Canada Day Recap: Brick Oven Bread, Greasy Fries and Solar Powered Street Lamps

Yesterday during our Canada Day festivities, I discovered an amazing jewel of a bakery.  It's called Romania Country Bread, and I was lured in by a Romanian man sitting outside the bakery at a checkerboard table, telling the throngs of passersby that inside was the best bread we have ever tasted.

He was not kidding.

If organic stone-ground whole wheat bread is your only product, it better be good- and trust me, it is fantastic!  The rustic loaves come in two sizes, 1/4 kilo for $5.00 or 1 kilo for $10.00.   The reason their bread is so amazing is because it's made the bread was supposed to be made - in a massive brick oven.  I was talking with some people outside of the bakery and apparently it took them years to get a permit from the city to build this oven because of fire safety hazards and such.

I bought two of the 1/4 kilo loaves. One of them was mostly eaten by the time we got home (yes, I shared).

We also visited Pajos at the beach to grab a veggie dog and greasy fries served in a cone of paper.  I love how the picnic tables have holes carved in them to accomodate the cones of fries.Unfortunately Pajos doesn't have do-it-yourself condiments, so this is what I got when I asked for mustard & relish.  (Note the ketchup and absence of relish.) It's a good thing I like mustard!
 

And the final highlight of my day was not food related, but environmental.  A lamp post unexpectedly powered by a solar panel and wind turbine.  It's part one Richmond BC's pilot projects and I hope we see more initiatives like this become mainstream. 

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers, I hope you had fun celebrating Canada's 143rd birthday :)

Vegan Cupcakes take over a 2 year old's b-day party!

People always make comments about how it works when my vegan daughter goes to a birthday party, and how she's gonna miss out on this and that when she's in school...I don't really think that saving the lives of animals can be looked at like missing out on anything.  I usually let the person know that gordita gets her own treats at birthday parties and she's perfectly happy with it.

I usually bake a vegan cupcake for her to take to the party, and a lunch too, depending on what's being served.  Asking the host/esswhat will be on the menu in advance is always the best way to plan ahead.  In fact, at one party I took gordita too, one of the other kids wanted to eat the lunch I had made gordita instead of the pizza that was ordered.

To celebrate my little one's 2nd birthday last week, I made the Golden Vanilla cupcakes and the Basic Chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW and they were all gobbled up by children and adults. And why not?  They are so delicious.  I liked the chocolate ones better, but then again, I like anything chocolate - I'm a chocoholic.

I also had made a batch for gordita's daycare group and the children and staff there loved them too.  If you don't already have this cookbook, you should run out and buy it.  Or stay where you are and order it from Amazon.

Cheers to Vegan Cupcakes, they really do rule the world!!

White Chocolate Craisin Cookies

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas full of joy and laughter.  For those who don't celebrate this holiday, I still hope you had a chance to enjoy the best the season has to offer - whether it was amazing deals while shopping, or some really good food.

This year I hosted some of my out of town relatives for Christmas.  And being the good hostess that I am, I wanted to bake them a festive treat.  I chose white chocolate Craisin cookies because I like how the color reflects the holiday season.  They turned out crispy on the outside, and chewy on the inside.


White Chocolate Craisin Cookies

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp ground sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup Earth Balance (or other vegan margerine)
2/3 cup brown sugar
Egg replacer equivilant to 1 egg (ie 1 1/2 tsp egg replacer + 2 tbsp water)
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup Craisins
1/4 cup vegan white chocolate chips

Combine flour, sea salt, and baking soda in a medium-sized mixing bowl.  In a seperate mixing bowl, cream together Earth Balance/margerine and brown sugar. Add "egg" and vanilla, and beat until smooth.  Add dry ingredients to the wet, and mix well.  Fold in Craisins and white chocolate chips.

Using a cookie scoop, drop balls of dough on a slightly greased baking pan.  If you don't have a cookie scoop, you can use a regular spoon to scoop the dough out, and then roll the dough in the palm of your hands to form a ball.  Flatten each dough ball slightly before placing them in the oven.

Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.  Cool slightly before removing from pan. Makes about 24 cookies, depending on size.

It's Pumpkin Season

When I think autumn, I think pumpkin.  I also think of foods like squash, hearty soup, cranberries, and hot cocoa.  And speaking of pumpkin, VegNews recently posted a Perfect Pumpkin Muffin recipe that I'll no doubt be making in the next few days.  But the first of this season's pumpkin baking for me was a recipe from La Dolce Vegan.  I replaced chocolate chips for the cranberries and made a couple dozen of these:

What are your pumpkin plans this season?

Deeelish Dobos Torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

The monthly Daring Baker's Challenges are always challenging, and making a vegan version of the recipes that are selected by the hosts makes it even more so.  Usually I stick to healthy cooking, making low fat and low sugar substitutes whenever I can - but that was all out the window for this confection!  

