Category: donuts

Portland vegan desserts

Posted by miss alix – 28 Jun ’10

In the four days Shawn and I spent in Portland, I ate more food than I ever thought possible. With so many vegan restaurants, it’s not even possible to try everything, but we were on a mission to test as much as we could. One of the highlights was being able to visit some completely vegan bakeries which Los Angeles is sorely missing. The most amazing treat that we tried, I believe was the raspberry coconut cream pie from Back to Eden. I don’t even like coconut, but oh my god, this pie was heavenly. Fluffy and sweet with the perfect crust.

Back to Eden was basically the last place we went before we headed for the airport. After getting numerous recommendations, we had to go there before we left. I tried a chocolate marionberry cupcake and also snagged some marionberry bread for the plane. I don’t even know what marionberry is but it is damn good. The fruity frosting on the cupcake was rich and amazing. The marionberry bread was moist with just the right amount of sweetness.

They had a case full of delicious treats including whoopie pies, tartlettes, chocolates and other savory items like quiches. The whole place is adorable. Oh yeah, and they have soft serve.

Of course we visited Sweetpea Baking Company. Actually we visited quite a few times.  Everything we tried was super good. I loved the cute little zucchini cake. We also had cookies and donuts and…

Loved how cute these pride cupcakes were. They were completely sold out on our second visit. We really tried to make it for their Sunday brunch but couldn’t get there in time. Not to mention, the idea of eating a huge brunch was a little terrifying considering all the food we had the day before.

We stopped in Saint Cupcake Deluxe just to check out the selection and were happy to find a handful of vegan flavors. This shop was super sweet and not only had cupcakes, but also had a lot of sweet cupcakes supplies. It was also attached to Noun, a shop where I wanted to buy basically everything.

It’s not a trip to Portland without Voodoo donuts. Do I really have to say anything about these guys? So good. While I usually prefer risen donuts to cake donuts, the chick-o-stick donut is a must have. It may have been my favorite. I’ll probably have to try them again to see.

Wow, that’s a lot of dessert. That’s not even everything. I drank a lot of coffee to counteract the sweetness. That makes sense, right? This soy latte from Stumptown was one of the best I’ve ever had. I mean, Intelligentsia good. Damn I want one now.

Thanksgiving 2009

Posted by miss alix – 27 Nov ’09

I’m going to keep the chatting to a minimum and just show you a photo tour of our Thanksgiving this year. Enjoy!

It all started with a donut from Madeline Bistro.

The phillet no phish sandwich, Thanksgiving sandwich (which is pretty much all you could ever want from Thanksgiving), mashed potatoes and gravy.

Vanishing meal. Also consumed: biscuits & gravy, crepes filled with fruit. All amazing.

Visiting turkeys from Animal Acres. Luckily these guys will live long happy lives instead of being abused and murdered this Thanksgiving. Yeah, I said that.

Homemade pumpkin soy nog. My mom made this! I think that’s pretty awesome.

When making a pie, it is absolutely necessary to make a mess. It makes it taste better, I promise.

Best way to work up an appetite before Thanksgiving dinner. Okay so it was a rather leisurely ride to the beach. We were rewarded with a gorgeous sunset.

Brussels sprouts with capers. Oh how I love brussels sprouts.

Perfectly fluffy and wonderful mashed potatoes whipped up by Shawn. He also made fabulous gravy to go on top.

There’s that apple pie! All baked up with the infamous crumbly top. This is the last thing I stuffed in my face today.

Happy Thanksgiving! (p.s. Shawn does not like to smile in photos. He really is having a good time, don’t let the serious face fool you.)

Donut Fever or mini donut disaster

Posted by miss alix – 27 Sep ’09

This all too common ailment afflicts nearly as many as the flu, but it can be even more devastating to vegans who cannot easily satisfy their donut craving. Recently a friend of mine fell victim to this affliction, and a very rare strain known as mini-donut fever. As you may know, the only cure is to eat donuts, in this case mini-donuts. So we set out on a mission to make our own vegan mini donuts using the recipe from Vegan Yum Yum as a starting place.

It should have been an an easy enough task, with a clear recipe to follow, but things did not go as planned. Plain baked donuts are good, but blueberry sounded even better so we threw in a handful of wild blueberries to the batter of our first batch, but the batter was already looking awfully wet. We carried on, hoping for the best. The best was not so good. Despite the recipe saying that you should not grease the pan (it was non-stick anyway) the donuts stuck horribly, and because the added berries, fell apart when you tried to remove them. They still tasted rather good though, so we ate a few of the ugly bits.

Round two, we added more flour and greased the pan. This batch came out better than the last but as they sat out, became rather crunchy. I would still consider these fairly successful. We glazed them with a blueberry juice glaze which was fantastic and so pretty.

Next we decided to go for some pumpkin spice donuts. This time we abandoned the recipe completely. Bad idea. While these donuts had the correct consistency, fluffy and light, the flavor was just off completely. There was neither enough pumpkin nor spice. Three out of three taste testers agreed, these donuts tasted like…hay. Yep, you got that right. They tasted like dried grass. I’m sure you could pass them off to some unsuspecting health-food type, but that is not what we were interested in. We had already frosted them before we realized that they tasted so bad, so at least they looked pretty.

The unfortunate side effect of this endeavor is that I’ve now come down with donut fever myself. Look out for some more (hopefully more successful) donut making in the near future.

Also get ready because it’s almost time for Veganmofo 2009. I can’t wait to get cookin’. Last year’s veganmofo really inspired me to work harder on this blog and get it going from something that I did only for myself to something I shared with people.

Donuts

Posted by miss alix – 16 Sep ’08


I’ve been so busy lately with a ton of things, I really want to put some of that energy into baking. Last night I made donuts! Damn they were so good. It was my first time frying anything like that, so as the oil heated up, a few may have been over done. They still tasted delicious. I definitely want to try out some other glazes. Maple perhaps?

Anyway, there are a ton of things I want to make so here’s a list to keep myself on track:

cinnamon rolls
peanut butter cups
marshmallows!
molten chocolate babycakes

I did make some coconut lime mini bundts that didn’t really make it out of the pan, despite being well greased. They tasted pretty good anyway, even though I’m really not the biggest coconut fan.