Posts filed under 'baking'
Irish Soda Bread
Tis’ not the season for Irish Soda Bread. St. Patricks Day is a quite a way’s away but Reno was having a Fall Fiesta in her Pre-K class and the teachers asked that the parents bring in a food that celebrates your background. Reno has quite a mix of countries that make up who she is so we had a lot to choose from. I think the teachers assumed she would be bringing something Italian in because of our last name but the problem with that is I’m not Italian. Not even close to being Italian. I struggled a bit with what to make. I wanted to make something that I knew the kids would at least try and Seitan Parmesan was not something I was ready to introduce to those kids and their parents so I brought it down to two choices: Crepes (France) and Irish Soda Bread (Ireland). What kid doesn’t like pancakes and bread?
With the fiasco of the Halloween Cut Out Cookies that I had made for her school I wanted to keep this project as simple as could be so I chose the Irish Soda Bread. Having said that I of course have never made Irish Soda Bread. Crepes….I’ve made before….MANY TIMES. Luckily for me the bread came out beautifully! From what was left over after the Fiesta I would say most of the kids/parents/teachers at the party liked it as well.
Two parents exclaimed at how brave I was to tackle making bread. The thing is this bread was the least labor intensive item at the party. It was in the oven in less then 10 minutes. All you do is throw some dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another, combine, shape, bake for 40 minutes. So simple! I will definitely be making this again for St. Patricks Day in 2012 along with some boiled cabbage and potatoes.
November 19th, 2011
Ghost Cut out Cookies
Halloween was all kinds of messed up this year. The Saturday before we had this freak snowstorm. It was crazy! Trees and heavy branches were falling all over the place. I went outside to check on my husbands car and it was covered with large branches. Luckily there wasn’t any damage. While standing outside all I heard were these loud creaks and cracks and then WHOOOSH. If I turned around quick enough to where the noise was coming from I would see the tops of trees falling to the ground. Because of this storm Halloween was cancelled and the schools were closed on Monday and Tuesday…remember that this storm was on Saturday and there was barely 1 inch of snow on the ground. People were without power for over a week because all the trees fell on the wires…it was a mess.
Re as Dorothy from Wizard of OZ
Reno was suppose to have a Halloween party at her school on the Monday and I for some reason volunteered to make Halloween shaped Cut Out Cookies. Big mistake on my part. Before I knew that school was cancelled I spent hours on Sunday trying to make these cute ghost and skeleton head cookies. Making the dough, cutting them out and baking them was the easy part. Decorating them was a PAIN. IN. THE. ASS. After I applied the white part of the frosting I didn’t realize I had to wait for that stuff to dry before drawing on the face with the other color frosting. It took forever. I eventually gave up and went to the store and bought already made and decorated cookies that weren’t vegan. The second I got home from doing that I received a call to say that school was cancelled. I could have killed someone since that would have given me enough time to finish the cookies. It turns out us parents all agreed to have the party on that Friday because of all the families who wouldn’t get their power back until then. I still gave out the unvegan cookies because by then my delicious cookies weren’t fresh enough. At least I know for next year that I need to start decorating them first thing in the morning so they are dry enough by the mid afternoon to paint their sweet little faces on them.
Miles as Mickey Mouse
I also wanted to mention that Trick or Treating this year was horrible also. The town cancelled trick or treating on Halloween because of all the down trees and wires, which made total sense, and made it for that Friday. I took Reno around our neighborhood that Friday and hardly anyone answered their doors and we only saw 2 groups of kids plus one other single kid trick or treating. It was miserable and I felt so bad for Re. She loves Halloween so much and it sucked this year. She took it all in stride though and I am happy that she got very little candy. She did however get a lot of bags of potato chips which I found bizarre. I’m hoping next year will be better for her.
November 12th, 2011
Rocky Road Cookies
One goal of mine this year is to add original dessert recipes to my site. I developed a great Plum Cake last summer and failed to post about it and now it just doesn’t make sense to post it until you all can get plums in season. I did however buy a jarred ingredient today that I’ll have plenty of leftovers and thought of using them in place of the plums. So perhaps I can post it soon! A few weeks ago I bought some Dandies Marshmallows in the hopes of creating a Rocky Road Cookie and/or a Rocky Road Muffin. So far I’ve come up with only the cookie recipe but it needs some help. They came out really good but I didn’t want to eat all of them which to me means that the recipe needs some tweaking. They were like a cross between a cookie and a brownie, which isn’t a bad thing, but not what I was going for. Another problem is that Dandies are pretty big marshmallows! I had to cut each one in 1/2 and use my biggest ice cream scoop to scoop the cookies onto the baking sheet and still 1 or 2 cookies didn’t get a single marshmallow in them! So that needs to change also mainly because cutting marshmallows is really annoying.
