You can't go wrong with pie

I came home from work on Thursday to find that Nadine had baked me a pie.

The Banana Toffee Pudding Pie (otherwise known as Banoffee) from Vegan Pie in the Sky as a matter of fact.

Could anything be more delicious?

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 ;)

Peanut Butter Coconut Cream Pie

Otherwise known as a heart attack. And it was sooo worth it.

Peanut Butter Coconut Cream Pie

Serves 12

Ingredients:

1 pre baked chocolate tart case (I made an oatmeal-buckwheat flour base but didn't write down the ingredients...make your favourite, just add 1 tbsp cocoa powder.

Filling

1 cup peanut butter (I used homemade)

125g vegan cream cheese at room temperature

1/2 cup coconut cream (put a can of coconut cream in the fridge for a few hours. Take it out and open and carefully spoon the thick cream off the top)

Scant 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Ganache Topping

100g 85% dark chocolate broken up

2 tbsp rice syrup

1/4 cup almond milk

1/4 cup coconut cream

toasted chopped peanuts

Method:

Prepare your crust. I put mine in a springform cake pan.

Put all filling ingredients in a food processor and process until combined. This will get really thick! Though I forgot to bring the cream cheese to room temperature first so that may have had an impact.

Pour into crust and put in the fridge for a few hours or until set.

Meanwhile, make the ganache topping!

Heat the two milks on the stove until boiling. Take off heat and stir in the rice syrup and chocolate. Stir until chocllate is melted - it'll go quite thick. Pour on top of set pie and sprinkle toasted chopped peanuts on top. Put back in the fridge until set.

Serve and enjoy. Every. Bite.

Bring it on! I'm going to try and make this deliciousness last all week. It's very very rich (as you'd expect) and quite high in fat so go easy on it!

I love to use this coconut cream. I probaably shouldn't, but I eat it from the can. Don't let me make curry hahaha. It just tastes so damn good!

Gluten free vegan chocolate cake :)

I was asked to make a chocolatey cake for a baby shower/restaurant dinner that we went to last night. I decided I'd better make it gluten free as the friend of ours who organised may be gluten intolerant (and it's fun to make non-traditional things even more non-traditional!). I ended up make it twice - the dinner was supposed to be on the weekend but said friend got food poisoning so it was postponed. So I took the first cake (pictured above) to dads place for dessert and it was happily gobbled up.

I followed this recipe (Mexican chocolate Cake by Gluten-free goddess) almost exactly for the first cake, with a few minor edits: I used 100% buckwheat flour, dark brown sugar, No-egg instead of Ener-G, guar gum instead of xanthan [couldn't find it, guar worked fine], allspice instead of cinnamon, orange sweet potato, molasses and rice syrup instead of honey, coconut oil instead of shortening, apple cider vinegar instead of lemon juice, and only two tsp of vanilla extract. It also took quite a bit longer to bake than said - I'm pretty sure it's my unreliable oven.

For the icing I made a basic vegan buttercream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and used coconut oil instead of shortening, which worked but there were a few lumps of solid coconut oil in it once set.

This cake was friggin delicious! Buckwheat flour is very fine so it was really nice and soft, rather than clumpy. Best chocolate cake I've made, and I'm not really a fan of chocolate cake at all. I want to make gluten free brownies out of the batter, which I think would work really well, since it's that sort of dense texture, but a bit cakey. I shall experiment.

When I made it again for the baby celebrations, I decided to do a two level cake, so I baked two! I put a layer of choko jam on first as per Nadine's request (it worked really well!), smothered that in the same icing as I used before (except I didn't make enough so I had to make another batch).

Plonked the other cake on top and then more icing. As you can see I didn't put enough icing in the middle - I'd put it over the edge next time or level out the cake around the outside to make it a bit more presentable.

