Peanut Butter Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

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Last week I made some super delicious cupackes for a friend’s birthday.  For Christmas my sister gave me this little tool that cores out the cupcake so you can fill them.  I hate to say it took me this long to use it but now that I’ve finally taken the time to do filled cupcakes, I think I’m going to have to fill every cupcake I make from here on out.  They were amazing!  Here’s what I did – I made the chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, filled them with the peanut butter frosting and topped them with the vanilla buttercream.  I think I might have to whip up another batch of filled cupcakes this weekend! 

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Minty Water

Category : Recipes

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My favorite summer drink…mint water with the fresh mint from my herb garden.  I know that sounds ridiculously boring but I love it! Super refreshing! I simply snip a bit of mint, pour a bit of boiling water from the kettle to release the flavor and then fill the pitcher the rest of the way with cool water and then off to the fridge it goes to chill

Chocolate Nesting Cookies

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

 

I discovered this idea on Crafterhours and immediately knew I had to make a vegan version ASAP.  I don’t know who thought of doing a chocolate chip cookie with an Oreo in the middle, but they’re a genius!  I’m calling them chocolate nesting cookies because they remind me of the Ukrainian nesting dolls I had growing up – like these…

one cookie inside of another, just like the little dolls!

these are super easy to make – whip up your favorite chocolate chip cookie dough recipe…

 

then form the dough around an Oreo cookie and bake!  easy peasy!

 

 

Cake Balls

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

Back at Easter I made some very yummy cake balls but never got around to telling you about them.  I know the big thing is making cake pops but that just added more complication to these already time consuming treats. 

 The recipe I followed over-complicated them so here is my simple version:

bake two Duncan Hines cakes (yes, the mix is vegan – just use your favorite egg substitute instead of adding an egg to the mix)

 crumble the cake into a large bowl and add 1.5 containers of Duncan Hines frosting (yep they have vegan frosting!)

scoop out balls of the mixture and place on a cookie sheet

put in the fridge or even freezer to cool them quickly – I cooled them just enough to be able to roll them into nicely rounded balls

while they’re cooling melt two bags of Ghiradelli Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips (yep, they’re vegan!)

covering them in chocolate isn’t the easiest thing – I can’t really tell you there is one amazing way to do it so if you don’t like my way, try something else.  I held each ball in one hand, filled a soup spoon with the melted chocolate and smoothed it over/around the ball – careful, that chocolate is very hot – I definitely burned my fingers!

sprinkle on some fun decor and put them back in the fridge to cool.  when they’ve hardened, pull them out and store them in an air-tight container.  I kept mine in the fridge and either ate them cold or would pull them out about an hour before serving – at which point they were super gooey and delicious

you could very easily make these with any type of cake and frosting.  It certainly took out several steps in the process by using a cake mix and pre-made frosting but since I NEVER buy that stuff I’ll likely make them completely from scratch next time

Strawberry Jam

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Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

The other day I whipped up some delicious fresh, strawberry jam.  You’d be surprised how easy it is to do! I had two quarts of strawberries which was almost 6 cups.  I mashed them with a potato masher and added 3/4 cup Coconut Nectar : Coconut Secret - Raw Coconut Nectar Low Glycemic Sweetener - 12 oz.I love this stuff!  It’s raw, organic, low glycemic, GF, GMO free and vegan.  I followed the directions on the Pomona’s Pectin box,  PomonasUniversalPectinBoxPhotocooked it then put it in my warm jars, then put them in a water bath to seal the tops.  After cooling over night on a dish towel on the counter I had a few jars of delicious, fresh strawberry jam – so much better than store bought!  I found some cute fabric remnants and hot glued a piece to a jar and gave it to a friend for her birthday last night.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

After a recent trip to the farmers market, where I picked up a green tomato, I did a bit of searching and came up with a fabulous recipe for fried green tomatoes.  I had never made them before but I think I’m hooked now!  They were super easy to make.  The sauce was so creamy and delicious and a side of fried, sliced potatoes rounded it out into a perfect meal.  Check it out here

Bruschetta Hashbrowns

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes


Saturday morning Eric and I went to the Green City Marketwith our friend Joe.  When we got back from out frigid spring outing I made some hot coffee in the french press and Eric made this delicious breakfast.  He’s obsessed with different styles of bruschetta and so he somehow came up with this.  Sliced, fried potatoes topped with sauteed red pepper, vidalia onion, green onion and garlic – not the version you’d think….it looked like this…

…to top it off he drizzled a reduced balsamic vinegar on the each piece.  It was so good and such a fun twist on a hashbrown breakfast.  We’d also picked up some amazing fresh wheat bread from Bennison’s Bakery , which we toppedwith Earth Balance and Rasperry Mint Preserves from Seedling (I’d never thought of putting mint in my preserves but it was fabulous!  I’m going to do that when I make my next homemade batch)

What a great way to start the day – before I began my LONG project of cleaning out my pantry – which took me all day long to fully empty it, wash it down and re-organize it all – I suppose it was the perfect thing for a rainy day.

