Let's play a game before we start. The owl in this post was actually an accident, so let's see if you can find him!
Sorry for the delay in posting! This cake was actually consumed by my family last weekend, but I've been in the process of packing up my entire house because I am moving next week. Thus, I have put off posting (and now, sadly, must put off baking until I get unpacked) for lack of time/energy. But I will finally have hot water in my kitchen! Woohoo! So excited.
I made this cake as a dessert to our family's early Christmas dinner this year. We celebrated the weekend before because our entire family was actually together. This is more rare than a natural food at McDonald's.
Perfection from the oven!
Came out beautifully. I was very worried about this part! It's so nerve wracking.
Here's the final product. Nothing glamorous, but really delicious nonetheless. Recipe below!P. S. Did you find the owl?
Ingredients:
3 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup (2 sticks) vegan butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups almond milk
4 medium-sized Bartlett pears
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup water
1/2 sugar
2/3 cup powdered sugar
4 Tbsp pure maple syrup
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium bowl, sift dry ingredients together. Set aside.
In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar together until smooth. Add apple cider vinegar, vanilla extract, and molasses. Mix until well incorporated. Add the flour mixture and mix until combined. Add the almond milk. Mix until there are no lumps left in the batter.
Liberally grease a bundt cake pan. Pour the batter into the pan, up to about 1/2 inch from the top. I like to put the pan on a cookie sheet just in case the cake pan overflows. That way you won't have a mess in your oven. Bake for about an hour and 15 minutes, or until a long toothpick comes out clean from the center of the cake.
Meanwhile, peel, core, and dice the pears. In a heavy sauce pan, combine pears, sugar, water, and cinnamon. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and let simmer until the water has turned into a thicker syrup. Remove from heat and let cool.
Also meanwhile, in a bowl, prepare the maple glaze by combining the powdered sugar and the maple syrup until smooth. Add more syrup by the teaspoon if the mixture seems dry, lumpy, or too stiff.
Place on cooling rack still in the pan for 15 minutes. Then flip upside down and take the pan off the cake. Let cool completely. Once the cake is cool, drizzle the maple glaze over it. Cut slices, and serve with pears on top.
I have been dying to make these cookies for almost a week now. This past week has been one of the coldest I've ever been through in Florida. The house I live in is old and crappy and doesn't have central heating (or any heating, for that matter!) similar to many houses in Gainesville. And since I only have two space heaters that combined could only heat one room, I had to prioritize. This meant the bedroom was the only habitable room in my house for about a week. Not only was the kitchen just too darn cold to cook in (even with the oven and stove top on), it was way too messy to cook in as well. On top of there being no heat, there's also no hot water in the kitchen. During the summer, this was awesome since it cut down on my energy bill a lot! But when the high is 47 for the day, doing dishes in cold water in a house that is the same temperature inside as outside just was not an option.
Today was the first warm day since the cold streak, a high of 70!!! I gleefully rode my bike home scantily clad in a mere two sweatshirts and gloves instead of underneath about six layers of coats, and when I got home and saw the mound of dishes waiting for me in my semi-warm house, I almost teared up with relief. Finally, I could cook!
This is a recipe I've been wanting to try for a while. They are not exactly savory cookies, but they're also not very sweet. They have a wonderful combination of flavors and are very simple to make.
I got some inspiration for these cookies from 101 Cookbooks. If you've never seen it, check it out online. It's amazing. The pictures put mine to shame (although in my defense, I'm a novice!) and it has unusual yet tasty ideas. I adapted this recipe in order to make it vegan and I switched up the presentation to suit my tastes.
These cookies provide a nice respite from the overly sweet Christmas cookies floating around this time of year. Recipe is below. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup (2 sticks) vegan butter, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
1 lemon's zest
1 1/4 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 tsp olive oil
Directions:
Combine vegan butter and sugar in a medium bowl until well incorporated. Add zest and rosemary and stir to combine. Add flour and mix until a crumbly dough forms. The dough should look dry, but should hold together when pressed.
Tear a long sheet of wax paper and put on the counter. Gather the dough in your hands and press all of it into one ball. Put the ball of dough on the wax paper. Tear another sheet of wax paper the same length as the first and put over the dough ball. Press down to form a disk of dough. Put in refrigerator for about 20 minutes.
After dough has hardened a little bit, take out of the fridge and, with the wax paper still on both sides of it, use a rolling pin to flatten the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Place the shapes on a greased baking sheet.
In a small bowl, combine pine nuts and olive oil so the pine nuts are coated in the oil. Scatter about 2 teaspoons of pine nuts onto each cookie. Arrange to your taste. Then press down slightly so they stick into the dough. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until edges are slightly browned.
Continue with rest of dough until entirely used up. If the dough becomes sticky and hard to work with, just pop it in the freezer for five minutes and then continue.
Let cool on a cooling rack. Enjoy! (I enjoyed about four in one night...)
