Peanut Butter Balls

PBBs using new rolling technique. Smooth operators.

Intros and Inspirations

Mom used to make this and bring it to family gatherings where she was showered with compliments. A close cousin reminded Mom that she in fact had given her the recipe and made them first (near the time when she invented the peanut butter chocolate combo) but this remains a family favorite, origin feud or no.

History of Dish

They are two great tastes that taste great together. This vegan version has tasters exclaiming, “These are vegan?!” with even more italics than I could muster with this font. These are also similar (or identical) to buckeyes.

Yield

Enough to cost you the equivalent of a month long gym membership, biking to work every day until Easter, or More to Love status forever.

Ingredients

• 1 cup peanut butter
• ½ cup non-hydro soy butter (Earth Balance=the best)*
• 1 t vanilla (optional)
• 1 – 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
• 1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips**
• 2 T coconut oil or soy butter

Whip together:

Peanut butter, soy butter, & vanilla

Add & whip:

Powdered sugar

*Note: for an even more decadent (but harder to roll into balls) treat, use equal parts peanut butter and soy butter

** Whole Foods semi-sweet and Ghiradelli semi-sweet are vegan last I checked.

Steps

• Refrigerate the mixture for about an hour.
• Roll into balls.
• For best/easiest rolling results, freeze these for another hour.
• Once ready to roll, melt the chips & oil/soy butter using the double boiler method.
• Your PBB’s will be dipped then placed onto a tray/plate. It’s easiest if you place them onto a plate with waxed or parchment paper.
• To dip, use a fork and a slotted wooden spoon (thanks Amanda) and lower each ball into the melted chocolate. Let drip off into pan, then place onto wax paper.

Place into fridge to harden – it should only take 30 minutes or less. Or leave them out if you’re without heat and it’s winter time.

Conclusion

Perfect with a little soy milky, or soy nog.

These are from an experiment I did pouring the chocolate into cupcake cup minies. Makes you feel like Mrs. Reeses!

Layered Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake

And then, all dressed up

Intros and Inspirations

When I was an eater of cheese, I most certainly did not agree with it being included in the cake family.* So I do not have a long, loving history with this dish. However, back in Seattle as a new vegan I had the most beautiful piece of dessert awesomeness in the form of vegan Kahlua Cheesecake one day.

From then on, I was ready to embrace the flavor marriage. Though the recipe below is rather opposite something Paula ‘heart failure’ Dean would prescribe for your sweet teeth, and adapted from the Fat Free Vegan blog, it in fact is not fat free. Instead, we have a rich, sweet, tangy, and spicy cake wonderment that is sure to make people fall in love with you (all over again).

I decided to serve this at our 3^rd annual Vegan Thanksgiving Record Party.

Cake adapted/reprinted from the Fat Free Vegan Blog.

*Ditto for the chocolate-fruit combo.

History of Dish

As if I needed more encouragement to make this dish every week to celebrate things I make up, it turns out cheesecake is thought to originate in ancient Greece. Better yet, Pythagoras, a vegetarian, was rumored to have baked the first vegan version of this dish.** Unfortunately, it failed since the local Agora was out of Tofutti Cream Cheese.

Democracy and cheesecake follows.

** This was completely fabricated during sugar high experienced by blog poster.

Yield and Preheat

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

Ingredients

Gluten-Free Crust

This one is just from my head. I made it up since one of my guests is gluten free. It just occurred to me she might be soy-free as well. OOPS!

• One box of Lucy’s Cinnamon Thins (5.5 oz): Crush it in your blender/food processor, pour into bowl.
• 1 cup of oatmeal: Crush in your blender/food processor, pour into bowl.
• 1/8 cup Earth Balance butter, melted, pour into bowl

Mix all three above in the bowl.

Spread into your pie pan.

Like this, except spread your filling up the side of the pan.

1^st layer

Blend the following until silky smooth:

8 ounces (one tub) Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese

6 ounces (1/2 tub) Tofutti Sour Supreme

6 ounces (1/2 of package) firm silken tofu (or extra-firm)
1/2 cup sugar

2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Remove 1 ½ cups of the mixture and pour into your awaiting pie crust.

Double the fun.

2^nd layer

Into the awaiting blender, add the following, then blend until smooth:

1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2 teaspoons rum (optional)
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Carefully pour on top of the first layer, spreading around by turning/rotating the pie pan.

