While at work today, I came up with an idea of making pomegranate cupcakes. In my head, they looked something like the above; a dark, rich pomegranate cake topped with a light vanilla frosting. As you will come to find out, this is not what I ended up with. The end product from this kitchen adventure turned out to be this: 
Yeah, I know. It looks like dog dookie in a really awesome vintage souffle bowl. But it's actually my version of bread pudding: vegan chocolate bread pudding. Now, how did I go from a light and fruity cupcake to a rich, heavy, chocolate dessert? Well, I will tell you.My first mistake was to think that the wonderful color of pomegranate juice would translate in the cupcake batter. When I mixed it in, instead of turning the batter into this awesome magenta color like I thought it would, it turned kind of gray-ish brown. I'm still not even sure why/how that happened.
The second mistake I made was to think I could substitute all the liquid in my cupcake recipe that's usually almond milk for Pom juice. Well, I'm not a chemist, but I now know that something in the almond milk has a binding effect on the batter, and without it, it turns out looking like this:
Now, being the eternal optimist that I am, I thought that even if they weren't that pretty, that maybe if they tasted good enough I could convince you, the reader, that this was the perfect dessert to make, so long as you weren't giving them out to dinner guests and feeling your self-esteem crumble along with the cupcakes in their hands. But when I tasted them, there was nothing special about them. Not a terrible taste by any means, but it was plain Jane. 
Either the crumbling or the plain taste alone I could have put up with, but since the two of them were holding hands and sticking their tongues out at me together, I had to come up with something totally different. I lost no time.
I crumbled all the cupcakes into my souffle bowl (not that hard of a task!), but then was stuck on what I should add to the crumbled mess. That is, I was stuck until I thought of what makes EVERYTHING better....chocolate! So I quickly got to work making a liquidy chocolate sauce that would firm up in the oven just enough.
This called for some egg replacer, which as an aside, I want to know when the heck this packaging was designed, 1974? I bought this not that long ago, but every time I look at it, I am transported to the '70s. Which is not a bad thing.
I ended up with this delicious, molten, sticky, chocolatey, warm, gooey mess. Not the prettiest thing in the world, but a seriously good comfort food! Recipe below.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup vegan butter
1 cup sugar
4 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup Pom juice
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup vegan butter
5 oz. semi-sweet chocolate
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 tsp egg replacer
2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
In a small bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking soda.
In a medium bowl, combine sugar, vegan butter, apple cider vinegar, and vanilla extract until smooth. Add the flour mixture and combine until well incorporated. Stir in the Pom juice until the batter looks somewhat uniform.
Pour into a greased muffin tin and bake for about 19 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of each cupcake comes out clean.
Let cool in the tin, then, using a spoon, scoop out and put into a casserole dish and crumble finely with the spoon. Set aside.
Meanwhile, in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, combine almond milk, vegan butter, chocolate and apple cider vinegar. Heat over low heat, stirring often to prevent the chocolate from burning. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together 3 tsp of egg replacer with 4 Tbsp of water.
Once the chocolate and almond milk mixture has melted completely and is combined, stir in the egg replacer mixture and vanilla extract. Whisk well. You will start to feel it gelling fairly soon after you add this.
Pour over crumbled cupcakes and stir to cover all the crumbles with the chocolate mixture. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. Let cool and enjoy immediately.
Up until now, there haven't been any ridiculously extravagant or super rich desserts on here, so you might not have known that I am a lover of over-the-top rich desserts. Well, the secret is out, and this is the cake that outed me.
My best friend is leaving for Texas tomorrow for an undetermined amount of time, so for this reason I decided I was going to make a cake. I may or may not have instigated a going away party for the sole purpose of making said cake, but that is another matter entirely.
It was a wondrous night full of fantastic flavors, including but not limited to hot cider, a block of cheese the size of my head, snickerdoodle cookies, homemade Greek yogurt dip, and of course, this cake.
