Chocolate-strawberry cupcakes!

Baked especially for For my little cousin's sweet sixteen: chocolate cupcakes from vctotw with vanilla buttercream frosting from jovb, filled with strawberry jam and topped with sliced strawberries and mint leaf garnishes. Jealous much?

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.

The x-mas baking post!

It's been so much fun looking at everyone's holiday baking, sorry my post is a bit after the fact but I was still baking pretty late on Christmas Eve.



Here is the big Christmas dessert platter: pine nute & anise cookies, sugar cookies and lemon bars from Joy of Vegan Baking plus peppermint-chocolate cupcakes inspired by Vegan Dad (chocolate cupcakes recipe from VCTOTW and buttercream from JOVB with peppermint candies and peppermint extract.) Everything was yummy, though the sugar cookie dough was a little difficult to work with. Using a little bit of water did help though.








Banana chocolate chip muffins from JOVB: totally perfect and fluffy!












Pumpkin bread from JOVB again, this time with walnuts and cranberries.

Maple madness!

Roomie and I made some spicy maple candied nuts (cashews, pecans and hazelnuts) inspired by Bazu's recipe on Where's the Revolution?


Mini gingerbread cupcakes with maple buttercream frosting are the perfect reward for the friends who trekked out in the sleet (!) for our housewarming party this weekend. These are insanely addictive. I used the cake recipe from VCTOTW and the JOVB buttercream using 1 tsp. of maple extract and 1/2 tsp vanilla. I actually made the gingerbread cuppers about a year ago with the original lemon frosting and I messed them up pretty good--how I was able to get a vegan cake to dry out or Isa's frosting to go runny I do not know, but lets all be glad my vegan baking skills have improved so very, very much. Oh, and if you can find it near you, use the Reed's brand candied ginger, and add a little extra to the batter. Also, don't even *think* about tasting the batter, because you may not actually make the cupcakes when you end up eating half the bowl...

Weekend Food

A out-of-town guest stays for brunch, and I make snacks for a night in with the girls...




Tofu scramble with baked sweet potato home fries: local tofu, soy sausage, spinach, chickpeas, mushrooms, earth balance, onions, garlic, tahini, tamari, red chile flakes, rosemary, oregano, basil, thyme. Sweet potato, olive oil, sea salt. Obviously, this was all covered in ketchup the second after I took the photo.





Brownies from Joy of Vegan Baking were moist and fluffy-- more of the cake-y variety-- and nearly fat-free. Still looking for the elusive fudge-type brownie veganized...









Sundried Tomato Dip from Veganomicon is simple and delicious if not super photogenic.