A Beginning to a Birthday Extravaganza

As I mentioned previously, my friends and family have a lot of birthdays during this time of the year.  (My younger brother has one today, actually.)  Two of my best friends have birthdays within a week and a half of each other, and I usually bake them something while I am at home during Thanksgiving break.  Last year I actually made two different sets of cupcakes, but this year I said that I would make one big cake if they could agree on the flavor.  Tiramisu was requested, and here is what I came up with.

Is that enough of a close up for you? I took the cupcake idea from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and ran with it. I apologize of the poor qualities of the photos. It was nighttime when I took the pictures, and my camera was about to die.  (I really need to look into getting a new camera...)  The one below was also taken after I had delivered the cake, hence the plastic wrap, random booze bottle, and star wars lego in the background.

Basically, I followed the recipe for the cake exactly. The middle layer is actually the dark chocolate Chocoreale that I still had left from my stay in Germany.  For the coffee/Kalua soaking, first I lightly cut off a thin layer from the top of the cake so that it could soak up the mixture better. (This also gave me an excuse to try the cake before delivering it.)  Because I used the Chocoreale to keep the layers together, I only needed one batch of the cream cheese frosting, which was good.  The cake was very well received (as can be seen since only half is left), and a few of my friends could not believe that it was vegan.

Coming soon will be what I made for my family for Thanksgiving.  (Sadly, they insisted on cooking their own dead carcass, but one can only do so much.)  I am also being rather lazy this year and am not going to make my own main dish.  (I'll save the fancy stuff for Christmas, I suppose.)  However, all of the sides and desserts will be vegan.  This morning, I did make banana walnut pancakes and scrambled tofu with Trader Joe's soy chorizo mixed in. Hopefully I'll be able to snap a picture of the leftovers tomorrow. Other pictures to come will be a crustless pumpkin pie, multigrain rolls (yes, from scratch), and the veganized version of my dad's mashed "party" potatoes.

And what about birthday cakes? Well, my brother has requested Coconut Lime Cupcakes (but I'm not sure when I'll be baking them if we are taking a mini vacation tomorrow.)  A good friend of mine from University has a birthday this next week as well, so I shall be baking her something next weekend.

Failing at VeganMoFo

Yes, so my apologies for dropping out of VeganMoFo as it was reaching the final stretch.  School and life just started to get way too crazy, so I didn't have much time to cook awesome meals (only simple things).  With the end of the school semester approaching, things are liable to get just as crazy, but I'll probably be doing lots of baking to help de-stress.  Plus, holiday foods will be coming. To make up for my lack of activity, here are two pictures.
This falafel and tahini sauce was made sometime during VeganMoFo, but I never had time to blog about it. (The picture is actually taken from a reheated meal. *gasp*) Needless to say, I almost considered using this recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance as my meal on Thanksgiving.

This is a double layer cake of red velvet with cream cheese frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World, naturally. I made it for the birthday of one of my roommate's, who was quite obviously turning 22. I was actually going to write happy birthday, but I ran out of time and was going to be late for work. The writing was made of quick melty ganache and set up quite nicely after being in the fridge.

That recipe is absolutely amazing, so, if you haven't tried it, you better get to it soon. So good. It took a lot of control for me to let the birthday girl have the final piece when it got to that point.

VeganMoFo: Roommate bonding Wednesdays

I am not sure how this started, but it has become a thing for the roommates in my apartment to all have dinner together on Wednesday nights. What makes it even more special, is how it will be one of us cooking for the other three. Last week, the volunteered cook wasn't even vegan, but she cooked a vegan meal since two of us in the apartment are vegan. I hadn't cooked a Wednesday dinner yet, so I volunteered for this week.

Last time my other vegan roommate cooked, she make pasta, so I knew that I wanted to make something different.  I didn't want to make something overly vegan (just yet).  Thus, I wanted to avoid tofu or tempeh.  Luckily, my parents went to the Farmers' Market for me at home while I was taking the GRE Chemistry subject test last weekend, so I had some fresh produce like butternut squash, cherry tomatoes, and green bell pepper. I was initially thinking of a lasagna of some sort, but after seeing the Pumpkin and Black Bean Casserole on Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, I knew that I had found the perfect dinner.

Do yourself a favor and make this soon while squash is in season! I used butternut squash instead of pumpkin, and it turned out amazing. It is very flavorful even if I went a little heavy on the cumin and paprika.  The nutritional yeast gives it a little something without tasting overly vegan-y.  Everyone loved it and ate it so quickly that I forgot to get a picture! Like Susan says, it does look a lot prettier in the pan than it does on the plate, but the taste certainly makes up for that.

