Food Porn Extraveganza!

In a marathon baking session this morning, I managed to make two different kind of cookies and two kinds of muffin tops. Yesterday at Goodwill I found a muffin top pan for only a couple of bucks - it was love at first sight.

First up, a Blackberry Rhubarb Cornflour Muffin Top. Very loosely based on the Strawberry Jalepeno Muffin recipe from ExtraVeganZa. These are tart. I love tart. Not to mention fluffy and moist. I used applesauce instead of oil, and unbleached naturally white flour along with the corn flour.

Next, I made the very best Pumpkin Muffins from VWaV. They really are the best. Once again I used applesauce and a combo of whole wheat and naturally white flour. I halved both muffin recipes to get 6 a piece, as my muffin top pan only has six "tops."

Here we have the Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies from VWaV. I added walnuts, raisins and used applesauce. I halved the recipe and got about 13 cookies. I always make my cookies too big. Not that I am complaining.

Saving the best for last, obviously. Bloody Finger Cookies. I saw the recipe here last year, but didn't get around to making them until now. They are tons of fun to make, and look super fab.

Up close

Butt shot

One more for good measure, and because I am so proud. These bad boys are getting mailed to a friend tomorrow. They will go perfect with the little devil hat I made for her son.

The Fruits of My Labor

I got some serious knitting done this week. Three projects in all. That's a lot considering I normally take months to finish one thing because I am easily side-tracked. Plus, I usually have two or three projects going at the same time. Behold -My maracas (dirty!) are modeling this baby-sized devil hat. I made this for a friend's son to match the adult-sized version I knit for her a couple of months ago.

The lava lamp is wearing the black kitty hat I made just for me. Grrrr.

Wrist/arm warmers. The pic does no justice. These are actually bright lime green. Here's a close up of the thumb "split":
These aren't as long as I would like, so I am making a black and white striped pair to go all the way up my arms. I am going to need these this winter; it gets cold where I work.

What I have accomplished on my vacation:

1). I started my Christmas shopping (So early?! I know!)

2). Finished knitted arm warmers that have been sitting on my desk for over a month (Lime green!)

3). Fixed (possibly, cross fingers) wireless router problem after a week's worth of back and forth communication with the e-mail support peeps.

4). Vacuum and clean out car (Maybe wash it tomorrow)

5). Get nose pierced (See blurry pic; oh, man are they gonna love me at work...)

6). Finally organized all of the recipes I have printed off the interwebs into binders, neatly divided into sections.

7). Called friends/wrote letters; basically kept in touch, re-affirmed that I am still alive and kicking.

8). Applied for a new job. Sigh.

9). Realized that I am way to boring and domestic.

10). Turned off computer, went in search of a life.

Kitchen Gadgetry

I am on vacation all this week. It isn't a traditional vacation where I have my butt planted on a beach some place exotic, it's more like a vacation where I sleep in and knit. Yesterday I took a day-trip to a town 80 or so miles from home to antique and shop at a really great outlet mall. In this outlet mall is a kitchen store called Kitchen Collection. Here I found:

The Ulitmate 3 in 1 Caddy! It's a Wilton cake, muffin/cupcake and mini muffin/cupcake carrier for clumsy folk like me. I thought it would be expensive like all of Wilton's products, but it was only $20 bucks.

Here's the first layer, I guess; the cake platform

The muffin/cupcake tray

The mini-muffin/cupcake tray; one tray, two sides.

The whole shebang, locked into place and ready to go.

Mini silicone bunny pans. I am beside myself with glee!

Spoon straws! Perfect for shakes and smoothies!

Silicone measuring cups.

Sushi mold! For the totally inept! Hey, that's me! I am terrible at weilding a rolling mat. I always get my sushi too fat, and stuff falls out the sides. Now all I have to do is stuff rice and veggies and faux-meats into the mold and voila! Roll it up in some nori and chop, chop, chop!

