Spring Eggs

I’m gonna first put out the disclaimer that I’m not a fan of Easter. I’m not religious and most of the related celebrations just don’t excite me. On the other hand, I am a fan of springtime and bunnies. I also like having an excuse to experiment and make new treats. Here’s to trying to make something great out of something you’re not into.

After having a taste of some vegan Cadbury creme eggs made by Vegyogini of Hugger Food, I couldn’t stop thinking about making some of my own. I think this is a pretty strange obsession considering that I didn’t even like Cadbury eggs when I wasn’t vegan. While I tried to put the idea out of my head, I found myself reading all about the fondant filled eggs. When the topic of Easter baskets came up, I finally decided it had to be done, along with some peanut butter eggs.

I started out with the peanut butter eggs, as I’ve made peanut butter cups before and thought it would be easier to try out the egg molds on something I was familiar with. I melted some chocolate chips in a double boiler and thickly coated the insides of the mold. The mold I used was made of silicone and was super easy to just pop the hardened eggs out when they were done. Another option would be to use plastic eggs and line them with aluminum foil. The important thing is to make sure the top edges of the eggs are well coated in the mold as this is the area that will seal to the other half of the egg. I let the chocolate set in the fridge for about half an hour while I prepared the peanut butter filling.

Peanut Butter Filling

1 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup confectioners sugar

2 tsp vanilla

Simply mix the peanut butter, sugar and vanilla together to form a smooth sweet peanut butter filling. If your peanut butter has been sitting around for awhile, refrigerated or just otherwise dry, add peanut oil back into the mixture to soften it.

I filled the hardened chocolate shells with the peanut butter filling and refrigerated again for about half an hour until they were firm enough to handle easily. Next came the experimental part. I popped the eggs out of the mold onto a cookie tray. I then took a knife and heated it on the oven. I then melted the outer edge of the chocolate egg with the hot knife and pressed it together with another egg half. The key to this process is keeping your hands clean and the eggs cool.

For the creme eggs, I went with a basic poured fondant recipe. There are a number of different ways to go about this: cooked fondant, food processor fondant, quick fondant… Ultimately I went with the one I thought would have the right semi-liquid consistency. I prepared the chocolate shells as above, making them slightly thicker to accommodate the warm fondant filling.

Poured Fondant

3 cups confectioners sugar

1 Tbs corn syrup

1/4 cup water

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the sugar, corn syrup and water together in a small sauce pan over high heat, stirring constantly. Using a candy thermometer, heat the mixture just above 90 degrees but do not let it get to 100. The fondant should be smooth and pourable but not too thin. Remove from heat, add extract and stir to combine fully. Let cool slightly and spoon into the chocolate shells. Refrigerate to harden and assemble the same as the peanut butter cups.

The consistency of the fondant creme eggs came out surprisingly like the actual thing, but perhaps a touch firmer. They were sugary sweet chocolate treats, and if you like the original, you’ll definitely like the veganized version. I personally liked the ones made by Vegyogini better as they didn’t have a pure sugar taste because of the Earth Balance. The peanut butter cups came out wonderfully though. Next time I might make them half eggs as it’s quite a lot of sweetness.

Despite my initial disclaimer, I really enjoyed making these and there may be some more Easter treats on the way. Happy springtime!

vegan bake sale

Well, the time has finally come to let you all in on a little secret…my vegan baking endeavors are going public. Vegan Bake Sale has been launched. It’s still in it’s beginning stages, but now you can order vegan desserts till your heart’s content (or I suppose your belly’s content, whichever). Right now I’ll be focusing on cupcakes and cakes, but some great cheesecake options are on the way, and cookies too. So if you’re in the Los Angeles are and you need something special for a birthday or event, Vegan Bake Sale is here to help! These aren’t the healthy, crunchy, cardboard vegan desserts you find at health food stores, they’re the decadent, delicious treats that could fool any non-vegan.

In fact, I’ll be at 3:28 The Death of FUN this Saturday with a ton of cupcakes. So come out and enjoy the wonderful Los Angeles spring time and nosh on some cupcake goodness. The bike ride will be going all day and all over the city (you can see more details in the facebook event) but I’ll be at Pan Pacific Park between 5 and 6 pm. I highly suggest if you have a bike and are in the area, you should not miss this. If you don’t have a bike, borrow one! There are so many great rides incorporated into this day and a lot of cool events planned along the way. Besides, it is the death of fun, so if you’re not there, you may never have fun again.