Since it was all about babies I drew this on top with black writing icing I got from Woolworths - vegan as far as we could tell (labelled gluten free as well). Tastes like poison but none of the ingredients were in our little vegan shoppers guide. Isn't it cute?

The retsuarant staff thought it was for a birthday so they put a candle in it and sang happy birthday! It was mortifying. But that's ok because the cake was fabulous!

With the second cake I didn't have enough buckwheat to make two cakes, so I mixed together 1:1 buckwheat and rice flour like suggested in the recipe. It worked, but 100% buckwheat was a fair bit nicer :) I also didn't have enough sweet potato puree so I put 1/4 cup in each cake and it didn't seem to affect the texture too much.

So hooray! Gluten free vegan chocolate cake success! Everyone at least seemed to enjoy it :)

I wonder what muffins made with buckwheat flour would be like?

Sometimes simple is best



Dipped in lindt 85%

Nothing like a simple dessert and two cuddly kitties at the end of the day :)



They are touching without squabbling!





Mmm Chocolate

I bought myself some new cookbooks for my birthday (cuz I totally need more cookbooks...) and they arrived yesterday!

And today was more of the ming numbing sameness as it has been for the last month or so so I was really hankering for a sugary sweet treat when I got home and Nadine had made me cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! these are the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes, which she chose because it didn't have icing and she didn't need to make soymilk for it (we had run out). These are rich rich chocolately cupcakes with a hint of cayenne with cinnamon and cocoa sprinkled on top with icing sugar. It's made with coconut milk (hence the not needing to make more soy) which made it even richer.

Yum. Exactly what I wanted! She even put them in little paper cups :)

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You Know You Hate Your Job When...You wish it was you who had the flat tyre on the way in, not your supervisor. Ha.

The cupcakes fixed it all though!

Birthday CAKE

Nadine made me a birthday cake!

My birthday isn't til Sunday, but we are having a picnic tomorrow with friends (hopefully - it's miserable weather at the moment) so of course we had to taste test it.

OMdgjsgnskjdf.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cake from the Concious Cook by Tal Ronnen.

Make it.

Valentine's day dinner

We aren't really big on the whole goopy lovey dovey crap associated with Valentine's Day, so we usually cook up a particularly special meal and dessert. Sometime we go out or buy presents but we are very broke this month :) Also this year Nadine had a nasty cold so there was no wine :( very sad. But the food was so so so delicious!

Nadine made dinner, a recipe she found in Tal Ronnen's 'The Concious Cook' (Old Bay Tofu Cakes with Pan Roasted Summer Vegetables, Horseradish cream, Apples and Beets) Jeez this guy has long meal titles. However long it takes you to read the title, it was fantastic. We thought the cakes wouldn't work because they were so mushy but they did, we just had to be extra careful, which is fine. I used the 'Horseradish cream' as a salad dressing on today's lunch at work. Yum. It's definately a comfort meal, for some reason it reminded me of when we got to eat fish fingers as kids.

I made dessert :) As soon as I saw the recipe on PPK (Berry Creme Tart with Cocoa Olive Oil Crust) I knew I had to make it. I made it up on Sunday afternoon when Nadine wasn't home and hid it in the fridge. We had one each for dessert then cut the other one in half and ate it with work lunches the next day :) Amazingly good. Make them :) The filling is especially good on it's own. I had to eat the leftover filling in the morning for breakfast so Nadine wouldn't see it and eat it and the delicous surprise would be ruined! Tragic. It's like the best pudding you've ever had.

So even though Nadine was blowing snot out of her nose all night and I had to get up at 5:30am the next morning to go work, it was a very nice relaxing Valentine's day for us :)

Low Fat Black Bean Brownies

I'm baking various desserts lately to test out for a small birthday do we are cooking for. These are on the list (the tasteless peach mini muffins aren't, but I'm trying a different recipe soon.)

