Cake, cake, and more cake!

I know I've been away for a while but I've been really busy!

Two of my dear friends got married on Saturday and I have spent the last couple of weeks coordinating the desserts for their wedding.

They had this wonderful dessert bar, complete with cookies, cheesecake bars, peanut butter brownie bars, cupcakes, homemade truffles, and so many choices of cakes.

The centerpiece of the dessert buffet was their mocha wedding cake with buttercream frosting!

The cake is super dense and fudgy - almost like a mocha brownie covered in vanilla buttercream frosting.

It was decorated with flowers to match the flowers miss Amanda used for her centerpieces and I think it came out rather well, if I do say so myself.

I also made a gluten-free and vegan German Chocolate cake and a gluten-free and vegan blueberry coffee cake.

I'll include all of my recipes in the next week or so, I just wanted to be sure that I posted something so you didn't think I'd fallen off the face of the planet!

Update - Moo Free Easter Egg

A couple of weeks ago I posted about dairy-free Easter eggs that I had ordered from England.

They arrived and I waited until Easter to share them with the boyfriend.

Boy, oh boy were they TERRIBLE! And expensive.

I think they taste like those chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, which taste to me like chocolate wax.

The boyfriend agreed but he actually likes those, so I let him have my egg as well.

So, if you enjoy those waxy little gold coins, by all means, follow this link and go buy some for yourself.  

Otherwise, please take my word for it and save your cash.

Update - Windowsill Garden

Progress!

I was tempted to title this blog "Success!" but I think that would be getting ahead of myself.

Nonetheless, my little plants have sprouted and I am feeling really proud of myself.

The cilantro is almost there! If you look really close, you can see a teeny-weeny sprout.



I cannot wait to cook with this basil - marinara here I come!



Look at those little chives go!

See that little white dot? That's a plant! And the wisp of green to the left, right up against the pot - also a plant.

Make your own Seitan

If you've done any vegan cooking at all, you know that there are a ton of recipes that call for seitan. And if you've gone grocery shopping for seitan you have learned a couple of things:

1. Store-bought seitan doesn't taste like much of anything

2. You only get a few ounces in each package, which is barely enough for one recipe

3. It costs a small fortune.

Remember, seitan (sometimes called "wheat meat") is just the gluten from flour once all of the starch has been rinsed out, so you're basically spending your hard earned cash on flour and water...I bet you have that at home already, huh?

Now that you understand the absurdity of purchasing seitan, let's talk about making it at home.

There are basically two ways to do this.

The first is to combine flour and water with the spices of your choice, knead it to activate the gluten, and then rinse out the starch. Yes, it's that easy.

But the second way is even easier!

You can buy Vital Wheat Gluten (Bob's Red Mill sells it in quantities large enough quantities to make it reasonable), mix it with spices and water and viola! You have seitan.

Of course, whichever option you choose, you'll need to cook it. The most common way to do this is to cook it for about 45 minutes in some kind of water-based broth but it's not the only way. For a firmer seitan you can make it into a log, wrap it in aluminum foil, and bake it for an hour or so.

I know both of those sound like they could be a bit of an undertaking but they are super easy.

Ask anyone I know, I have been on a major seitan kick lately.
Lucky for you readers because I have a bunch of recipes to share!

Blog Love

Yes, I stole this idea from my bestie-since-childhood, who stole it from her boy-toy, Mr. Wonderful, but I am totally going to do it anyway.

The thing is, bloggers read other blogs. We get ideas and inspiration...and spend a ton of time reading about other people's lives.

So I thought I'd share a little blog love. I have a bunch of blogs I follow and love, so I'm going to highlight one at a time. 

Today's winner...

drum roll please

A Dinner Party

I totally love this blog. She shares fun ideas about throwing dinner parties, great recipes and drinks, tips for throwing a dinner party and not pulling your hair out, and a bunch of links to other great foodies.

Go check it out!

Why are there no vegans on Food Network?

