Wheat free chocolate chip cookies

So last night we decided to be sociable (rare these days! utter laziness) and went to a free [vegan] wine and cheese night at my favourite all vegan cafe/shop. We walked there from our flat, as we knew the wine was free and well, you know. Alcoholic.

When we got to within a few meters of this place I suddenly got so nervous I felt ill, but I was brave and powered on! I am too shy to live, I think :P Luckily I didn't chicken out because I managed to meet some new people and have a damn good time. Also accidentally met the author of Kittens Gone Lentil (hooray a not-quite stranger!!) which was very lovely.

Anyway the wine was awesome (and free-flowing) and we got to taste all the different vegan cheeses you can get here in Brisbane (Sheese, Cheezly...that's all I can remember) and even a couple of faux meat things which totally creeped me out by the way.

They are apparently doing it monthly so maybe I'll make it a regular thing :)

Today I felt like baking some cookies - worst idea ever. I ate too much sugar and now I think I'm dying.

But anyhow, these are the Wheat free chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, and they pretty much didn't reaaallly work, but they are still pretty good. Very large and flat though :P I think I used about 2 tbsp per cookie instead of 1, and there wasn't enough room on the baking tray for all of the mix, and what was left would only make about 2 cookies so I just ate it. Bad bad bad.

Chocolate Chip Blondies

Yum. I wanted to bake something to take to dad's for dessert on Sunday so I flicked through Chocolate Covered Katie's recipe page and clicked on the chocolate chip blondies first and I had everything for them so they were the one! Ha.

These things are made from chickpeas! Yeah. Well I used 1 cup of chickpeas and half a cup of white beans since I didn't have enough :) I also didn't have chocolate chips so I just chopped up some Lindt 85% dark choclate bar. I usually do that when a recipe calls for chips, it's a bit cheaper I think. None of our supermarket or supermarket avaliable brands appear to be vegan.

Yeah make these. They also make a great high protein snack for morning tea at work! But it is also very easy to eat all of them straight from the oven...

Sometimes you just gotta make dessert

I love how this dessert makes it looks like I went all out and put in a heap of effort...but really it was a simple process of blending some stuff together and sticking it in the fridge.

I saw the recipe on Chococlate Covered Katie's blog and decided to make it then and there.

I made a basic sweet shortcrust pastry and blind baked it for about 20 minutes before pouring in the filling.

In the filling I used 2x100g blocks of Lindt 85% dark choclate, and 1 pkg and a bit of silken firm tofu. I also used about 1 tbsp maple syrup to sweeten just a tad as the choclate is quite bitter. Strawberries are still cheap (amazing this year!) so I cut a bunch in half and pressed them into the filling before I put it in the fridge. I left it the fridge all day and we ate it after dinner :) It was set perfectly - it still amazes me that I didn't have to bake it or use coconut oil or anything. I guess when the chocolate goes hard again...

This pie is so fine I have to force myself not to just go to the fridge and eat the lot. And it's good for you too! I think it'll be a great post-workout snack when you aren't quite ready for a meal yet. I might try that theory tomorrow ;)

Smoothie!

It's what's for breakfast.

I find smoothie recipes to be a bit redundant, I mean, don't you just chuck in whatever you've got in the fruit bowl and hope for the best? This is essentially me doing just that but the result was so pleasent I wanted to share.

This is a good way to get some healthy avocado into your crazy avocado hating friends and family!

Ingredients (makes about 2 cups worth):

1 tiny banana (for real - mine was probably barely 100g, I buy teeny ones at the farmer's market for $8kg)

1/2 a ripe avocado (if you can't afford bananas yet, use the whole avocado)

1 cup frozen raspberries (or other frozen fruit)

1 tbsp chia seeds

1/2 tbsp pea protein isolate powder

1 cup non dairy milk (I used soy)

Put all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend. (See? Redundant.)

The result is a smooth creamy smoothie that I very much enjoyed for my breakfast and am going to have again tomorrow it was so nice. If it's not sweet enough for you, add a tbsp or so of maple syrup, agave, or molasses or whatever liquid sweetener you like. I love the tartness of raspberries so for me it was perfect.

The chia seeds are crunchy in it - if you don't like that then I reccomend making a chia gel/pudding type thing before adding them into your smoothie. Apparently this goo lasts in the fridge for ages. I couldn't be arsed.

