Avocado Wasabi Salad

Recipe.

Oatmeal Cherry Chocolate Chunk Cookies

It's hard to make good vegan cookies. I almost never trust recipes and instead look up older, tried-and-true non-vegan recipes and substitute ingredients. I modified another recipe to make these, and they were fantastic. Seriously, just the right combination of sweet and chewy and oozy. Cherries are a bit more expensive than raisins, but I think they really made the cookie.

1 cup Earth Balance, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup organic white sugar

2 Ener-G egg replacer equivalents

2 t. vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

3 cups oats

1 cup Enjoy Life Chocolate Chunks (or just regular vegan chocolate chips)

1 cup chopped walnuts

3/4 cup dried cherries

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Start by sifting the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. In a separate bowl, cream the Earth Balance and sugars together, then stir in the egg replacer and vanilla extract. Slowly stir in the flour mixture until a dough forms - be wary of overmixing! Stir in the oats then add the chocolate chunks, walnuts, cherries, and stir until well combined.

Drop tablespoon-sized balls (I like big cookies!) onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes then allow to cool on a baking sheet. They'll harden significantly once they cool down, so don't be afraid of taking them out too early.

Enjoy!

Curried Puff & Slaw

My apologies in the delay since my last post, college seems to have gotten the best of me! But I am now home for spring break... or rather, was home. I'm now bloggin' at the airport en route to Orlando, FL.

 Puff pastry is a truly magical substance. Whooda thunk that it's vegan, as well? It's certainly not something to make a habit of eating, but it's fun to make a special treat with it. In this recipe I made some basic curried vegetables with potato, cauliflower, and chickpeas, then wrapped those in puff pastry and baked the whole thing. Served alongside a very tasty slaw, this was an excellent meal.


Curried Vegetable Puff
 2 T. vegetable oil
2 t. garam masala
2 t. curry powder
1/2 t. opt. additional spices (ex: whole mustard and cumin seeds)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. fresh ginger, minced
1 onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
1 potato, cubed
1/2 cup cauliflower, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup green peas
1 can chickpeas, drained
1/4 cup raisins
1 box puff pastry, thawed
Salt and pepper, to taste

Cabbage Slaw
1 bag of cole slaw mix (cabbage, brocolli, carrots... all the goodies)
1/3 cup red wine vinaigrette (Use Brianna's Blush Wine Vinaigrette... it's my favorite dressing)
1 t. curry powder
1 T. chopped fresh cilantro or parsley
 1/4 cup raisins

For the slaw, mix together the vinaigrette with the curry powder and fresh cilantro. Toss with the slaw mix and raisins. Chill for an hour or so to let the slaw marinate.

Preheat your oven to 375°. For the puff, start by making the curried vegetables. Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan, I used my wok. Add the garlic, ginger, and spices and saute until fragrant, about two minutes. Add the onion and carrot and cook until soft. In a separate medium-sized pot, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook about ten minutes, then add the cauliflower and cook until both are tender. Drain and toss in with the vegetables. Stir in the raisins, green peas, and chickpeas. Season with salt and pepper, and more curry powder and garam masala if desired.

To assemble the puff, roll out the thawed puff pastry onto a floured surface. Spoon about half the vegetables in the middle, then fold the two edges inward onto each other. Pinch together the ends, repeat for the second, bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned, then voila! A curried vegetable puff.

To serve, slice the puff into thin slices and serve atop a healthy heap of your slaw. Garnish with fresh lime wedges.

Serves 4-6.

Winter Crepe Duo

Blogging from a train. Technology these days, huh?

I'm a big fan of Lauren Ulm's Vegan YumYum blog and cookbook, and I recently decided to do a spin-off of her Spring Crepes Three Ways with some wintery crepes. The first is a roasted vegetable crepe with  a balsamic reduction sauce and the second a caramel apple crepe. 


I still used her basic crepe recipe, it works just fine for me. I just whipped up one recipe, used the first half for the savory crepe, then added a teaspoon of vanilla and some sugar for the dessert crepes. Easy as pie (er, I mean, crepes...). 

Roasted Vegetable Crepes

Filling
1 potato, sliced thinly lengthwise then cut in half
6 carrots, peeled and chopped into thick matchsticks
1 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup sliced shiitake mushrooms
2 T. olive oil
2 T. balsamic vinegar
1 t. dried thyme
1 T. fresh rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste


Balsamic Glaze
1 cup balsamic vinegar
3 T. brown sugar
3 cloves garlic, smashed with the side of a kitchen knife
1 large sprig rosemary
2 T. Earth Balance
1 T. olive oil


Preheat your oven to 400°F. Toss the potatoes and carrots with the olive oil, 1 tablespoon vinegar, thyme, rosemary, and salt and pepper and roast for 20-30 minutes. Add the onion, mushroom, and the rest of the balsamic and roast another 20 minutes or until the potatoes and carrots are tender.


