polars and penguins

 

“]

 

I don’t know if you’ve been to Sbux lately and seen the ridiculously cute polar bear sugar cookies they have, but let me tell you, they are RIDICULOUSLY cute…and absolutely not vegan at all. But of course when I saw them I knew I had to make some. Do you even know how hard it is to find polar bear cookie cutters? Impossible. Ok, totally not impossible, but I’m not patient enough to order a cookie cutter online and wait for it to get here. I swear I looked everywhere and only the lame, ever-present, cutters were around. Who cares about candy canes and leaves. BOO, I wanted polar bears! SOOOO I made some. That is how obsessed I was with this. I cut out some cardboard, then used my handy exacto knive and cut those babies out. In the end (after a botched batch…cause i was RUSHED) they turned out very  cute and pretty tasty. I also made little cookie balls with the scrap dough and frosting. Cheeeeesyyy i know :]. I like to keep it real. I just found an every day sugar cookie recipe and changed it up a bit. It’s a good one, but seriously why does every recipe make 3 million cookies. I only know so many people and they can only eat so much! Even after halving the recipe it still made quite a few!

Sugar Cookies
1 cup vegan butter
3 3/4 all purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 egg replacers (i used flax, of course, but it leaves your batter flecked with brown so if you want it nice and even use ener-g)
1/4 c vegan cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter. You’ll want it a nice light yellow color. Then add the egg and vanilla and combine. Then gradually add in the flour and baking powder (pre mix this). There will probably be some that just doesnt want to mix, thats ok right now. Now add your cream cheese. It’s a pretty crumbly dough, so you’ll probably have to get in there with your hands and knead it a bit to get it sticking together well. You want it crumbly, but not completely falling apart!
Once it’s all mixed together, wrap in plastic and let it chill in the fridge for at least one hour.
Then roll out your dough on a floured board to about 1/4″ and cut your cookies.
Bake for about 12-14 minutes until just slightly golden on the edges. Wait until cool to frost.
(If you’re super impatient like i am, stick those bad boys in the freezer)
Depending on what you’re doing with your cookies you can glaze them or ice them with designs and such.
Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
3-4 tsp soy  milk
2 tsp agave (or light corn syrup)
food coloring of your choice
This will take forever to set up and not be the best for designs but its good and shiny and stuff
I ended up just mixing some tofutti cream cheese and powdered sugar into a good consistency with some food coloring for mine and i like it a lot better :]

polar love

so cute right? I’m satisfied.

speaking of cute things…

look at its tiny little legs!

I love corgis. theyre such a strange little breed. Tiny little baby legs and regular sized bodies AW. precious.

 

snickerdoodle blondies

So its basically been eons since the last post. Youre all probably depressed and disheartened right about now, but fear not. Lots of things have gone on since then, the making of these snickerdoodle blondies one of them. Yum, might I add. I saw a recipe for them, and seeing that I’m a sucker for a snickerdoodle thought I’d try to veganize them and see how they came out. Theyre pretty tasty if i say so myself. Also, the boy helped me make them and I always like when he cooks with me. :]

 

 

 

Snickerdoodle Blondies
2 and 2/3 cups all purpose flour
2 T baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1 t salt
2 cups lightly packed brown sugar
1 cup butter flavored veg shortening
2 egg replacers (i used flax seed+ water)
1 T vanilla

for the topping:
2 T sugar
2 t cinnamon
a couple pinches of nutmeg

preheat oven to 350 degrees (of course, right?)

In a large bowl combine shortening and brown sugar until they are blended and creamy. Add the flax seed and water mixture and vanilla making sure everything is combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
Then slowly add dry ingredients to wet until fully incorporated.
Its a pretty dense batter so you’ll basically have to scoop it out into a greased 9×13 pan and even it out with your fingers or rubber spatula. It doesnt have to be perfectly flat as it will even out while baking.
Bake for about 20 min (or until ALMOST) done, then in the last few minutes add the cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg topping and put it back into the oven.
Let cool for at least 15 minutes then dig in!

