Dessert first!

nomnomnom

Got your attention? I've noticed that when I post about savory foods I get something like 2 comments to my usual 6 when I post about sweet foods. You guys are such bad influences! :P

I had my AP Calculus BC exam this morning. I didn't have any classes afterwards so I came home and slept. I was totally zonked! First, however, I made myself a good, comforting, healthy lunch. Veggies & Cheeze!

This is Fat Free Vegan's Easy Macaroni and Cheeze... sans macaroni (or tahini, because I didn't have any). This was pretty good, though I had to add more nooch to it because I'm a nooch-a-holic. It won't fool anyone into thinking it's real cheese; it has a decidedly noochy taste. But it's fat free, super healthy, and gives you loads of good old B12! I made my version by putting 1 medium yellow squash, 1 onion, and about 1 bag of frozen broccoli into a large pot with some water and letting 'em cook. I added the sauce like Susan said to. It thickened, but not quite enough for my liking; I probably should have drained the vegetables because there was a good bit of water which made it harder for the sauce to thicken. But it was deceivingly comforting-tasting, with less than 200 calories and 12 grams of protein for that there bowl.

After waking up from my long nap, I decided I wanted to bake. After all, I've spent the last few days slaving away over integrals (okay, that's an exaggeration, I didn't study all that much but it wasn't all that hard), so I figured I had an excuse. I mean, reason. I was looking around on the 'net at my millions of cookie recipes and stumbled upon this. Obviously I had no peanut butter chips (vegan ones don't exist, I'm afraid) but I wanted to try it, just cuz. I decided to try subbing in peanut butter for 1/2 cup of the margarine (both in order to bring some nuttiness and to save margarine!).

These were pretty good, but not ZOMFG EAT WHOLE BATCH good (which is probably better for my hips anyways). The PPK double chocolate chip cookie recipe is much better. They were kind of floury in a weird way, and I wound up adding 4 tbsp (1/4 cup) of water to the full batch and for the last 1/3 I added another tbsp of water. I'd say adding ~5-6 tbsp total should work nicely. Mine didn't spread nearly as much as hers did, so I had to flatten 'em when they were still warm (well, I started flattening my balls of dough after the first batch came out very... round). Also, I couldn't taste the peanut butter AT ALL. I thought maybe I could try with all peanut butter, but I don't know how that'd affect the texture. Overall, these were okay, but not something I'd really make again. The site I linked to, however, is a treasure trove of (nonvegan) baked goods recipes, and I will definitely be returning! Here's the typed-up, veganized recipe I used for these cookies (same from the site, with slight modifications).

Chewy Brownie Cookies
Makes around 3 dozen

2 cups all purpose flour (or whole wheat pastry)
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup vegan margarine
1/2 cup peanut butter (or margarine)
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp ground flaxseed + 1/4 cup water, blended till gooey
1 tsp vanilla extract
~4-6 tbsp water (till desired consistency)
1-1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together margarine, peanut butter and sugars until fluffy.
Beat in the "eggs" and vanilla. With the mixer on low, beat in the flour mixture, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary, and continue to beat until all of the dry mix has been incorporated. Do this slowly to avoid dusting your kitchen with flour and cocoa.
Stir in chips by hand.
Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheet (dough balls were a bit larger than 1 inch in diameter). Flatten slightly. Leave about 1 to 1 1/2-inches between cookies to allow for spread.
Bake for 9-11 minutes, until cookies are set at the edges and tops are slightly cracked looking. Cool on baking sheet for 5-10 minutes, until firm enough to transfer to a cooling rack. Cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Well then. I guess that's it for today. I'm still waiting to post about my last regatta (I'm putting it off because it'll take more work. Or at least I think it will...). Time to drown immerse myself in chemistry for the AP next week (that one's gonna be a bitch, let me tell you). so long!

Cinco de Mayo!

Black Bean Enchiladas with Tangy Tofu Cream

My family and I never celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Mostly this is because my mom hates cooking and wouldn't ever bother making something special. But I felt inspired to make at least something. My mom didn't feel like taking me to the grocery store, so I just had to make do with what I had at home. I ended up just using a ton of veggies, black beans, corn, and diced tomatoes and wrapping them up in whole wheat tortillas (we only had 3, so there were lots of extra innards, if you will ;) ). I topped them with a lemon-infused tofu cream. My mom went crazy for these! Much better than the slabs of meat she'd been intending to make for my dad. :)

And brigadeiros, take two! You may remember an earlier post about these delicious Brazilian treats and my failed attempt at replicating them. This attempt was much more successful, but the sweetened condensed milk still needed to be a bit thicker. Also, since I used an excess of soymilk powder to make this, it DID taste pretty soy-y. But overall not bad at all, if not quite up to par with the nonvegan version. My cousin from Brazil is coming this summer and is bringing some premade sweetened condensed soymilk that they sell there, so hopefully that'll be more successful (though I still plan on experimenting with homemade recipes... I tried the one where you reduce sugary milk but it didn't reduce at all. Oh well, I'll just try again).

