Blueberry-chocolate cake, sweet potato bread

Hi everybody. Grad school is kicking my butt, but I still do eat food, so here are some pics:



Blueberry-chocolate cake, recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blog. I used a chocolate-hazelnut spread my friend brought me back from Paris to adhere the fruit to the cake in lieu of agave. This was delicious, quick and looks pretty fancy to boot. I used these farmers market blueberries that made you say; "oh yeah, that's what these things are supposed to taste like!"





Braided sweet potato yeast bread loaf, recipe from IVU (International Vegetarian Union). Delicious, but somewhat dense. The recipe doesn't instruct you to warm liquid ingredients to room temperature, and I only thought of that halfway through the process, but it still rose quite a bit, so I think next time using warm soymilk and yams it will be even better. I made two spreads for this, both based off of Bryanna Clark-Grogan's vegan "boursin" recipe. One was made with cranberries, walnuts and orange zest and the other had dill, garlic and scallions. Both were delicious (google that recipe, I make it all the time!) but neither were super photogenic unfortunately.

"OhyespleasemorenaoNOMNOMNOM!" Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls with Pecan-Cranberry Filling and Orange glaze

So I made a pan of these for Easter brunch, to be enjoyed with some TLT's (homemade tempeh bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and vegenaise on whole wheat), curry roasted brussels sprouts and yukon gold potatoes, various fruit, tea and juice. Despite demolishing the other offerings, over 1/2 the pan of cinnamon rolls was gleefully consumed over the course of the afternoon, by, um, four people... And Tomas I had our way with the rest inside of two days.

Much thanks (and fat pants love!) to Katie from Don't Eat off the Sidewalk. Her original recipe here. My mods = double the filling, add pecans and cranberries to filling, and add orange zest to glaze recipe.

More cookies for indecisive vegans...

*Open up your copy of Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, which you obviously own, being a reader of this blog and all, to the recipe for chocolate chip cookies
*Prepare batter as usual
*Add 1 cup vegan chocolate chips, 2/3 cup dried cranberries, 1/3 cup flaked coconut and the zest of a small/medium orange.
*Roll 1 1/2 - 2 tbs of dough into balls, smooshed slightly
*Bake about 8 minutes
*Enjoy!

Oh, and try to use unsweetened cranberries and coconut if you can get your hands on them (your heath food store will have 'em) and if you can't, reduce your sugar a bit. Also, I used 1/2 AP flour, and 1/2 "white whole wheat" flour from King Arthur Flour which is magical stuff. It bakes like white flour, but is all whole grain goodness. If you wanted to increase the health factor further, sub 1/3 of the vegan margarine for applesauce. I've done it before with nice results, but alas, I was out of it today.