Vegan S'mores

Organic raspberry chocolate, Sweet & Sara marshmallows, and generic graham crackers.
Hell yes.

Homemade Ginger Vanilla Ice Cream

Holy crap. Ever since little Evan did a post about ice cream made with Mimic-creme, I've been wanting to try it out. They have it here at the Drug Emporium, an enormous Walgreen's type store with a secret health food store in the back called Vitamins Plus. I always forget it's there until someone reminds me, but they have a ton of selection and better prices than Whole Foods and Kroger.

So I picked up some Mimiccreme thinking I would try Evan's method, only to discover than when your refrigerator has a ice maker, you don't own ice cube trays. On Monday, when it was supposed to be a state holiday, I stopped by work just to check my e-mail only to find out that we were supposed to be there anyway only no one told me. I felt like that imaginary time in jr. high, when everyone changed the time of the party and conveniently forgot to tell the smelly kid. I am the smelly kid.

So I was stuck at work, feeling sorry for myself, and decided to buy an ice cream maker. It's the grown up version of "fuck this, I want some ice cream." The feeling passed, and I didn't end up buying one, mainly because there were too many choices and I've never used one before. That night, however, we had a couple of Couchsurfers coming back to Vermont from California, and as we were pulling out of the driveway to hit the grocery store, Jay spied something in the back of their car. "Is that an ice cream maker?" It, indeed, was. After dinner, they brought it in and made ice cream. It was magical.

We put in about a cup of liquid per person, which ended up being some Mimiccreme and some soy milk. Then we added a little bit of vanilla, some ground ginger, and (in a stroke of brilliance) ground up chunks of candied ginger. We added some extra sugar, too, but the result came out too sweet, so I think in the future I'll taste it and keep it more creamy and less sweet. The ice cream maker the girls had was a Rival brand that one of them had picked up at a thrift store for $5. It had an inner container for the creamy mixture and an outer container for the ice and salt. They used a whole canister of table salt and layered it with the ice until it filled up, then plugged in the machine that magically made the ice cream.

I think the whole thing took about 45 minutes. I am buying an ice cream maker.

Pumpkin Pudding

Jay, god love him, has issues with recipes. In that he doesn't use them. Whoever's reading this might be thinking, "But, Maggie, you don't really use recipes either. You're always changing things or throwing things together." This is true, but I have several cookbooks, and the internet, and I look at recipes a lot. I look at other food blogs; I look at random cooking sites; I watch videos from everyday dish and food network. I have a lot of contact with recipes, and even though I almost never follow one to the letter, I generally use them to get an idea about proportions of ingredients, or what flavors might best complement each other.

When I say Jay doesn't use recipes, I mean he really refuses to even look at them. And in terms of complaints about boyfriends, I know this one is minor, but it's super dooper annoying because it can be so wasteful. I'm sure I don't have to remind you all of the pumpkin pie failure soup. There was also the bread that resembled a bowling ball, at least in texture.

The only upshot here is that he lives with two additional people who can generally rescue his unfortunate baking mishaps. The credit on this one goes to John. Jay tried to make pumpkin muffins. Who makes muffins without looking at a recipe? Jay does. They came out really dense and wet, but not altogether inedible. They just needed a little something extra. John made an orange maple syrup sauce and poured it over the top of them, turning them into delicious individual pumpkin bread pudding delights.

Peach Cobbler

What? Stop looking at me that way. There has been weather and we've been cleaning the house and here I am with more food love for you.

This is a peach cobbler. I bought an enormous bag of frozen peaches from my local food co-op and I needed to use it. I was feeling sad about the winter and wishing I'd saved more lovely summer and fall fruit, and then all of a sudden there it was, like a beacon: ginormous bag of frozen peaches! I decided cobber was the way to go because it's so easy.

This one was made with flour and a five grain cereal blend and some baking soda and some soy milk and oil. Basically a rough biscuit dough. I put the peaches in a casserole dish, dumped a cup or so of sugar on top, and then spread the dough around. I baked it at 350 until the dough spread out and firmed up and looked dry. It was delicious and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Speaking of which, I posted something on facebook last week about the sausage apple stuffing and a friend posted a comment with something like "Sausage?! Was it vegan sausage?!" And I responded with this:

"Yeah, I actually am talking about vegan sausage. I dispensed with the superfluous words like soy or fake or vegan when describing my food a while ago. I just expect people who know me to assume, correctly, that I mean the vegan version of whatever I'm talking about."

