dessert friday: gluten-free mini tarts

I am fortunate enough to be able to eat gluten, but there are many people in my life (my mother and 2 brothers, my sister-in-law, friends, etc) who are gluten intolerant. So around holidays and family events, the food almost always needs to be gluten free.

For my sister-in-law's bridal shower, I was in charge of making a dish that was dessert-y but easily eaten as finger food. I used Vegan Pie in the Sky's gluten-free variation of the press-in almond crust to make mini tarts! (Note: in the cookbook, though not on the site, Isa recommends using 2/3 cup oat flour and 1/3 cup rice flour as the flour substitute.)

I pressed the crust into a muffin tin lined with paper cups. Since it was a fall shower, the fillings (also from Vegan Pie in the Sky) were cappuccino mousse and pear frangipane.

They were a little crumbly, but VERY well received and VERY delicious. So I decided to make some variations on the theme for my family's Thanksgiving dinner!

I winged these fillings on my own; a straight chocolate mousse (made of tofu, melted chocolate, and cocoa powder), and an apple-pie-type filling. They were both great but the chocolate mousse ones were my favorite of all 4 options!

If you plan on trying this at home, one note of caution: the individual tarts don't keep very well, because the crusts get soggy after not too long, and start to lose their structural integrity. They still taste delicious, though!

March eats

February and March have been really busy months. We're looking for a house while trying to sell our own place, my job has been especially busy, I've started taking yoga courses, and I've been trying to get outside in this amazing weather as much as possible.

I don't really have time to sit and write a full recipe or how-to post. But I can show you some of the food I've been making lately!

First, while I didn't post about it, I "celebrated" pi day by baking a pie! I wasn't going to, since pie is a lot of work, but everyone else's blog posts about their awesome pies made me jealous. So! After work I put together possibly the quickest pie in Vegan Pie in the Sky:

Curried Macaroon Pie, with a biscoff cookie (in lieu of gingerbread cookie) crust. I didn't know how I'd feel about curry in my dessert while making it, but ohhh man I really loved it. Cookie crusts, however, tend not to be a hit with me because they're so sweet--I ended up giving my crust to Kevin (the husband) every time we ate it.

That was not the only pie I've consumed of late! We had a game night with our friends recently, and since one of them is gluten intolerant, I tried a recipe I've been wanting to try for a long time:

Chocolate Covered Katie's Deep Dish Cookie Pie, which is gluten-free if you use gf oats. Mine has kind of a marbled top since my chocolate chips started melting. The recipe calls for beans--white or garbanzo. I used garbanzo, but would probably use navy beans next time--I thought I could taste the beans a little bit, but no one else at the table could. That recipe is definitely a keeper.

I'll stick with this pie theme for one more:

My Valentine's Day present from Kevin was a Maple Blueberry Pie (also from Vegan Pie in the Sky.) We were a little short on blueberries, so he tossed in some blackberries, which made for nice, juicy surprises in every slice.

Much to his horror, I proceeded to have it for breakfast every day, too. Breakfast pie is the best pie!

He also made me an enormous, decadent meal from The Voluptuous Vegan:

A Tofu Leek Tart on top of French Lentil Sauce, with a side of Fennel and Asparagus Salad with Beets. Yummmm. I love everything I've had from that cookbook, but the recipes are often a lot of work, so the best thing is with my wonderful husband MAKES me things from there.

I also made this Damp Orange Cake recipe from The Kitchn.

I tried healthy-ing it up with all whole-wheat flour and date sugar, which made it very brown, but very tasty. I think next time I'd do it with white flour, though, since the whole wheat nuttiness sort of masked the citrus, and I looooove citrus baked goods.

On a healthier note, I've been getting into making smoothies for breakfast this week. Veggie scraps, frozen fruit, browning bananas, a little homemade nut-based yogurt, anything goes!

Green ones are my favorite.

I hope you're all enjoying this amaaaaaaazing "spring" (more like summer here) weather!