Potlucks

Up until last year, when I was fortunately invited to meet up with some Los Angeles vegan bloggers, I had never been to a potluck besides some family holiday affairs. Recently though, it seems like every weekend I’m trying to make something to bring to an event. The most amazing part is that most of these have been vegan potlucks which is extra awesome because you get to try a bunch of treats made by other vegans.

There is always the dilemma of what to bring. Ideally one should bring actual food to a potluck so that everyone can eat. It’s no fun to show up when there is only various flavors of chips and dip. A few weeks ago I attended the BBQ/potluck after Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer, a bike race up the ten steepest hills in Los Angeles. I did not race up any of the hills, instead I biked a macaroni and chreese with broccoli casserole in my basket across town. I managed to arrive right on time, coming right around a corner to meet Shawn just as him and the other racers finished. Everyone was super hungry and most everything was devoured including veggie hot dogs, homemade seitan, vegan corn dogs and pasta salad.

Just the next day I got to attend another BBQ at a friends house. When I asked what to bring, I got the go ahead to bring dessert and was quite excited because there are few things I like more than baking cupcakes. I decided to try out a new recipe for spiced tea cupcakes. Since I wasn’t sure how many people would be there I went ahead and made mini versions. The spiced tea cakes were sweet and simple, a subtle black tea flavor with a bit of a kick. Even though it was an omni BBQ, our hosts made us an awesome vegetarian chili with extra beer, veggie dogs and grilled corn (with earth balance!). There was also homemade sangria to be enjoyed. Delicious!

We were also lucky enough to visit the new home of Sunny of Vegan Beauty Review and her husband along with some other vegan friends. We chowed down on vegan mushroom pate made by George from Sante la Brea and fried faux shrimps from Garden Wok brought by Lex and Kristen of Vegan LA. Vegyogini from Hugger Food made some tasty vegan cadbury cream eggs and Foodeater from To Live and Eat in LA brought a ton of adorable, colorful mochis (which I gobbled up quite a few of). I made cupcakes (again!) this time going for a simple strawberry shortcake cupcake. You can’t see the surprise filling of fresh strawberries hiding under the extra fluffy frosting. Unfortunately I was so full of other food I didn’t even get to try one of these, but Shawn assures me they were delicious and in fact still hold the place of his favorite cupcakes.

On a non-food related note, something I’ve been meaning to show off for a bit is the wall scratcher I made for my cats. When I first got Meeme and Mochi I was enthralled by all the modern looking cat furniture that was nothing like the carpet covered trees I’ve always seen. On the other hand, I was not excited at all about the prices. I decided to take matters into my own hands and make my own version of a wall scratcher. I ordered a piece of lovely orange carpet and obtained a leftover piece of wood shelving from a construction site, glued it together with some industrial adhesive and voila! While my custom piece cost less than $25 all together, the much smaller version it was based on cost double that. Most importantly though, Meeme and Mochi love streching out and scatching it so I have deemed it a complete success.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

First of all, welcome to the new home of Cute and Delicious! I’m really excited to start this off with a great recap of some Saint Patrick’s Day feasting.

For Shawn’s birthday this year, I gave him a number of tokens to be redeemed for favors or treats including meals and bike rides. Despite the fact that he has had a few months to use them, he has yet to come up with anything to trade them in for. That is, until Saint Patrick’s day. The first token was used for a full Irish feast day.

We started off the day with beans on Irish Soda bread toast and some smoked apple sage Field Roast Sausage . I’m not usually one to eat particularly hearty breakfasts (although I am a huge fan of toast) but this was a very satisfying way to start the day. The first time I had ever had beans on toast was actually in Belfast, and I’ve only had a it a few times since then. The beans were just slightly sweet and went really well with the soft, dense bread. We’ve tried other flavors of the grain sausages before and, previously, I have not been a fan. The apple sage sausage was perfect though. It had a very light flavor and a subtle sweetness to it.