Layers!

Baking

Bake until the center is almost set, about 60 minutes (or until you become impatient, about 10 minutes). Insert a toothpick into the center -- it should be firm. If not, give it more time.

This pie must cool. Chill for 3 hours at least in your fridge.

Conclusion

Thank you, Fat Free Vegan for creating this wonderful recipe. I'm not a fan of pumpkin, and this tastes a bit pumpkin pie-y to me. But I had to convince Rob to save the rest for our guests.

We at Fat Love Cafe added a little bit o' Soyatoo on top.

Vegan Pirate Ship Cake

Brave little ship about to hit cupcake island.

Intros and Inspirations

This cake was made using my yellow cake recipe. It's moist as a wet hankie and completely delicious. However, the setting, an 18^th century pirate ship? Completely new. I decided to make the ship-themed cake for Rob's birthday after my good friend Bonnie mentioned her employer making a ship cake. Rob also is a huge fan of pirate ships. My model is loosely based on this:

Very loosely.

History of Dish

Pirate ship cakes have been around a long time. Possibly even longer than pirates.

Rob asked, 'Where did you get that plastic pirate?!' To his surprise, the pirate figurine bedecking the cake was carefully researched and based on Jean Lafitte.

Or, it has been sitting on our dining room window sill for the last 3 years (apparently, unnoticed).

Materials Needed

• Yellow Cake recipe & frosting
• Blue food coloring
• Rum extract
• Wooden skewers
• Fake flags. I used old CD labels bent over.
• Optional: decorative icing. I used black glitter style. Bad choice in this case (see conclusion).
  
• Authentic Pirate Figurine©
• Blue sparkly sprinkles
• Corn holder and candle cannons
• Serving platter

Yield and Pre-heat

Since the round cake pans will cook faster than the big rectangle version, you will need to cook them for a shorter period. Ditto for the mini-cupcake islands.

Mixing/Blending

• Make two batches of the Yellow Cake recipe.
• Place the batter evenly into four pans: a rectangular pan, two round pans, and four small cupcake tins. (I only used one cupcake for this version.)
  

Baking and Frosting Making

• Monitor the baking process. The mini-cupcake islands come out first, followed by the round cake ship hulls. The cake is ready when a finger-press indentation bounces back in the middle (thanks Rob's cousin Melissa).

• Meanwhile, make the frosting. Based on 'yo ho ho and a bottle of rum' I decided that it would be necessary to make the sea rum-flavored. I added blue food coloring and some rum extract to one batch of the frosting. The frosting was a simple mix of 3/4 Spectrum non-hydrogenated shortening + 1/4 earth balance spread, organic powdered sugar, and rum extract. (I used imitation since it wasn't a real pirate ship)

• For the actual ship, I made chocolate frosting using the same recipe, except eliminated the rum and added about 2 T of rich chocolate cocoa powder.
• Place both frostings in the fridge to chill.

Assembling

• Let the cakes cool. Once cool, remove from pans carefully (I put pans upside down over plate/platter then tap the pan).
• Cut out two rectangular chunks from the middle of your rectangle cake (see picture below). Your ships will be sailing there later. Retain the cutouts as you will need to supplement the ship with part of them and/or you can eat them later.
• Cut the round cakes in half. The four halves will eventually become your ship. So they balance better, you can also trim off the round parts, just barely. Though I don't think that was necessary in hindsight.
• Place chocolate frosting between two slices, to glue them together. Do the same with the other two.
• Coat the outside of the cakes with a thin layer of appropriate frosting color and cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours (I was in a hurry and put them in the freezer). This will ensure your later layers of frosting will adhere better and crumbs will not get in your frosting (thanks for the tip, Shirle). You need only coat those areas you are going to frost (that will show) and any damage areas (where the ship-cake was hit by cannon balls and is coming apart).
• Once cooled, frost your rectangle sea first. Sprinkle with blue sparkles.

• Rather than do what I did, frost the boats first then place them into the sea.

• Add your cupcake island(s) and skewered flags and pirate. Add the corn holder and candle cannons. Don't forget Jean Lafitte.
  

Eating

Some people preferred the sea whereas others took the chocolate ship.

Photo by James

Thankfully, no one ate or wanted the plastic pirate or corn holders. But everything else was pretty much disapeared.

Optional:

Blueberry cannon balls and vegan wafer walk-the-plank planks.

