Thanksgiving and more

This Thanksgiving was all about stuffing. Shawn and I made probably about 20 servings worth of stuffing which has lasted us for days. We both spent the whole day in the kitchen with our various projects. Despite the potato peel disaster of 2008 everything turned out really well.

Instead of Tofurky, I made a version of the Seitan Roulade from Vegan Yum Yum. I filled it with apple cranberry stuffing (more stuffing!) that made it taste even better a day later. The fruit flavors seeped into the seitan after being refrigerated. Although it probably would have been prettier cut into smaller pieces, it was kind of fun to eat "caterpillars" for Thanksgiving.

Shawn made a monster batch of mashed potatoes that further tested the abilities of the new mixer. Of course they turned out smooth and delicious. I also made my first apple pie. I made the crust from scratch, which was slightly terrifying. Unfortunately I decided to bake it in our small oven (yes we have two) and ended up with a slightly burnt top crust. It still tasted really good, the filling was the perfect consistency and sweetness, and the bottom crust was not bad at all, but it wasn't quite photo material. I can't wait to try another.

I also got a new cupcake courier, and a good deal on it no less. I love this thing. I previously had a smaller carrier that carried 24 cupcakes but was always irritated that half the holders were too shallow and the other half were too deep. The new one holds 36 cupcakes securely for travel. It's great. So here it is on it's first delivery filled with red velvet, pumpkin spice and vanilla/chocolate cupcakes (from the top).

Hope everyone else had a great turkey-free Thanksgiving.

peanut butter cups

photo by studiodrome

While I've mastered many vegan goodies, there are a lot of candies that I miss. It wasn't until I made these peanut butter cups and a batch of peppermint patties did I remember what I'd been missing. It had been over three years since I had either and man were they delicious. I would say for sure that the peanut butter cups were even better than the non-vegan kind. With dark chocolate and rich flavored peanut butter that melted in your mouth. Absolutely amazing. They were extremely easy and fun to make as well. I particularly enjoyed painting the insides of the mini-cupcake cups with chocolate. I had to wait patiently for the picture, as it was taken on film but turned out as good as the treats themselves. Can't wait to make more.

Happy 25!

So if you hadn't guessed already. My (not-so) little surprise is a stand mixer! I'm ecstatic! I finally decided it was time to just fork over the money for it and get the one I really wanted. It's a great addition to the kitchen and I know it will be great to make larger batches of things which I hope will be in my future.

My first baking experiment was my own birthday cake. A lot of people thought it was against the rules for me to make my own cake but I couldn't think of anywhere that I could get a better cake. We broke in the mixer with mashed potatoes but this was the first dessert to get made.

I also treated myself to some new cake pans and a cake stand. It's been quite awhile since I've made a cake, let alone a double layer one, so it was definitely a learning experience. With cupcakes, if one turns out funny there are still 11 good ones. With a cake you just have one chance. Mainly I learned the correct proportions of frosting and such that I'll need for the next cake I make.

The plan was a double layer vanilla cake with vanilla frosting in the middle and a chocolate ganache icing. I used to have a really good recipe for vanilla cake but apparently lost it so had to do a bit of improvising. Ultimately everything turned out really well but did cause me a bit of distress in the making.

I made quite a chocolate mess covering it but I new it would taste great even if it wasn't the prettiest cake ever. Still need a couple more decorating tools, but mainly practice. It really did turn out delicious though. Shawn says it tasted like a giant gourmet hostess cake. Yum!

In the end it was almost all gobbled up by the end of the night with only one lonely piece left. I had a great birthday, absolutely the best yet!

More autumn flavors

I made some pumpkin bread last week that was absolutely delicious. Super moist with some subtle spice. This is only half the loaf since it all got eaten so quickly. Pumpkin is seriously awesome. I'm going to have to come up with some more pumpkin dishes before the end of November. There is still time yet!

Wonderful news though....I'm getting a big baking treat tomorrow! A special present to myself. I'm sure a lot of people out there could guess what it is. So excited. :)

I don't know why but I've been craving brownies like crazy lately. I thought I'd try something a little different and make these brownies using my mini cupcake tray. The concept was great, but didn't turn out exactly as planned. Things went wrong at first when I found that my applesauce had gone bad. I also tried using ground flaxseed as egg replacer for the first time which worked amazingly well. I mixed all the wet ingredients in the food processor which made the whole thing fairly easy.

In the end, the recipe came out light and moist on the bottom and crunchy on top. The rose quite a bit more than I expected so they took a bit of trial and error to get them out of the pan intact. They were so cute though, like little brownie mushrooms, which made them even more fun to eat. I wish they were a bit more chocolatey though. I'll just have to make some more!

I also made some messy red vevlet cupcakes, which helped curb my chocolate craving. They're all gone already! This batch proved to me how important oven temperature is. My oven is just slightly cooler than the dial, and now that I've taken that into account my cupcakes are coming out better than ever. Yum!

Happy Halloween!

pumpkin cheesecake

As I'm sure I'll be out gallivanting tomorrow evening, I thought I'd do my Halloween post tonight. I honestly can't get enough of Halloween. I'm going to dress up as a bat tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get some good photos to show you all since I made my costume, well some of it at least. I swear I do other things besides bake.

Above is the pumpkin cheesecake I made this week. It was good but it didn't blow me away. Perhaps it was that I kept wanting it to be pumpkin pie and not cheesecake. I still have yet to find vegan graham crackers anywhere so I used a store bought crust. I guess it could have been more like cheesecake and that would have been better as well. Don't get me wrong, it was good, I just wanted it to be even better.

Shawn and I carved pumpkins tonight. Since we bought them so late, they were only $5 for three good sized pumpkins. It's been quite awhile since either of us carved any. I decided to go for something cute and carved a sugar glider in my pumpkin. Shawn made a traditional jack-o-lantern with big eyes that I love.

"bon bon" and "little ricky"

VeganMoFo has definitely inspired me to step up my blogging and has been very rewarding (although not always easy). I've had a total of 13 posts this month, which while not nearly every day is at least double the most posts I've ever made in a month.

Special breakfast

Okay so I grew up in Los Angeles and biscuits and gravy is not exactly a common meal out here in general, but this is one of my favorite breakfasts. Since it's pretty much impossible to find without meat, I learned to make this for myself as a teenager. It's so simple to put together and so delicious. A lot of the time I use mix for the biscuits but this time I made them from scratch. I'm not sure they turned out better necessarily, but they were still filling and delicious. The gravy is about as basic as it gets: soy milk, flour, salt & pepper. I couldn't even tell you the measurements, because I just add until it seems right. I got a little distracted when I was making the gravy this time so it ended up a bit lumpy (oops!) but it still tasted just fine. I also added some tofurky sausage to the gravy which was a perfect addition.

Seven days in a row of posting for VeganMoFo. I'm pretty proud of myself. :)