Booooberries

I never read recipes all the way through. I just pull one out that I want to make, and as I am gathering everything I will need out of the cupboards to make it, that's when I realize I am missing an ingredient. I whipped out Vegan with a Vengence this morning in search of a good blueberry recipe. Obviously it wasn't blueberries that I was missing or else I wouldn't have wanted a blueberry-specific recipe. I decided to make the Blueberry Coffee Cake and take it to work in the morning. It would be great for breakfast. While doing the ingredient rundown I stopped with an exclaimation of "oh, man!" at the need for maple syrup. I never keep that stuff around. I didn't want to sub regular sugar, I'm trying to be healthy here, so I reached for the agave nectar. I had about 1/2 cup worth. Hmm. A dig further into the nether regions of my upper kitchen cabinets revealed a never opened jar of brown rice syrup. Score! I used that to make up the full cup of liquid sweetener. The only other sub. I made was to use half whole wheat pastry flour and half all purpose. The end result is to be determined. The batter was the awesomest, if that says anything for it. We'll find out tomorrow if it is omni-approved.

Mailing happiness

Last Sunday, I went hiking. And bowling. And carbo-loading. Okay, it was just lunch, not an attempt to bulk up. After giving my feet blisters, pretending to be a really bad bowler (fine, I really am that bad) and eating my weight in spaghetti with marinara, all I wanted to do was come home and bake. While standing on my blistered feet even more in a hot kitchen. Did I mention I went hiking in flip flops? It makes no sense. I had a baking purpose and I was going to let nothing stop me. A friend of mine was having a bad couple of weeks, and I thought some swets would help make everything better. Mission accomplished. Cookies never hurt a situation. First up:

A half batch of Gigantoid Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies from VWAV. Recipe followed as is, because I was just too tired and hot to be creative, not to mention it was getting late and I had to go to work the next morning. Excuses, excuses.

Drool.

In an effort to make something healthy, I decided on muffins. Only, I had but one fruit in the house: peaches. I don't even know why I bought peaches, I'm not a big fan of them. But they were there, so I had to make do. I used this recipe, making a half batch. I used fresh peaches, of course, and a flax egg for my substitute. They came out nice and moist, with a nice spice.

I am calling them peach love muffins because they were made with love and wrapped with love, obviously.

I was told that my friend's 1 and a half year old son was kissing my muffins. I think that means they were yummy.

Gratuitous nature shot:

I made a blueberry coffee cake earlier. I may get around to putting it up soon. Maybe.

Bonnaroo Baking

I can't believe I didn't make anything last week. I must have had a brain malfunction. I think it was because we had a birthday party at work and if there's cake in the building, no one will eat anything else. So I don't think I bothered for that reason. I made up for it this week. It's the week of Bonnaroo. If you haven't heard of Bonnaroo, then boo for you. I live in the small town of Manchester, Tennesse, home of 10,000 innocent people and which blows up to 100,000 for the short four-day festival. Needless to say, it's a little...cramped. The traffic is a mess, and there's no sleeping because music can be heard for miles. Actually all I get where I live it a lot of bass, but it is enough to keep me awake. I appreciate good music, though, so I don't mind too much. With Bonnaroo comes a lot of interesting people, and their interesting modes of transportation. Hippies on old school buses, and people blessed with leg muscles of steel who ride their bikes hundreds of miles to get here. Every year, the city, county and state police converge on City Hall to eat. The city police cookout for all the law enforcement guys working the event, long hours in the hot sun. They come by and hang out under a tent, eat and relax, then go back to busting pot heads and streakers. I took it upon myself to join others in donating goodies for the event. Example:

Chocolate chip cookie bars, Vegan With A Vengence choco chip cookies, baked as bars.

Brownies from Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk! (again).

Chocolate Cupcakes from VCTOTW, and Fluffy Buttercream Frosting.

Vanilla Cupcakes from VCTOTW, with Fluffy Buttercream Frosting also.

Ready for the road.

Baking with a vengence

I have a dream. It involves peanut butter, as all dreams should. There's chocolate, banana and marshmallow too. It's called a fluffernutter, and if I could eat one everyday, I would. Friday I was brainstorming cookies with my friend Maggie (there, are you happy? You have partial credit now!) . I was expounding my love of peanut butter in a manner that didn't make me look lik a freak, and came off looking like an obsessed psycho. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that I would bathe in it if I could. Anywho, all of the sudden, I shouted "fluffernutter cookie!" and I knew it should be done. So I did it. I wanted to make a peanut butter banana cookie, but didn't know if I should go for crunchy, if possible with the banana, or cakey. I knew I wanted to make it a sandwich cookie though. So, I pulled out La Dolce Vegan, knowing there was a decent small batch peanut butter cookie in the book, and made that one. It was popular among my Christmas cookie tray. I used pureed banana and soymilk as the egg replacer, and also as a sub. for the oil. I wanted as much banana flavor as possible. What I got was a cakey cookie that could have used more peanut butter, but was good nonetheless. Pic:

This was only the first step of the journey to cookie perfection. Here's the recipe, with all my changes in parenthesis:

Wolffie's Peanut Butter Cookies (La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer)

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

egg replacer to equal 1 egg (1/4 cup pureed banana)

1/4 water (I used soymilk, which I added with the banana in the blender)

1/2 cup peanut butter (I used half crunchy and half smooth)
1/4 cup oil (1/4 cup pureed banana)

3/4 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup demerara and 1/4 cup organic sugar)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

This is all me now:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda and salt. Add pureed banana, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla, and stir until well combined. The dough is wet, so you can't roll it with your hands. Spoon it into mounds on your cookie sheet. They don't spread too much, so make sure they are the size you want. Bake for approximately 8 minutes, until edges are starting to brown. Let them cool for a couple of minutes on the sheet, then transfer to cooling rack to cool further. I got 18 cookies.

Next time I might bake them at a lower temp. Since the cookies came out nice a cakey, I decided to make them into fluffernutter whoopie pies. I have been eyeballing the whoopie pies in My Sweet Vegan for awhile, but I have never gotten around to making them. I decided to use the recipe for the creme filling in that book for these pies. It's just powdered sugar, shortening, vanilla and soymilk whipped together until light and fluffy, your basic frosting type deal. My hand mixer went kaput in the middle of making the creme, so I ended up beating it by hand for several minutes, and it turned out fine. Though, my arm is a little sore. I'll be feeling that one in the morning. Maybe I should go back to the gym...

I chilled the creme for a bit in the fridge, and decided to melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips to put in the middle of the sandwiches. My initial thoughts were to dip the sandwiches in chocolate, which I may still do at some point. I also pondered drizzling them with the chocolate. I will try both in the future, but for now the chocolate and creme filling worked out great.

I pulled the creme out of the fridge and made some magic. Proof:

Can you deny such blatant photographic proof? They truly are magic.

Group huddle!