hot for food

What are you going to be for Halloween? I don’t know that I’m going out, but if I WERE I would definitely go as my hero of 2010, Antoine Dobson. I have a feeling there will be a lot of Antoine’s out this year.

Anyway, I made chocolate pumpkin brownies for a pot luck dinner last week. And I just NOW realized they make the perfect Halloween treat! They are yummy yummy and not overly sweet since they  use pure pumpkin puree, raw cacao powder, and unrefined sugars. The recipe was passed along to me by a friend, but it’s from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Of course they don’t quite look like the ones from VCTOTW, because whenever I follow a recipe it’s never the same as the picture I’m  following. The only difference is I used raw cacao powder instead of dutch process cocoa, and cornstarch instead of tapioca flour. Don’t get me wrong, they were still deliciously chocolatey and pumpkiney!

Also this will be the first Halloween where I don’t eat commercial halloween candy, since going vegan in 2010. And I’m ok with it. I have lost my desire for candy, it’s weird.

hot for food has recently become a Foodbuzz Featured Publisher. Being recognized by this foodie community is very exciting! You may remember when my Carrot Cake Muffins were featured on Foodbuzz.com’s Top 9 back in March. Well, it’s time I try and get myself back in the Top 9 again!

In trying to raise awareness and money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Foodbuzz is going to donate $50 for every banana split post by a Foodbuzz Featured Publisher. Then this Monday July 19 the Top 9 on Foodbuzz.com will be a Top 9 Takeover  featuring the best photos of scrumptious banana split sundaes! Tasty treats for a good cause are A-OK with me. You can find out more about the cause and how you can get involved too by clicking here.

This is my original Vegan Banana Split…

I’d like to think this is a “healthier” version of a very indulgent treat! Sure, of course it is. The “ice cream” is So Delcicious Coconut Milk non-dairy Vanilla Bean and Chocolate frozen dessert. I made my own non-dairy chocolate fudge, and even attempted to make soy-free whipped cream from Ricki Heller’s recipe. It didn’t quite work out, in that the whipped cream ended up too runny and didn’t stiffen like it should have, but it tastes great!  The banana split is sprinkled with vegan chocolate chips, vegan colored confetti sprinkles and shredded unsweetened coconut. Looks pretty sweet to me!

I’ve never made or eaten a banana split in my life, so this was a fun challenge. Even now, I’ve only had 3 bites. I think that’s enough for me!

Ice Cream equals summer, if you ask me. I used to eat ice cream… lots of it… all summer. Problem is, I wanted to die every time. That’s not a fun summer. You know, having to pre-plan my entire ice cream excursion (making sure I could get to a err uhh… bathroom). How ridiculous is that?! Now that I’m a changed woman, I no longer have to worry about such silliness. Though I still can’t have that spontaneous ice cream on a nice summer stroll, I can deal. I just go home and fulfill my cravings with my trusty food processor. No freezing required!

You know I’ve raved about frozen banana ice cream before, but I recently saw a new creation on (never home) maker. Great blog, by the way! If you want to be way jealous of someone’s house, go check out the pics of Ashley and Steven’s, here. Anyway, recently they posted a recipe for a variation of this frozen treat. Check it out…. peanut butter chocolate banana vegan ice cream… awesome!

I used natural peanut butter, so I added a bit of sea salt as well. I bet if you used the “not so good for you” PB it would be a bit tastier, or sweeter. Maybe even add a drizzle of maple syrup. I’m going to try some other versions of this too. Jennifer of sweetonveg pointed me in the direction of this Banana Caramel Pecan version just the other day. That’s next on my list of to eat’s!

Of course, I can always go for a bowl of my favorite Fruity Summer Sorbet. Probably the easiest, healthiest treat one could eat while still feeling indulgent! This is just frozen raspberries, mango and 1/4 of a banana with a drizzle of lemon juice. No added sugar! It’s SO friggin good.

I just want to point out that you don’t have to do this in a food processor. A blender works too, but it might take a bit more fiddling with a spatula to get everything well blended.