Veggie Galaxy's lemon meringue pie

Last month, Veggie Galaxy, a new vegetarian restaurant, opened up down the street from where we live. It has a diner-style menu, and the desserts and baked goods are all vegan. We've been there a few times so far. People with food allergies might have some problems, since MANY of their ingredients are prepped/made in advance, but the food is really good and pretty inexpensive, and the employees were committed to helping me find something I could eat.

I'll write more about them later, but the main reason I wanted to talk up Veggie Galaxy: their Lemon Meringue Pie.

That's right. Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie.

Some more meringue-y goodness for you.

The desserts and baked goods are my favorite part; everything tastes really good, and the baker/pastry chef is really serious about making really good baked goods that "just happen to be vegan." The whole place is like that. If you're in the Boston area, definitely check them out, and save room for dessert!

give thanks! it's the last day of Vegan MoFo!

Goodbye, Vegan Month of Food!

I have posted for all 30 days of VeganMoFo! It was great, but I am so glad it's over; no more "Wait, did I post today?!" feelings of panic before I go to sleep, no more forced entries on days I don't feel like talking about food. But I'm definitely glad I did it, and I'll definitely do it next year.

I finally have Thanksgiving pictures to post, and with them, a note on Thanksgiving. I touched on my thoughts on the day a couple years ago, but I want to reiterate them. Thanksgiving is about celebrating the blessings in your life, appreciating what you're thankful for. I think that it's important to take time to recognize the good things in your life. If you do that every day, maybe you don't need Thanksgiving, but is it really so bad that the government has reserved a day for us to spend time over a meal with our loved ones? People who claim Thanksgiving is about genocide and racism are unfamiliar with the history of the holiday, and I suggest to them that they read about our nation's history and that of the holiday, even if only the Wikipedia pages. Thanksgiving was always a harvest celebration. A feast or festival where we, humans, give thanks for the bounty of the earth, of our ability to survive, to be sustained by our environment--both in terms of food, and in terms of support from the people around us.

I appreciate my family. In the past few years, so many of my family members have gone vegetarian and vegan that our meal was almost entirely vegan. There was some token meat, but only for one person! And it's not in any of the pictures. All of the things below are vegan!

I got the idea for this delicious Cashew Goat Cheese recipe from C'est La Vegan. My family was so impressed with how much it looked--and even tasted--like goat cheese! It takes a lot time to make, but it's pretty easy. And I kept worrying at every step that I was doing it wrong, but it came out perfect.

I rolled it in a mixture of normal black pepper and freshly-ground cubeb, pink, and green peppercorns, just for effect.

One family member thought it was actual goat cheese, and tried to warn us vegans away from it!

Appetizers eaten, we then had THE MEAL:

Clockwise, from the bottom left: mashed sweet potatoes, rolls, earth balance, brussel sprouts with garlic, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (with miso instead of mushrooms, to make it cheesy. I totally recommend adding a couple Tbsps to YOUR next green bean casserole), corn, cranberry sauce, my mother's awesome stuffing, herbed gravy that came with the tofu turkey.

You will note the central part of the meal, the tofu turkey, is missing; we hadn't yet brought it to the table. My family's favorite, so-simple entree for holiday meals is Fresh Tofu Inc's Tofu Turkey:

The Tofu Turkey is lightly seasoned tofu, with a crispy skin. It's tasty, but not overpowering, and, unlike most other vegan holiday roasts, it isn't especially salty. We had two for 9 people, and had a bunch of leftovers, so it serves plenty. Plus it's cute! I tried to get a better picture of its little smile, but it was too blurry:

It comes with an herby, rice-flour-and-nutritional-yeast-based gravy.

We paced ourselves pretty well with eating, which is good, because there was PIE:

I'm cheating, actually--this is last year's pie, because I forgot to take a picture of this year's. But we had the same options this year! Pumpkin pie (from Bryanna Clark Grogan's recipe), and Maple-Pecan Pie (also from Bryanna Clark Grogan). This year, we ran out of pecans, so my mother tried it with half pecans and toasted walnuts. It was so delicious that she's planning to make it like that every time.

