The David Lebovitz effect

I'm very suggestible. Reading this post on David Lebovitz' blog, along with the fact that I had some chickpea liquid in the fridge to use up, led directly to a completely unnecessary, yet somehow very necessary S'mores Pie.

It got a bit burnt under the grill, but I'm pretending that was intentional.

The crust is the Press-in Almond Crust from Vegan Pie in the Sky with some dark cocoa powder added. I baked it at 350 F for 10 minutes.

The chocolate pudding is this one, halved and veganised. (I added a tiny bit of liquid smoke but it was pretty subtle.)

The marshmallow topping went like this:

75 g chickpea liquid
75 g sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
0.5 g xanthan gum
vanilla
--whipped together

Then things get a little bit hazy...
I heated up agar (0.7 g?) with water (not a lot) and sugar (some). It got to at least 108 C (I was originally planning on letting it get to 118, but it was starting to look right so I pulled it early.) I poured this mix down the side of the mixer bowl as it mixed the meringue on high speed. (This is based on my recipe for marshmallows, but with more liquid [here the chickpea liquid is straight out of the can, not reduced]. It ends up marshmallowy but softly set.)

Spread the marshmallow topping on top of the pudding. Put it under the grill and watch it carefully. Put it in the fridge to set up.

Birthday cake

Not the prettiest, but the tastiest:

I made pistachio dacquoise, using my recipe but with chickpea liquid instead of versawhip. I didn't bother with heating the agar mix, I just mixed everything together and assumed that the agar would activate during the baking. (To be honest, I'm actually not even sure whether the agar and xanthan are necessary.)

The filling was a salted caramel mousse, based on a peanut butter mousse from The Voluptuous Vegan. Each dacquoise disk had one side painted with melted chocolate with some roughly ground coriander seeds and some dehydrated ground whole lemon mixed in. I thought I would make some beautiful swirls of chocolate on top but... well, you can see how well that worked. (I didn't count on the chocolate solidifying immediately on the cold mousse!)

I was aiming for the dacquoise to soften slightly, but hoped the chocolate would prevent that from happening too fast. After sitting for about 4 hours, the disks were still quite crisp. 24 hours later, they were quite soggy. Somewhere in between they would've been perfect. The flavour, though, was amazing. I got the idea for the flavour combination from this recipe for Pistachio Millionaire's Shortbread.

Durango

Almost Durango cookies (veganized with a bit of cornstarch and water, and dark instead of milk chocolate):

I used alder smoked salt, and though I thought I was sprinkling it on a bit too generously, in the end I couldn't really taste any smoke at all. Nevertheless, these are excellent chocolate chip cookies with almond and cocoa nibs, and salt, and they are flat with crisp edges and chewy middles. A bit more smokiness would be delicious I'm sure. I read about these on the Tipsy Baker, and I think she might've suggested using smoked almonds which is an excellent idea.

Catchup

Good things I ate (or drank) in the second half of 2014:

From Vedge, Broccoli Rabe Philly Style (seriously bitter homegrown broccoli rabe [which I cut with gai lan to tone it down a bit], roasted red capsicum, porcini mayo)

 Pizza and roasted cauliflower at Pizza Domenica in New Orleans:

 Birthday/journal acceptance cake (Chocolate/root beer):

Asparagus pizza:

Enchiladas Especiales Tacuba style (wish I'd had poblanos; made do with green chillies and used rehydrated yuba sticks as chicken, and cashew cheese)

Pasta with a pureed caramelized onion / nutritional yeast sauce and cubed smoked tofu:

Pumpkin and pecan pie(s):

Home brewed saison:

Unphotogenic

I couldn't get a good photo of this ice cream, but I want to write about it so I don't forget it. It's a great compromise that pleased both ice cream eaters in our household: peanut butter and chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough and cocoa nibs.

The chocolate-peanut butter ice cream is from The Perfect Scoop, but I replaced the half and half with soy milk, and added just a touch more sugar. It ended up really rich and creamy, so the original version must be insane. The cookie dough and peanut butter pleased one of us. The chocolate, the cocoa nibs, and the fact that it was peanut butter cookie dough rather than boring old chocolate chip, pleased the other one.

The ice cream contains just sugar, soy milk, peanut butter and cocoa powder. I am thinking that I might replace the peanut butter with hazelnut butter next time, for gianduja.

Caramelized white chocolate

I really love my pressure cooker, and I love finding new uses for it. One that I've been curious about for a while is using the pressure cooker to caramelize white chocolate. You put the chocolate in a jar, fill the cooker partway with water, and cook. I think I first read about this on Ideas in Food, but it wasn't until I got their cookbook (Ideas in Food), that I got up the nerve to try it out. (Although I am almost totally over any fear of the pressure cooker exploding, it was a little scary putting a closed up jar in there.)

On the left is how the white chocolate started, on the right is after an hour in the pressure cooker. (The recipe called for 30 minutes, but mine had hardly changed colour at that point.) I used the same vegan white chocolate recipe I used last time (with half almond meal and half soy milk powder).

