I don't follow recipes, but I hope you do

I have trouble following recipes. Though I always set out to follow someone else's recipe, by the time I am ready to serve or eat the finish product, I realize I didn't follow it at all. Most recipes have unnecessary steps or ingredients I can't eat (ie, nightshades) or ingredients I don't want to use (ie, refined sugar or white flour). I like to think of recipes as suggestions, not instructions.

Sometimes, of course, this ends in failure. But most of the time I end up with something I like... and a new recipe that is more mine than anyone else's. This following recipe is an example of that: I saw a Martha Stewart recipe for buttermilk scones with tangelos, and while I liked the idea of chopping up citrus for scones, I didn't like the actual recipe. Too much white flour, too many steps... so I have made a better recipe!

These are whole wheat orange scones, topped with cashew "clotted" cream. The cream is melty because the scones were still warm, but if you refrigerate the cream first, it holds up pretty well (recipe follows scone recipe). I was worried whole wheat scones would be too dense, but these were great.

Whole Wheat Orange Scones
(makes 6 scones)

1/4 C soymilk
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 C + 1 Tbsp whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
3 Tbsp margarine
2 Tbsp agave (or 3 Tbsp sugar, but in that case add another Tbsp soymilk)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp orange zest
2 medium oranges (or 3 clementines), peeled, segmented, then chopped into 1/2-inch pieces

Stir together soymilk and vinegar; set aside so it has time to curdle.

Sift the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt into a large bowl. Add the margarine in small pieces, cut into the pastry flour (with a pastry cutter or with a fork, like I do) until the mixture is clumpy, as the cookbooks say, "like coarse sand." In a separate bowl, combine the agave (or sugar), vanilla, orange zest, and soymilk mixture. Stir well, then add to the flour, with the orange segments. Don't stir this too much; some lumps are okay. It should form a sticky dough; turn this out onto a well-floured cutting board or parchment paper. With well floured hands (or put another piece of parchment paper on top), flatten the dough into an inch-thick circle.

Refrigerate the dough for half an hour. This is a good time to preheat the oven to 400. Take the dough out of the fridge and cut it into 6 triangles. Place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. (Optional: Brush tops with a bit of soy or coconut milk and sprinkle with sugar.) Bake for 18-22 minutes, until the tops are golden and the bottoms are starting to brown. Cool slightly before serving.

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Do any of you ever have those moments where you think something like "Oh, man, where's that recipe for pineapple-and-tofu pie?" and start digging through your cookbooks before you realize there is no such thing? I frequently dream up recipes like that, and am always disappointed when I discover that no, nobody's made or sweet and sour hijiki patties. So I have to do these things myself. For some reason I had dreamed up a cashew clotted cream. This does not exist, guys. UNTIL NOW. I never had clotted cream, but when I lived in london, my flatmates were crazy about it. I can't make any promises that it tastes like clotted cream, but it tastes great and the texture is about right.

Cashew Clotted Cream
(makes enough for 6 scones)

1/4 C cashew butter
1/4 Cup + 2 Tbsp coconut milk
Optional: 1/2 tsp vanilla

Combine ingredients in a blender; blend until completely smooth (2-3 mins). Add more coconut milk to taste, but remember it will make the cream runnier at room temperature. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

If it's in the fridge for more than an hour, it'll firm up really well, but I don't care how firm my cashew cream is... IT IS DELICIOUS EITHER WAY. Some people sweeten their clotted cream; I think those people are crazy. This recipe is actually already a little sweet because of the cashew butter, but feel free to add a Tbsp of sugar if you want it sweeter.

how sweet it is

Long time, no post! But the good news is that I now have my camera back AND a bunch of delicious desserts to share!

Gingerbread cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World:
Boston Creme Cupcakes (also from VCTOtW), which I made for a dinner with my boyfriend's mother (needless to say with these babies, it went well):
Caramel Apple Cupcakes (from Veganomicon), which I brought for everyone in one of my classes last semester:
Mexican Hot Chocolate and Lemon Macadamia cupcakes (seriously, my copy of VCTOtW is near to falling apart), which I packaged up to give to a friend:
Okay, I want to do a close-up, because I love how pretty and yellow the lemon cupcakes were...
And after the cupcake overload that was my holiday season, it was only natural that my loved ones should give me cupcake-related gifts.* First off, my sister gave me this Oneida cupcake carrier! Yessss, no more squishing cupcakes into multiple tupperware containers! And my roommate gave me reusable silicone cupcake cups, so I won't go through as many cupcake wrappers!
They are really fun. And from them came my following idea for a great, not-too-sweet dessert!