For how crazy it looks, it didn't take much time to prepare. And if you like desserts that look pristine, I wouldn't recommend this one. Because it is so rich, i skipped icing it for fear of overdoing it, and just poured melted chocolate all over the top and let it run down the sides. This proved to be a success, albeit a messy one.
Recipe below!
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup vegan butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cup almond milk
About 16 ounces coconut cream (not milk)
1/4 cup sugar
1 pint strawberries, quartered length-wise
3 1/2 ounces dark chocolate
2 Tbsp vegan butter
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium sized mixing bowl, sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add the vanilla, apple cider vinegar, and almond milk. Mix until combined.
Add the flour mixture and stir (or use an electric mixer) to combine until the batter is smooth.
Pour equally into three very greased 9-inch cake tins. Smooth batter out so it is evenly distributed over each pan. Bake for about 22 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of the center of each cake tin cleanly.
Let cool on a cooling rack in the cake tins for about 20 minutes. Then flip cake tin upside down and let cake fall out onto a smooth surface. You may need to bang the bottom of the pan (which is now the top since it's upside down) to get the cake to come out without crumbling.
Let cool completely.
Meanwhile, in a medium sized mixing bowl, pour coconut cream and sugar together. Beat with an electric mixer on a medium speed until soft peaks begin to form, about five minutes. Store in refrigerator, covered, until you're ready to assemble the cake.
Then, in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, combine chocolate, cut into small pieces, and the butter. Melt together over low heat, stirring constantly to keep the chocolate from melting. If you have never melted chocolate on the stove top before, you may want to use a double boiler, since burning chocolate is so easy to do, and is also irreversible. (You can tell chocolate is burnt if it starts to look grainy instead of smooth.) Let this mixture cool to room temperature.
To assemble the cake, lay the first layer of cake on the platter you will be serving the cake from. Make sure it has a flat bottom big enough to lay the cake on entirely, and some room around the sides for rogue chocolate and coconut cream to slide onto. Then spread on about half of the coconut cream. Bring it right up to the edges of the cake. Then take half the strawberries and arrange so they cover the cream one layer thick. Try to keep them fairly level since your next cake layer will be balanced on them. Place the second cake layer on top of the strawberries and repeat.
Once the strawberries are on the second layer of coconut cream, place the last layer of the cake on the very top, then top with any remaining coconut cream. Then spoon the chocolate sauce onto the top and let it slide over the sides. If there's excess chocolate on your platter, spoon it up and pour it back on top.
Ta-da! Your cake is ready and probably looks delicious. Enjoy it with friends!
This is a homemade chai that is concentrated so it can be mixed with your choice of non-dairy milk. It can be served hot or cold.
Ingredients:
4 1/2 cups water
1 stick cinnamon
3 slices fresh ginger, about 1/8 inch thick
7 cardamom pods
2 star anise pods
10 whole cloves
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
zest of one navel orange
10 black tea bags
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 Tbsp agave nectar
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
Plain almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, coconut milk, or hemp milk
Directions:
Bring water to a boil. Meanwhile, gather spices and zest along with tea bags. Once the water is boiling, take it off the heat and add the cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, star anise, cloves, black pepper, nutmeg, orange zest, and tea bags. Cover the pot and let steep for 15 minutes. Then strain the mixture, and add the brown sugar, agave, and vanilla extract. Stir until dissolved. Then pour over warmed milk or over cold milk with ice and enjoy!
This is what it looked like outside today from my apartment window. Beautiful to look at, yet miserable to be out in. On days like this, I love to just curl up with a book and tea and a sweet treat. Deciding to try and make this desire a reality, I proceeded to do the exact opposite. I ended up running all over town getting the ingredients to make these muffins and a vegan chai latte to go with it. But once I got the end result I was looking for, it was so worth it!