Finally, though this didn't make it into this year's Thanksgiving dinner, Sunchoke Salad with olive oil, scallions, and balsamic vinegar is a go-to dish for most of our holiday meals, and WAS present last Thanksgiving.

And with that, my friends, we have come to the end of VeganMoFo! I'm glad to be done with daily entries. I'll still try to post at least once a week. And next week, look for another food-from-literature post! I read Great Expectations this weekend. You can also look forward to some posts that aren't about food.

Thanks for reading this month, and for those of you who just started reading, I hope you stick around!

cupcakes and pie

Today is a happy day for me, and I wanted to write a post that would make other people happy. SO I FILLED IT WITH CUPCAKES.

Basically I have turned into "the cupcake girl" amongst my friends. I don't know how it happened, but I started bringing cupcakes to almost every social gathering I attended. Now I can't stop! These are all from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World.

Black Forest Cupcakes (which are a variation on the Chocolate Cherry cupcakes). I ended up using the leftover kirsch to make Kirsch Cupcakes for a different party, which were vanilla cupcakes with a Tbsp of Kirsch in the patter, then decorated with the leftover cherry sauce from these, and drizzled with a kirsch-and-sugar glaze. They went over well and I took no pictures. Anyway they weren't quite as pretty as these.

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes. Something about these reminds me of tuxedos and that makes me happy.

Mucho Margarita Cupcakes! I don't believe in food coloring, so I was worried they wouldn't have enough pizzazz, but they were super-cute and delicious nonetheless.

Earl Grey Cupcakes! A variation on the Chai Latte Cupcakes, these involved Earl Grey tea and a lot of citrusy things.

Finally, a recipe for you. The reason this is such a happy day for me is it's my 1-year anniversary with my boyfriend, so I thought the little heart-shaped pie below would be appropriate. Not only is it cute, but good lord. Even when I screw up the crust so it's ugly (but heart-shaped!) and maybe a little overdone, this blueberry pie recipe, one my great-grandmother used to make, might be the greatest pie ever. And I do not make such claims about pie lightly.

Great-Grandma's Blueberry Pie

Note: I'm not going to give you a recipe for pie crust, because 1.) everyone has their own favorite, 2.) I have trouble making pie crusts, so I am the last person who should instruct you on how to make one. This pie is best with a top and bottom crust. I ran out of crust for mine: I ended up with only enough for a bottom, and then salvaged some scraps to make decorations for the top.


Pie Crust (see note above)

2 1/2 Cup Fresh Blueberries (a little more than a pint).
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Flour (all purpose or whole wheat pastry will do)
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp margarine, divided

Preheat the oven to 450.

Prepare your pie crust however you like to prepare it, put the bottom crust in the pie plate.

Wash the blueberries thoroughly and put them in a large bowl. Sprinkle the sugar, flour, and salt over them, then mix until all the berries are coated. Pour over the lemon juice and mix again.

Pour the berry mixture into the pie crust and smooth the surface. Divide the margarine into 6-8 pieces and "dot" the berry mixture with them, about 2 inches between each (this is not a science, though, so no worries). Cover with your top crust (or cheesy decorative crust bits, like mine) and HERE is the catch: Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, then turn the oven DOWN to 350 and bake for another 30 minutes.

Let the pie cool a while before you serve it, but if at all possible, serve it warm, because then it is basically love on a plate. Even if it's not heart shaped.

Great with soy ice cream, but sometimes I just put it in a bowl and pour soymilk over top instead and that is also delicious.

heidi swanson = the new rachael ray?

alternatively titled, someone else I love to hate.

As some of you may remember, I dislike Rachael Ray and everything she stands for (ie, dunkin donuts). AND YET she has some great recipes that I can't resist making/veganizing.

Rachael Ray has been replaced in my life, with Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, 101 Cookbooks is a vegetarian food blog whose conceit is that the creator, Heidi Swanson, has 101 cookbooks and realized one day she had to start cooking from them before she could allow herself to accumulate more. Heidi Swanson posts gorgeous pictures with cute little stories and fairly healthy recipes.

