Cookies & Cocktails Plus Catching Up

It's been awhile again. I haven't been in much of a writing mood lately I guess. It's an overwhelming time of year - work is busy wrapping up for our holiday shutdown, busy trying to think of presents for everyone (and realizing Christmas is in less than two weeks!!), busy cooking, and busy spending time with friends. Those aren't bad things it's just sometimes it all gets piled on at once and stresses me out a little.

But enough of that - there are a few exciting recipes I have been wanting to share from the past few weeks! The first is for this salad - it pretty much has everything that is great in it: kale, pineapple, avocado, black beans, and peanuts. You can find the recipe here. I more or less just followed it.

I made the salad to go along with a West African Peanut Stew. My coworker sent me the recipe for this one and I'm not sure where they got it from, so I will share it with you here!

West African Peanut Stew
2 c. onion, chopped
1 T. vegetable oil
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
1 t. powdered ginger
1 c. carrots, chopped
2 c. winter squash or sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
5 c. vegetable stock
3/4 c. smooth peanut butter (I used chunky and omitted the chopped peanuts)
1 T. sugar
1/2 c. diced green onion
1 T. chopped peanuts

Sauté the onions over medium heat for 3 minutes.  Add the cayenne and ginger.  Add the carrots and squash.  Add the stock, cover and simmer about 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender.  Puree with a hand blender if desired - I did only slightly, not until it was anywhere near smooth.  Add the peanut butter and sugar.  Season with salt and pepper.  Stir until blended.  Serve topped with green onions and chopped peanuts.

The next recipe doesn't have a great photo to go along with it - sorry, I was hungry after this pre-P90X workout! More on that later. I had some leftover pumpkin from making cookies that I needed to use up, and I'd been curious about these pumpkin and squash mac and "cheese" recipes I'd been seeing lately. I loosely followed this recipe here, except I cheated a little and added ~1/2 cup of smoked Gouda since I had it leftover. I didn't have any sage (or at least I didn't want to go out in the dark and rain to pick some) so I used some thyme to season it. The sauce was a bit thick so I thinned it a little with some pasta water - I think I could have actually used a little more since it was still pretty thick. I thought this was delicious though - super creamy and flavorful and a bit healthier alternative to regular mac & cheese with all of the comfort.

I've been doing a lot of holiday baking and candy making recently too. Here's a few things I've tried out so far:

Spritz cookies (fun with the cookie press!)

 Homemade Peppermint Patties (first time I attempted tempering my own chocolate - mixed results but better than I feared!)

 Caramel Pecan Bars (I have about a million of these since I used the recipe from the large batch cookbook!)

 This past weekend we had out annual Cookies & Cocktails party - I love entertaining and this party is pretty simple since you're asking people to all contribute a holiday treat. We always have a ton of food and end up with not enough table space to even display everything! It's a nice chance to get all of our friends together to hang out and surprisingly I think almost everyone actually likes the dressing up part - it certainly makes it more festive! Check out how nice everyone looked! I think the guys win this year - they all looked very fancy.

We had a smaller turnout this year - December is a tough time to schedule events! It was great fun though and luckily my coworkers willingly ate every single leftover that I brought in today!

Hope you're all getting ready for the holidays without too much stress - if so, let me know how you're doing it please!

-C

Vegan Chocolate Cake

Yesterday while browsing The Pioneer Woman's website I saw she had posted a recipe for Red Velvet Cake and with it a link to The Best Frosting Ever. I'd recently had a long conversation with my coworker about frosting and how sometimes it can be a little gritty or overly sugary even with powdered sugar, so I was really intrigued by the fact that this frosting recipe used granulated sugar and claimed to be exceptionally creamy and smooth. How could that be? I kept thinking about this frosting recipe for the rest of the afternoon.

Then, while flipping through my Joy of Vegan Baking cooking, Jonathan pointed to the recipe for chocolate cake and asked if I would make that. Perfect! Now I have a valid excuse for making frosting too! Of course I said yes (who says no to chocolate cake!?) and got started. This chocolate cake recipe really is insanely easy. It didn't require me to do any weird egg substitutes or even to use soy milk! I don't always have soy milk around because I usually eat oatmeal for breakfast and not cereal so this deters me from a lot of recipes. I also didn't need an electric mixer to mix it which I thought was convenient. I'll get to the recipe in a minute though. Now on to the frosting - it truly was smooth and creamy with no hint of the sugar granules! It did require an awful lot of beating (15 minutes?) and I'm still not positive I did it long enough, but the taste was very good! It was almost whip cream like and not overly sweet. I'm not a huge frosting fan, so I really enjoyed that. You can find the recipe on Tasty Kitchen here.

