Hot Fudge Cake

My boyfriend's momma recently gave me this recipe. She said it originally came from Taste of Home magazine. I veganized it and changed the pan size, as it called for a 12x12 pan, which is a pretty rare size. The first time I made this, I wasn't thinking clearly and decided to make it in an 8" square pan. I briefly considered putting a cookie sheet underneath it in the oven, as I suspected it might overflow, but for some mysterious reason I rejected that plan. Boy, was that a mistake. Sugary chocolate goo seemed to have surgically implanted itself on the bottom of our oven. I had to scrub....and scrub....and scrub to get that stuff off. On the plus side, our oven has never looked so clean.
I do not know the science behind this recipe, but somehow you wind up with a wonderfully gooey chocolate sauce underneath a layer of chocolate cake. Who can say no to that? Well, diabetics and celiacs can I'm sure, but you know what I mean.

Hot Fudge Cake
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/8 cups sugar
9 tablespoons cocoa, divided
3/4 cup soy milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 cups hot water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar with 3 tablespoons of cocoa. Stir in soy milk, oil and vanilla until smooth. Spread in ungreased 9x13" glass baking pan. In small bowl, combine brown sugar and 6 tablespoons cocoa. Sprinkle over batter. Pour hot water over all, do not stir. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. Serve warm.

Thin Mint-Esque Cookies

This is such a simple recipe, but they taste so good. You'll want to hide the rest of the cookies from yourself because they're so addictive (much like the Girl Scout version, even though it's been years since I had them). I stumbled across the recipe on RecipeZaar awhile back.

Thin Mint-Esque Cookies
1 1/2 lbs. chocolate (dark, semi-sweet...whatever you'd like....I usually just use a bag of vegan chocolate chips and cover as many of the crackers as I can)
1/4 teaspoon peppermint oil (or 1-2 teaspoons peppermint extract)
72 Ritz-type crackers (I usually use Late July crackers...in the picture are the Whole Foods brand)

1. Melt chocolate, either in the microwave or in a double-boiler.
2. Stir in the peppermint oil/extract.
3. Drop crackers one at a time into the chocolate mixture, being sure that the crackers get completely coated.
4. Place on wax paper to harden. (I put them into the freezer for a few minutes, then store them in the refrigerator in an airtight container.)

Creamy Tomato Barley Risotto...and Boston Cream Pie for dessert

This creamy tomato barley risotto is a test recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum. I don't often like creamy non-dessert things, but I am absolutely in love with this. I think I want to have it at least once a week for the rest of my life. Seriously. Recently I have noticed that we eat a heck of a lot of rice, so it's nice to have some other grain recipes to use. I served the barley risotto with baked Italian-marinated tofu (and mushrooms) from Vegan with a Vengeance.

This not-so-pretty-to-look-at (but yummy to eat) Boston Cream Pie is half from Damn Tasty and half from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I didn't have all of the ingredients for the cake recipe from Damn Tasty, so I used the golden vanilla cupcake recipe from VCTOW (I doubled the cupcake recipe and baked it in two 9" cake pans). The pudding layer and the chocolate ganache are both from the Damn Tasty recipe. This was my first time both making and eating Boston cream pie. It was indeed damn tasty.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Shells

These are the Chocolate Peanut Butter Shells from The Damn Tasty! Vegan Baking Guide (by Kris, of Squirrel's Vegan Kitchen). Holy yum! These are so rich and tasty. She actually has this recipe up on her website if you'd like to try it out, but her book is fantastic and I highly recommend that you get a copy.

Rich Vegan Brownies

I found this recipe on the vegancooking group on livejournal last year. I really liked it when I made it, but I had a bit of an accident the last time I made it about a year ago. Since the recipe calls for melted soy ice cream and I wanted to make my brownies right then, I put my ice cream in the microwave to melt it. Now, I know better than to put metal in the microwave. I am POSITIVE that I did no such thing, but yet the microwave started sparking on the inside as though I had done just that. I quickly turned it off and unplugged it, but there was this little burnt hole inside it. It was never the same again. When I told my daddy about the incident, he said "there must have been some metal in your ice cream." Well holy crap, I certainly hope not! I had to throw out my microwave. Since I was moving in about a month (by the way, oh friendly neighbors in Richmond...I am a small girl and that microwave was heavy and awkward. Thanks for just watching me struggle with it on my way to the trash cans.), I didn't want to buy another one, so I did without until I moved. I am accustomed to my modern conveniences. It was an annoying month, as exam-time means very little time for cooking.