Other than her loose definition of being a vegetarian (oh, you had soup made from chicken but wouldn't eat beef cheeks? that's okay then), I have no reason to hate Heidi Swanson. And yet every time gmail links to one of her recipes above my inbox, I groan. Stupid Heidi Swanson and her soothing white and beige blog and her so-pretty-they're-practically-pornographic pictures of food. I refused to try any of her recipes for months.

But then! I got home late one night to find a note from my roommate: she had made a tofu scramble, I could help myself if I was hungry. So I did. It was THE GREATEST TOFU SCRAMBLE I HAVE EVER HAD. I'm not exaggerating. The next day I told my roommate how amazing it had been... and she told me where she got the recipe.

I still irrationally dislike Heidi Swanson. But yeah, okay, now I sometimes check out her blog. And dangit, I pretty much always like the recipes.
Broccoli Pesto from 101Cookbooks.com

For the first time in a while, I too, have been turning to my cookbooks. Here are some of the results:
Smores Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies and Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Vegan with a Vengeance and Vive le Vegan, respectively.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, from pamela's blog - but slightly healthier, I swear! I halfed the amount of chocolate chips and sugar, and instead put in a little extra tofu and some cocoa powder, and if you look closely, you'll see I used sliced bananas instead of a cookie crust:
I mean, it's practically health food, right?

And finally, Paradise Casserole from the Candle Cafe cookbook.
When I had this at the Candle Cafe, there were waaaaay more sweet potatoes on top. The recipe called for 4. Next time, I say at least 6! I made it for my mother when I was back in upstate NY. ALSO in upstate NY, I got to meet and enjoy delicious vegan milkshakes with bazu of where's the revolution?!

the monster dessert post!

I love indian food. That has to be one of the hardest things about being allergic to nightshades: I can't eat much at an indian restaurant when I go out anymore. Indian food used to be one of my standards suggestions when omni friends asked where I could eat if we went out - most of it is so vegan friendly.

Except the desserts. Almost all indian desserts not only contain dairy, but center around it. (The only one I can think of that doesn't is the occasional jalebi recipe, but even then, sometimes they have yogurt.) I've tried my hand at a few indian desserts: gajar halwa, or carrot fudge, date rolls, kheer... also I am a master at laddu, but an ex once made fun of them and said they were just balls of cookie dough so I don't like to share them with people anymore). But there was always that one dessert that haunted me.

Gulab Jamun. Little deep-fried balls of... dairy (some people call them cheese, but I think technically cheese has to have cultures, so it's just a dairy ball) soaked in sugar syrup. With rose and saffron.

I've weeded though dozens of recipes for gulab jamun. All are different. Some are staggeringly unveganizable. And almost all of them make gulab jamun sound like such a complicated dish that even if you could veganize them, it's not worth the time.

but: 1.) I love a challenge 2.) I loved gulab jamun and 3.) a very good friend of mine had a birthday last week and he's been pining over gulab jamun for the 10 years he's been vegan. AND SO:

This recipe takes longer to read than it does to make. It looks/sounds complicated, as it has quite a few steps, but it isn't actually very difficult. And it's totally worth how amazed everyone is that you've made:

Vegan Gulab Jamun
serves 3-4, maybe more if you don't keep taste-testing as you go...

NOTE (8/6/2010): Since I first posted this recipe, I have had questions as to what kind of soymilk powder I used. Embarrassingly, I don't remember. HOWEVER, I have repeated the recipe with Fearn's Soya Powder, and it worked BEAUTIFULLY. If you can't get that, I would recommend trying soy flour (you may need to up the soymilk amount) before trying soymilk powder--there is such a wide variety of consistencies in soymilk powder that it might mess up the recipe too much.

