Almond-quinoa muffins from Veganomicon, which are yummy, healthier than your average muffin and sugar-free, sweetened by agave nectar. I left out the dried fruit but theyre tasty enough without. Yum!
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Muffins!
Almond-quinoa muffins from Veganomicon, which are yummy, healthier than your average muffin and sugar-free, sweetened by agave nectar. I left out the dried fruit but theyre tasty enough without. Yum!
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Tales of joy and woe from the kitchen...
Now for the tale of woe- and this is what makes cruelty free kitchen different from most food blogs with their pretty pictures and sucess stories, here you get to read the fuck-ups and see when things get ugly, for your amusement...
They're lemon cupcakes. Explosive lemon cupcakes. With double the baking powder they should really have. How did that happen?
Well, I never had any self-raising flour so I tried to make my own by adding extra baking powder to plain flour(FWIW the rule is 3 tsp of powder per 8oz plain flour), something I've successfully done loads of times in the past.
But I was having a blonde moment and between the mental arithmatic of halfing things down to make a smaller quantity, must have got confused and used almost double the baking powder... eep!
I discovered my mistake on eating the batter and thinking it was overly bitter and remembered what I'd done... I looked at my cakes to discover they were rather explosive-looking. I tasted a little to see if the finished product was any better than the batter, but alas, they tasted bogging too. I hate wasting food, but if it provides my readers with a laugh I'll share all here...
Friday, 25 January 2008
Happy Rabbie Burns Night! Vegan haggis FTW!
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Comfort food at it's finest! Plus a book review
I've seen mixed reviews for this posted online, with some folk suggesting they found it tasty if a little bland, and others raving about it. Now, I'm a spice fiend myself as you know, so I decided to tweak this a bit by quadrupling(x4!) the crushed garlic, upping my pinch of crushed black peppercorns to a heaped teaspoon, and putting a pinch of rosemary and thyme into the biscuits. I've also used black eyed beans instead of navy beans, and this turned out very nicely indeed!
Last up is creamy mushroom sauce from the Low-carb vegetarian by Rose Elliot. Only this isn't low carb anymore since I've used it as a pasta sauce instead of as a topping for tofu cutlets.
I must say I was unimpressed by the low carb diet, while it may be possible to follow it as a vegan, in terms of weight loss I only lost 3lbs in a fortnight anyway, and it was pretty restricted, plus I felt hungry all the time. I much prefer sensible healthy eating to faddy diets, and this one's no exception. The book was vegetarian, and heavy on the eggs and dairy, although Elliot offered suggestions for vegan variations for many of the recipes. It gets 2/5, but thats just because some of the recipes were actually really nice, but I'd rather buy another of this author's vegan-only recipe books on the merit of that than recommend this particular one.
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Messy rice? It's supposed to be messy!
So I left two little sugarfree cookies there for the diabetic boyf to try, and rolled the rest of the dough up and added the sugar this time, so the sesame seeds are kind of through all the other cookies. The cookies were a delicious success despite that setback however, and the boyf even liked his sugarfree cookies, although my sweet tooth found them a little bland sans sugar. I'd definitely make them again and I can't wait to try them in all their glory complete with the crystallised ginger, since I love ginger!
Last but not least, a big bowl of Mac Daddy with broccoli. I enjoyed this and so did the boyf(enough that we both went back for seconds!) although it wasn't very mac-and-cheese-like to be honest, it was very pleasant and tasty in itself, but for a more authentic-tasting m'n'c I'd recommend New Farm Vegetarian for cheesiness or my own recipe in here (scroll down near the middle) for creaminess. This is, however, far healthier, more nutritious, and less fattening than the others I've mentioned however.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
More vegan nom nom nom goodies! And oatly cream review...

I also made the jelly donut cupcakes from the same book, which are really tasty but as you can see from the pic, the jam kind of exploded outta some of 'em! Oh, and it makes waaay too much batter for 12 cupcakes... not that I'm complaining at having to spoon the extra batter outta the bowl to eat before I wash it or anything! (In fact, that is something of a bonus :P)
Cheezly and my new tattoo!
Saturday, 5 January 2008
Vegan nom nom nom!
Above is some Chickpea Noodle Soup, which was quite nice. I never had any shrooms and Jay ain't too keen on them anyway, so I just left them out and used a little more carrot and onion. She said to adjust the miso (1/3 cup) to taste and use more if you like a stronger taste(!) but I only used 1/4 cup and found it pretty strong at that! It's pretty easy and I'd make it again. Yes, I should probably have wiped the bowl before taking the pic, but I was hungry and distracted!
Below are Terry's favourite almond cookies. Now, I love almond, I love cookies, and... I think I might love Terry for coming up with these! I'll definitely be making these again. I never had any sesame oil so I just left it out, and I never had any brown rice syrup so I just used maple, but they turned out beautifully anyway! As you can see from the pic, they really spread quite a lot when cooked.
CAKE!!
While my poor boyf Jay is a type 1 diabetic and cannot normally indulge in cake, his dieticians say it is okay to take a very occasional(like annual, for a birthday or xmas or something) "day off", by injecting extra insulin to cover the extra sugar intake. So he had a few of the cupcakes plus he fancied a sponge pudding too.
Now, I've never veganised sponge pudding before, but it was really incredibly easy! I used the Microwaveable Sponge Pudding recipe from the Cake Scoffer again. The result is pictured below. It was okay, but really sweet, so I couldn't eat a lot of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)