If anyone reads this, what do you think about that? Do you generally modify the words when talking about your food? I just find it cumbersome and unnecessary. Thoughts?

Also, I added a tag. It's "local." I'm going to go back and stick it on a few previous entries.

VeganMofo 19: Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Sausage

I'm not a big fan of chocolate. There, I said it. I'm not one of those women who coos and swoons whenever she sees a brownie. I like sweets, and I like chocolate fine, but I don't place it on a pedestal.

That said, these chocolate chip flaxseed pancakes were awesome. And yeah, that's some Gimme Lean sausage. I love that shit.

VeganMofo 13: Tiny Pear Pies

So, I'm like 30 minutes late for the VeganMofo Iron Chef Challenge, but I totally have a good excuse. I didn't think to actually check the challenge until 7. When I did check, the theme ingredients this week were pears and nuts. That worked out well for me since my friend Sally had just come by with a crapton of pears from her grandparents' pear tree, and these tiny pies were already underway.

Jay made a pie crust with flour, salt, sugar, smart balance, and a little water. We smushed it into muffin cups. I took the pears and left the skins on, cored them and chopped them up in the food processor with some sugar and ground clove. We put the filling in, topped it with another crust, and then I dropped a couple of almonds on top, sprinkled it with sugar, and baked it at 400 until it started to brown on the edges. Did I drop the almonds on top just so this would fit the Iron Chef Challenge? Yes, of course I am that transparent. The bright spot is they turned out really nice, all toasty on there, and added a lot to the pie.

VeganMofo 10: Deep Fried Oreos

I don't know why I was craving these. They were good, but I think they were better in my imagination. I used this recipe, but for some reason my batter came out a little lighter. That was okay, though. I mean, like I said, they were good, but I'm in a bad mood and I guess I needed something a little more familiar or comfortable. I don't even especially like oreos (or in this case, generic oreos). Maybe I'll be in a better mood tomorrow.

Box of Goodies from Taiwan!

I said way back in my first post that one of my exceptions to being vegan is when I have a chance to experience something from another culture. This is the first example of that this year. My friend visited Taiwan and brought back a huge box full of goodies, and none of the packaging is in English so I have no idea if anything in here is remotely vegan. I am assuming there may be some butter and gelatin tucked away in the plethora of luscious goodies. I'm trying a little bit of everything and passing some of it along to friends and coworkers.

While I think Anthony Bourdain goes a little overboard on his blanket characterization of vegans as the enemies of good food (I really love food) and says he couldn't live in a world without veal stock, I kind of see where he's coming from. When I heard him speak a few months ago, he talked about food as a cultural passport. He said when he was in Vietnam the people in the village where he was staying offered him a whole chicken. He knew it was all the meat they could afford in a month, and it was a huge honor to be offered that, and of course he accepted. When you travel, one of the best ways to show people that you respect them and want to learn more is to try the food without reservation or judgment.

While of course my friend who brought me all these goodies isn't going to judge me, a different Taiwanese friend commented on it last night. "It's weird that you like all that stuff. Most people don't like it unless they grew up eating it." I can't imagine what's not to like about flaky, delicious pastries and chewy soft candies, but it was noteworthy to her.

That leads me to believe it's not specifically a vegan or vegetarian issue. People are generally hesitant to open up to new foods, especially when they look totally unfamiliar or have unidentifiable ingredients. Vegans, I think, have a much better reason (whether it's health or animal rights or environment) than others (where it's probably just xenophobia). When it comes to opening up my world a little bit, I try to put all my reservations aside, including those that I find very important in other circumstances.

Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Rolls

I had a yoga retreat at my church this morning, and there was a potluck brunch afterwards. My assignment was to bring bread. I did bring bread, a nice multigrain from Boulevard Bread Co., but my cooking class is coming up in a week and I figured I should bring something good to pimp it out. I think I may have mentioned this before, but nothing represents veganism as well as delicious baked goods.

I've also just been wicked intent on making these lately. I love the combination of chocolate and bananas, and peanut butter I like as a nice accompaniment. Last week we had a few bananas who had seen better days and I was going to make banana bread, but then I looked on the bjorkedoff blog and saw these and fell in love.

