Vegan MoFo 2012, Bloody Eyeball Cupcakes and a Halloween Bash

Rule #1 of baking: always have enough ingredients on hand for a do-over.
Rule #2: always hope it doesn't come to that.

My friend was having a Halloween party and I really wanted to contribute something festive.  Since my fellow lychee martini fan always thinks the lychees look like eyeballs, I decided that bloody eyeball cupcakes were in order- made with lychees!

I admittedly got a late start: at about 9pm the prior evening I gathered my ingredients and got to work making VCTOTW lychee cupcakes (p. 122).

When I mixed the wet ingredients with the dry, it seemed disproportionate.  I assumed that I'd miscalculated when doubling the ingredients, so I randomly scientifically added more liquid.  The batter remained thick, but I put them in the oven and hoped for the best.

In case you're wondering, these are not the best.  After cooking for an extra 10 minutes the center still wasn't cooked.  I did try them, but they were indeed undercooked, pasty, and inedible.

Because I clean as I go, I had to re-gather the ingredients and hand wash (I love my dishwasher) all of my bowls, utensils, measuring cups and spoons in order to start over.  Round 2:

I knew I'd measured everything exactly, but the batter was still stiff.  It didn't pour like traditional cupcake batter, but instead had to be scooped in like soft cookie dough.

It would seem that's just the nature of this recipe.

No doubling/no math: this time I'd made the recipe as printed.  I only had so many special Halloween cupcake liners!

Thankfully, they cooked in the expected time.

10:47pm- when my apprentice ceased to be of any help.

Because I needed something substantial to hold my eyeballs, I skipped the recommended coconut glaze and instead made half a batch of buttercream frosting (p. 142) using my leftover coconut milk.

I iced the cakes and then got to work on the eyes.  This is where there was a break in the photography because I really wanted to get done and go to bed.

I used the top half of a lychee for the the eyeball, and a defrosted frozen blueberry for the iris/pupil.  I mixed cranberry sauce with water in the Magic Bullet for the blood (yes, in hindsight cranberry juice would have been more efficient).

Early the next morning I delivered them to the party location, the underground dungeon of doom, where I traded them for two mini-cupcakes as they were being prepared.

The dungeon:

Complete with an impressive vegan spread:

So much delicious food.

Sugar cookies!  Green and orange pumpkins, ghosts and cats.  I only ate about 50 of these.

As seen above, VCTOTW vanilla mini-cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting, festive sprinkles, and a Sweet & Sara marshmallow.

My eyeballs: they turned out spooky enough, but I didn't love the taste of the cakes.  Despite all the sugar, the flax made an unmistakably "healthy" tasting cake.

French bread:

fresh guacamole (good friends don't make friends eat cilantro!!)

AFR baked falafel (p.121-122)

AFR quinoa salad with black beans and toasted cumin seeds (p. 31-32)

Queso, hummus, and chips:

And, last but not least: vampire's blood jello shots!

photo: JD Gut

Besides my bloody eyeballs (the cupcakes, not my actual tired, bloodshot eyes), this was all the work of one busy and generous Willy Wonka, who invited us into his dungeon for an evening of great friends, excellent food, and mediocre horror.  Thanks, JD!!

Vegan MoFo 2012, Eggplant Chickpea Curry. Kinda.

So I'm really getting on board with this whole tossing meals together with healthy ingredients that I purposefully (or happen to) have on hand.  It just means that sometimes you don't have the exact ingredients for a particular recipe...and you just go with it.  On this day, it was Appetite for Destruction Reduction's eggplant chickpea curry (p. 230).

It all started when my co-worker gave me a couple of small eggplants from her daughter's garden.  Then my boss gave me a beautiful assortment of peppers from her CSA.  VM tends to keep me rolling in onions and tomatoes at all times, and then I remembered I had black beans and Thai jasmine rice in the freezer.  I figured there was a meal in there somewhere.

My cookbook search for the simplest recipe (i.e. fewest ingredients and dishes involved), brought me to the eggplant chickpea curry recipe.  Although it didn't call for peppers and my beans weren't of the chick variety, I figured: what could it hurt?  Close enough, I say.

Because I like to keep the dishes to a minimum and because I have minimal patience for simmering, once an hour had passed I decided to just dump the rice in the same pot.

I'm not the biggest fan of eggplant (although I've been proven wrong lately), but this was good!

Relatively simple, extremely healthy, and very tasty.  Toss meals together with healthy ingredients that I have on hand?  I got this.

Vegan MoFo Day 24: Hourslong Soup

VM & OD went to a dinner recently and came back raving about a soup that they'd enjoyed.  They were armed with a recipe, but it was shoddy at best.  Vague ingredient listing, insufficient instruction, and missing steps: even the sentence structure was wrong!  But I figured it was a good weekend project for VM & I while I was still in the throes of healthy cooking mode, so I decoded it and we came up with this.

Fennel and Yellow Split Pea Soup
serves 10

4 1/2 cups dried yellow split peas, rinsed
4 tbsp butter
2 bulbs fennel, diced
2 onion, diced
8 stalks celery, diced
12 small carrots, diced
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
1 tsp turmeric
14 cups vegetable stock
2 cups water
4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced

Directions:
Place peas in a ginormous pot where they take up from 1/4 to under 1/2 of the room, then fill up to the 3/4 line with water and a sprinkle of salt.  Bring to a boil, lower the heat slightly to prevent boiling over, and let cook for 30 minutes.  Stir occasionally, being aware that the peas will significantly expand.  When finished, drain, rinse, and set aside.