I'll definitely do this again. Caramelizing the white chocolate gave it a really complex and delicious flavour. My favourite discovery came when I mixed a small amount of the caramelized chocolate into the uncaramelized stuff -- say, 1 part caramelized to 4 or 5 parts uncaramelized.

I used most of the caramelized white chocolate as Kamozawa and Talbot suggest: in their Popcorn Gelato. Mine didn't work out that popcorny (partly I think because I used plain popcorn, not butter-flavoured; partly because I wasn't able to strain the popcorn mixture thoroughly enough). However, it did work out white chocolatey and delicious! Here it is as a choc-top with caramel sauce.

White chocolate

Home made vegan white chocolate.

This was my second attempt, and it was better than the first. The first time, I used some gross soy milk powder, and had to add tons of sugar to try to mask the flavour. This time, I used half soy milk powder and half almond meal -- much better flavour, but the texture is not perfect. I think if I had a decent soy milk powder that would solve the problem, but the only one I can find here has a really strong soy taste.

I am basing my experiments on this recipe (without the hours of grinding, though. I just use the stand mixer for 5 minutes or so).

Chocolate stout cupcakes

These cupcakes set a dangerous precedent.

I am not one of those bakers who enjoys precision. I try to measure things accurately and follow the recipe, but the urge to just eyeball it, and change things on the fly is just too hard to resist.

Anyway, the day I made these cupcakes on the spur of the moment, I surprised even myself in how far I strayed from the recipe. I didn't have tofu or sour cream, or self raising flour. I used less chocolate, and more sugar. And yet they worked out beautifully. The flavour combination of chocolate, prune and stout is just perfect.

I make candy for the intellectual stimulation

These are homemade Butterfingers candies, from this recipe (I only had chunky peanut butter in the house, so that's what I used). I hadn't realized that Butterfingers were supposed to be peanut butter flavoured, but there you go.

These were very interesting -- and not in the euphemistic sense, I actually mean the candy-making process here is interesting. You heat the sugar until almost the hard crack stage, and then add the peanut butter. This prevents the sugar from hardening into a toffee consistency -- it ends up sort of flaky and crumbly.

World peace cookies

You might think that the name of these cookies is a bit effusive. I did, until I made them. They're very good. The recipe (you can find it here) is by Dorie Greenspan.

 A couple of notes:

• There is a very troubling sequence of instructions in the recipe. First you are told that the dough may be crumbly, and not to worry about it. Then you are told to form said dough into logs. The recipe does not seem concerned that crumbly dough may not want to be formed into logs. (I found that swearing at the dough helped a lot with this step.)
• While the recipe instructs you to refrigerate the dough for at least 3 hours, if you are like me and don't read all the way through and have plans to bring these cookies to a dinner party in about an hour and a half, don't worry. Just stick the dough logs in the freezer for as long as you can (about 40 minutes worked fine for me).

Coconut muffins

I recently bought a young coconut. After we drank the coconut water inside, I was left with the question of what to do with the coconut meat. It was too soft to grate, and its flavour was quite subtle -- not that exciting to eat on its own. But cut into chunks and baked into muffins, it was amazing.

Even though it was quite a lot of work cutting into the coconut, I am thinking about getting another one just so I can make these muffins again. (The coconut water was great too -- it wasn't the flavour that blew me away, but the scent, which was surprisingly floral.)

I used this recipe with a few modifications*. (I should take a moment to praise this recipe -- it is terrific. I say this as someone who has made many failed muffins.) I used some cooked and pureed pear for the cup of fruit in the recipe, and added the chunks of coconut plus some Dutch chocolate sprinkles.

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* I reduce the oil to 1/4 cup, use regular whole wheat flour, reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup and increase to 3/4 if necessary, replace the egg with a 'flax egg' or just extra water, and use soymilk + vinegar for the buttermilk. So far the fruits and vegetables I've used to great success are: pumpkin, pear, apple, banana, and most surprisingly, a mixture of banana and pureed kiwifruit.

Iron chef: sriracha

I was out of ideas for dinner, so asked R if he had any cravings. I don't know why I asked -- I was expecting him to say no, as that's his usual answer to that question (weird, right?) but instead he surprised me and asked for something with sriracha. This turned out to be an excellent and inspiring answer.

We had tofu omelettes with sriracha (based on the Thai classic); roast cauliflower with a dipping sauce of sriracha, honey and lime juice; and latkes (from the freezer) with a sauce of vegan mayo and sriracha.

All three were pretty good but I think the best one was the cauliflower. The very brown pieces went especially well with the sauce. (I got the idea for this combination after some googling turned up the suggestion to combine this sauce with roasted brussels sprouts.)

After all that heat: ice cream (chocolate and peanut butter, with pretzels. I used soy milk in place of the recommended half and half, and regular cocoa powder, and it worked out fine -- very rich and almost fudgy.)

Frazzled

What can't a dinner of pizza and ice cream fix?

Three small clean-out-the-fridge pizzas (dough is whole wheat from the freezer at Whole Foods; cheese is Follow Your Heart mozzarella):

1. Sauerkraut, caramelized onions, ajvar. (This was my first time trying sauerkraut on a pizza and it won't be the last. This particular pizza could've done with a little something extra, though.)