It is amazing to me that there are no vegetarians or vegans on Food Network.

Not that I watch a ton of television but it ticks me off that there are so many chefs who are teaching Americans to make unhealthy food. Paula Dean, anyone?

Yes, I know there's the Weight Watchers girl and there are a couple of low fat shows (BTW, fat doesn't make you fat - go do some research) but there aren't any shows for the non-carnivore.

It ticks me off. 

There, I said it.

There are a ton of fantastic vegan chefs out there so why is it that not one of them has a cooking show? 

Why is no one out there teaching the public that vegetarians eat more than tofu and salad?

Why is Food Network, by ignoring their vegan and vegetarian viewers, perpetuating the idea that vegetarian food is gross or flavorless or boring or unhealthy or whatever other idiotic fallacy is out there?

Why?

Let's all send notes to Food Network. 

Let's flood their e-mail in boxes and demand a vegetarian show!

You can write to them here.

Let me know that you've done it, ok? Promise?

Dairy Free Easter Eggs!

If you're not on Twitter, you should be.

I don't care what your lame reason is, go sign up.

Yes, I know it is a lot of info coming at you all at once but think of it like The Weather Channel - it's all white noise until you see something that peaks your interest. Plus, you sign up to follow only those people or organizations that you want to see news from.

Anyway...one of the people I follow is @Vegan_Hive (it's actually from a website but ya know). A couple of weeks ago they tweeted about a dairy-free, vegan Easter egg. When I went to the web site, though, it was sold out. BOO.

But they're now back in stock!

So if you know a little vegan kiddo out there who would like to feel just like the rest of the kids this Easter, go check out Palmil Foods. They carry a number of vegan or dairy-free goodies that ship from the UK.

Naturally, I ordered one in hopes that it will arrive in time. 

I'll keep you posted and let you know whether or not it's worth buying.

Fail

Sometimes recipes fail.

Some you can tweak but some just plain stink.

In talking about upcoming blog post ideas with one of my coworkers, I realized that I do a LOT of cooking that never makes it to the blogosphere.

I'm happy that friends and family think I'm a good cook and that whatever I serve them is tasty but in the blog world I feel compelled to be a little more...honest. (The secret, by the way, is to serve friends and family only tried-and-true recipes that you have made 100-gazillion times and could dictate to someone in your sleep.)

Maybe it doesn't bother any of you.
Maybe you like the idea that this is a resource to come to for easy, mostly vegan recipes.

But trust me when I say that writing about the failures will accomplish two things:
1. It will be quite a while before I run out of things to post
2. You will be seriously entertained - when my recipes fail they crash and burn!

In the coming weeks, you can expect to find recipes in a series - the first one (or two...or more) will be the funny failure. After that, I'll let you know how I tweaked the original recipe to produce a more desirable outcome.

There are some seriously awful ones that I can't wait to show you!

I'm getting a little giddy just thinking about it.

Windowsill Garden

I have a special gift: I have the unique ability to kill any plant.  

House plants are my specialty.

I know plenty of cooks who delight in growing their own food. They know exactly what has been put into it, so they know that the food they are producing and eating is healthy and chemical free. They find joy in tending to their crops (large or small) and relish the opportunity to skip out to the garden to pick something fresh for dinner. Talk about locavores!

I've always envied people like that. 

Instead, I sign myself up for a local CSA and let the professionals handle the growing so that I can stick to the cooking.

While at Target the other day, I came across some tiny little pots for growing herbs, veggies, and flowers. Since they were only $1 each I thought, "Why not? If I kill them, I'm only out a buck each."

So I'm trying to turn over a new leaf (please pardon the horrible pun, I get those from my dad) and have begun a mini garden on my windowsill.

cilantro, basil, chives, and parsley

As you can see, there hasn't been any progress yet but I'm hoping the little guys grow up enough so I can cook with them. Otherwise it'll be a new personal plant-killing record: dead before even sprouting.

Wish me (and the plants) luck. We're going to need it!