In any even more gigantoid pot, melt butter over medium-low heat.  Cook fennel, onion, celery, and carrots with garlic and salt and pepper, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.

Add the turmeric, stock, water, potatoes, and peas; mix well.  Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for 2 hours.

Once cooled (this will take hours), use a food processor to puree in batches until smooth. 

Before:

After:

I realize we made a most significant batch, but we're both of the mind that if we're going to go through all the trouble, we may as well wind up with enough to freeze for a couple of meals.  If you choose to cook this quantity, know that the prep time is 2 hours, with more than two hands pitching in.  Granted we're far from culinary professionals, but eegads that's a long time.  I want to stress that the result was DIVINE, but there's no denying Amy's,- gotta love 'em. 

To accompany, a salad of romaine, tomato, red onion, and avocado with sun-dried tomato-walnut dressing (AFR p. 50), subbing lime juice for vinegar.

No lunch today, but for breakfast I had sliced banana with the LAST of my almond butter.  How fitting.

I know, I'm still having issues with the orientation of my pics.  Even though I correct it after uploading, it still appears out of whack.  Who cares?  Tomorrow is the last day of the cleanse!  Maybe I should fast completely in order to make room for the feast that awaits me?

Vegan MoFo Day 11: Pseudo PB&J Smoothie

So, I unintentionally left myself with not much in the way of foodstuff to start the week.  Making the best of what I had left, for breakfast, I decided to try a greenish (or should I say -ist!) smoothie instead of juice.  A cucumber, raspberry, almond butter, cinnamon (and water) smoothie, to be exact.

Magic Bullet to the rescue.

It was kind of like peanut butter almond butter and jelly, but...different.  Thankfully I had frozen my fresh raspberries, so that added a chill and thickness to the smoothie that would have otherwise been warm and liquidy.  Without them, I would have definitely had to add ice cubes.  The almond butter was the dominant flavor, so I would have to adjust the proportion in the future.  Overall it was thick and heavy, albeit only about 8 ounces.  Very filling.

I had nothing to pack for lunch, so when the time came I had to venture out into the real world for some healthy grub.  Finding vegan food is one thing, healthy vegan food quite another.  Turns out, this is even harder on Columbus Day.  To make matters worse, I somehow forgot my cell at home.  If someone wants to complain and there is no means by which to text, are they still annoying?  It didn't matter; the smoothie had been so filling that I really wasn't hungry.

For dinner, a reprieve.  I'd forgotten that I'd picked up some broccoli when purchasing the ingredients for my zucchini spaghetti.  To make up for yesterday, I ate the cruciferous veg raw with shabby sheik hummus from AFR (p. 138).  Since I'd eaten so many chick peas over the weekend, I subbed cannelloni beans.  I tripled the cayenne for obvious reasons.

I also made a salad of mixed greens, thinly sliced avocado, and peanut almond lime dragon dressing (AFR p.34).  I subbed Bragg's for soy sauce; this dressing was great!  I will note that it's very watery and prone to separating, so plan to prepare and serve immediately.  Leftovers aren't advisable.

Fear not; I will be better prepared tomorrow and there will be kale.

Yummy Curried Cabbage and Incredible African Stew, but Authentic Vegan Irish Soda Bread Remains Elusive

When St. Patrick's Day rolls around I always find green cabbage on sale have the urge to cook with cabbage.  This year VM picked me up a 6 pounder (yes, really), so the urge is now gone.  But, in the meantime, I made two dishes that turned out great.

First I whipped up the Curried Cabbage and Peas (p. 111) from Appetite for Reduction.  I did sub frozen sugar snap peas for regular (this is now a vegetable I do not recommend buying frozen) and it was really tasty: kind of like a less-carby, kicky, and healthier halushki.  I tried serving it over udon noodles (no, I don't know why), but that was a fail; the dish is much better on its own.

Then I tackled the African Vegetable Stew (p.148-149) from The Natural Vegan Kitchen.  I've taken classes with the author, Christine Waltermyer, and have always been very impressed by her flavor combinations; I've even successfully recreated many of her recipes (tempeh salad, lentil-walnut pate, basil summer rolls, broccoli slaw) in my own kitchen.  So, when her cookbook went on sale became available I knew I had to buy it.  I was a little daunted by the amount of ingredients in this recipe, but it came together quite easily.

The final dish was really impressive and hearty.  The base of the sauce is peanut butter with elements of clove, tamari, and cinnamon; I'd recommend throwing some actual peanuts in right before serving for extra crunch.  And, even though the scoops are much cuter, I'd suggest serving over rice; reason being, cute = work.  Why have to combine the dry rice into the meal as you're eating if the rice can be absorbing the delicious sauce from the moment it is plated?  You can't argue with this kind of laziness logic.

I had made up my mind not to attempt Irish Soda Bread this year because it never turns out authentic.  But then VegNews posted an easy recipe so I had to give it a try.  I decided to make mini-breads instead of one big loaf and I doubled the raisins, which was an excellent call.

Unfortunately, the result was the same as always: some sort of muffin/scone hybrid not at all like traditional Irish Soda bread.  It didn't taste bad, but if I wanted a muffin or scone I would have just made one.

Eh, Irish Soda bread isn't one of my favorites anyway.  I should have just turned my attention to potatoes.