For the balls:
1 1/4 cup soymilk powder
2 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch cardamom
pnch salt
1 Tbsp "butter" (melted) or peanut oil
3/4 C soy milk (you may need more later)

Vegetable oil for deep frying

For the syrup:
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 Tbsp rose water*
pinch (5-6 strands) saffron*

(for a cane-sugar-free but not cost-effective version, use 2 C maple syrup or 1 1/2 C agave nectar mixed with 1/2 C water)
* - these are optional, use one or both or neither, but they give the recipe a nice authentic taste and the saffron gives it a nice color.

Combine the soymilk powder, flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt in a large bowl. Add the oil and soymilk and stir well. The texture should be a bit less firm than play-doh but not as wet/limp as clay (wow, sorry, that is totally unappetizing). If the dough is too wet, sprinkle in a bit more soymilk powder; it too dry, more soymilk, a Tbsp at a time.

Let the dough sit while you make the syrup. In a small pan, combine all of the syrup ingredients. Bring ingredients to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer, stirring often, until the syrup is reduced to nearly half of what it was.
Mine was a pretty orangey color thanks to the saffron. Remove from heat.

Now, back to the dough. Form the dough into slightly-smaller-than-walnut-sized balls. (They should be small enough that they will either be submerged or nearly submerged when you fry them.) They will be very sticky: I used a small pat of Earth Balance to rub my hands to keep the dough from sticking to me.

In a saucepan, pour 1 1/2 inch to 2 inches of vegetable oil. How big a sauce pan to use depends on how much oil you want to use - the bigger the pan, the bigger the batches you can do, but then, the more oil you'll use. I used about 2 cups canola oil in a small pan - this means I had to fry the balls in several batches, so it's a question of which you'd rather save: time or oil.

This is the trickiest part of the whole process (you can handle it!):
Turn the heat up to high. After 3-5 minutes, the oil will be hot - test by dropping in a tiny piece of the dough (finger-nail sized?): if lots of little bubbles form around it, turn it down to medium. (If lots of little bubbles don't form around it, wait another minute or two and try again with another small piece of dough.) TURN DOWN THE HEAT TO MEDIUM.

Hold the pan by its handle and tilt it a little sideways. Put in the balls of dough, one at a time, slipping them in along the side. This is so they don't stick to the bottom when you drop them in. I used a small pan, so I only did 4-5 in a batch, but if your pan is bigger, you can do bigger batches. Once they are all in, level the pan and shake it gently to stir the balls around. Let them fry for 3 minutes, jiggling the pan around occasionally to ensure even browning. After 3 minutes they should be a nice golden brown; if not, give them a little more time.
Here are mine, bubbling away in the oil. The uncooked ones are in the background.

Remove from oil with a slotted spoon and place in a bowl lined with a napkin or towel to soak up some of the oil. Repeat with the remaining balls of dough.
Mine were a little darker than golden brown, but still pretty, right? right. Try to take yours out a little earlier than this.

Combine the balls and the syrup. Let rest anywhere between 20 minutes to a day so the balls can soak up loads of the syrup. Serve in the syrup, at room temperature or warmed slightly.
If the balls aren't submerged when in the syrup, make sure you stir/shake the balls occasionally so they soak up the syrup evenly on all sides.

Yeah, so that was epic. Mostly I've been making desserts from other people's recipes lately for dessert.

From Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World:
Rum raisin cupcakes for my book club, with just the rum glaze because I'm not big on frosting.
lychee cupcakes with coconut glaze. I have no words for how amazing these babies are.
mmm... preglazed... you can see the chunks of lychee. Uh oh. I'm getting hungry as I type this.
An M cake! My roommate mish's birthday was this month, and for the past two years I've made her M-shaped cakes in honor of the occasion. It's an orange-chocolate cake: I used the basic chocolate cupcake recipe, added orange extract and put a layer of marmalade under the chocolate ganache.