This was one of those baking episodes I anticipated would be a wasteful disaster. With my luck, upside down cupcakes were gonna stick to the pan like mad! Luckily, I was wrong. They turned out beautifully. It all started with half a bag of cherries being left in the fridge for too long. They were a day away from being no good, so I saved them from a rotten death and turned them into pretty Upside Down Cherry Vanilla Almond Cakes.
You could make this even easier and use a box cake mix, but I followed my Vanilla Bean Cupcake recipe.

You also need:
2 cups of pitted and halved cherries
12 tsp raw sugar
1/4 cup toasted almond slices.

Prepare a muffin pan by buttering (I used, Earth Balance) each muffin cup. Place cherry pieces at the bottom of each so there is little space and sprinkle each with 1 tsp of raw sugar. Pour cake batter into the muffin cups and bake at  350 F for 20-25 minutes. You can toast the almond slices in a pan on low heat with some brown sugar or raw sugar until brown. Make sure you allow the cakes to cool for at least 10-15 minutes before turning them out onto a cooling rack. It was a bit tricky. In my case they didn’t all come out of the pan at once. It took a few turns to get all 12 cakes out of the pan. Lastly, sprinkle each cake with almond slices.

p.s. apologies to Greg P for tempting you with these cakes and making them appear forbidden to eat. Next time you can have all of ‘em buddy!

I was passed along a recipe for Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies. I occasionally get recipes from people so that I can test them, as the person giving me the recipe doesn’t want to  go to the trouble! Which is totally cool since I love to cook, especially bake. And I’ll try anything. A perfect combo and childhood fave of mine, chocolate and mint, can’t go wrong! This Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is supposedly from a real live bakery/baker, Krissys Cookies. Her gourmet vegan cookies look incredible, don’t get me wrong. But this cannot possibly be her recipe, as posted on Ready Made. The dough was totally dry and impossible to ball up into cookies, let alone flatten slightly on the cookie tray. Mine do not look like the picture on Krissys website, or even the picture posted on ReadyMade.com. What gives? Sometimes I truly HATE following recipes, as I find they often turn out wrong. Maybe this was scaled down from a larger batch recipe and therefore messed up somewhere.

Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie #1 (krissyscookies.com)

This was the first time I’ve ever seen Peppermint Oil used in a recipe as opposed to Peppermint Extract. I bought 100% pure organic peppermint oil, and boy is it strong. The recipe calls for 1 tsp, which FYI is WAY too much. You can barely even eat these cookies, even though they look rather edible in my pic. They’re like some kind of aromatherapy cookie. Seems a little like your eating medicine or something. It’s  so over powering that you can’t taste the cookie or chocolate. I also used white all-purpose flour and coconut oil instead of spelt flour and safflower oil, which this recipe calls for. Really, the only part that ruined these is the amount of peppermint essence.

I always get bummed when a recipe doesn’t work and so I immediately have to re-do it with variations to fix it.

Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie #2 (recipe below)

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups non-dairy chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
2/3 cup maple syrup
2/3 cup canola oil
2 tbsp water
1/4 tsp peppermint oil

Combine wet ingredients in a bowl. Sift dry ingredients, except for walnuts and chocolate, into another bowl and combine. Add dry to wet and stir until combined, without over mixing. Line baking trays with parchment or spray with cooking spray. Roll 1 1/2 balls and place on cookie tray, then slightly flatten the dough with your hand. Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes. Makes 16 regular sized cookies or 8 large cookies.

Cookie #2 is the winner! It’s still minty fresh, but the batter tastes better, the chocolate comes through and it doesn’t feel like you just drank mouthwash!

I attempted to make my first 4 layer cake. It was for my dad’s birthday. He’s a fan of chocolate on chocolate cake so I thought I’d spice it up a bit for him and make lots of it! It is vegan, by the way, and while my mom originally stuck her nose up to the idea of serving a vegan birthday cake to the family, it was a huge hit! Everything worked out for the most part. Although I still don’t know why every cake I make sinks slightly in the middle. I also have a hard time getting anything bigger than a cupcake out of a baking pan without losing some of it on the bottom. Perhaps I need better pans?