Unfortunately, I didn't get around to it until too late for those bananas. Also unfortunately, there was no recipe posted for these, but there is a bjorkedoff recipe for cinnamon rolls that others seem to enjoy. I used that recipe (modified for my usual impatience and inability to locate ingredients) and made the following modifications: instead of the flaxseed and water as egg replace, I used one large banana; instead of the cinnamon filling, I used about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips melted up with 3/8 cup chunky peanut butter. I left them un-iced, also, because the sweetness of the chocolate was sufficient, I thought.

They turned out really well, considering I winged it entirely, and everyone at the brunch was adequately impressed. I'd like to try to get more banana flavor in there, because it's so incredibly subtle, so I may play with the recipe more next time. A few people asked if I was going to teach them how to make these at the cooking class. I stumbled a lot before I muttered something like, "These are pretty difficult, on the general cooking, uh, difficulty ... scale." And it's true: real baked goods, with yeast and kneading and time to rise, take a lot of time and labor. I was up at 6:30 this morning making these. The result, however, is so, so worth it.

Valentine's Cookies

OMG Happy Valentine's Day! I made the sparkled ginger cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance but left out the molasses, added a little red food coloring, and dipped them in sprinkles instead of tourbinado sugar. I think they turned out super festive. The ones I sent to my valentine got broken in the mail, so they arrived as emo broken hearts, but the ones I have here maintained their shape and are still lovely.

Super Fat Tuesday King Cake

I was planning on getting together with some people to socialize and pretend to watch election returns on Super Tuesday for a while now. I honestly hadn't even realized it was Mardi Gras, but an e-mail went out to the group asking if we should try to get a king cake for the occasion. There are a few vegans among the group, so I shot one back and volunteered to bake it so that the vegans could happily partake. I'm a decent cook, it's a cake, how hard could it be, right? I even looked up a few recipes and it seemed like a few steps but nothing overly complicated. Let me say right now: this was one labor-intensive motherfucker of a cake. I ended up using this recipe, which I modified marginally: a little more sugar, a little more filling, and oil instead of egg replacer. I also used some Fleischman's Unsalted margarine instead of Earth Balance because I had it in sticks and that's easier for me to measure, obviously.

I did take the suggestion in the recipe of rolling it out on the formica countertop, which worked surprisingly well. I did not, however, take the suggestion of using my stand mixer's dough hook because I don't have a stand mixer. Insert lamentations here. There was a lot of kneading and wrestling with dough, but the result was really worth it. My glaze was a little lumpy, my sprinkles were less than brilliant, but the cake was really, really delicious.

I think one of the greatest compliments a vegan can get on her cooking is the one I got last night. "Did you say this is vegan?! I totally can't even tell." Several other non-vegans made similar comments, one of them even expressing his annoyance at me for bringing something he couldn't stop eating. On one hand, it's sad that people have low expectations of vegan food. If someone is a good cook, you shouldn't be able to tell that something is vegan, especially baked goods. There are so many good substitutes for the basics, like eggs and butter, that the finished product should be indistinguishable from the normal variety. On the other hand, it's nice to have the opportunity to change those perceptions, even just a little bit. The cake was HUGE (it turns out the recipe was supposed to be for two: oops) but when I left there was maybe a fourth of it left. So, while it wasn't the prettiest cake, I feel like it was definitely a success.

Apple Spice Cupcakes

This is from a while ago, but here are the caramel apple spice cupcakes with caramel fudge frosting from Veganomicon. I have a weakness for baked goods. The frosting required more soymilk than the recipe called for to get it to a consistency that I liked, but was really, really yummy.

Pumpkin Pie

Saturday was a banner day for baking. I made whole wheat soft pretzels, which I'll post about separately, and a lovely pumpkin pie. The recipe for the pie is here and it's pretty accurate in its description. I used a prefab graham cracker crust so the whole thing took almost no work.


Here's the raw pie with the blender remnants in the background. After the pie was in the oven I got a spatula and demolished the scant remains of the filling.


The baked pie, fresh out of the oven. I let it cool for a couple of hours before trying it, but the consistency really is much better the second day. The slice I had last night was delicious but it was more a lump than a slice.