I actually halfed the recipe and put it in a round cake pan, but whatever its up to you. Delicious all around. (get it? cause it was round when i made it…ok im done)

I really wanted to make something for halloween but never really got around to it, but either way, enjoy the least blurry picture I could come up with from the night!

cute right?

I’m really bad at taking pictures but thats ok. I thought about subbing a halloween pic for a puppy pic but that just doesnt seem right! Especially since the halloween one is pretty not awesome.
Its the cesar great dane. You know the commercial where all the big dogs try to be little dogs and this great dane tries to sit in the tiny bike basket?! It’s probably my favorite commercial. I laugh so much.
Happy wednesday!

 

 

100 vegan eats

So i was goofing off checking out recipes and blogs, like i often do, and i ran across “The vegan hundred” on HHL. Its a list of 100 vegan foods that you should try within your life time (a play on the omnivores hundred). Its pretty cool and extensive, and heres mine. The “rules”, if you will, follow.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or social networking site profile, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out or italicize any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment on this post linking to your results.

1. Molasses
2. Cactus/Nopales
3. Scrambled Tofu
4. Grilled Portobella Caps
5. Fresh Ground Horseradish
6. Sweet Potato Biscuits  (sounds so good)
7. Arepa (ok id never even heard of this, turns out its a cornmeal flat bread)
8. Vegan Cole Slaw

9. Ginger Carrot Soup
10. Fiddlehead Ferns
11. Roasted Elephant Garlic
12. Umeboshi  (again never heard of…pickled umi fruits)
13. Almond Butter Toast
14. Aloe Vera
15. H and H Bagel NYC
16. Slow Roasted Butternut Squash
17. White truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut Milk Ice Cream (not store bought)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Orchard-fresh pressed apple cider
23. Organic California Mango (in season Sept-Oct only)
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet (habanero) pepper (just a bite!…hot!
27. Goji Berry Tea
28. Fennel
29. Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie
30. Radishes and Vegan Buttery Spread
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh Sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices
34. Sauerkraut
35. Acai Smoothie
36. Blue Foot Mushrooms
37. Vegan Cupcake from Babycakes nyc
38. Sweet Potatoes and Tempeh combo
39. Falafel
40. Spelt Crust Pizza
41. Salt and Pepper Oyster Mushrooms
42. Jicama Slaw
43. Pumpkin Edamame Ginger Dumplings
44. Hemp Milk
45. Rose Champagne
46. Fuyu (japanese persimmon)
47. Raw Avocado-Coconut Soup
48. Tofu Pesto Sandwich
49. Apple-Lemon-Ginger-Cayenne fresh-pressed juice…with Extra Ginger
50. Grilled Seitan
51. Prickly pear
52. Fresh Pressed Almond Milk
53. Concord Grapes off the vine
54. Ramps
55. Coconut Water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic Arugula
57. Vidalia Onion
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics
59. Honeycrisp Apple
60. Poi (ok sounds gross, but id still try it)
61. Vegan Campfire-toasted Smores
62. Grape seed Oil
63. Farm fresh-picked Peach
64. Freshly-made pita bread with freshly-made hummus
65. Chestnut Snack Packs
66. Fresh Guava
67. Mint Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies…ugh mint and chocolate together es no bueno
68. Raw Mallomar from One Lucky Duck, NYC
69. Fried plantains
70. Mache (or lambs lettuce?)
71. Golden Beets
72. Barrel-Fresh Pickles
73. Liquid Smoke
74. Meyer Lemon
75. Veggie Paella
76. Vegan Lasagna (raw optional)
77. Kombucha
78. Homemade Soy Milk
79. Lapsang souchong (a type of black tea apparently)
80. Lychee Bellini
81. Tempeh Bacon
82. Sprouted Grain Bread
83. Lemon Pepper Tempeh
84. Vanilla Bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan In-Season Fruit Pie
88. Flowers
89. Corn Chowder
90. High Quality Vegan Raw Chocolate
91. Yellow fuzz-free Kiwi
92. White Flesh Grapefruit
93. harissa (North African hot red sauce fom chili peppers)
94. Coconut Oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade Risotto
97. Spirulina (a blue-green algae)
98. Seedless ‘Pixie’ Tangerine
99. Gourmet Sorbet, not store bought
100. Fresh Plucked English Peas

interesting list none the less and i want to try some of those!
ps all of the things in parentheses are little notes from me mostly because i had no idea what those things were!
what have you guys tried?

does anyone else think pink pups are funny?