For the glaze, bring the vinegar, sugar, garlic, and rosemary to a simmer in a small saucepan for about 20 minutes, until the liquid is reduced by at least half. Remove from heat and remove garlic and rosemary. Stir in the Earth Balance and olive oil. Your sauce should be sticky at this point, but enough to create a nice drizzle. As it cools it may become too thick, in which case you should reheat it.


For assembly, while your crepe is cooking (or heating up again), transfer a few spoonfuls of your filling into the center. Fold the first third over, spoon some balsamic sauce onto that as a "glue", then fold the other third over. Drizzle more sauce and serve with baby arugula.


Caramel Apple Crepes

Cupcakes

Cupcakes are the best. Right? Right.

http://www.theppk.com/books/vegan-cupcakes-take-over-the-world/

Truffles

I can't remember the last time I had a truffle, nevermind a vegan one. I used full-fat coconut milk in place of heavy cream and they turned out super well. Definitely eat them up quickly though, as if that would be a problem, because the texture is the best immediately.

4 oz. baking chocolate, chopped
4 oz. vegan chocolate chips
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 Tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 Tsp. almond extract
1/2 Tsp. almond or hazelnut extract
Decorative items such as nuts, coconut, cocoa powder, powdered sugar

Bring your coconut milk and extracts to a near-boil, then pour into a bowl with the baking chocolate and chocolate chips. Stir until melted, and voila! Ganache.

Let cool then chill for two hours.

Once solid, roll the mixture out into teaspoon-sized balls onto a parchment lined cookie sheet... quickly, because the chocolate will start to melt. Chill overnight.

Now for the fun part! Roll your truffles around in whatever suits your fancy... I did sifted cocoa, powdered sugar, coconut, and chopped walnuts. Serve immediately or continue chilling.

Gardein Stir Fry

I apologize for the delay since my most recent post, I was soaking up the rays in sunny Florida for the last two weeks!

Specialty vegan products like Gardein can be difficult to come by in my neck of the woods, so on the way back from the airport I stopped and picked up some Gardein Mandarin Chicken to try out.

It was excellent! Very crispy and the sauce was surprisingly good... I was afraid it would be sickeningly syrupy, but it was just right.

Before

After!

On to the stir fry.

Start with your wok. Don't have a wok? A big skillet will work just fine... but really, woks are fun. Get a wok.

Preheat the pan till it's quite hot, add some peanut oil, then let the fun ensue! I recommend having your vegetables already chopped, that way you don't risk any mishaps.

I work (wok?) my stir fry in five parts:

Aromatics

Garlic and ginger, and perhaps scallions, sesame seeds, or cashews if you so desire. Stir fry until... aromatic.

Veggies Part 1

Next I toss in vegetables that take a bit longer to cook. The list is never ending, but here are some of my favorites:

Carrot
Onion
Broccoli
Red pepper
Shiitake mushroom
Green bean



Veggies Part 2

Here go the quicker cooking vegetables, or those that just need to be heated up.

Greens (baby bok choy, chinese cabbage, or spinach)
Water chestnuts

Bean sprouts

Pea pods

Sauce

I typically just eyeball a few tablespoons of each with whatever's in my fridge. Whisk and pour.

Soy or teriyaki sauce
Sriracha sauce
Hoisin sauce
Sesame oil
More sesame seeds
Agave nectar or brown sugar
1 Tbs. cornstarch (if you want a thick sauce)
Coconut milk


Protein

I like to saute this in a separate pan, just to make sure it gets nice and crispy. Marinated tofu, seitan, tempeh, the world is your oyster! In this case, I used those tasty chik'n pieces. Serve everything atop some fluffy jasmine rice.

Chai Cake

Ooh, oozy.

A birthday is a perfect excuse for some cake experimentation, right? ...kidding, it's actually a week early, but I decided to go for it anyway. For this'n I combined my love of chai lattes with inventing interesting desserts. Voila!

Steepin'

I started with the ppk's Chai Latte Cupcake recipe, basically just doubling it and then baking it in two 8" cake pans. The cake itself turned out relatively well... I've read  that these particular cupcakes are more muffin-y than others in VCTOtW... next time I'll try tweaking the recipe to fluff it up a bit.

Next is where my creative juices actually began flowing. Rather than a logical and bee-filled honey icing, I decided to try out my two favorite tea sweeteners: agave nectar and maple syrup (obv the real stuff). My recipe was approximately:

2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
8oz vegan cream cheese
1/4 cup softened Earth Balance
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbs. fresh grated ginger

Blend together, and... yum! I decided to add blackberries as well, because, well... why not? I spread some blackberry preserves on the first layer than added a few healthy dollops of the icing for good measure. Plopped the second layer on top, and proceeded to drizzle and/or drown the chai cake with gooey goodness.  On went the blackberries, and the cake was complete!

I brought this cake with me to a small birthday gathering where it was quite a hit. Success!

I use slabs of parchment paper to keep my
display plate nice while I decorate.

Ohhhh yeaaaaah

And my mom made me pink bean-avocado
enchiladas for my birthday! Very tasty.