Also, to give it more staying power, I'd add some raw oats or wheat germ or something in it, otherwise it's really just a drink!

I've always been curious about trying a protein powder. Not for any particular reason - I doubt I actually NEED any more protein, but it's always fun to try new things. Whey protein is obviously out, soy protein (which you can get at Mrs Flannery's in bulk) sounds revolting and I really don't need any more soy in my life, the other main option seems to be this pea protein, which I've only seen in huge big buckets, but while at Mrs Flannery's the other week I saw it in little packets! Hooray!

It basically smells like guinea pig food, but once you get over that it's fine. I've been mixing it into my overnight oats that I have for breakfast before work. It has no noticeable taste (though I put lots of things into my oats so that could be covering it) but I've only been using quite a scant amount because as you can see, there is no serving size on the bag I got! And I don't really want/need that much. So a half tbsp is usually what I use.

Raw hummus

I've always wondered what raw hummus would taste like so on the weekend I decided to make some :) There just happened to be a recipe on sproutpeople.org, which was handy, but it is essentially the exact same as making regular hummus - just use chickpea sprouts instead of cooked chickpeas.

I packed up some for lunch at work with carrot and kohl rabi to dip it in (the carrot tasted awful though - remind me not to buy organic stuff at woolies).

Anyway, it tastes pretty good, just like regular hummus, just sprout-y :P I will probably make it again, next time I sprout chickpeas.

I put the rest on warmed slices of pita bread, topped it with sprouted alfalfa (I buy in bulk at Mrs Flannery's for nothing - 2 tbsp of seeds made 3 cups of sprouts!) grated kohl rabi (I got one as big as my face at the markets for $1.50!) and baby spinach leaves. Tasted like the best salad sandwich in the universe.

I love alfalfa sprouts. They cost a fortune to buy at the shops but are so simple to make at home.

Peanut Butter Pancakes

I am completely obsessed with peanut butter this week. I have made 3 batches since last Saturday, so that's pretty much 6 cups of peanuts gone in a week! (Between us both of course!) I thought it was about time for some more pancakes today and naturally peanut butter pancakes sounded the best. I based it on this recipe for snickerdoodle pancakes by Chocolate Covered Katie (I clicked on that one because I thought snickerdoodles had something to do with peanuts - they don't, and I still don't know what a snickerdoodle is! and the pancakes from Chocolate Covered Katie are always a winner.)

Peanut Butter Pancakes

Makes 4 small but fat pancakes (1 serve)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp soy milk (or other non dairy milk)

1 tsp vanilla essence

Heaping tbsp smooth or crunchy peanut butter

Maple syrup, crushed peanuts and non-dairy butter as toppings

Method:

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. In a measuring jug measure out the milk, then add the peanut butter and vanilla. Whisk until peanut butter is evenly distributed (mine sort of went to the bottom, but it wasn't in one big lump - this is ok).

Mix together wet and dry but don't overmix.

Cook pancakes as you normally would (I obviously don't know how since I always, ALWAYS burn them and end up using tons of oil) and serve hot/warm with the peanuts, syrup and non dairy butter.

These pretty much tasted just like really soft peanut butter cookies. If you added a little brown sugar into the batter they would taste even more like peanut butter cookies!

In mine I actually had a large tbsp of dessicated coconut, and was going to call them Peanut Butter Coconut Pancakes, but you could hardly taste it, if at all. Next time I might put way more in, and maybe use coconut milk as the liquid :) 

Titles are hard to come by...

I got my race card in the mail, finally! Check out that number. Apparently there's about 50,000 people doing this thing. Dude. Are there that many people in Australia? Far out. I've been keeping up with my training quite well. I can now run jog 4.5km without stopping, for which I am quite proud.

Nadine baked me some cupcakes (woohoo!) today. She chose the Dulce sin Leche cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. But for the icing, instead of what it said she just made a basic chocolate icing which was delicious. I want another one but apparently I have to make them last til Saturday. Bah.

I had a beer the other night and a friend decided to join me :) I nearly had a heart attack, but it wasn't nearly as bad as when the cane toad came flying out of the potting machine at me! It was still alive so we let him go. Poor thing must've been terrified going around and around. I also nearly stood on a water dragon - the animals are coming out now! Just in time for spring :)