Sunday 17 February 2008

Special mac n "cheeze" and chewy chocolate cookies

It's the mac and cheese recipe from the new farm vegetarian cookbook, using only 1/8 cup of oil instead of the 1/4 recommended, and with an additional 2 cups worth of brocolli florets and 1 cup of frozen peas thrown in before baking, for added green leafy and legume-y goodness. Tasted great and we were both back for seconds!
ETA- just realised I forgot to list the 125 sugar before! Sorry if anyone tried this without and it ended up being a disaster. :(

I come up with the recipe for these Chewy Chocolate Cookies myself. Here it is...

125g sugar
11og vegan margarine
1 heaped tbsp molasses
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
3 tbsp cocoa
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

-cream together the sugar, marge, oil, molasses and both extracts in a large bowl
-in another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt, then add this to the wet ingredients
-mix well, then take tablespoons of the cookie dough and form into cookies on a baking sheet
-bake at 180C for 8 mins.

Monday 11 February 2008

Lovely things! Lots of!

First up, Vegan with a vengeance's thumbprint cookies made diabetic friendly! I got the idea from my friend Drea who very kindly brought some to the last vegan freak forums' meetup for my diabetic boyfriend Jay.These aren't chocolately, I just omitted the cocoa powder and used a little more flour till I got a nicely textured dough(about 1/2 cup-ish), replaced the sugar with agave nectar and used diabetic jam. Cheers Drea! =]
These cookies aren't diabetic friendly, unfortunately (although I'm sure I could probably try to tweak the recipe). They're Veganomicon's chewy oatmeal raisin cookies, but actually, they're chewy oatmeal cranberry cookies since I used dried cranberries instead of raisins. Very nice.
It was pancake day last Tuesday... but I forgot, and didn't get round to making the pancakes until Saturday morning! Here is the easiest crepe-style pancake recipe in the world, ever, that I used for these...


(Makes 2-3 10" pan-sized thin pancakes or more or thicker smaller ones)

300ml soya milk
100g of plain or wholemeal flour
tsp vanilla essence

pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg
a little vegetable oil

- blend or whisk soya milk, flour, vanilla essence and spices till frothy

- wipe the oil onto a preheated pan, then pour enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, wait till it all the batter is "dry"(should only take a few minutes) before attempting to flip it or it will fall apart!

-flip and fry other side of pancake for a minute or so, then serve

~try serving this with lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar, or a little syrup or agave nectar, as pictured below~


I bet you're thinking I should reeeeaaaally go on a diet for the rest of Lent after seeing all those pictures... (not gonna though- I'm an atheist, I just happen to love pancakes and think Pancake Day is as good as an excuse as any to eat 'em!) but there are a few slightly heathier ones coming up!

Here's my new kitchen toy, a ginormous stockpot I got in Ikea at the weekend! Ideal for making massive batches of soup for grazing on for a few days! It's first mission was to cook this butternut squash and lentil soup.

Last but not least, some muffins! But these are healthier than your average muffin, as it's Veganomicon's almond-quinoa muffins again, but this time with fresh blueberries! There's loads of good stuff packed into these... quinoa(which is so chock- full of nutrients, like protein, calcium and iron, that I always feel almost virtuous when I eat it!), flaxseed, wholewheat pastry flour, almonds and blueberries, only agave nectat to sweeten, and only 1/4 cup oil for the whole entire batch!

Monday 4 February 2008

Lelly's famous stuffed tofu yet again, and... Barshaw Park potato salad?

Don't think 'shroom-hater Lelly'll be pleased that I've defiled her recipe with baked 'shrooms (sorry Lelly!) marinated in the filling on top, but they were damn tasty! :P

I've served this with a tweaked variation on Veganomicon's prospect park potato salad dressing. I thought it was too vinegary last time so I just omitted the vinegar altogether and used a wee drop of agave nectar to sweeten instead of sugar. I've used baby new potatoes instead of chopping up bigger ones since they're really tasty, and a bit healthier too due to the fact there's more skin and thats where all the nutrients are in a tattie! I've name-changed it after a park in Paisley, lol.

I usually buy Maille brand Dijon mustard but today I'd bought Morrison's own brand dijon mustard since it was a lot cheaper, but wow, they taste a lot different, the latter is far spicier than Maille's which is far milder. It was nice enough, but I much prefer the milder Maille's stuff.

Sunday 3 February 2008

I popped my cherry...

...atop my cupcakes to garnish 'em :) They're coconut heaven cupcakes from vegan with a vengeance and I've made them many times before, but oh my, they're heavenly! More posts coming up asap, once I pop my cherry to some new recipes!