VeganMoFo: Care packages are the best

Over at the ppk we had a care package swap for the month of October.  I had never participated in such a thing before, but I can officially say that I am hooked!  I got some really awesome stuff, and it wasn't all food.

In the box are some green tea walnut biscotti from Isa and Terry's upcoming cookie book. (I've already had two pieces, and the flavor is interesting and hard to describe.) There is also some ginger pear jam, which I will try for breakfast tomorrow. I had heard of the mythical vegan peanut chews, and I now have a bag of my own. Oh my. So addicting. I also got some white chocolate chips. Now I just need to decide what wonderful baked goods I will use them in. That scarf is so long and amazingly soft. I wore it this evening and already got complimented on it. What fun. The mug is adorable with a sun on it and is filled with (mostly vegan slogan) pins. Oh, and I can't forget the cute card!

I knew it would be coming any day now, but it definitely made my evening.  I can only hope that mine was well received too.

VeganMoFo: Blowing the Socks off of Omnis with Cookies

Last night I went to the party, where one of the hosts had a birthday a few days ago. Naturally, I decided to bake him some cookies as a present.  After double checking to make sure he had no food allergies, I decided on Isa's Peanut butter oatmeal cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance.

These cookies are seriously addicting.  He hid the cookies after I arrived and didn't reveal them until late in the night. Everyone was raving about them and couldn't believe that they were vegan after that little fact was revealed.  One girl asked me what made the cookies stick together if I didn't use eggs, milk, or butter.  I find it interesting that people don't realize how vegan baking is so similar to non-vegan baking.  (Admittedly, I felt the same way before I was vegan.) Yes, some recipes might call for tofu, but they really don't call for obscure ingredients.

What lovely peanut butter goodness resides in these cookies. I saved three for myself (hey, they couldn't fit on the plate!) and managed to eat them for breakfast this morning. Well, I ate two, had a hot chocolate, and then ate the last one right after taking that picture. They are definitely my favorite, and my go-to recipe whenever I want to impress omnivores. In all seriousness, I have never met an omni who didn't like these cookies. Score for veganism!

VeganMoFo: Pseudo-Thai for Omnis

Sadly, my trip home has coincided with the seeming demise of my camera.  I will see what I can do to revive it, or maybe temporarily borrow my mum's.  In the meantime, tonight's dinner will have to go without a photo yet again. (Hopefully I can figure something out by lunchtime tomorrow when I reheat leftovers.)

Even though I wasn't able to get to the Farmers' Market last weekend, I still had an eggplant and a few small bell peppers which needed to get used.  As in as soon as possible. I had been thinking about this dish for the past few days and it is a hybrid of sorts of this dish from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen and this in the PPK recipes section.  I was inspired by a late night (not entirely sober) snack of the original quinoa dish that I had doused in store-bought peanut sauce and extra hot sauce. It was so good and addicting.  Having my eggplant made me think of making it again.

I simplified the recipe a bit since I am at home.  The only seasoning that I used for the 1 1/2 cups of quinoa was 3 cloves of minced garlic. I used coconut oil when I sautéed an eggplant, a yellow summer squash, 3 small zucchinis, and 3 small bell peppers.  When those were done, I combined it with the cooked quinoa.  The peanut sauce was run through a blender before being poured over the dish and consisted of the following:

spicy peanut sauce 

 1 cup peanut butter

 1 cup hot water

1 tsp ground ginger (had none fresh)

1 bunch of scallions with a few of the green stems added in for good measure

zest of 1 lime

juice of said lime

a few squirts of sriracha hot sauce (I couldn't be too liberal with it since my mum can't handle hot stuff.)

I was really pleased with the dinner, and my younger brother even got seconds, which is always a good thing since he can be such a picky little omni.

VeganMoFo: Green smoothies, the sequal

I know that I talked about green smoothies a week or so ago, but I mixed up my recipe again with interesting results.  This time I halved the amount of water and ice that I used previously, froze the banana first, and used two kiwis instead of a kiwi and raspberries.  I will say that I missed the tartness that the raspberries added.  Plus, I had no idea how hard it was to peel a frozen banana. What a pain. It did add a thicker consistency to the smoothie that I liked though.

(See that book underneath my smoothie? I'll be taking the Chemistry GRE subject test in 3 days.  So, even though I am going home for my Uni's fall 'reading' break, I will be doing lots of studying. Yikes. Hopefully I'll be able to fit in a few good vegan meals for my omnivore family.)

I don't have any excited meal updates because, even though I planned on making a fun dinner tonight, one of my roommates ended up cooking for our entire apartment (which includes another vegan in addition to me).  Here is the quick picture that I took before my camera died.  She didn't do too bad, and I didn't find her Moroccan stew as spicy as she seemed to think it was.  I think it is my turn next Wed. to cook for the entire apartment. Any suggestions would be welcome...