I know there's been a lot of cupcakes on this blog so far, but fall/winter is a time of plentiful birthdays, so I've been making a lot of them for friends. There's some history behind these cupcakes that I'd like to share with you.
Every year, I have a giant feast where I make a wonderfully decadent five-course meal in which I invite my closest friends, and the cake is the grand finale of the meal. At one such dinner, one of my friends who sat at the opposite head of the table from me, had been blown away by each course, just sat in total amazement with each bite he took.
When the cake came out, he just couldn't contain himself any longer. He started talking about how wonderful this cake was, how it was just the best food he had ever tasted. It was hard for him to find words for what he was experiencing. Finally, he came out with it: this cake was interstellar.
These cupcakes are the vegan version of this cake. I have modified this recipe to fit a vegan cupcake format. Hopefully you'll think they're interstellar as well!
This is the mess I make in my kitchen as I cook.
This is after I've hollowed them out.
Here's with the blackberry filling. If you're not a big fan of frosting, you could just eat them this way. They're gorgeous and not too sweet.
Here's the final product sliced down the middle. Recipe below.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup (1 stick) vegan butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
4 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup almond milk
12 oz blackberries
1/4 cup sugar
8 oz vegan cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup vegan butter, softened
1 lb powdered sugar
Directions:
In a small bowl, mash the blackberries with a fork until a lumpy liquid is formed. Stir in 1/4 cup sugar and let sit for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium bowl, sift dry ingredients together. Set aside.
In a large bowl, mix butter and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in apple cider vinegar and vanilla extract.
Mix the flour mixture into the sugar mixture. Then add almond milk and mix until uniform texture is achieved.
Pour into greased muffin tin and bake for about 22 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into each cupcake comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire cooling rack to let cool completely.
Once cupcakes are cooled completely, cut around the edge of each cupcake at a 45 degree angle about half-way down the cupcake so a cylindrical pyramid shape comes out of the top of each one. Then spoon blackberry mixture into each depression up to the top of the cupcake.
In a medium bowl, mix vegan cream cheese and vegan butter until smooth. Add in confectioner's sugar and mix until incorporated.
Ice the top of each cupcake. Enjoy!
Winter has finally arrived in Florida. I sit typing this under layers upon layers of clothing and blankets with a space heater nearby and am still shivering. Any northerners reading this may scoff, thinking, It's Florida, how bad can it be? But for those of us who are used to complaining about heat and humidity for eight months out of the year, a low of 25 (like tonight) sends us into a state of panic.
Anyway, I digress. I was talking about winter, which means that Christmas is peeking its head around the corner, and nothing brings back fond memories of Christmas like making sugar cookies. This is fairly convenient for two reasons: first, my boyfriend has been bugging me to make him sugar cookies that are NOT VEGAN. He said, Nothing fancy, and nothing for your blog; I just want some sugar cookies. But of course if I'm going to bake something, they're going on the blog :)
The second reason this recipe came at a convenient time is because the dough must be kept very cold through the process, and since my house is hardly weather-proof, the kitchen was definitely cold enough to keep the dough chilled, thus making my life easier! It's pretty much impossible to make these cookies in a hot kitchen (i.e. an un-air conditioned kitchen in Florida during the summer).
Now, I know that owls aren't necessarily indicative of the holiday spirit, but I am somewhat of a Grinch when it comes to Yuletide joy, so forgive me.
This is an owl-in-progress shot. I used a drinking glass to cut out the bigger circles and then an old 7-Up bottle cap to make the holes for the eyes.
Make sure to reserve the eyes so you can fill in the holes of the other colored dough.
Here they are out of the oven. They come out looking a little creepy! Could possibly be decorated for a good Halloween party or even an anime thing.
Just making room on the cooling rack for the second batch.
Here's one of them finished, along with the assembly line for the others! These turned out pretty cute, with lots of decorating possibilities. They're pretty tasty, and retain their softness and moisture pretty well. Nothing like the slice and bake from Pillsbury, although quite a bit more work! But I think it's worth it. Recipe below.
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour, divided
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt, divided
2/4 tsp baking powder, divided
1 cup sugar, divided
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk, divided
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp coconut extract
Directions:
You will need four mixing bowls, two small and two medium, wax paper, and two different sized circles for cutting the dough, one for the cookie size and one for the eyes.
In one of the small bowls, sift together 1 1/2 cups flour, pinch of salt, and 3/8 tsp baking powder (a little less than 1/2 tsp).
In the other small bowl, sift together 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, pinch of salt, and 3/8 tsp baking powder.
In one medium bowl, beat 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup sugar together until smooth. Do the same in the other medium bowl.
In a small bowl, crack the egg into it and then whisk well with fork or whisk. Pour half of the egg into each medium bowl. Then pour 1 1/2 tsp milk into each of the bowls. Into one bowl, pour the vanilla extract. Into the other, pour the coconut extract. Make sure you remember which bowl has what extract. Mix each bowl separately until contents of each bowl are well incorporated.