Conclusion

Though I noticed an unfortunate likeness to a certain oil spill after decorating the ship with a “B” and placing little black frosting drops in the 'sea', little room for comment remained after being distracted by my dead-on skull and crossbones flags that were viciously rumored to be potato heads.

Petite BABS Muffins

Intros and Inspirations

These banana-apple-blueberry-strawberry muffins are so fruity they belong in a basket.

With all the touring and new-website making there has not been a lot of time for documenting food creations. Know that food has been created, enjoyed, eaten, and stored as body fat -- all undocumented except for the latter.

Rob's a sucker for a good muffin, and after several hints (“Mmmmuffins!” or the classic, “I love muffins!”) I gave in. In the past, I might have used Agave nectar to sweeten these bad'ns, but though they are brave little muffins, they cannot be mingled with the devil himself.

History of Dish

Muffins can be traced back to 10^th century England, but the American variety popular today arrived later, adding the moulds since the batter mixture was unable to stand alone like dough. Weak!

Potash was used to make them rise until baking powder was created around 1857. Muffins were promoted as healthier than doughnuts (kind of like cigarettes are better than crack?) but to ensure long shelf-life, additional fats and sugars were added and we were back to square one, or cupcake impersonations.

Yield and Pre-heat

Preheat the oven to 350 (or 375 if your oven runs colder than mine).

Makes 10 smaller muffins, or 8 larger.

Ingredients

Wet:

• ½ apple, shredded with grater

• 1 cup soy milk

• 1 t apple cider vinegar

• 1 crushed banana

• ¼ cup blue berries

• ¼ cup chopped strawberries

• ¼ cup canola oil

• 1 t vanilla

Dry:

• 1 ¼ cup flour (whole wheat pastry or all purpose)

• 2 T ground flaxseed

• ½ cup powdered sugar

• 1 t cinnamon

• ½ t nutmeg

• 2 t baking powder

• ½ t salt

Mixing/Blending

Mix the wet ingredients in one bowl, the dry in another. Fold the dry into the wet, stirring slowly with a wooden spoon, just enough to mix, lumps are OK. Overstirring causes flat, dense, depressed muffins. Nobody wants that.

Baking

Scoop batter into cups – lined or not. Using paper cups will not give you a crust on the outside, so choose according to preference.

Bake at 350 for 20-22 minutes.

Eating

Let cool first. Do I need to say this?

Optional:

Add walnuts to make them BAWBS.

Conclusion

Rob was happy.

History Sources:

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Sweet-History-of-Muffins&id=145416

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffin

Snow Soup

Snow soup!

I took the opportunity of our first real snow (heaviest in 10-20 years as I understand) to make something sweet out of it. Mom first introduced snow soup to me as a kid in Seattle, and I was a fan immediately. Anything you can turn into a dessert is a winner nominated by my tooth, the sweet one, unless the creation causes suffering indirectly or directly to another...then it's a bummer.

Fortunately for my tooth, this snow caused no harm, at least the part in my yard. I can't speak to the street part. For this recipe, I carefully hand-picked the snow from our front yard on the side our dog Syba hadn't peed on earlier.


Ta da!

• Bowl of snow (fresh)
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 4 T almond or soy milk
• Stir.

Tastes just like ... snow soup.

This is part snow soup story, part cautionary tale. In an alarming moment, I discovered an unidentifiable particle in my bowl:

Speck, to the right of spoon. Piece of dirt, tree bark, or....other?

Be careful during the selection process.

Cashew Crumble Cheesecake

Caramel-y Cashew Cake

Intros and Inspirations

If cashews could sit, they would sit in thrones. Due to their rounded shape, I'm thinking it's possible, except they wouldn't sit long due to their wide range of culinary applications. Cashew Technology struck again when I realized I could probably make cheesecake out of these. My originality was also struck (down) when a search revealed this has been tried (many times) by (several) others before me.

There are raw cashew cheesecake recipes, cooked, caramel, and many other varieties. The version I put forth to you today is cooked. Whether or not this reminds you of a cheesecake is irrelevant after tasting little triple C – the Tofutti Cream Cheese version is much closer to actual cheesecake – but this recipe has a cheesecake tang as well as a nice balance of taste and texture I think you'll enjoy.