This concludes yesterday's journey. Thank you *takes bow*

Frooty Muffins

I seriously have no idea what to call these since I deviated a bit from the original recipe. I started with a recipe for Cantaloupe Muffins from VegWeb. I am not a huge fan of cantaloupe so I wanted to add soemthing else to make it more tropical I guess. I threw in a small banana and added some Strawberry Banana Vitasoy to the fruit and pureed it all together. I used half spelt flour and half unbleached white flour, and 1/2 cup demerrara sugar and 1/4 cup sucanat. As always, I sprinkled the tops with demerrara before popping them in the oven. I was wary of the time it was supposed to take to bake them, so I watched them closely. They were ready to come out at about 15-17 minutes.

Mine got a wee bit brown around the bottoms, but that's okay. They are very sweet and not in a bad or overpowering way. Neither of the fruits is dominant in taste, giving them a very pleasant fruit punch kind of flavoror maybe like Froot Loops, with an underlying brown sugary taste. This was just a half recipe, so I got about 7 standard sized muffins. I can't say enough about how yumtastic these were.

An exciting find...

Okay, for some it may not be that exciting, but considering I leave in a very small southern town with not another vegan for miles, let alone anyone that knows what a vegan is, it was for me. My first thought was, 'Ha! A ccokie that I don't have to make!' The cookies themselves are very soft, and have a subtle banana flavor and a few nuts scattered about. Really, nothing special. I consider this progress. The next slightly larger town over from us has two health food stores: one ran by two old ladies, and the other a recent opening that carries so much more. I found these at the two old ladies' store. It is the first thing I found in there specifically labeled as 'Vegan'. I bought three, plus a soy natural fudge brownie that is also vegan, but I didn't get a picture of that before it was eaten. I would probably only buy these again if I was in serious cookie withdrawl and could not get to a kitchen to make my own. Not that they were bad, just bland.

Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

Definitely not the best pic, but sadly the best I could do in my kitchen. Today's venture turned out pretty good. I fused two recipes together; one for Carrot Spice Muffins and another for Chocolate Wave Zucchini Bread. For the most part I followed the first recipe, just subbing zucchini for the carrot, then added unsweetened cocoa powder and chocolate per the second recipe. The only other change I made to the first one was to use soy milk instead of soy yogurt, since I didn't have any soy yogurt or soy sour cream (which I usually sub for yogurt). They turned out fluffy, and the chocolate was subtle. What really made them pop was the juicy raisins and melty chocolate chips intermingling together. I really dig the spicyness. Oh, and they are kind of good for you.

Apple Zucchini Muffins and Bonus Cookies

I love apples. I mean, love. I would take apples intravenously if possible. There is nothing better than a crisp, tart Granny Smith. I get a little weak in the knees for a Pink Lady. I recently got "Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk," a 'Zine created by a PPK alum. After flipping through it, I decided that I must make the Apple Zucchini Muffins before all else. Firstly, because I am an obsessive when it comes to muffins. Secondly, because I had never thought to combine the two. Why had it never occured to me?! I tweaked it a bit to my liking. I used half all purpose unbleached white flour and half whole wheat spelt flour. I put applesauce in place of oil, for an extra special apple-y treat, I cut back the sugar and added raisins. They are super amazing.

I made cookies too, and since there is no way on earth all this good stuff is staying in my house for me to eat it all, I am taking them to work tomorrow. I don't even think that my co-workers realize that they are eating vegan. They have no complaints though. I made Sour Cream Chocolate Chippy Chunky Cookies. I got the original recipe from here. I added the chunks myself. I had half a bar of Lindt 70% Cacoa Dark Chocolate bar laying around and a partial bag of Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. So I threw them both in. I used Toffutti Better Than Sour Cream, Earth Balance margarine and Ener-G for the egg. Well, half an egg in this case, though I probably would have been alright without it. I halfed the recipe, but only got 11 cookies. I made them too big, I guess, but who cares. They taste like you are chewing on a chocolate cloud of dreams and sugar...they kind of look like clouds too...