Chocolate Cherry Cups

Note: Silicone cupcake cups will make cup assembly much easier, but you can also do it with paper wrappers; just put them into a muffin tin when you chill them so they maintain their cup shape.

Chocolate shell:
2 Tbsp soymilk
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped into tiny pieces
1/4 Cup chocolate chips
1 Tbsp butter
1-2 Tbsp agave nectar, depending on how sweet you want it
1/2 tsp vanilla

Cherry filling:
1 bag frozen cherries
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 C water
2 tsp cornstarch or arrowroot powder

Optional: buttercream frosting (I used vanilla but chocolate would be great, too) yogurt, chopped nuts or mint for topping

In a small saucepan, heat the soymilk, agave nectar, and vanilla until the mixture is near boiling (probably 2-3 minutes over medium-high heat). Remove from heat, and stir in the chocolate and the chocolate chips until they melt. Put about a tablespoon of this chocolate mixture into a silicone cupcake cup, and use a spoon to smooth the chocolate in an even layer across the bottom and about 2/3 of the way up the side of each cup. This is pretty easy, and gets easier as the chocolate starts to cool and thicken. Chill the cupcake cups for at least an hour in the freezer or longer in the fridge.

To make the cherry filling, pour the bag of cherries into a saucepan. Add the water and cook over medium until the cherries are soft, soupy and boiling; about 10 minutes. Spoon a few tablespoons' worth of the liquid into a small bowl. To this bowl, add the cornstarch or arrowroot and mix it well. Add the mixture back to the cherries and stir about 5 more minutes, until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat; chill it in the fridge for at least an hour.

To assemble, remove the wrappers from the chocolate cups, then spoon the cherry mixture into the cups. Keep them chilled until you are ready to serve them, and garnish with the optional frosting, yogurt, chopped nuts or mint.

This made 10 chocolate cherry cups.

OH I almost left out THE BEST STOCKING STUFFER EVER:
Agave nectar sticks?! I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THEY MADE THESE.

*-Actually, it was a bit of a surprise that my christmas presents this year were ENTIRELY food-related: I also received Vegan A Go Go from my parents, and a whisk, a spatula, and a waffle iron from my sensational boyfriend. Expect waffle-related entries in the future! ^_^

just in time for winter... picnic food?

This is not the most timely of entries, I know. But I left my camera in New York when I went there over Thanksgiving (man, do I have some awesome month-old pictures of food to share with you that, alas, I can't), so I've been rooting around my old pictures for an "okay, I made this months ago but never posted about it UNTIL NOW" moment.

When I think picnics, I think "what will still taste good cold?" because I generally have to drag everything around for a while before I get to a picnicable time/spot. So back in June, when picnics were possible, I made an Asian-themed picnic!
Starting from the top, going clockwise: Green Tea Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (I accidentally halved the amount of oil, so they sunk, making a nice little bowl for the frosting), Asian Marinated Tofu from Vegan with a Vengeance, my own Cold Sesame Noodle Salad, made with rice and buckwheat noodles (gluten-free!), and last but not least...

Snow Pea Oranges!
These things are cute, healthy finger food. If you ever need adorable hors d'oeuvres, you know what to do. Oh, and this isn't really an ingredient, but you'll also need 20 toothpicks.

20 fresh snow peas*
20 mandarin orange sections
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 1-inch section of ginger, peeled and minced

Bring pot of water to a boil, then dump in the snow peas. Take them out after 1-2 minutes; they should be sorta floppy, but not discolored. Wrap each citrus section in a snow pea and stick a toothpick through it to hold it together. Put in a shallow dish or bowl.

Whisk together the other ingredients in a small bowl; pour over the snow peas and allow to marinate for at least an hour. Store in the fridge until ready to serve!

*- Note: If using frozen snow peas, you don't have to blanch them to make them flexible. Just run them under warm water until they aren't frozen anymore.

Also, jd over at Veggie Terrain tagged me to do this image meme. I think I was supposed to do 10 "this is so me/this is so NOT me" things, but finding that many images was exhausting, so I gave up after 7.