For lunch, we had a picnic, since I only had a bit of spare time on my lunch break. I tried out the recipe from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen for Colcannon Puffs. I was very excited about mixing kale and potatoes, two of my favorites, and making them into adorable little toasted bites. I was so excited, in fact, that threw the kale in the food processor and blended to a puree instead of chopped leafy chunks. When I mashed it together with the potatoes, I had truly green potato puffs. I loved the texture of these, soft in the middle and slightly crispy on the outside, with a noticeable lightness. My only problem was that they were extremely salty, which is saying a lot coming from me, because I love salt. I didn’t even use salt in the water to make the potatoes so I would definitely cut down the seasoning a bit next time around.

We enjoyed these in the greenery of Griffith Park, along with some leftover beans, toast and sausage from breakfast. Shawn also made a great nutritional yeast cheese sauce to top everything off.

For dinner I busted out my crock pot and made an Irish stew. Sometimes I forget how amazing crock pots are. It’s great to be able to throw all the ingredients in and just let it cook away all day without having to do a thing. This stew was hearty and filling. All the vegetables were soft and flavorful. The other great thing about this stuff is that it’s even better the next day, it thickens up just a bit and makes it even more wonderful. The recipe is kind of a hodgepodge of things but you can check it out below. The only change I would probably make is to make sure the seitan is cut into small pieces so that it doesn’t overshine the vegetables. I would also recommend grilling the seitan a bit before adding so it has a little extra flavor.

Finally, for dessert we had apple bread pudding. The last of the Irish soda bread was put to use in the making of this recipe found in The Almost No Fat Holiday Cookbook. Since the slices of bread were a bit thicker than some pre-sliced bread, the top layer did not come out so much like pudding but a bit more like french toast.  Even still, it was amazingly tasty. A squishy bread pudding on the bottom with a layer of soft green apples, then a firmer flavored bread layer topped with a caramelly brown sugar sauce. I’ve actually never had bread pudding before, which I’m finding hard to believe myself, considering how much I love bread, and I was highly impressed with the way this came out.

At the end of the day I was so full I can’t even tell you. So full of bread and potatoes. The soda bread was by far the best part, especially considering how simple it is to make. I’ll definitely be trying out the stew again, and experimenting with some more crock pot recipes.

Hope everyone had a wonderful St. Patty’s!

Irish Stew
3 cups vegetable broth

1 can potato leak soup

1 package mushroom gravy mix

16 oz sliced mushrooms

1 cup seitan chunks

1 cup burger crumbles

4 small potatoes peeled and cubed

1/2 large yellow onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

1/2 cup peas

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried parsley

1/2  tsp rubbed sage

2 bay leaves

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbsp flour

1 Tbsp olive oil

Throw all the ingredients in your crock pot, stir and cook on low for 6 – 8 hours.

Kitchen gadgets

The great thing about making chocolate fondue for a dessert is not only how easy it is, but how amazingly satisfying. I simply cut up some apples and nectarines, and melted some semi-sweet chocolate with a dash of soymilk and it was ready to go. The result was fantastic. It’s easy to forget how sweet and tasty fruit is when there are so many prepared desserts out there, but combined with the dark chocolate it was absolutely divine. In fact, I’m craving it now, just writing about it. The important thing is just to have fresh ripe fruit and good quality chocolate.

While I would have to say that having the fondue warmer increased the fun factor by at least 10%, it’s totally not necessary to enjoy this simple dessert, just put the melted chocolate in a bowl or mug and it will stay warm for quite awhile. Another option would be to dip the fruit in the melted chocolate and refrigerate and harden for a cool treat later on.

Vegan Spritz Cookies
adapted from Wilton

3/4 cup earth balance
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tps egg replacer mixed with 1 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp soy milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder.

Cream sugar and earth balance. Add egg replacer and beat till slightly frothy. Add soy milk and extracts to combine. In another bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Slowly add liquid mixture and mix until smooth.

Put mixture into cookie press and press cookies onto cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Spinach Pesto

1/4 cup almonds
1/4 cup walnuts
3 Tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic
3/4 cup chopped frozen spinach, thawed
1/4-1/2 tsp salt

Put the almond, walnuts and garlic in a food processor and blend till you have a coarse meal. Next add the spinach, oil and salt and blend until combined. Spread on pizza dough and bake away!

Since this recipe has raw garlic, I recommend using it for baked items. Otherwise, roast the garlic beforehand and add to the blend.