If Naples met the Bronx…

And had a one night stand, these Calzones would be their love child.  I’m not joking.
The filling is onions, garlic, mushrooms, spinach, broccoli, and sundried tomatoes, mixed with tofu feta cheese, pizza sauce, and gooey mozzarella. A scrumptious combination, all hidden inside the golden crispy crust. Mmmm….

But I can’t take all the credit. This is another diamond from “The Garden of Vegan.” The only significant change I made from the recipe is to cook the vegetables lightly before hand and press the water out of them, because the only other time I made these, the vegetables steamed inside the crust & made it soggy. Now, though, I believe I have achieved perfection in the art (and consumption:) of these calzones.

Numbly French Toast

Somewhere along the line, I read a children’s picture book where the heroine proclaimed anything delicious to be “Numbly!”  That certainly describes my breakfast this morning.  With a guiding hand from Fat Free Vegan’s Sweetheart French Toast recipe, I took off and tried out a new use for my beloved nutritional yeast.

 Does anyone out there have a tried and true way to keep your breakfast warm while photographing it?  Despite quick whirl in the microwave, this “eggy” toast was still that scrumptious mix of crunchy and gooey that denotes a 1st-class French Toast.

What’s truly great about this toast, though, is that it’s mostly hands-off.  Having battered the bread, you boot it into the oven and batten the hatches!  Make a cup of tea, find some berries and ground almonds to put on the top, and then your breakfast is done!

Numbly French Toast
2 slices multigrain bread
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp corn starch
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon (or more to taste)
15g almonds, ground
Berries

1. Preheat oven to 375*
2. Lightly toast the bread in a toaster.  Meanwhile, whisk together all ingredients except for the almonds and the berries. 
3. Soak the bread in the batter, flipping once to coat.  Pop the slices onto a lightly greased cookie sheet, spray the tops with cooking spray, and slide that sucker into the oven to bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until crisped around the edges but still gooey in the middle
4. Top with ground almonds, berries, syrup, powdered sugar, more cinnamon, etc….
5. Devour with such frenetic abandon that your pet cockatiel looks at you with prissy disdain.
*To make this breakfast extra special, after soaking the bread in the batter, take a cookie cutter and cut the center of the bread out.  Put all the prettily-shaped pieces on the pan and bake as normal.  Then, fill the center well of the bread with berries and pop back in the cookie-cuttered piece.  Then top and serve.

Fabulous Figs!

I’m a big fan of Fatfree Vegan Kitchen.  I check it daily, always salivating over what Susan Jackson posts next.  Yesterday I was in the mood for something decadent yet healthy, something to both satisfy my sweet tooth and nourish my body.  Her “Skinny Fig Bar” recipe was just the ticket.  The main ingredient, figs, are naturally sweet and high in fibre and calcium.  Made without flour, and using no added fats or processed sugars, I could feel downright virtuous about eating dessert. 

Moist and crumbly, these bars have a soft oaty crust.  The inner fig layer is chewy and sweet, and the seeds pop excitingly with each tender bite.  I was a little disappointed, though, as the bars weren’t very sweet.  Perhaps that’s because I don’t own agave nectar, which the author recommended, and had to use maple syrup instead.  According to Wikipedia, agave nectar is a lot sweeter than other liquid sweeteners.  So, perhaps I just need to find a way to up the amount of sugar in the recipe , without throwing off the liquid/solid balance .  But have no fear- I will make this again.

Phew!- Part III

Somewhat belated, but still beauteous, here is the last part of my birthday posts.  After the cake was safely unpanned and on a rack, I washed my dishes and turned to the next project on my list.  Another wish of my mom was to have the Orange Poppyseed Pancakes from “The Garden of Vegan” for breakfast on her birthday.  Being a school morning, I won’t have much time to make these tomorrow, so I mixed up the wet and dry ingredients (separately, of course!) ahead of time.