Pumpkin cookies…Pumpkies?

I thought I’d start off by saying happy birthday Eric!

Now, usually when im baking for a reason (birthday, holiday, etc) I go with something tried and true because theres a miniscule chance that something will get messed up and I wont have anything to bring. Talk about a conundrum. And even though I’d never made these cookies before and they ARE for a special occasion and not just because I happen to have a little free time, it was a great choice.

I dont know about you, but I love pumpkin in the fall/winter. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin lattes…you name it. The spicy comforting smell of something pumpkin baking in the oven is so fallish to me, especially around the holidays. So after going through hundreds of recipes this past week, I finally ran across a recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and was sold on the idea. (It was actually between these and snickerdoodle blondies, but the boy helped me decide on these now and the blondies for another time)

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tbs ground flax seed + 3 tbs hot water
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk alternative
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Mix the flax and water and let sit.
Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and flax mixture. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt (I put a shake or two of all spice in there too).
Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
Add vanilla and chocolate chips.

Light orange and a little cakey

Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 12 minutes or until lightly brown and firm

quick tips: using parchment paper to line the cookie sheet worked a million times better, and it took more like 15 minutes in my oven.  The cookies do spread quite a bit so leave plenty of room. Using 1 1/2 -2 tbs of batter per cookie yielded  20 decent sized cookies.

What better way to say “Hey! this post is pretty much all for you!” to someone than to post pics of the pup they are basically obsessed with. Taken directly from his flickr, I present Dexter.

Dex, the cutest ever

substitutions!

Look how prolific I’m being! Two posts in two days? I’m so proud of myself. Besides the whole “What do you even eat?!” question (broccoli and only broccoli) when a non veg finds out that my baked goods are veg i usually get the eyebrow raise and “um howww?” question to go along with it. SO here are some general substitutions, mostly for baking but for regular cooking as well. :]

When it comes to baking there really are only a couple things that get in the way. Those being eggs, milk, and butter. EASY I tell you, easy.

Eggs
1 tbs ground flax seed + 3 tbs warm water for every egg being replaced. I like to mix this at the beginning and let it sit until i need it so it gets nice and eggy. I tend to use this in cookies and savory breads.

1/4 c applesauce for each egg. This usually works best for cakes, muffins, sweet breads, things of that nature. Applesauce can also be used to replace some or all of the oil in the same recipes. :]

1/4 c mashed banana per egg. Basically the same as the applesauce except i dont really use bananas much because i dont really like a hint of banana flavor in my oatmeal cookies….

ener g egg replacer. ok ive never actually used it, but i hear good things. i just think its weird and expensive.

milk
this is kind of self explanatory.
there are many many different kinds of non dairy milks out there. Soy, rice, almond, hemp, coconut…
So if theres a soy allergy or something, nbd. These sub with equal quantities and i usually get the plain or vanilla varieties.

Butter
This is also a pretty easy substitution.

There are a couple of different brands of vegan “butter” out there to pick from. Earth balance and smart balance lite are the two ones i get.

Also, vegetable shortening (butter flavored) is a good one to use in cookies :]

There you go, easy substitutions for your vegan baking needs.

ridiculous...ly adorable

will you be dressing up your pooch for halloween?