I was admiring everyone's Jelly Donut Cupcakes from Veganomicon, so I tried my hand at them this evening. Unfortunately I only have whole wheat flour and raspberry preserves on hand, so both were a bit denser than the recipe called for. The taste is AWESOME, but the jelly didn't sink to the center like it's supposed to...
I didn't cover them with powdered sugar, because I told myself that if there's no sugar on top, they're healthy. Really! I used whole wheat flour and agave instead of sugar, they are basically jelly donut MUFFINS, which makes it okay to have two in one sitting, right? right.

And last, but definitely not least: Pecan Fudge Pie from sarah kramer's La Dolce Vegan.
Incredibly decadent and really simple.

Ugh it was such a bad idea to write up this post late at night... total snack attack... and those jelly donut "muffins" are sitting on my kitchen table...

I mean, if there's no sugar on top - they're healthy enough for a late-night snack -

right?

christmas on the homestead

christmas in cooperstown (upstate ny) was pretty normal: my youngest brother woke us all up at 7 so he could open presents, mom and I planned and prepared the day's dishes, siblings helping with occasional chopping and stirring, dad running into town to our store for last-minute ingredients. The menu, all organic:

green beans (vegan)
potato-style sunchoke salad (vegan)
mashed sweet potatoes (vegan)
mashed potatoes (vegan, but nightshades)
mom's stuffing (vegetarian, contains eggs)
roast chicken (ew)
2 kinds of gravy (one vegan, one... not)
chickpea casserole (vegan)
2 kinds of whole-wheat rolls (one kind vegan, one with milk)
pumpkin pie (vegan)
some non-vegan pie

sparkling pear and apple juice

There will be some food preparation pictures later. But after everything was safely stewing or baking or boiling in the kitchen, it was time for what has become a holiday tradition (we did it last year, too, though it wasn't as festive): hauling wood.

For most of the winter, the only heat in my parents' house comes from our woodstove. We use wood from already-dead trees on our property, which means dad has to chop it all up and lug it to the porch to dry before it goes into the woodstove. It's a lot of work for one person, so when dad randomly decided to fell a dead ash at the bottom of our lawn on christmas morning... my sister Liz, my brother Rob and I decided to help. (Mom stayed in to watch the various foodstuffs on the stove, Danny stayed in to play his new videogame.)

Dad and Robby chopped wood:
Robby, ironically, bought me Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness for christmas, as he was so pleased by the evil dead reference in my durianomicon entry.
Liz and I hauled the wood in sleds to the top of our hilly lawn to load the wood onto the porch.
That's Liz, just before she tethered her sled to the porch, and here's your heroine, loading up the wood:
It wasn't all heavy labor, though. Liz and I raced down.
This is a race. I'm losing because she cheated.
This is me being a bad loser and ranting about unfair sled races. The chickens, smartly, stayed away from the wood-chopping and sledding.

But we came inside to delicious smells and quickly threw together this beeeeeeautiful spread:
It's at a weird angle because I wanted to cut out the chicken in the bottom right corner.

Here's the chickpea casserole. It's from christina pirello's cooking with whole foods. I really like that book, if you can' tell, because all of her recipes are simple, low fat, and nightshade free. The casserole has chickpeas, winter squash, carrot, onion and garlic. There's plenty of miso in it, too, and you grate mochi on top, so it's rather cheesy in taste and texture. Mom and I went crazy for it.

Vegan pumpkin pie! I'd never made it before. I've made sweet potato pie, but my sweet potato pie recipe is different from my mother's pumpkin pie... we replaced the egg with ground-up flax seeds - TERRIBLE IDEA. The egg in pumpkin pie is as much for texture as for binding/lift - and the flax seeds made it rubbery. The taste was awesome (especially with a little soy whip!), and my brother wolfed it down, but mom and I decided next time we're either going with tofu or a fruit-and-baking powder mixture (with sweet potato I used sweet potato baby food mixed with baking powder and it worked great) to replace the egg.

soyatoo's whipped cream tastes like a less-sweet version of store-bought whipped cream, the kind that my mother didn't allow in the house when I was a kid (she always made her own). I love it.

I hope you all had a happy christmas. Even if you didn't celebrate it, I hope you at least got the day off from work ^_^