Pour the non-chocolate flour mixture into the bowl with the coconut extract, and mix well until a the flour mixture is incorporated. The dough will look crumbly, but will stick together when you press it together. Pour the chocolate flour mixture into the bowl with the vanilla extract, and repeat the process of mixing.
Tear off four sheets of wax paper so that they are about square shaped and lay them on the counter. Grab one of the doughs and form into a ball with your hands. Place on one wax paper square and then flatten. Put another wax paper square on top of that one. Set aside.
Do the same thing with the other dough. Place both doughs in the refrigerator for at least two hours, or overnight, to chill enough so that the dough is hard.
When you are ready to continue, pull one of the doughs out of the refrigerator and, with the wax paper still on top and below the dough, use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into about a 1/4" thick sheet of dough. Take the top wax paper off of the dough. Use your big circle cookie cutter to cut out as many circles as you can. (You may want to dip the rim of the cookie cutter in flour so it won't stick to the sides, as this dough gets very sticky when it gets warmer.) When you have gotten as many circles as you can out of that sheet of dough, roll it into a ball again, flatten, and replace the top sheet of wax paper. Roll out again and repeat the process. Repeat this until there is not enough dough to make another circle. Discard (or snack on) the leftover dough.
Put the circles of dough back on the wax paper. Now use your smaller circle cookie cutter to cut out two eyes in each of the bigger circles. You may want to flour the rim of this cookie cutter as well. I had trouble getting mine out of the bottle cap, so I used a fondue sticker to get it out. You can also use a fork prong or a toothpick to help you out with this.
Once you have cut out all the eyes, place all the circles, big and small, back onto the wax paper and put back into the fridge to keep chilled.
Then repeat with other dough.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Get out a cookie sheet and grease it, or lay down parchment paper. Grab all the circles from the fridge, and place big circles on the cookie sheet, making sure they are about an inch apart from each other and the sides of the cookie sheet. I could fit about six onto one cookie sheet at a time. Place small circles of opposite colored dough into the holes of the big circles on the cookie sheet.
Bake for about 9 to 10 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to brown. Be sure to keep a close eye on the chocolate ones, as the browning of the edges will not be apparent. For this reason, you might want to bake chocolate ones with vanilla ones so you can tell when they're ready.
Take out of oven and let cool for about two minutes. Then transfer to cooling rack to let cool completely.
To ice these, I used some mess-up frosting from my chocolate beet cupcakes. The recipe is here
To decorate, make two angled lines above the "eyes" of the cookies. Then cover with shredded coconut. Then make two dots for eyes, and an upside down triangle for a nose. And you're done!
This is what happens when I get four hours of sleep: I lurch through my work day with the aid of massive amounts of heavily sweetened coffee, and when I try to take a nap when I get home, realize I'm too caffeinated to fall asleep. So I decide to try out the muffin idea I came up with while deliriously biking home. The next thing I am aware of is cramming my mouth with scrambled eggs because I forgot to eat all day while wondering what that burning smell is coming from my food processor. I then realize I put whole cardamom pods (without de-shelling them) into the food processor, which is, apparently, not a good idea. And then the tears come.
So I put the muffin idea on hiatus until my brain synapses returned to full function. In the meantime, I bought powdered cardamom.
Needless to say, I am barely functional when I don't get enough sleep. But I come up with some fairly decent ideas when my logical abilities aren't in the best working order, like these muffins! This recipe isn't perfect yet, but I'll add some additions to what I did so you can make them better than I did.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp cardamom
Zest from one orange
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 carrots, shredded
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
Directions:
Something I should have done is make the carrot topping first. Put the carrots, sugar, and water in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil. Let boil until all the water has evaporated. Then set aside to let cool.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium sized bowl, sift flour, salt, baking powder, and cardamom together. I usually don't care about sifting all the dry ingredients together, but for muffins it is ESSENTIAL. It will be really important not to have ANY chunks in the dry mixture when it comes time to combine with the wet ingredients.
In a large bowl, mix sugar, oil, apple cider vinegar, zest, orange juice, and vanilla extract together until combined.
Add the dry ingredients. Mix together oh so carefully, just until the dry ingredients are wet. It's okay to have small chunks left of dry ingredients in the wet mixture. The point here is to not over-mix the muffin batter, which is why sifting the dry ingredients together makes this easier.. The key to a wonderful muffin is the texture. You want it dense, yet fluffy, with little pockets of air in it. The way to achieve this is with minimal mixing.
Once combined, pour into a greased muffin tin. When you have all the tins filled, sprinkle the candied carrots on top. Be careful not to let them drop on the muffin batter in big clumps, because then they will sink.
Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into each muffin comes out clean. Let cool on a cooling rack.
This is my very first muffin recipe that I've made up, so if you have any tips just let me know. The texture on these came out very good, but the orange flavor was too weak in mine. I used 3/4 cup almond milk and 1/4 cup orange juice in mine though, so hopefully just using the orange juice will make their flavor pop more for you!