the whole shebang

I dont know if this should be separated into different entries….but im lazy so its not gonna happen, basically this was my tuesday night dinner. I’ve made a million things between my last post and now, but whatever, suck it.
ANYWAY, I dont know about you, but i LOOVEEEE asparagus. Seriously i love it. Grilled, roasted, steamed, whatever, just put it in my mouth. So when i find it for 99 cents a pound (hey im broke and thats really freakin cheap) i buy a lotttttt. I also like to keep my asparagus simple, usually just roasted with a touch of salt and pepper and SHABAM deliciousness, but in the attempt to mix it up i made a little roasted asparagus and tomato salad. Easy peasy.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound asparagus spears cut into 1.5″ pieces
2 roma tomatoes, cubed (you can use baby tomatoes or whatever you have, just make them bite sized and about 1/2 a pound of these as well)
1/4 medium shallot
1 Tbs balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (1/2 for roasting, half for dressing)
zest and juice of 1/2 of a lime
salt and pepper (oh baby baby…)

preheat oven to 400 degrees and toss veggies in the oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to your liking. (honestly i used veggie oil because i dont really like extra virgin when it comes to roasting…eh) put them on a baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes and then toss a bit and leave them in for 5-10 minutes more.

doesnt that look yummy already?

while the veggies are doing their thing, do yours and put together the dressing.
mince the shallot super fine, and add the balsamic, oil, and lime. you can add more oil if you like but i like mine more vinegary…also, let this sit a bit so the shallots break down a little in the vinegar.

once the veggies are fork tender and delicious looking throw them in the bowl with the dressing and toss. they’ll absorb the flavor best if theyre warm. then put it in the fridge to chill or eat warm if you like….i prefer cold.

easy and delicious!

I also made the easiest bread ever to go with everything. I love making bread. The smell filling the house (apartment) a piece straight out of the oven with a little bit of butter (ok smart balance lite). SO good.

I just used a recipe off Veg Web that you can find here !

I cut the recipe in half and used a touch more salt, and it would be so good baked with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper on top! But either way it ends up this GIANT loaf of really tasty bread. Last time i made two smaller loaves and i liked it better but it turned out pretty good this time too.

I made all of this to go with a two sided bean soup (that turned out very good i think) but in my hurry to eat and feed, I forgot to take pictures. It looked really pretty though. I’ll make it again and actually take pictures, im sure.

I almost forgot the puppy of the post!

wittle beagle

how cute is this guy?! I want him and I want to name him bagel.

cran-oat cookies

First blog post, real nice.

Thought I’d start out with something guaranteed to be delicious and in my book, one can never go wrong with some oatmeal cookies. Being as raisins make me sick and dried cranberries are better anyway I went in that direction. the recipe that i altered for this made at least 2 million cookies ao i decided to cut it in half and it still made about 15 pretty decent sized one.

Cran-Oat cookies

1/2 cup butter flavored shortening
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/8 cup pure cane sugar (or granulated white sugar)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 egg replacer ( i used flax seed and water)
5/8 cup (or 1/2 c + 1/8 c) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups rolled oats
3/4 c dried cranberries aka craisins
1/2 c walnuts (optional)

As far as egg replacer goes i tend to go with 1 tablespoon of finely ground flax seeds plus 3 tablespoons of hot water per egg needed. And of course vegan butter can be used in place of the shortening, but i find that butter flavored shortening actually tastes more buttery than butter. Weird right? Also im not a fan of nuts in my cookies…or mostly my anything but feel free.

Before really starting anything I like to mix my “eggs” and set them aside so they get goopy and more egg textury. Using hot water works best for this. Also, this would be the time to pre-heat to 350.

First start by creaming the sugars, shortening and vanilla in a medium to large mixing bowl. The mixture should turn a nice light brown color. Then add your egg replacer of choice and mix well.
In another bowl whisk together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt and slowly add it to the wet ingredients.
When it is well mixed, add the oats and cranberries (and walnuts if desired).

The final batter should look relatively close to this.

I used a VERY round tablespoon for each cookie and placed them on a non-stick cookie sheet. The first ones i made were probably more like two tablespoons, but slightly smaller ones turned out better.
Bake cookies for 13-18 minutes, depending on your oven until they are golden brown on top. Let cookies rest for about 3 minutes before removing them from the baking sheet.

The final result? scrumptious!

And of course it cant be pups and veg without a puppy pic of the day!

The infamous panda puppy. Awwwwwww.