I also got some wonderful news today, which turned this not only into a cozy snack, but also a celebratory snack. One of my friends and soon to be business partners came over to tell me we would be up and running with a commercial kitchen to sell at the farmer's market by next week! I've been waiting for this opportunity for about a year now and today was finally the day. I'm bubbling with excitement!
The recipe for these muffins is below, and the recipe for the vegan chai latte is here. Guaranteed to make your rainy day a little brighter. Or at least more enjoyable.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegan butter, melted
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup plain almond milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 pint fresh blueberries
brown sugar for sprinkling
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium sized bowl, sift four, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon very well.
In another medium bowl, mix sugar, melted butter, and apple cider vinegar until smoothly incorporated. Add almond milk and vanilla extract. Mix until combined.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir very slowly just until incorporated. Make sure not to over-mix so that your muffins will retain pockets in them while baking.
Mix in the blueberries ever so carefully.
Spoon into a greased muffin tin until all compartments are equally full. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the top of each muffin. Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out clean.
Let cool for about 10 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. Devour.
This is all that was left after the brunch potluck I made these for...and this one got snatched up at my house soon after! I got this recipe from Vegetarian Times. It's a pretty good one, although I have some adjustments in method. If you want to add sprinkles to yours like I did, i found that one bottle of sprinkles did the trick. These ones are peppermint flavored, which was a nice little surprise (I didn't even know they were flavored until I tried a mess-up one!).
The link to the recipe is here. I doubled the recipe and still only got two dozen doughnuts out of it, instead of three dozen. But maybe I made mine too big? Not sure. Also, I doubled the glaze recipe too, but there was no need. I had LOTS of left-over glaze, and I laid it on pretty thick. I also didn't heat the glaze before-hand, just mixed it in a bowl and added a Tablespoon of extra soy milk to make it thinner, which worked out fine. I would suggest that you let the doughnuts cool completely before you glaze them, as they firm up considerably after cooling, making it easier for them to hold together when you dunk in the glaze.
Hope you enjoy these! They were quite a treat.
I'm finally back! It's been so long since I've been able to bake that I've felt all out of sorts lately. It didn't help that I was in the midst of moving (which took longer than expected, since I accidentally turned my utilities off at the old place too soon, so had only a couple hours a day between the end of work and sunset to continue transferring stuff from the old to the new place!). I'm also the kind of person who gets unpacked as soon as humanly possible, but it has taken me over a week to get started on unpacking since i slipped a disc in my back on New Year's Eve! So I laid helplessly in bed, not able to move at all, trying not to let the boxes stare back at me, refusing to listen to them mock my disorganization. This week has been the first that I can do anything after work besides crawl under the covers and take pain medication. So I mostly unpacked and got to work in the kitchen!
Oh yes, this is the newest addition to our family, Luna. She's quite a character, but seems to be settling in with us just fine. She cuddles relentlessly, which was entertaining for me while bedridden.
And here's the other kitten dozing on his new favorite blanket.
Here's my new half-way unpacked kitchen.
As you can see, I don't have much counter space at all, which drives me nuts! I'm going to have to create some on my own, but for now, this is what I have to work with.
I emerged from the dungeon I work in to greet a uniformly slate-gray sky and gusts of chilly wind, and my first thought was, "gingersnap cookies and a glass of almond milk, with a book under my covers with the kitties cuddling with me sounds like the best sort of remedy for this day". So that's what I did. Recipe below.
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp clove
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
sugar for coating the cookies (about 1/2 cup)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Sift together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
In another medium bowl, stir together all the wet ingredients with a fork. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and stir to combine. The dough will be uniform in texture and will feel oily, but should stick together.
Scoop by rounded Tablespoon-fulls and roll the dough between your hands to create balls. Roll in a shallow bowl or plate of sugar. Coat completely and place on an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake in oven for about 15 minutes. Place on a cooling rack after you let them cool on pan for about five minutes. Once they are completely cool, they will be much stiffer than when they first came out of the oven, so expect a crunchy cookie when you bite into it!
Hope you all enjoy :)