Due to my enthusiastic cashewing these past weeks, I thought I should make sure there are no adverse side effects. Luckily, true to its royal cashewiness, we are delivered nothing but nutrients and heart benefits. In fact, cashews even reportedly have weight LOSS properties.

History of Dish

Once again, ladies and gentleman, I present to you...the Greeks! In summary, a form of cheesecake was served to the Olympian athletes, then spread further by the Romans.

Yield and Pre-heat

Makes one thin cake. Double the recipe to creat a tall version (thicker crust and taller cake). The thinner version has the advantage of feeling good about eating a lot less, even if you ate half of the cake. It's also good when you don't have enough cashews for a full cake, or a Springform pan.

Preparation alert: Soak the cashews overnight or at least 10 hours.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Farenheit.

Ingredients & Steps

The “Rob forgot to get me graham crackers” Crust

Ironically, when I just asked Rob if any improvements were needed before posting this recipe, he told me I could “experiment with the crust a bit more.” Try using a graham cracker crust, but if you liked a toasted almond flavor this crust is for you.

Blend in a food processor or blender:

• ¼ cup unsalted uncooked almonds
• ¼ cup walnuts
• ¼ cup canola oil
• 1 Tablespoon coconut fat

Coconut fat! Also used to make whipping cream for the topping.

Scrape out into bowl then stir in:

• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 2 Tablespoon ground flax seed
• ½ cup oat flour

Spread resulting mixture into pie tin or glass pie dish.

Filling

Cook the following over medium-low heat for two minutes, stirring frequently:

• ¼ cup Earth Balance
• ¼ cup + 2 Tablespoons coconut fat (use the solid part of coconut milk from Thai brand coconut milk cans, chilled)
• ¼ cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Add above ingredients to cleaned blender or food processor. To this, add:

• 1/8 cup lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons agave nectar or maple syrup
  
• 1 cup of pre-soaked cashews (drained)

Blend until creamy.

Compiling and Baking

Two options:

1. Spread your filling into the crust. Bake at 325 for 20 minutes. This will produce some brown crispiness atop your filling. If you do not want this, see option two. (I made option 2.)

2. Bake filling in separate dish for 10 minutes. Stir well, then spread into crust. Bake for another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool. Chill in refrigerator overnight, or if you're inpatient, throw it in the freezer for 30 minutes, then eat.

Eating

If I had the ingredients, I would top this sucker with some homemade coconut whipped cream: http://www.everydaydish.tv/index.php?page=recipe&recipe=157

Optional:

Experiment and let me know if you find a different version to try. I will try adding a ½ up of creamy peanut butter to the filling next time then drizzling chocolate on top. And of course using graham cracker crust, if Rob buys the crackers.

Feel free to email me at hortamatic@gmail.com with pictures of your versions for posting.

Since this was my first ever attempt at cashew cheesecake, I will certainly post alternate versions of my own as well in the future.

Conclusion

A fourth “C” should be added to this recipe: Caramel. Due to the mingling of Earth Balance and sugar, there is a slight caramel-y overtone. The walnuts and almonds give the crust a toasted flavor, similar to candied nuts.

Vasilopita

In what has certainly become a tradition, I failed to capture an adequate photo of my little new year's Vasilopita.

Instead, above, a photo taken by someone who was on her second theme drink (that is, second THEME, not second drink) the Soy Nog White Russian (I capitalize out of respect, not grammatical appropriateness).

The first theme drink was even more classy: Cheer Wine and Whiskey (thank you Laura and Tofu Mama, respectively).

I previously posted the Vasilopita recipe and backstory at my travel and vegan cupcake-searching blog, Binge Cafe, back in '07. You can find it in its entirety here:

http://bingecafe.blogspot.com/2007/01/vegan-vasilopita-drinko-happy-new-year.html

The only changes I made to the Vasilopita pictured above was to reduce the orange juice by half and use ground almonds rather than sliced due to not wanting to step into a supermarket to get them on NYE.

Again, due to the themed drinks, there were not a lot of pictures, but I did want to share with you three appetizers brought by guests. The third, a delicious German potato salad (thanks Jana) was not photographed. The fourth, which I'll be posting soon, is a recipe I created for Jalapeno Poppers. Stay tuned!

Bonnie's Spanikopita:

Delicious little nuggets with smoked tofu and creamed Tofutti cheese.

Chef Shirle's Fauxmage almond feta and cashew goat, available at the Wine Authorities!


Happy 2010 everyone.