Looking good from the outside, this Raspberry Chocolate Mocha Cake with Chocolate Ganache and layers of Raspberry Preserve was scrumptious! But just one more picky criticism I have is that you can’t see the 4 layers. I used organic raspberry preserve from a jar in between the layers of cake, but it spreads out so thin and just soaks into the cake that you can’t see each beautiful slab. Aah well!

Raspberry Chocolate Mocha Cake
(make 2 batches for 4 layers)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup raw cane sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup strong brewed coffee
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup raw cacao powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt

In a large bowl whisk apple cider vinegar and soy milk and set aside. In a separate bowl sift together the flour, cacao powder, baking soda, baking powder, sea salt. Add to the soy milk and vinegar mixture the coffee, sugar, vanilla extract, and oil. Add the dry ingredients to wet and mix together until smooth. Divide the mixture into 2 greased round cake pans and bake at 350 F for 20 minutes.

For Chocolate Ganache you need to bring soy milk to a boil, then remove from heat and stir in enough non-dairy chocolate chips so the consistency is thick-ish. So it won’t drip too much, but rather stay in its place when you ice the cake. I didn’t measure the ingredients when I did this but it was about 1 cup soy milk and 2 cups non-dairy chocolate chips.

Assemble the cake by adding a layer of raspberry preserve in between layers. And using an icing spatula cover the entire cake with chocolate ganache. You could also just use ganache throughout the layers and eliminate the raspberry preserve. Garnish with fresh raspberries. Refrigerate the cake, but allow it to come to room temperature before cutting and serving.

Am I weird if I want to stay at home and cook on my Saturday night? I don’t want to go out and drink at a bar with my friends and yell talk. And if I’m going to spend money on something to put in my mouth I would rather it be food and not alcohol. Tonight I made a yummy naturally sweet and raw snack (which I will post tomorrow). While those are refrigerating, I am prepping components for a vegan lasagna so that it’s all ready for tomorrow’s dinner, and I just tried Jennifer’s (Sweet On Veg) Blueberry Chocolate Frozen Treat. OK, this is the second time this girl has changed my life! The first time, if you recall, was with her Raw Chocolate Ice Cream. So my boyfriend is in heaven right now over it and I’m singing “yummy yummy I got love in my tummy”. I think it might have made us high… it’s not such a boring Saturday night after all!

It’s not quite summer, despite what all those girls traipsing around the city in short shorts think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice out, but keep your pasty legs at home for now. Anyway, I celebrated this ‘nice’ weather and Easter with some Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes. I don’t celebrate Easter, per se, except the commercialized part of it that requires eating sweets. Worst part… no more Mini Eggs on a vegan diet! F my life. Just kidding… these cupcakes got me through. I didn’t eat them all to myself, only 2. The rest were shared with family after Easter dinner.

It’s a perfectly moist vanilla bean cupcake with creamy orange frosting. The sprinkling of glistening sanding sugar on top is almost reminiscent of ice crystals on a real Orange Creamsicle, isn’t it! I’m a nerd.

Vanilla Bean Cupcake (Makes 12)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup almond meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup oil
1/2 vanilla bean (seeds only)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine apple cider vinegar and soy milk together and set aside for 5 minutes to curdle. In another bowl sift together flour, almond meal, baking powder, soda and salt. Whisk sugar, oil (I used canola this time, but vegetable or coconut would work too), vanilla bean and extract into the curdled soy milk mixture. Add wet to dry ingredients and mix until just combined (don’t over mix). Pour into cupcake liners and bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes.

Orange Frosting

1/2 cup Tofutti vegan cream cheese
1/4 cup Earth Balance
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 orange (juice and zest)
4-5 cups powdered sugar

I actually used an orange I had left from The Orange Experiment that had been boiled 3 times. I think this might have made the orange flavor sweeter than if you just used a fresh orange. But don’t worry too much about that. Beat together Tofutti, Earth Balance, vanilla extract, orange juice and zest until fluffy. Continue adding sifted powdered sugar and beating with a mixer until the desired consistency is achieved for frosting your cupcakes.