These yummy pancakes have a delicate yet intense citrus flavour and a pleasant texture- light but not exactly fluffy, and crunchy due to the pumpkin seeds and poppy seeds liberally sprinkled throughout.  I like them with maple syrup, but my mom prefers plain or with powdered sugar.  It’s all personal preference :)

The secret to making perfect pancakes when there are oats in the batter (as is the case here) is to mix the batter up as soon as you can, and let it sit while the skillet is heating up.  By the time it’s hot enough to cook your pancakes (or flapjacks, if you want to be all Tall Paul Bunyan about it), the oats will have absorbed all the liquid and the leaveners will have done their duty.

Gourmet Nut Brittle

Flipping through my trusty “V Cuisine” one afternoon, I came across a recipe that had only 3 ingredients. Yes, three! Astounded by the simplicity of this recipe, I read it ever so carefully, sure that there had to be a catch, some sort of specialty equipment my kitchen would lack. Nope. Didn’t even need a candy thermometer. And on that note, I set out to make nut brittle.

I must admit, I have never made or eaten nut brittle before. As a kid, I had this Candyland game, and was fascinated by Mrs. Peanutbrittle. What was this peanut brittle she was housed by? I tentatively poured my sugar (half white, half brown for a darker taste) into the pan, sprinkled it with water and a little vanilla, and began to stir. Soon the sugar was clumping up and beginning to melt. When it was a light caramel colour and beginning to “puff up” (only way I can describe it), I added my mixture of hazelnuts, walnuts, and almonds that had been toasting in the oven. Stirred for another minute or so, and then turned out onto a lined baking sheet to cool.

Unfortunately, what my too-tired brain had failed to comprehend was that if you line a baking sheet with wax paper, and then pour very hot candy onto it, the wax will melt! Perhaps my joy with my new nut brittle was somewhat marred by having to pick off little bits of melted paper that had become stuck to the brittle- but not really :) The brittle tasted delicious, it’s dark “burnt sugar” taste and crunchy texture a fantastic partner to the lighter sweetness of the roasted nuts. In fact, at first bite its flavour reminded me of the outside of marshmallows, after they’ve been toasted deep in the coals until almost singed. Mmmm….

“Better Than Sex” Birthday Cake

That’s all I can call it. The meringue topping is perfectly crisped on the top, but its crunchy exterior contains a divinely soft and fluffy interior. Studded with roasted almonds and melting squares of silky dark chocolate, it dissolves in your mouth almost before you can realize how sweet and yummy it is. 

As well as concealing its gooey insides, the meringue also conspires to hide the devilishly delicious chocolate torte underneath. The 12 oz of dark chocolate tangoes with the other ingredients to make a cake so fudgy, so smooth, so silky, that you swear that it’s Don Juan reincarnated. I’m usually an avowed cake hater, but this cake I could happily marry and produce multiple offspring with. It’s damn good.

Phew!- Part II

It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow, and she asked me to make her a cake that she had torn out of a Martha Stewart magazine.  So, I toodled home from school after lunch today to continue my baking streak (after a brief sojourn at the gym- training for a triathlon, y’know).  And no, I wasn’t skipping class- I only have two classes this semester, which in theory creates plenty of time for training, reading, knitting, baking…all that good stuff.  Of course, being the irrational creature that I am, I have promptly started a blog and begun to work at Subway (more on that later), which means I basically have no free time! Ah, well….

Anyways, back to the cake.  Being a Martha Stewart creation, it of course required hefty doses of butter, eggs, and chocolate- not to mention 15 gazillion steps- but since it was my mom’s special request for her birthday, I dove into the fray and was soon up to my elbows in melting chocolate, beating eggwhites, and whipping butter.  After a few broken yolks, and a brief scare when the batter cooled into a rock (turns out the 12 oz of dark chocolate in it had solidified- quickly rectified by a twirl through the microwave), it was safely into the oven!  The picture will be posted as soon as it is (carefully, oh so carefully) removed from the pan.

Phew!- Part 1

 

I cannot remember the last time I baked so much in 24 hours! Or maybe it just feels like a lot. Looking back on it, it wasn’t really that much, but it was sure fun! 

Last night I made Bran Muffins from “How It All Vegan”. I added chocolate chips on top, and some ginger in the batter, just because I felt like it:) These lusciously moist goodies taste far too good to be healthy- yet they are full of bran, fruit, flax seeds, and craisins. And talk about huge! They’re about the size of a middling apple, which for a ~200 calorie muffin, is fantastic!