Anyways. All of this came together pretty quickly as I study for APs and try to keep myself mostly fueled. ;) So yeah. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Ruh-roh!

I sliced my finger! Not really sliced, more like... peeled. It's not deep, just a little patch of skin gone. It's all bandaged up with a Scooby-Doo bandaid (hence the title!) so it's all good. :) How did I slice it, you ask? Well... I did lots of chopping today.

I decided today to use my oven for something other than baking. I know, right?! But anyways. My mom's friend was coming over for dinner and they were serving pizza. Typically we serve a side salad, but I was dying to make something. I was inspired at the grocery store to pick up a ton of vegetables, with the intention of making some sort of oven-roasted vegetable plate. This picture is really awful, but basically it's a melange of zucchini, yellow squash, onions, potatoes, fresh tomatoes, Italian spices, red pepper flakes, and a bit of red wine and balsamic vinegar tossed in for good measure. Completely fat free, I might add. Though it would likely taste wonderful with some olive oil drizzled on top (well, if you like olive oil anyways). Our guest loved it! She was impressed that I'd just tossed all this stuff into a bowl and come up with something so healthy and delicious. :)

And dessert. I took the same general idea (roasting stuff) but made it sweet. I used a butternut squash and apples and put 1/2 cup chai tea concentrate, 1/2 cup applesauce, and some various spices together to bake in as flavoring. I topped it with a makeshift crumble. It was really good! I loveeee butternut squash. :) It turned out pretty spicy, which was delicious.
It was, however, the cruel, tough-skinned, impossible-to-peel butternut squash that I had to wrestle with that gave me my battle wound. Oh well. Takin' one for the team. And I think it was worth it ;)

Winging it in the kitchen is probably one of my favorite things to do. The nice thing about cooking instead of baking is that you don't have to worry about the chemistry of it... whether it will rise, end up too gummy, chewy, crunchy, or just strange. And if it needs something, it's usually easy to just stir it right on in. So today's experiments were damn successful and on their way to the official cookbook boards!

Oooohkay. Time for bed.

pb-nana-choco-cookies

Phew! That was... well, quite a week (to say the least!). It's been a whirlwind of catching up from last weekend, being inundated with new stuff, studying for upcoming APs, and just generally being stressed out! So I baked. Again. :P

There was a pair of ever-browning bananas sitting on my counter. I said, "Self, you must do something with those bananas. What ever shall we do?" Last night, as I tossed and turned in my bed gazing at the plastic stars above, I had an epiphany. If nothing is better than bananas with peanut butter, OR bananas with chocolate, they must be combined for ultimate happiness. And if cookies = awesome, a combination of all four components could be lethally delicious.

And thus, these cookies were born. They sprang, a fully formed recipe, from my brain into the bowl into the oven and into my tumbly. Some crew kids didn't like the banana taste, but I for one thought they were fucking spectacular.

So without further ado, I present:

And now, a recipe. Because originally these were going to be just for fun & games, though they turned out damn well and are vying for a spot in the cookbook. So yes. Eat your hearts out, ladies & gents. And tell me how it goes if you make 'em.

PB Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 40 (can be halved)

1/2 cup vegan margarine

3/4 cup peanut butter

1 1/2-2 medium bananas, preferably overripe

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp flax blended with 1/4 cup +2tbsp water (optional)

3 1/3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2-2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (more or less to your liking)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.

Toss the margarine, peanut butter, and banana into a large bowl. If your banana isn't very ripe, you might need to chop it or mash it before mixing (depending on the strength of your mixer). Mix until well combined. Add in sugar, vanilla, and flax egg if using. Mix well. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients except for the chocolate chips. Slowly mix this into the "wet" ingredients. You may need to add a splash of water. Fold in chocolate chips. Eat some cookie dough (this is an important step, because otherwise you will never achieve true happiness).

Roll into balls and flatten (unless you want weird lumpy cookies, which are good too). These don't spread much (if at all) so you can put them pretty close together.

Bake for about 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Some sweets!

RIP Delicious Muffins

So you'll still have to wait for the tale of my faraway regatta (mostly because I'm bloody lazy, but I'm also busy so we'll pretend that's it). But I do have food pornages!

First up... tropical breakfast bars. Featuring pineapple, these delicious dried tropical fruits by Sunmaid (papaya, mango, pineapple, it comes in a mix) and coconut. The picture doesn't do these justice. I took them to school uncertain of the response they'd receive, and was happily surprised to find that two of my friends singlehandedly devoured about 3/4 of the batch. Apparently they were good.

Secondly, two types of muffins. I'll get to the almond-covered ones in a moment. I've been experimenting for a looong time with different cappuccino-chip muffins in hopes of replicating the utterly nonvegan ones they sell at my school. My mom's a big fan of them and I know they're delicious from small pieces I used to swipe from muffins I bought for her. While I haven't yet perfected these muffins, this was definitely the closest batch yet. One of these days... (oh, and excuse the lousy picture).


