Halloween Cupcakes

You know what’s awesome? Halloween. I love it. I especially love getting to make Halloween treats, decorations and costumes. I love that you can decorate cupcakes and they can look like a five year old made them and they are still amazing. I made these guys for some friends and got a little carried away. Hope they like them. I have a lot of cupcake decoration ideas that I’m hoping I’ll still have time to execute this month. If not, I’m just going to pretend that November is still October. October part two. Is this cool with everyone? I think it’s a fabulous idea.

Halloween Movie Marathon Massacre

Live blogging from the 2nd Annual Halloween Movie Marathon Massacre. This event has gotten a little out of control. As of this moment we’ve watched 12 movies straight, starting at around 8 pm last night. It’s now past 6 pm. We’re getting close to 24 hours of Halloween movie madness. So I’m not going to write much because, well, I’m rather sleep deprived and whatever I write will probably sound ridiculous (disclaimer: I have actually slept through part of at least a few movies). Instead I’m just going to show you a few of the treats I made for the event. Above you can see some vanilla cupcakes with orange frosting.

I also made cookies and cream cupcakes and decorated them with crumbled Newman’s O’s. I had intended to put little graham cracker headstones on each but I totally burnt them. They looked even more awesome burnt but were not at all edible.

My favorite treat that I got to make was caramel corn. I used the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. It’s amazing. I can really only make this stuff for special events because I will eat the entire batch.

We also had a veggie hot dog station inspired by The Franken Stand. Sometimes if you can’t get the real thing you just have to make your own. Luckily, they have been at some great events this month, so we get to enjoy them somewhat frequently.

We’re down to five movie watchers, including myself. It’s amazing. The plan is to head to the Cinefamily and catch the double feature of Victims and Don’t Go In the House to finish the extravaganza. I’ll keep you posted.

Movies so far:

Labyrinth

The Brood

I Spit on Your Grave

Poltergeist

Friday the 13th part 4

Sleepaway Camp

Dawn of the Dead (original)

Shaun of the Dead

Lost Boys

Ringu

Necromantic

Suspiria

UPDATE

I finished with:

Victims

Don’t Go in the House

I think that the remaining three watched Close Encounters after that.

So many hours of horror!

Halloween Candy

These days one of the main selling points of Halloween is candy. As if costumes and ghosts weren’t awesome enough, people thought you should coerce children in to celebrating by giving them treats. This has now turned into a sugar free for all consisting of thousands of bags of individually wrapped bite sized candies, because god forbid anyone actually make anything for their neighbors. Everyone knows the razor blade in the apple thing never really happened.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for trick or treating. In fact, as an adult, I still kind of wish I could go. But then I realize the majority of those candies aren’t vegan so there isn’t really a point. I wonder what vegans with children do. Do you take your kids trick or treating and take away the candy afterward or skip the event all together?

Luckily more and more vegan candies are coming onto the market so we aren’t just stuck with licorice and suckers. Go Max Vegan candies are new on the scene and replicate some of the more popular non-vegan brands.  The Buccaneer, reminiscent of a Three Musketeers,  has creeped in as my favorite of the four. I highly recommend throwing a few in the fridge as they are even more tasty cold. The Twilight is my next choice, though I was a particular fan of Milky Ways as a non-vegan. There some flavor in the caramel that doesn’t quite win me over. It’s still really nice to have a vegan candy that’s not just a pure chocolate bar.

It’s easy to make some vegan candies yourself. I’ve successfully made peanut butter cups and peppermint patties that were even better than the mass produced ones. I’m still dying to make Your Vegan Mom’s crunchy version of peanut butter cups. Can someone please figure out how to make a vegan Junior Mints? That would be awesome.

non-dairy milk

Okay, let’s talk about non-dairy milk. I never liked milk. I wonder what it would be like to really want to drink milk. Actually, I don’t. I do like coffee though (I’ll revisit this subject later) and I generally prefer my coffee with some sort of milk substitute. For the longest time I relied on soy milk because it was the most commonly available option. The truth is, I really like soy milk. I still wouldn’t really want to drink a glass straight, but the thought doesn’t gross me out either. In the past year I’ve added a lot of almond milk and on occasion rice milk into the mix. I’m not as big a fan of the rice milk as it is not quite thick enough and a little too sweet. Almond milk, on the other hand, is great and makes some intense latte foam.

On a recent visit to Vinh Loi Tofu, I thought I’d get some of their freshly made soy milk, just to try. I figured, before I mixed it in with my coffee or cooked something with it, I should probably taste it, just in case. Do you know what fresh soy milk tastes like? It tastes like soybeans. Like raw tofu, except sweeter. This might sound kind of gross, but it’s not. It’s actually pretty refreshing. It was definitely a change from the standard vanilla soy milk  that I usually get. I think it would be extra good for a shake or something, to give it a little bit extra flavor. More than that, I love that it is fresh and only has three ingredients…water, soybeans and sugar. There was also a non-sugar version and a crazy green one that I’m not really sure what it was (if anyone could enlighten me I would be grateful). It made me want to try and make some of my own soy milk, or tofu even!

What kind of non-dairy milk do you like?

Four years of being vegan

Happy veganniversary to me! Today celebrates the four year anniversary of me being vegan. I can honestly say that becoming vegan has changed my life significantly for the better and is without a doubt one of the more life altering decisions I’ve made. Though making the switch from being a vegetarian to vegan wasn’t that dramatic in and of itself, the resulting changes in my lifestyle have come to shape who I am. I find so much joy in experimenting in the kitchen and there are few things that calm me more than baking. I have made so many awesome friends in the vegan community through this little blog that really just started out as something to motivate myself.

In the past four years I’ve learned to be proud of my choice to be vegan as the more I learn, the more it is reinforced in my mind that it is undoubtedly the best option. Whereas I used to shy away from conversations with non-vegans on the issue, I’m now happy to point out many of the benefits  of veganism and even happier to tell people about all the really amazing vegan food and restaurants out there.

Every day I try to be a better vegan. This means not only trying to eat a diverse diet (it is even easier now than ever to get vegan junk food) but also being conscious of my choices outside of what I eat. I do the best I can without driving myself crazy. In a world where nearly everything is processed and manufactured it’s not always possible to know every element of the production of an item, but I try my best to be aware.

I’m so glad that I get to be a vegan blogger, a vegan baker, a vegan filmmaker, a vegan cyclist. I’m so happy that I’ve met so many of you and learned so much from your vegan adventures. So I insist, celebrate with me and go eat something damn delicious, because nothing tastes better than being vegan.