AMAZING Sticky Toffee Pudding

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

Sticky toffee pudding

photo from The Great Vegan Conspiracy

The other night I made the most amazing sticky toffee pudding.  I LOVE sticky toffee pudding but I’ve never made it before.  I randomly came across this recipe and got super excited to make a vegan version of this yummy treat.  The hardest part was converting the measurement to ones that made a bit more sense in my kitchen.  You’ll find this funny – I quickly glanced at the label on my Earth Balance butter and say 14g, so somehow got it in my head the entire package was 14g (but really its 1T).  So, I started thinking how unhealthy this pudding was going to be and even ran out to buy more Earth Balance butter since I didn’t have enough!  So, after I creamed my third stick of butter with the brown sugar, I suddenly realized what an idiot I was.  I put all the creamed butter in a bowl and spooned out the correct number of tablespoons and adjusted my sugar.  Oh my – what a mess I would have created if I’d gone ahead with all that butter!

Anway, I got the recipe from The Great Vegan Conspiracy.  You’ll find the original recipe here and below you’ll have an more Americanized version.

Ingredients for two 350ml puddings:

1 cup dates

4 tablespoon  vegan butter

½ cup brown sugar

Egg replacer equal to two eggs

1 cup self raising flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

1 teaspoon molasses

1 teaspoon golden syrup (I was out of maple syrup so I added more molasses)

1 teaspoon vanilla

50ml soy milk (I used coconut milk)

Ingredients for the sticky toffee sauce:

6 tablespoons vegan butter

½ cup brown sugar

250ml soy cream (I used vanilla coconut creamer to add a little more flavor)

1 tablespoon molasses

1. Preheat the oven to 365°F.  Spread two pudding basins with butter and dust with flour.

2. Finely chop the dates and place in a bowl. Pour 175ml of boiling water over the dates and leave to one side.  After soaking I put mine in the food processor and pureed them.

3. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the egg replacer then fold in the flour, baking soda and ground flax seeds, followed by the milk and vanilla. Fold in the dates, molasses and syrup.

4. Divide the pudding batter between the two basins and cover with foil. Place in the oven and cook for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for a further 10 minutes. Do a skewer test to check the puddings are done.

5. During the last 10 minutes of cooking make the toffee sauce. Melt together the butter and sugar over a low heat and add 100ml of the cream. Bring to the boil and cook, stirring for 5-8 minutes until the sauce starts to thicken (mine really didn’t thicken but it wasn’t a problem at all – it still tasted fabulous).

6. Run a knife round the edge of the puddings to help release them from the basins. Stir the remaining cream into the sauce and drench the pudding. Serve with vanilla ice cream (that might be a bit much – the pudding on its own is enough).

**I made mine in one basin rather than two but it took a lot longer to bake.  Next time I’ll split it up per the recipe but if you don’t have two small basins one larger one will do.  Also – by basin they just mean a bowl.  I used a pottery bowl, you could use any type of bowl – glass, tin, etc.  

***Be sure to serve this warm – if you manage to have any left-overs, always heat bef

Quick Asian Inspired Dinner

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

 

I had some leftover rice from Thai takeout the other day and some veggies that desperately needed to be used up.  So…this is what I came up with…

I put carrots, green peppers, bok choy, portobelloand peas, in the wok with coconut oil.  After it was cooked I added the rice and seasoned with onion powder, braggs, brown rice vinegar, nutritional yeast and powdered ginger (which gave it a good zing).  I’d never done that combo of seasonings - it was great!  Then I took a slice of firm tofu – pressed it between a tea towel to drain it and fried it with some olive oil Soyaki from Trader Joe’s.  YUM!

Seitan Bourguignon

Category : Food & Beverages, Recipes

Seitan Bourguignon

I forgot to take a photo of mine so I borrowed this Martha Stewart :)

Monday night I made the Seitan  Bourguignon that Biz Stone and Martha Stewart made on her recent vegan episode and it was absolutely delicious!  It was super easy to make, hearty and full of flavor.  I didn’t do the mushroom topping – I had planned to use some cripy onions that I had on hand but I completely forgot.  I will definitely be making this again!

 

Check out the video clip and get the recipe for yourself!

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