This time I was patient and just measured out the soy ice cream and waited for it to melt on its own. I used Purely Decadent Cookie Avalanche. This time I doubled the recipe. What can I say? We like our chocolate. These are good. Not cakey at all. I'm sorry, but brownies should not be cakey. Here's the doubled (and slightly modified) recipe:

1 1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 c cocoa
2 ts baking powder
1/2 ts salt
1 c melted soy ice cream (the flavor is up to you)
1/2 c vegetable oil
2 ts vanilla extract
1/4 c chocolate soy milk (vanilla would work, too--you might need a little more, depending on the consistency of your batter)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease 11x13" baking pan (or line with parchment paper).

Mix together all of the dry ingredients. Add in the wet ingredients and stir until just-blended. If your batter is too thick (read: difficult to work with), add in a bit more soy milk. The batter will be a little thicker than most non-vegan brownie batters. Spread into 11x13" pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Jambalaya and Cookies

This is the Jammin' Vegetable Jambalaya from Robin Robertson's The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. Yes, I know that's kind of a goofy name for a recipe. I suppose that when you come up with as many recipes as Robin Robertson does, coming up with creative names can be a challenge. This jambalaya was good. I've never had non-vegan jambalaya, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I liked the flavor in this. I used Tofurky Chipotle Franks as the "sausage" in this. The recipe wound up not being very spicy at all. It was good that way, but I would like to try it again substituting some chipotle pepper for the hot sauce. The recipe says to serve this over long grain rice. I thought I had enough rice, but when I looked in the pantry, I discovered I was wrong. I did have a bag of barley, though. I took this as an opportunity to try out Alton Brown's recipe for baked barley (substituting Earth Balance Whipped for the butter). It was so easy. I will definitely use it more often in the future (and his recipe for baked brown rice, too).


These are the Chewy Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Post Punk Kitchen. By no means are these cookies remotely healthy, but my do they taste good.

Despite My Absence, I Have Been Cooking

Sem Aur Khumbi, from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. The English name of this dish is decidedly less exotic-sounding: Green Beans with Mushrooms. This was the first dish I made from the book, which I currently have checked out of the library. I added some of the Morningstar Farms chick'n strips to it. They really weren't necessary, but we had some hanging out in the freezer and my boyfriend really liked them when he tried them recently. This dish was really good and I would definitely make it again, although I'd probably cut back on the cayenne next time. The recipe calls for a whole teaspoon of it and I found it quite spicy (and I don't even have the spicier cayenne....the health food store had two different heat-levels in the bulk spice section and I bought the less spicy one--boy am I glad I did!). I served this over organic whole-wheat couscous. I was excited to discover that Fantastic Foods started making a whole wheat version.

Vegan with a Vengeance samosas (potato and green pea) with homemade mango chutney. These took forever to make, but they were really good. I was going to take the easy way out on the chutney and just buy some already made (either mango or tamarind), but all of the ones I found had either high fructose corn syrup or refined sugar, so I bought a mango and figured I would wing it on making my own. It worked out quite well.

Tempeh hot wings. I am testing some recipes for mrsbadmouth over at the Post Punk Kitchen, and this was one of the first ones I tried. I'd never had regular wings before, but I was told that this was a milder sauce. It was really good and I definitely plan on making this again.

Lovin' Spoonful O' Cornbread. This is another test recipe for mrsbadmouth. It is a sweet, moist spoon bread and we loved it. I was sad that we didn't finish it before Passover started. The recipe calls for creamed corn, but I didn't go with my boyfriend to the grocery store and he came home reporting that all of the creamed corn at Kroger's had refined sugar in it. As such, he bought me a regular can of corn and figured that I would be able to make my own creamed corn. I must say, homemade creamed corn is much tastier than the awful canned stuff that my daddy tried to make me eat when I was growing up.


Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, another test recipe for mrsbadmouth. The filling was much better than the store-bought crust. It's possible that I just don't like graham cracker crusts, but until I do some more experimenting, I am choosing to blame the Arrowhead Mills crust. My boyfriend didn't seem to mind the crust, though. I ate the filling out of my piece and he finished the crust. I like having a boyfriend that can eat more than I can. It means I waste less food.