2. Salsa, caramelized onions, cilantro.

3. Kalamatas, basil (from the freezer -- I threw in a bunch and it held up surprisingly well), caramelized onions.

Then almond and pecan ice cream (just so-so by itself, but much better with chocolate and peanut butter ganache and plantains).

Pride

Last month I had my biggest ever cooking disaster. We were invited to a barbecue, and I decided to make my old faithful: curried chickpea tart. There were a few hiccups -- for instance, the kitchen here on LI has no blender of any kind, so I had to use an antique eggbeater to mix the batter, and in addition there are no tart or pie plates, so I had to send our lovely host to the supermarket to buy a disposable aluminium one. Anyway, long story short, when we got there I went to cut the tart and it hadn't set up right. I served the first piece/dollop to the host of the party, who assured me it was delicious. And then I tried some... oh my god it was way way oversalted and overspiced. (Maybe it reduced down too much while I waited for the disposable tin? But then why didn't it set up? Maybe the salt in the LI kitchen is superpowered?)

I was mortified.

It was lucky, after all, that the tart was in a disposable tin. It meant I could slink out of the party at the end of the night without having to claim my leftovers.

Anyway, tonight we are going back to those same people's house for a dinner party -- I had to redeem myself. Hence: peanut butter filled chocolate cookies (with the usual vegan subs, and egg replacer). They are tooth-rottingly sweet (like giant peanut butter cups) and I will be walking into that place with my head held high.

De-Stressed Baking

I woke up on Saturday at 4.30, ran starting at 5, and finished work at 4.30pm. I came home ready to relax. This is what I did. The cake is the Cook's Illustrated chocolate snack cake (fudged because I ran out of vegan mayo -- I used some old sour cream, which probably wasn't a great idea -- too dense). The cookies are from 101 Cookbooks, thanks to David Lebovitz. Really super tasty.

Look quickly -- Quickly! Then turn away!

I had to look away while someone else emptied my cake pans... a birthday cake for a colleague, and another crumbly mess.  Is it the humidity here?  Why is it I can't turn out a decent cake, even with parchment paper?  My flour should have had enough gluten in it... is there just so much bayou in the air I need to add less liquid to my baking mixes?  Ughhh.  This is the SmittenKitchen chocolate layer cake.  It's great.  It's just the non-vegan version of the cake I made a few months back.  I need to find another one... maybe the Veganomicon recipe I've had a few times with cream filling?  

Cake and cake and cake!!!

This here is a monster of a chocolate (vegan) birthday cake.   There's a layer of ganache and red raspberry jam in the center, but it's basically chocolate.  Whole wheat flour to support it (2c ww/ 2c apf) - there's basically a cup of cocoa and a bag of chocolate chips melted with hot coffee).  I can't eat it.  The caffeine makes me crazy.  

You'll see (look carefully) that the sides are held together with frosting - (1/4 c earth balance, 3/4 cup soymilk, until melted, then stir in a bag of chocolate chips) - the cake crumbled coming out of the pans.  I should have used bigger pans, but something in the whole wheat flour/brown rice syrup thing went wrong.  Not sure what.  Guess I'll have to bake it again!

A happy accident

Last night's dinner: steamed kale with caramelized onions, chickpeas and pine nuts, served over pasta. But here's where it gets interesting: the pasta was tossed with the leftover cranberry chutney from the other night. This was a very spur of the moment decision, but it turned out perfectly. I really loved how the slight bitterness of the kale tasted against the tangy sweetness of the chutney.

For dessert we had brownies. I have yet to bake a brownie that I am completely happy with, but these were pretty close. The recipe is from Peter Berley's The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. (I was out of WW pastry flour, so used WW bread flour instead. I like chewy brownies so I didn't think the extra gluten would be a problem, and it seems I was right.)

Fruit mince pies and snickers

This is what Christmas tastes like to me: fruit mince pies (dough recipe from here, minus the egg yolk, and the filling is Robertson's fruit mince (no suet!) plus a grated Granny Smith apple).

For Hannukah, I made R fake Snickers bars using the Chow recipe for Snickles. For future reference (if I am ever crazy enough to make this recipe again) I halved the recipe, and replaced the egg white in the nougat with 1 Ener-G egg, plus a packet of whipping cream stabilizer. (I don't know if the stabilizer (or the Ener-G for that matter) did anything, it was just a hunch. It worked out okay, but not as fluffy as the real thing.) For the caramel, I used mimiccreme and EB. And I used Trader Joe's pound plus bittersweet chocolate. (Only later did I discover that the temperatures for tempering chocolate differ for milk vs. dark chocolate. I followed the recipe temperatures, which are for milk chocolate, and it seemed to work out okay.)

By the way, future self, if you are reading this and planning on doing this again, (1) buy a decent candy thermometer, your old one sucks and (2) if you can make sense of the recipe instructions for using 2 forks to dip the bars in the chocolate, you're a smarter and more coordinated person than I.