This is so me:
This is so NOT me:


This is so me:
This is so NOT me:


This is so me:
This is so NOT me:


This is so me:
This is so NOT me:


This is so me:
This is so NOT me:


This is so me:
This is so NOT me:


This is so me:This is so NOT me:


Thanks for the tag, jd! I think most other bloggers have tagged each other by now, but if you're a vegan blogger who reads this and hasn't been tagged... You're it!

my rediscovered love of rice

Two years ago, if you asked me what my favorite food was, I would unhesitatingly tell you it was brown rice. I cooked a large pot of brown rice a couple times a week and breakfasted, lunched, dined and snacked on it hot, lukewarm, cold or reheated. Plain, with margarine, with soy sauce, with soymilk and molasses, any way I could get rice to my mouth was a good way.
Then something changed. I make less of it in the summer, and when I went back to cooking rice last fall... I just wasn't enjoying it as much. I assumed, like stir fries and curries and hoe cakes, that my love of rice had been a phase, and that phase had ended. So I've made fewer rice-compatible dishes recently, and have stopped stocking humungous quantities of rice on my shelves just in case I get a rice craving.

Last night, however, I made cauliflower pakoras, and wanted some rice to go with the meal, so I meandered down to whole foods to get some. I usually go for short-grain brown rice, because it is cheaper, lower-calorie and higher in fiber than other kinds of rice, but I decided to splurge and get brown basmati.

And as I ate my dinner (and breakfast and lunch today), I realized: IT WAS ALWAYS BASMATI. I had always liked basmati rice. The switch had been too subtle; I didn't lose my love of rice, I had just stopped buying the kind I liked! So no more bland and boring short-grain brown rice. BASMATI, I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN.

(professor) plum cake

I love Clue. I used to play it (the version pictured above) for hours when I was a kid; it was my favorite board game. When I first saw the movie, I was probably 6 or 7 and it quickly became one of my favorites (also high on the list: Splash and The Little Mermaid. We can therefore deduce that in first grade, my main interests were McCarthyism and Mermaids*).
I always had to be Professor Plum. We can analyze my attraction to this character in three ways: 1.) Aesthetic - the purple game piece was the prettiest.** 2.) Romantic - Okay, so he's not attractive, but who cares--I prefer "intelligent" over "good-looking" (case in point: at age 5 I wanted to marry Donatello, the smartest of the teenage mutant ninja turtles). [Who ALSO wore purple!] 3.) A sort of far-seeing Narcissism (my career goal? PROFESSOR).
And in the movie, who should play Professor Plum but Christopher Lloyd, one of my favorite actors (as a child I loved him in Taxi and in Back to the Future because he was so crazy)!

Okay, so I'm getting to the food part. A friend invited me and my boyfriend over to watch Clue, and I wanted to bring a dessert. What, then, could I make to fit a Clue theme? (I'd been thinking Cupcakes with little marzipan Clue weapons, but alas, I loaned out my [roommate's] muffin tin, so no cupcakes.)

And then it hit me.

(PROFESSOR) PLUM CAKE
This is a dense little cake. If you want to make it a little healthier, you can replace up to half the flour with whole wheat pastry, and half the oil with soy yogurt (both work fine) but I wouldn't go much further than half.

1 1/2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cardamom
5 Tbsp margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 Tbsp flax meal
6 Tbsp water
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I always use canola
1 Tbsp orange zest (1 orange) - OR - 1 tsp orange extract (but zest is best!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2-3/4 C plum preserves, stirred around in the jar to loosen them up (see Note at the end of this post if you'd rather use real plums)

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly oil a 8x8 baking pan.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cardamom in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, use a mixer to beat the margarine until soft and (I hate this word) creamy (about 2 minutes). If you don't have a mixer, use a fork for a long time. Add the sugar and beat for another 2 minutes. Add the flax meal and water and beat for 2 MORE minutes. Add the oil, orange zest, and vanilla, and beat until they are all combined. Now put away the mixer, and STIR in the dry ingredients, until just combined. It'll be a thick batter. Finally, pour the plum preserves into the batter, stirring it ONLY enough to marble it in.

Pour the purply goodness into the baking pan and bake for 40 minutes, until the top is golden. I turned mine upside-down and drizzled a light glaze over it (recipe follows).