Red Curry Seitan and Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

This red curry seitan was such a simple "recipe" (I made it up on the fly). I cut up seitan into bite-size pieces and browned it over medium heat. I added chopped onions and a red bell pepper and cooked them until they were softened. I meant to add a can of straw mushrooms, but I managed to forget it despite the fact that I had it sitting out on the counter. I then whisked approx. 2 teaspoons of Thai Kitchen red curry paste (would cut that back a little next time) into one can of coconut milk. I added this mixture, along with some chopped fresh basil, to the pan of seitan and veggies and let cook until it was heated throughout. Except for the time it took to make to cook the brown rice, this was the fastest dinner I've made in awhile. We had enough for leftovers the next night, which was good because we got home from our day-trip to Atlanta pretty late.

My boyfriend took me to Atlanta this weekend as a belated Valentine's Day present (I was sick on Valentine's Day, so he couldn't surprise me then like he'd wanted to). We ate lunch at Soul Vegetarian, then went to Ikea, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods. At Ikea I got a large whisk (my other one was getting rusty in the handle, plus this new one is silicone-coated so that it won't scratch my pots), a mortar and pestle, a wok ($7!!!), and an apron (also $7!!!). We spent entirely too much money on food, but it was a fun trip. I long to have a Trader Joe's here.


Cookies and Cream Cupcakes, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, of course. So cute! Cutting a Newman-O in half is not as easy as you'd think.

Basic Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

I am absolutely in love with this peanut butter frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. It's not too sweet like frosting so often is. I swear my boyfriend told me one day that he doesn't really like peanut butter mixed with chocolate, so I hadn't made these cupcakes even though I wanted to (I'm not going to make cupcakes if I don't have someone to help me eat them). Then one day he swore that he never said such a thing and that the cupcakes sounded tasty to him. And tasty they were. With the frosting not being too sweet this time, I can even eat a whole cupcake!

Lots O' Food

Valentine's Day dessert. Brownies from theppk.com and caramel sauce from the Vegan Chef (the recipe is on there as Vegan Caramel Sauce...the site doesn't let me directly link to the recipe). I've made the caramel sauce before and really like it. This time I used dark brown sugar by Wholesome Sweeteners. I think I liked it a little better with a lighter brown sugar, but it was still good. The brownie recipe was a little too cakey for me, but I am generally a fan of fudgy, non-cakey brownies, so that doesn't mean anything was wrong with the brownies. And I could ignore the cakey-ness with the sauce on top!


Jerk Seitan, from Vegan With a Vengeance. Not a pretty picture, but a tasty dish. Green peppers + onions = mmmmm. I made the seitan from scratch. I used the other half of the batch for spring rolls on Valentine's Day. Why I didn't take pictures of said spring rolls, I don't know.


Stuffed Shells. We love these and I've made them several times, but just as I was about to eat this last night, it occurred to me that I've never taken a picture. I don't follow an exact recipe. It's loosely based on the Baked Stuffed Shells recipe from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook (well, I follow the baking instructions, at least). We like soy cheese melted on top, but this is only baked at 350 degrees. It's hard to get soy cheese to melt at that low of a temperature. I heat some plain soymilk on the stovetop, whisk in the grated soy cheese and whisk until it is melted (I also added in a bit of nutritional yeast, since the soy milk tones down the soy cheesiness a bit). Once the soy cheese is melted, I add a couple of tablespoons of flour and whisk until the mixture thickens. I then pour the mixture over the stuffed shells. You can see some of the cheesy sauce on the left side of the picture.

Chocolate Cupcakes!

This is a basic chocolate cupcake with chocolate buttercream frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I haven't actually eaten one yet, as I'm saving it for dessert, but I had a bit of the frosting and mmmmmm. The top of the frosting reminds me of a kewpie doll. I finally made was able to use my pastry bag without any catastrophes (I'm still not very good at it, but at least I didn't wind up with a big glop of frosting like I usually do). I got new cupcake liners yesterday. I know that you can't see it very well, but it has these hippie-looking flowers on it. So cute!

Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies

Another cookie recipe from Vive le Vegan. I've made these many times before; they are really awesome. We were grocery shopping this weekend and we walked past the maple syrup. My boyfriend asked if I needed any. I said I was all out, but that it's expensive so it could wait until I really needed it for something. "Or...we could have some more cookies." So the maple syrup went into the cart. And the rest is history.

For so long I didn't eat chocolate....

And then one day I just decided that I wanted to again. I have to say, it sure is good.


These are peppermint patties; I got the recipe from SDGvegan's blog, Vegan-licious (recipe here). These were AWESOME. Mint+chocolate=heaven.

This one is candy cane chocolate bark. I found organic candy canes at the local health food store--yay! The recipe is the Sublime Chocolate Bark recipe from Dreena Burton's Vive le Vegan, but I subbed the candy canes for the dried fruit and nuts. I had fun taking a hammer to the candy canes, and I kind of wished that the noisy guy who lives downstairs had been home to be annoyed by it (but I checked and he wasn't--I wouldn't seriously have sat there banging on the floor if he'd been home. Even though he is rude, I just can't be that rude back.).

Raspberry-Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars

Yet another recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. You know, as often as I use this cookbook, there are still a ton of recipes I have yet to try. With this one, I took the shortcut and used raspberry jam instead of making the raspberry sauce. This was really because I already had the jam on-hand and did not have any frozen (or fresh) raspberries. It was still very good, though, and with the shortcut I took, it was a cinch to make!

I've been slacking on posting

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Funny story....I bought the book right after it came out, only I'm trying really hard to control my spending, so I kind of neglected to tell my boyfriend about it. I figured he would figure it out eventually, though, especially when I suddenly started making lots of cupcakes. Apparently guys do not think the way I do, though. Instead of analyzing where the cupcakes came from, he just thought "mmmm cupcakes." So, one day he went to the front page of theppk.com and noticed that the cupcake book was out. He asked me if I was going to get it. I am a horrible liar and don't like doing it anyway, so I fessed up that I'd had it for a couple of weeks already. Turns out he didn't care that I spent the money and, in return for not getting upset with me for hiding the book, he got to pick out the next cupcakes (but the Tiramisu ones got vetoed by me because I don't do coffee).
The mint icing on these just wouldn't stiffen up for me, and there was a bit of an incident with my makeshift pastry bag, but I think everything turned out just fine. I kind of like the mint icing being smooth like it is because it reminds me of a mint filling from a peppermint patty.

Asian-marinated baked tofu (Vegan with a Vengeance) with sauteed green beans and onions over yellow rice. I just love yellow rice. Even though it's really just turmeric added to regular rice, I think it is tastier and much more visually appealing. Hey, I'm easy to please.

Baked BBQ seitan with mushrooms, black beans, and (I think) onions over rice.

Homemade bread. It's shiny because I brushed it with oil after coming out of the oven. Although I have a bread machine, I did this one all by hand. Non-bread machine bread is so much easier to slice, plus there is no hole in the bottom from the paddle. I think I'm going to start using my bread machine for the kneading and rising, but then shape the dough and put it in a loaf pan. It might take some practice to get that right, though, as I'll have to figure out what temperature to bake it at.

Guilt-Free Chocolate Brownie Cake

I promise we eat much more "real" food than we do dessert.
Yesterday I bought a quart of chocolate Silk soymilk. I don't know why I bought a whole quart when I'd never tried it before. I didn't like this stuff at all--it tastes almost bitter to me. I would feel awful throwing out that much soymilk, so I started looking for dessert recipes I could use it in. The first one I chose was Guilt-Free Chocolate Brownie Cake from Nava Atlas's Vegetarian Family Cookbook. I just replaced the regular soymilk with chocolate. This was tasty and simple. It only used about 1/4th a cup of soymilk, though. I see a lot of chocolate desserts in our future.

Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes with Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting

Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes with Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I used black cherry concentrate instead of red food coloring, hence the lack of "crimson" color in the cupcakes. They still turned out really well. I have lots of leftover icing, so I'll have to make more cupcakes soon.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, but took out 2 TB of flour and put in 2 TB of cocoa. I also added some almond milk (it was all I had on hand) since the batter was too dry. These turned out really well. They stayed soft, which, for me, is the mark of a good cookie. I took most of them to a Sukkot party last night (the ones in the picture are the ones I set aside for my boyfriend to eat at home) and they got eaten up.