And now my favorite. You may remember a few posts back when I wrote about almond-apricot COOKIES that I tested for Kelly/Garrick's vegan cookie-book (which is gonna be totally awesome). I was so smitten with the flavors that I decided to make them into a muffin. And so I present: Almond-apricot muffins! Some of them I put jam on top (it baked right into the middle leaving a lovely moist gooey center) and some I left without. They were all delicious. Unfortunately I was out of dried apricot as I think those would have taken these to the next level. These were awesome nonetheless! I can't choose between these two pics, so...
All the above recipes are for "my" cookbook, but if anybody wants one in particular I'm more than happy to share on an individual basis. Leave your e-mail address in a comment along with the recipe you want. :) If you want to give me feedback on them that's cool too! And if an overwhelming number of people randomly ask for the same recipe I'll probably just post it, because I'm lazy like that. ;)



Happy Hump Day! It's chemistry time. Joy.

I'm here!

Hey guys. Sorry for being so MIA. I DID have internet at my regatta but... well, let's just say I didn't even crack open my computer (much less my school books!). We had a ton of fun, but let me tell you, 4 1500 meter pieces is damn tiring. ;) Most of my 'extra' time I spent shuttling oars around for teammates, warming up for the next race, eating, or (my favorite) sleeping.

And now I'm being thrown back into a world with about a bazillion tests that I missed while gone for only 1 1/2 days. WHY must they put all the tests at the same time? Geesh.

Anyways, this is going to be a short, sweet post. I have some pics of some of the stuff I ate at the regatta (though mostly it was cereal, not because it had to be, but because I rediscovered my adoration of crunchy cereal...) but those are gonna have to wait till a day when I have at least a little more time.

FOR NOW. Allow me to redirect you to Ruby Red Vegan's blog where she made my cinnamon coffee cake muffins. This just totally made my day. ;) Thanks RRV!

And now, back to integrals. Ciao!

Busy little vegan food... and announcement

The other day I bought a delicious looking pack of asian style vegetables. On the back it had a recipe for a sauce for said vegetables... I decided to try making my own and ended up with this:

It was good if a bit lacking in originality. It basically involved broth, soy sauce, pomegranate molasses (my addition), maple syrup, and one other thing that I forget. Nothin' special. But good for a super-busy day! I had it with some tofu. :)

And then some broooownies. Peanut butter brownies, to be precise. These were delicious. Maybe a touch on the cakey side but mostly because I used crap peanut butter. And they were gooey melt in your mouth type chocolatey brownies. SO GOOD. Excuse the picture...

Here's a recipe, just in case anybody ever decides to make 'em. They're easy! And aside from the peanut butter, they don't have any added fat. So you can pretend they're healthy ;)

Lower Fat PB Brownies

1 oz semisweet/unsweetened baking chocolate, melted

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce*

1/2 cup peanut butter*

1/2-3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt (less if using salted peanut butter)

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease either an 8x8 or 7x11 inch pan (depending on the thickness you want from your brownies).

In a small bowl in the microwave or in a double boiler, melt your baking chocolate (make sure to stir every 20-odd seconds so the chocolate doesn't get scorched).

In a small mixing bowl, combine melted chocolate, oil, vanilla, sugar, and applesauce.

In a separate bowl, mix together dry ingredients (except chocolate chips). Add dry ingredients to first bowl and mix until well-combined. If the mix is too dry, add water 1 tsp at a time until all the flour can be incorporated (this recipe was originally regular brownies with just applesauce, and pb is thicker than applesauce, so...) Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake 20-25 minutes, depending upon how thick you made the brownies. They should be relatively firm to the touch. You can also try the toothpick test, just make sure you aren't poking melted chocolate chips!

*Note: When I made these, they weren't super peanutty. This was probably in part because I used bad peanut butter, but if you want really peanutty brownies, you might try upping the pb to 3/4 cup and lowering the applesauce to 1/4 cup.

And now two announcements.

1) This weekend (starting Thursday) I'll be in Canada at Brentwood College School (or something) for a regatta. It's really far away (well, 8 hours by bus) and is SO much fun. I'll document at least vaguely what I end up eating as I'm sure it'll be a little difficult eating vegan when other people are serving me food. But anyways, I'll manage, and I'll be back Sunday night. I may or may not be posting while there depending on how busy/tired I am. So we'll see! :)

2) If you read Jillian's blog (linked as V for Vegan on teh side bar there) you'll know that... we're trying to write a cookbook. I know we're both like 2 (okay, 15 and 17, but close enough) but it's a fun endeavor and gives me something to work on that I WANT to do. So do it we shall! Or die trying. ;) We've got somewhere in the realm of 70 recipe ideas and I have no idea how many actual recipes. So yeah. We're mostly announcing this so that we have someone external to hold us accountable because otherwise we're liable to procrastinate! Right Jillian? Right. ;)

Anyways. That's it! Over and out. :) Hopefully I'll come back tomorrow with some baked goods for my trip...