Simple Glaze
(I actually halved this for my plum cake, but that's because I'm not a big fan of icings)
1 C powdered sugar
1 Tbsp margarine
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-3 Tbsp soymilk (vanilla soymilk is especially awesome, or soy nog if you have it--yum)

With your mixer, or a fork if the mixer is covered with plum cake batter, blend the sugar and margarine until there are no chunks of margarine left. Add the vanilla, then add the soymilk one tablespoon at a time - if it seems dry after 2, add the third, and if it's still a bit dry, try another tsp or so. But if it seems runny enough after 2, by all means, stop. Icing can be so finicky. Drizzle over your cake or any other dessert.

Note: I couldn't find fresh plums anywhere, so I used plum preserves. If you actually have plums, you can still make this recipe, but increase the amount of brown sugar to 3/4 cup and either: a.) chop 6 plums into wedges and fold them into the batter in place of the preserves, or b.) cut them into halves and press them into the top of the batter after pouring it into the pan but before baking [google search "dimply plum cake" and you will see what I mean].

*-This gives me a fantastic idea for a movie. Must get to work on a screenplay...
**-Though I was occasionally Mrs. Peacock because the blue was almost as pretty, and SOMETIMES Miss Scarlet because she was the babe of the board game.

gasp!

I just realized that as of yesterday I have had this blog for a year. Man, I missed my own anniversary! if I'd thought ahead I could've done a commemorative post, but now, on the spot, I can't think of something to post that is representative of my first year's attempts at vegan blogging.

What represents this blog, I thought? Something pretty and classy? Something innovative and interesting? Something complex? Something bizarre and/or frightening? Something with chickens or carved, glowing turnips?

No, I thought. This will have to be a pictureless post. And then suddenly, it hit me. They're a little weird. They're a little sweet, a little salty. They are interesting. And I love them! They are... PICKLES.
But not just any pickles! Exciting pickles from the nearby Babushka Deli. The jar on the left is pickled celery (which is just celery, salt, sugar, and vinegar), and on the right, pickled summer squash (patty pans), pictured in front.

So happy 1 year, everyone. Thank you very much for reading my blog, and I hope you continue to do so!

I didn't invent any of these, but all are awesome

So all of you bloggers and blog-readers may have noticed that I am not participating in "vegan mofo" ("vegan month of food"). I cannot find the time to update every day... but I am enjoying everyone else's posts! My readers should definitely check out some of my favorite vegan blogs (see links at right>>>>>); most of them are participating and doing a great job ^_^

Anyway. Everyone has a tofu quiche recipe. I myself have tried quite a few vegan quiches, some tofu based, some chickpea based, and of all of the ones I've tried, the following recipe remains my favorite. It's not innovative or inventive, and it would never fool someone into believing it is anything other than tofu. But it is simple, easy, and delicious, especially sice you can adjust the herbs and veggies to whatever you're in the mood for or have in your kitchen.
Tofu Quiche

1 9- or 10-inch pie crust
2 Tbsp Olive oil
1 onion, sliced
2 cups chopped veggies (I like broccoli and mushrooms, but you could go for anything)
2 Tbsp chopped fresh herbs, or 2 tsp dried herbs
1 lb (one block) Tofu
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
2 Tbsp tamari
1/2 tsp turmeric (for color)
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)

Preheat over to 350.

In a medium pan, saute the onions in the oil until translucent. Add the other veggies and cook until tender.

In a large bowl, crumble the tofu and add the herbs, lemon juice, tamari, salt, turmeric and nutritional yeast (if using). Add more salt/pepper to taste. Stir in the veggies.

Pour the mixture into the pie crust, pressing it here and there with a spatula or the back of your spoon so that it's flat. Bake for 40 minutes, allow to cool for about 5 mins before serving.

Yum! Also in the brunchy/tofu category, my boyfriend made me Tofu Benedict a couple weeks ago! He made a vegan hollandaise sauce and we used the Yves brand of canadian bacon.
I never actually had eggs benedict before I went vegan, so I don't know if it tasted "authentic," but it tasted good!

I'm still on a mission to make every cupcake in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. My only problem is that I am afraid to attempt the filled cupcakes. There are a bunch I can make before I have to get that far, though. Including:
Green Tea Cupcakes (with special thanks to Bazu for helping me find the matcha)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cinnamon Icing

Finally, this is not food, but it is also awesome: a picture of the kitty my roommate and I are fostering! His name is Ziggy and he is staying with us until december. I was iffy on the idea of having a cat, even temporarily, but then I met him:
ADORABLE.