups confections sugar
• 1 stick (1/2 cup or 4 ounces) non-hydrogenated margarine, at room temperature
• 3 to 4 tablespoons “Baileys”

Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners.

Put the margarine with the beer in a sauce pan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Whisk in cocoa powder until smooth. Cool slightly.

*For the margarine, I use Earth Balance sticks.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a mixer bowl, beat the oil, soy milk, and the sour cream together. Add the beer/butter/cocoa mixture and beat to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat briefly just to combine. Using a rubber spatula, fold the batter until completely combined, making sure to incorporate little pockets of flour on the bottom so that the batter is of equal consistency everywhere.

*At this point I found my cake batter to be too thick (like a muffin), so I added more soymilk a tablespoon at a time until it was a more cakey consistency.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 of the way if you want flatter cupcakes and 3/4 if you want domed. Bake for about 17 minutes, or until a toothpick or a slim knife inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool completely to room temperature.

Make the filling: Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the soymilk until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. Add the margarine and whiskey (if you’re using it) and stir until combined.

chopping chocolate!

Chocolate chopped!

Fill the cupcakes: Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped. Using your 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. I went about half to 2/3 of the way down and used a small knife to help me extract the centers. Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.

*Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a 1-inch round cookie cutter.  It was a surprise given my hundreds of cookie cutters…  but ladies and gents, I’m a smart and resourceful girl, and I used what I did have… a coupler!

Couplers! Good for piping cake decorations, and cutting holes in cupcakes.

If you’re not familiar with couplers, they’re the little doo-dads you put in decorating bags before you fill them with frosting and add the tip… if that makes things any clearer.  Anyhow, I realized it was about an inch wide, so I just pushed my trusty coupler into the cupcakes, and behold! Lovely holes:

Waiting to be filled with whiskey ganache.

After filling the cupcakes with ganache you must:

Make the frosting: In a large mixer bowl, whip the margarine for a second and then add the powdered sugar, until it’s stiff.  Now, this is the fun part.   Bailey’s is not vegan of course.  From Wikipedia:

Baileys was the first 44% liqueur to use cream and alcohol together in a manner sufficiently stable to allow commercial distribution. The alcohol in Baileys is produced from a bacterial fermentation of whey. The cream and alcohol, together with some whiskey are homogenized to form an emulsion, with the aid of an emulsifier containing refined vegetable oil. This process prevents separation of the whiskey and cream during storage. The quantity of other ingredients is not known but they include chocolate, vanilla, caramel and sugar.

So, since Bailey’s is basically cream and whiskey, what I did was simply alternate adding a tablespoon of whiskey and a tablespoon of soymilk to the frosting until it reached the proper consistency and taste.  Soy cream might provide a better consistency, but it’s difficult to find in these parts.

And then, my lovely cupcakes were ready to boogey down!

Cupcake and Beer, together at last!

As you can see, the bride traded in her garter for some groovy glasses.  Looks good, eh?  Want a close-up?

Ballin'

Ohhh, you wanted a close-up of the cupcake, not the glasses…

Rocking the do

I saved some of my chocolate from earlier and sprinkled it on top of the lovely cupcakes.  Delicious huh?  Seriously… it was delicious.  I ate one.   Yummmmm.

And I didn’t want to just completely ignore the birthday girl’s requests, so I took some normal non-guinness chocolate cupcakes, filled them with whiskey ganache, and topped them off with what I’m calling, “Irish Coffee Frosting.”   I recently discovered that Irish Coffee is simply coffee and whiskey… so I bet you can guess what was in the frosting.   Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that when describing edible or drinkable products, “Irish” just means “boozy.”

Happy Birthday, Eve!