The Dobos Torte was supposed to be a five-layer sponge cake, and apparently some recipes end up with 12 layers!  That would be quite a tall slice of cake.  I think that the omission of eggs attributed to less batter in general for mine, and alas, I only had a three-layer cake.  

I love how the chopped hazelnuts matched the dark chocolate "buttercream"icing, and the caramel topping was amazing.  As I mentioned, this is an extremely sweet dessert, and just a small slice will satisfy any sweet craving. 

Celebrating Gordita's first birthday!

We recently celebrated Gordita's first birthday by throwing a little birthday bash.  I made a vegan luncheon for our family and close friends and Gordita had a great time being the focus of so much attention. 

I baked two cakes: a vanilla-banana cake of my own creation, with white vanilla frosting, and a chocolate cake from La Dolce Vegan called Wolffie's Cocoa Cake with Chocolate Fudgey Frosting - both cakes were very well received. 

I wanted to make a few dishes with a Caribbean twist, in honour of Gordita's Caribbean heritage, so I made maki (sushi) with avocado and fried plantain banana, a tropical fruit platter, and mango berry iced tea.  We also had latin music and reggae playing in the background.

Other treats included mock tuna maki, mock tuna roll-ups (I'm so in love with Happy Herbivore's recipe!), tofu stix with peanut sauce, almond  butter & strawberry jam rollups, Ian's Alpha tots, spring rolls, and a big platter of fresh organic veggies.

 Feliz cumpleaño Gordita!

Two uses for Vitasoy Holly Nog, and a munchin in a Christmas Tree....

I hope you are all enjoying the holidays.  I haven't had too much time to catch up on everyone else's blogs to see all of the goodies that are being serving up, but I hope to check them out over the next few days.

 

In the meanwhile, how about some Rum and Holly Nog? with a little sprinkle of cinnamon.  This will warm you inside and out!

For Christmas morning breakfast I whipped up some corn bread from La Dolce Vegan and subbed in Holly Nog because, whoops, I forgot to buy my usual almond milk when I went shopping the other day.  Even my friend's dad who is very skeptical of any soy/tofu/alternative food liked it!

Well, it's time for some late snacks and a movie with the girls (and some more rum & Holly Nog!) so I'll catch up with you later!  Merry Christmas :) I'll leave you with one last photo, of our little munchkin.

Holiday Yummies

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever you prefer.  I wish all of you a joyous holiday season and may you be blessed all year with good friends, family and yummy FOOD!

I've had to miss a couple of days of work due to some bad weather.  In fact, my flight to be with my family for Christmas was cancelled, so I'm spending the holiday with friends and hoping that my rescheduled flight on Boxing Day doesn't get cancelled. 

On the bright side, being snowed in and stuck at home leaves lots of time to bake some old favorites for our guests. 

I made a batch of Almost Sugar-Free Peanut Butter Cookies subbing in almond butter...

And I made some of Dreena's Chocolate Mint Melties.  These are soooo good.  If you've never made them, you must find any excuse to do so.

And I also made a carrot cake.  I had an abundance of carrots from my weekly produce bin (Green Earth Organics) so carrot cake was the perfect way to use some of them.  I used a recipe from Martha Stewart's website and made a few substitutions.  You can refer to the original recipe here, but I'll list it with my substitutions below:

  

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 tbsp ground flax + 6 tbsp water

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup packed light-brown sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened almond milk

1 cup finely shredded packed (about 2 medium) carrots 

Quick Glaze, or confectioners' sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly oil an 8 inch round baking pan and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk flax/water, sugars, almond milk, and oil until smooth. Gently mix wet mixture into dry ingredients until moistened; mix in carrots. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes (if browning too quickly, tent cake with aluminum foil). Cool in pan, 15 minutes. Turn out of pan, remove paper, and cool completely on a rack, right side up. Apply glaze, or dust with confectioners’ sugar. 

 Right now I've got a batch of Lavash baking, and I'll be making some lemon-dill hummus to go with it.

(Vegan) Caramel Cake With Caramelized "Butter" Frosting

No, that's not a giant donut.  It's this month's Daring Baker's challenge from author Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater and her signature caramel cake.  The challenge was hosted by Dolores, along with Alex,  Jenny, and alternative baker Natalie.  If you have the need to satisfy a sweet craving, this recipe may well cure you of that forever.  It is S-W-E-E-T!  Too sweet for me, actually.  I mean, I'm always trying to cut sugar out of my recipes, and here I am eating it by the pound for this challenge.  I stopped counting the sugar after the first 4 cups of it!  Here's to hoping it doesn't go straight to my hips or butt ;)

I had to make a few substitutions like Earth Balance instead of margerine, ground flax instead of eggs, and almond milk instead of dairy milk.  I've never made caramel syrup before, it wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be.  But I have to admit, I was wearing heavy oven mitts after reading the disclaimer about having a bowl of ice water ready to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin. 