As for the chocolate cake - it was moist, not crumbly (which I find happens with a lot of vegan baking), and delicious. I can't believe I hadn't made this sooner - it will now be my go to chocolate cake recipe!

Vegan Chocolate Cake
From: The Joy of Vegan  Baking
1 1/2 Cups Flour
3/4 Cups Sugar
1/4 Cup Cocoa Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup Cold Water
1/3 Cup Canola Oil
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
1 Tbs White Distilled Vinegar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (or if your oven likes to burn things, like mine, heat it to ~325 degrees).
2. Grease and flour a 9" cake pan - I used a springform pan to ensure the cake would come out without breaking - set aside. You could skip this step by using muffin liners and making cupcakes too.
3. Whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt until well combined.
4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the water, oil, vanilla, and vinegar in the center. Whisk until just combined.
5. Pour into your prepared cake pan and put it in the oven - bake for 25-30 minutes. (The recipe says 30 minutes, but even with my oven turned down mine was done at 25 - just keep an eye on it).
6. If you have the patience to let it cool and you like frosting, frost it with the best frosting ever recipe linked above! I realize this would no longer make it vegan - but if you eat dairy products and are still terrified at the sight of raw eggs then this whole recipe should work out great for you.  :)
7. If your frosting looks a little suspicious still and you're not sure if you should keep beating it you can sprinkle on chocolate chips like I did to detract from it!

All of My Favorite Things

I finally got around to uploading the pictures of a few of things I made this weekend. I'm excited because I've been messing around with Photoshop some and downloaded a bunch of new custom actions to use!

I didn't quite get around to making the things I mentioned in my previous entry, but I think it was pretty close! First off I made Banana Bread - I love banana bread so much, I think I would make it all the time except that I rarely buy bananas! If you read my last post where I mentioned how much I love VegWeb you probably know that is where I got the recipe - you can find it here. I like it because it uses very few ingredients (and ones I always have on hand, except the bananas of course) and it tastes just like the bread I remember as a kid except  there are no eggs or dairy!

Speaking of bread, I also finally got around to making the Gruyere Stuffed Loafs that I have been meaning to make for quite awhile now (Roma - if you're reading this, thanks for the recipe!). Luckily it was a three day weekend because I planned to make the bread Sunday only to realize I needed to let the starter sit over night! I'm glad I noticed that and was able to get it started and still make the bread on Monday! This bread was a little bit messy to make, but I think it was worth it - how can you go wrong with bread stuffed with cheese? I don't think it's possible.

To go with the bread I made a recipe that I came across back around Thanksgiving time but never ended up making. It is for a Hazelnut and Chard Ravioli Salad from 101 Cookbooks. I'm still really into kale and not as much a fan of chard, so I used that instead. I also used a Butternut Squash ravioli - I can't recall the name of the brand, but they come in the freezer section and they make several vegan varieties! Other than that the only change to the recipe I made was to throw in a bit of butter when I tossed the ravioli with the vegetables. I really recommend this recipe - I think it's a perfect winter meal (and it sure feels like winter here still, there was snow today!).

But now on to the best part - candy! Since I made Sea Salt Truffles last week I decided I wanted to do the same, but with caramel. Do you remember how much I love caramel? It's a lot. Since the last (and only time) I tried making it it came out a little too soft I tried to get the temperature just a tad higher - that backfired and I ended up with inch-thick toffee. Not very edible unfortunately, unless you want to risk breaking a tooth. Thanks to the three day weekend (again!) I had time for a redo. I made some that were coated in chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt and a few that had caramel wrapped around a hazelnut and dipped in chocolate.

Two people at work told me the hazelnut ones were the best things they had ever eaten, one person told me the sea salt ones were better than anything at See's, and another person told me that it was their new favorite caramel (and that they also really like caramel)! I'm thinking I should really set up a business here! Maybe someday...  wouldn't that be nice?

Speaking of, I'm actually going to take a weekend class here in another month on starting your own catering business. A girl can dream, right?

-C

P.S. As I was adding photos I realized I forgot to mention the Olive Oil Cakes with Lemon and Thyme! They were pretty good - nothing too eventful. Unfortunately I didn't think you could really taste the thyme at all and I was really hoping for a nice flavor combination there. If you like lemon though, these cakes were great!