Not Quite Vegan Mac n’ Cheez

I checked out Angeline Linardis’ cookbook “V Cuisine: The Art of New Vegan Cooking” a few weeks ago, and have been waiting breathlessly for a chance to make something. This incidentally coincided with a trip to “The City” and Whole Foods, where I got my hands on some nutritional yeast. Yes folks, until yesterday I was a nutritional yeast virgin. As such, when “V Cuisine” fell open to a recipe for Mac n’ Cheese, I jumped at the chance to test my yeasty tastebuds. I was not disappointed.

What resulted was a luscious bowl of comfort food, perfect for the still chilly temperatures outside. The velvety sauce glides over Rye noodles (also from Whole Foods). Chunks of zucchini, and even the occasional broccoli floret can be found nestling jewellike under the saucy blanket, which in turn is capped by some quickly chopped soynuts and rosy paprika. A pinch of cayenne added to the topping adds a zesty kick to update this childhood favourite.

Although I did follow the recipe pretty precisely, I made some changes to suit my personal preferences and the current contents of my refrigerator. Instead of olive oil, I sauteed the garlic and onions in Pam and cooking wine. I added zucchini (sauteed with the onions and garlic), and steamed broccoli. I had no breadcrums, and no time to toast bread to make some, so soynuts added some crunch. Something I’m contemplating for the next time I make this dish is grinding almonds and adding them to the topping. They’d add a pleasing bit of sweetness and richness, without an oily texture.

The one criticism I have is more of an error on my part than on the part of the recipe- I forgot to pop a lid on the casserole dish before putting it in the oven to cook, so the top noodles dried out a titch. My mom reminded later that shealways covers the dish for the majority of the cooking period, and then just pop the dish under the broiler to brown the topping for the last 5 minutes. I’ll have to try that next time.

All in all, a definite keeper. Quick and easy, and a homey meal to eat in the frigid social waters of high school lunchtime, it’s a definite keeper.

Oat-y Waffles with Ginger Spiced Pumpkin

Some mornings, you just want food to be fun. Something decadent, yet playful and healthy at the same time. And of course, as it is morning, having it be easy to make is always a bonus.

After waking up insanely early and being utterly unable to fall back asleep, these waffles were just the ticket. Not a namby-pamby fluffy waffle, like the ones my mom always made growing up, these creatures keep you full all morning and are delicious to boot! In fact (and don’t tell my mom this!), I like these ones better. They have a lovely robust texture from the oats and flax seed, and the cinnamon adds a delicate note.

Oaty Waffles
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup oats
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2-3 tsp molasses
1 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tbsp flax seed
1tbsp Nutiva Organic Hemp Protein Shake (optional) (*I add this because I have a honkin big 16oz container of the Berry Pomegranate flavour to eat before I can open my Chocolate flavoured one. Besides, it’s yummy and adds a subtle fruitiness to the waffles)
2 tbsp applesauce
1 cup “milk” of choice

BUT! Although I have made these waffles before, this morning they were not enough! That’s when I got my thinker on, and realized that I had a whopping container of canned pumpkin in the freezer left over from Thanksgiving. After several minutes of hacking at the frozen orange blob with a chef’s knife, I succeeded in whipping up what is known as Gingered Pumpkin. But that doesn’t do this spread justice! It’s velvety texture and blatant spicy sweetness are reminiscent of pumpkin pie- only without all of the other crap that usually gets tossed into pies.

Gingered Pumpkin
1/3 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 tsp maple syrup (or more, to taste)
1/4 tsp ginger (not fresh, the dried stuff. We’re thinking pumpkin pie here, people, not stir fry!)
“shake” cinnamon (again, to taste)
pinch nutmeg

1) Stir all ingredients together. Microwave for 20-30 seconds. Use as a topping for waffles, toast, pancakes, crepes- you name it!

After all this, all my waffles needed were some peaches and raspberries (Fairly basic: cut up canned peaches, throw in a handfull of frozen berries and a sploosh of vanilla, microwave for 30 seconds. Stir. Add about 1/2 to 1 tsp cornstarch. Stir. Microwave for another 30 seconds. Devour, lick the bowl, and wipe pink goo off your nose)