Once it was all said and done, I gathered up some girlfriends and we dug in.  Everyone thought it was fantastic, though we all felt naughty eating it because it has about, oh, a zillion calories.  I'm gonna work those calories off tomorrow at the mall doing some speed shopping...or trying to, anyways. 

Pumpkin Spice Bread

I absolutely love the scent of cloves, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg, especially when they are coming from my kitchen!  I call this group of fragrant spices my "autumn spices" because when I smell them I think about a cold rainy day when red and orange leaves are dropping from the trees outside. They just smell like autumn.  I  morphed a banana loaf recipe into a pumpkin counterpart and of course after making substitutions and additions, the final recipe is nothing like its original.

If you're familiar with my baking at all, you already know that this is super healthy, with no almost no sugar or fat, but don't worry, it's definitely full of flavour.

Pumpkin Spice Bread

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped pecans

4 packets of stevia

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp cloves

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp allspice

1/2 cup agave nectar

4 tbsp ground flax + 6 tbsp water

1/4 cup unsulphered, blackstrap molasses

1 cup pumpkin puree

Combine the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.  In a small mixing bowl, stir together the remaining ingredients.  Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed, do not over mix.  Pour batter into a lightly oiled loaf pan .  Sprinkle a handful of pumpkin seeds on top if desired, and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Fabu-lash Lavash

I was completely thrilled to discover that my second ever daring baker challenge was vegan!  No substitutions necessary, just a straight up Lavash Cracker from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread.  I strayed only slightly from the recipe in that I used whole wheat flour instead of unbleached all purpose flour, I added 1 tbsp of guar gum, and I sprinkled ground pumpkin seeds on it right before baking in the oven.

The instructions say to roll the dough paper thin, and this is probably the most important step, as I learned the hard way that if the dough is too thick it ends up being pita-like.  Still tasty, but I don't think it could really be called a cracker.  My second attempt turned out much better after I realized just how thin paper thin is supposed to be.

The other half of the challenge was to make a dip for the lavash.  I decided I wanted to try making something raw, and I came up with a delicious spinach & artichoke dip which was a hit with my friends - they couldn't believe that I made it by just tossing random ingredients into the food processor.  Seriously, there is no chopping or preparation of ingredients needed.  It's that simple.  Raw can be so easy, I really should eat more raw foods.

*UPDATE:  as someone pointed out, the artichokes aren't raw so I fudged that up.  Hmm maybe raw isn't so easy!

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

1 16 oz can white kidney beans, drained
1 small jar of artichoke hearts in oil, drained
1 cup fresh spinach
3 cloves garlic
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
pinch of salt & pepper
pinch of cayanne pepper

Blend everything in a food processor until smooth.

Platinum Waffles with Blackberry-Lime Syrup

With the absence of banana, sugar, and dark vanilla, these waffles are not a familiar golden brown, but instead, a delicate platinum hue.  It creates a stunning contrast for the rich color of the blackberry-lime syrup.

PLATINUM WAFFLES:

1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
3/4 tbsp stevia
1 1/4 cups unsweetened almond milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp oil (canola, olive...)
3 tbsp ground flax
3 tbsp water
1/2 tsp white vanilla

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sea salt, and stevia.  In a seperate bowl, mix together almond milk, vinegar, oil, flax, water and vanilla; add to dry ingredients and stir until blended.  Pour onto lightly oiled, hot waffle iron.

BLACKBERRY-LIME SYRUP

2 cups blackberries, strained
1 tsp freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup agave nectar

Simmer all three ingredients in a small saucepan over medium-low heat for 15-20 minutes or until thickened.  This is great on pancakes and waffles, and even ice cream!

Who Choux Who?

When I first learned of this months Daring Baker's challenge, Chocolate Éclaires, my first reaction was somewhere along the lines of "OMG what have I gotten myself into?"  Having never made Pâte à Choux before, and then having to veganize it as well was definitely a challenge, considering that making pastry in general is not something that I consider myself very good at.  But I closed my eyes and jumped right in, hoping that the results would at least be edible.

After several experiments I can honestly say that this will require more testing in order to have the kind of happy ending that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy inside.  My first attempt at the dough turned out to be a good texture, but every single one of the puffs deflated.  I think I let them cool too fast, even though I followed the directions of leaving them in the oven with the door open for a period of time. 

My subsequent baches didn't deflate but I never got the dough to be as smooth as it was the first time.  I had better results with little round puffs than with the logs.  I also thought it would be a good time to use the white vanilla I bought when we went to Punta Cana so I went with a vanilla filling that sadly turned out more pudding like than whipped and fluffly as I had imagined.  While my little eclaires turned out to taste pretty good, they fell short of the greatness I was anticipating.  I'm all puffed out for now so it might be a while until I tinker with them bit more.