Mine turned out really thin but that's because I had to use a long rectangular brownie pan to make them. But that's ok :)

I added the optional extra 1/4 cup of oats (except I used oat bran because that's what I had). They were still fudgy and delicious :) I've made brownies using tofu before but these were way better (and not too banana-y which is good because I'm not banana's biggest fan. I sort of chose this recipe so I could get more banana in me without having to actually eat a banana.)

I'm also trying to lay off the sugar, so I didn't add the optional sugar in the recipe. It didn't need it anyway!

The recipe is from Happy Herbivore.

Chocolate chip cookies + new kitty :)

I tried to make choclate chip cookies today :)

As you can see they are really more like choclate chip cakes! Delicious, but not cookies! It might be the applesauce I used instead of half the oil...here is the recipe anyway :)

Chocolate chip cookies cakes

Makes about 26

Ingredients

1 cup flour (I used wholemeal)

1/2 cup wheat germ

3/4 cup oat bran

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil (I used grapeseed)

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (Woolworths home brand is the only one I can find with no added sugar)

3/4 cup dextrose (or 3/4 cup sugar, I just have dextrose to use at the moment)

3/4 cup dextrose + 1 tbsp molasses (or 3/4 cup brown sugar)

Seeds of one vanilla bean

2 tbsp flaxeeds, ground and mixed with 4 - 6 tbsp hot water

1 cup chocolate chips of choice (I used 150g packet of Sweet William milk chocolate chips)

First, grind your flaxseeds and mix them with the water. I use a mortar and pestle, good arm work out! Haha. Set aside to thicken.

Mix flour, oat bran, wheat germ, baking soda and salt in a bowl. In another bowl beat together the oil, applesauce, sugars and vanilla bean seeds. Add in flax egg.

Gradually beat in the flour mixture into the oil mixture. Once combine stir through your chocolate chips.

Set oven to 200 degrees celcius. Drop tablespoon sized blobs of cookie dough on a baking tray that is either greased or has baking paper on it. Flatten them down with your fingers or a fork (fingers works better). Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Let cool on the tray for a while, then transfer them to a wire cooking rack or plate to finish. If you try to move them while they're still hot, a) you'll burn yourself and b) they'll fall apart!

While not exactly what I wanted, they still taste damn good :) I've eaten about 6 already and now I feel sick. Surprise surprise! I really shouldn't bake when I am at home alone :)

We got our second cat a couple of weeks ago! She's so tiny, but apparently she is 3 years old. Her name is Charlee (that was her name from her previous owners, who I think had to surrender her because they could no longer look after her). She loves to play with catnip filled toys and toys in general, and likes to sleep on our bellies at night.

She and Bob have had their fair share of tiffs so far (I came home one day to find Charlee had missing chunks of fur on the back of her neck!) but they are getting used to each other. There's a bit of hissing but it's lessening haha. They even both sat on our bed this morning at the same time!

Bob likes to get in my way. She's getting a bit fat. We'd feed her less but she eats Charlee's food as well :S

Charlee likes to watch me update my blog :)

It's extremely windy today. Beautiful clear blue skies and lots of sun, but very very windy. The neighbours tree snapped just before. It's pretty tall and thin. It's some type of melaleuca. I should go get my washing in before it ends up in Perth.  

Sushi!

Been very uninspired the last few days as I have somehow got a stupid head cold! It's nearly over though, so I'll be able to make actual food again :) Oh, and go to school.

I decided to make some sushi tonight to use up some of the produce in the fridge (it really didn't end up using much at all!!!)

In the rolls are a mix of: organic cucumber from the market, organic carrot from the supermarket, organic avocado, conventional lettuce and spring onion.

The sauce is a mix of: soy sauce, really hot chilli sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds and the chopped white parts of the spring onions.

It was a bit of effort to go into when sick but I really wanted to make them. Unfortunately the avocado is a bit past it...

Today is father's day here in Australia. I decided to make little chocolate thingees :) I may or may not post the recipe, maybe later :) They are rich and delicious, anyway.