These seriously taste like Orange Creamsicles… and thus got me in the summer spirit without donning short shorts!

I had so many oranges lying around (2 for 1 special on bags ‘o’ oranges) and I decided to use up what I could and make candied orange peel and a flourless orange cake with orange sauce/glaze. Things I learned: both are not worth the time it takes, you can’t make a flourless AND eggless cake, and I don’t like the taste of orange unless it’s in its natural state.

The candied peels worked out. My boyfriend and roommate who are candy hounds, ate them straight up and liked them. Except I know they’re supposed to be more orange instead of this rusty orange brown color. I don’t know what to do with them either? I might garnish cupcakes next week for Easter or include some chopped candied peel in some kind of spice cookie. If you look up candied orange peel online you’ll be faced with many different ways to candy peels. I’m not sure what works best and why, but I followed Candied Orange Peel on this page. I will never be doing this again, so feel free to experiment on your own time, if you so desire!

Then there’s the cake… and I’ll tell you right away this did not work out and I had to throw it out. I hate that, it’s the WORST thing ever! The reason I’m blogging about something that didn’t work out is because I think it’s good to let you know that you can’t win ‘em all and it’s ok. Even though I did waste a lot of money on friggin almond flour and have nothing to show from my deal on oranges! Anyway, I randomly found a beautifully photographed flourless orange cake on a blog called Citrus and Candy. It was a time consuming recipe, but I thought what the hey! After some internet researching I thought I could get away with replacing the eggs in this recipe to make it vegan. I ended up using a combination of one flax egg replacement and 1/2 cup soy yogurt to equal the other two eggs. Well, after 70 minutes of baking I thought this cake is getting too brown on the outside and the toothpick came out mostly clean, so it must be done. Plus it looked great right out of the oven!

Basically I didn’t discover it’s mushy insides until I made the orange sauce topping – which I also screwed up and cooked too long, resulting in the sugar drying like a hard candy top on the cake – and when I cut it it started to fall apart. I was determined to salvage this cake, so I removed the candy coated orange top and put it back in the oven… for a long time. Obviously, that still didn’t work.

After all this, the disturbing thing is I was obsessed with still getting a good end result photo. It’s like if I never told you about any of this disaster you would look at this photo and think… wow what an awesome flourless orange cake! But in conclusion, if you like orange, have at least 4 hours on your hands and aren’t opposed to using eggs, make that cake recipe on Citrus and Candy – I bet it’s good. I so wish this worked out, but I must move on! I didn’t eat this slice, either, in case you’re wondering.

I’m not even joking about this… but because I got to talking about South Park with someone at work, I couldn’t stop thinking about my favorite moment on that show ever, Chocolate Salty Balls. Which made me think… I’ve never actually made these before and I have to pay tribute to a real Chef – Chef on South Park.

So I made Chocolate Salty Balls. It’s probably the easiest treat recipe around and typically they are only eaten at Xmas time. But why? They are delicious morsels of chocolate and peanut butter that can be eaten whenever you damn please! And since they are even better right out of the freezer, you can make a bunch, freeze ‘em and they’ll be ready, waiting for you, when the time is right.

Obviously you need to use natural peanut butter when doing this, since you’re going to be adding sugar. You might as well start with something healthy. And because mine are a vegan version I’ve used non-dairy chocolate and vegan friendly powdered sugar. But it’s not necessarily necessary!
Chocolate Salty Balls

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cup natural peanut butter
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 cup rice crisp cereal
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
2-3 cups chocolate chips

Mix all the ingredients, except the chocolate chips, together in a bowl to form a paste/dough. It will handle better for rolling balls if you put it in the freezer for 30 minutes. Then roll 1 inch balls and put them onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment or wax paper. Freeze again to harden while you melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Then dip the balls or roll them in the melted chocolate using a fork to move them around and lift them back out on to the cookie sheet. Store in the freezer or fridge (I prefer freezer) and put ‘em in your mouth and suck ‘em whenever you want something sweet and indulgent.

This is not the recipe, as sung by Chef on South Park – which I’m sure would also work? But I still wanted to call them what they are, and that’s chocolate salty balls!