Italian Plum Cake
I love creating baked goods/desserts. I just hate fine tuning the recipes but I’m trying. :)
March 10th, 2011
Chocolate Chip, Coconut, Cinnamon Scones
We have been having a lot of snow here in NJ this past month and by a lot I mean A LOT! We have yet to have a day this year that there wasn’t any snow on the ground. There is no place to put the snow anymore and our front yard has a snow pile that is way over the top of my head. Its ridiculous but I don’t mind because I love the snow plus I have nowhere to go usually so I’m completely fine with being snowed in. On most snowy mornings I like to make us scones for breakfast. I always make the same ones and I call them Blizzard Scones. They have chocolate chips, coconut and lots of cinnamon in them. I usually top them with cinnamon sugar before popping them in the oven but was lazy this last time. These things are so good. I always say I’m going to make a different flavor scone and always end up making the same ones over and over again.
On this particular snow day I also made us one of my favorite tofu sandwiches….
Lemon-Mustard Tofu Sandwich
Unfortunately somewhere after making the above scones and turning off the oven and then turning it back on to bake the tofu my oven broke. It was devastating. I had tofu marinating in a great lemon and mustard marinade to bake off in the oven and couldn’t. I ended up searing them on the stove top which made them still delicious but it’s not the same as that slow baked tofu texture that I love. I make this tofu a lot in the summer months when I want to make my French Sandwich which is just a riff off of a vegetarian sandwich I became obsessed with while I was in Paris once many many years ago. That sandwich contained hard boiled eggs and this tofu is a great replacement for it. The above sandwich is not the French Sandwich however. I’ll make a post on that sandwich in the summer months when I can get great fresh/ripe veggies for it (hopefully from my garden). The sandwich above is just a simple mini baguette spread with veganaise and some whole grain mustard, mesclun greens and the tofu. A simple sandwich for a simple day stuck inside because of the snow. Here is my recipe for the tofu:
Lemon-Mustard Tofu
1 block extra firm tofu, pressed (I use and swear by my Tofu Xpress)
1 1/2 tablespoons tamari
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons whole grain mustard
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Combine and whisk all the ingredients, except for the tofu, in a small bowl. Cut tofu in 1/2 so you have two rectangles. Place each slab of tofu on its side and slice each piece into 4 slices. You’ll have 8 rectangle pieces of tofu. Pour 1/2 of the marinade in a large shallow baking dish and place the tofu on top of the marinade. Pour the rest of the marinade on top and place in the fridge for at least one hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Have a sheet tray covered with parchment paper ready and transfer the tofu onto the sheet tray. Bake for 25 minutes. Flip over each piece of tofu and bake for 20-25 minutes more.
Let cool and use however you like.
January 27th, 2011
Pecan-Date Truffles (raw)
There has been a few times recently that I needed to make a dessert or snack for a potluck or trip to a friends house. I was always delayed in figuring out what to make and before I knew it I had to leave for the event in less then a half an hour! One option when that happens is just to head to Whole Foods and pick something up. The other option, my favorite, is to make Raw Truffles. From start to finish they take maaaaaaaaybe 10 minutes and what’s even better than that is that I ALWAYS have the ingredients for them. The ones above are made by throwing a handful of raw pecans in a food processor and pulsing them until they are broken down a bit but not too much. I then add about the same amount of pitted medjool dates, a few dashes of cinnamon, a few tablespoons of raw cacao powder and a tablespoon or two of water or juice and blend away until all the ingredients are combined. If it’s not blending well or the ingredients keep getting stuck I just add more water or juice to help get it going again. Once everything is done I take a small cookie scoop and scoop up some of the dough into my hand and roll them into balls and place them into mini cupcake or candy liners that should be ready and waiting on a serving plate. Once all the truffle making is complete cover them with some plastic wrap and stick them in the fridge, taking them out 5 minutes before you are going to serve them. OR if you are anything like me lately just cover them while your running to your car hoping you won’t be too late for the vegan dessert potluck you just made these for!
Now if you have all the time in the world to make these and want to make them extra decadent you can dip them in chocolate and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet tray, stick them in the fridge to set the chocolate and then drop them into individual liners. YUM!
July 31st, 2010
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