Vegan Cupcakes: Vanilla-Agave

What better way to start back up on the ol' blog than by making up a batch of simple vanilla-agave vegan cupcakes? Also, I had an excuse since I've wanted to celebrate having a new roommate in my little apartment today. I grabbed my copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (essential, seriously), shopped for a few missing ingredients, and made my way back to the kitchen.

The great thing about vegan cupcakes is that the ingredients come together so quickly, in a way that traditional dairy-full cupcakes just don't. (The icing is always delicious and fluffy, too, but I've got some left over cream cheese icing from my last baking experiment, so the finished product wasn't completely dairy-free.) Oil-based cupcake recipes tend to make spongier, fluffy cupcakes, but they don't rise as much, according to my past experience. And, just as I suspected, they were dense, moist and rich, but didn't rise sky-high over the pan's edge.

The flat surfaces made them easy to frost, so with the icing at a perfectly spreadable temperature, the finished product turned out quite pretty (if I do say so myself). The result? Delicious.

Just because it's a frozen burrito doesn't mean you have to sacrifice presentation.

Case in point -- tonight's dinner, at your right (guest starring Miss Dyna Bean).

That's an arrow made out of Sriracha, for the curious. When you run out of salsa, it's an adequate substitute to get the hot chile flavor. It also appears frequently next to sushi rolls, if you think you might have seen it before but are having trouble placing it.


Tonight's dinner also happens to be vegan, and, despite the presence of the Coke over there, it's HFCS-free. I stopped eating the fructose devil about a year and a half ago, and now when I encounter it, the cloying sweetness is such a turn-off that I find I don't want it anymore. (Kind of like being non-dairy -- I have to ask my roommate whether the milk is bad when I'm baking, because I think it all smells icky after having abstained for so long.) This bottle is from a grocery store that carries Mexican Coke in glass, which makes the taste so much better on top of the fact that their version's made with regular old sugar. And sometimes, doesn't everyone want to ditch the healthy routine and drink a damn soda?

Try going without high fructose corn syrup for a few days and then drink a regular Coke and you'll see what I mean about how unpalatable it becomes -- let me know if you give it a try!

This week in baking: Grape Nuts (preview edition)

So I've been having a Grape Nuts craving, but since I usually get tired of them long before they go stale (and then they, um, go stale), I decided to get preemptive and concoct some Grape Nuts baked goods, including vegan strawberry cereal bars and a very Daring Custard Caper. Stay tuned to this space to see what delicious Grapey-Nutty yummies I come up with!

The other reason for baking in the relative heat of July is that I heard a horrible story from my mother this morning. Seems that while she was putting away the delicious peach pie we had at her July 4th barbeque, the pie plate slipped from her hands, shattering the dish and laying waste to all those hand-peeled peaches and the perfect, flaky, homemade crust. So I wanted to bring something yummy and not-too-bad-for-you to her when I see her next, to help ease the pie-related trauma. Here is a picture of the pie, taken by my friend Styrous, before it met its doom:


In the meantime, check out this recipe for Peanut Butter & Jelly Tart (with graham cracker crust, I might add) that I found on Epicurious while I was looking up other people's Grape Nuts experiments for inspiration in my own. It contains no Grape Nuts cereal, but the words "grape" and "nut" appear in the recipe, so it showed up in the results of my searching. If I were gonna make this tart, I'd tweak it a little (for instance, I'd try seasonal berries & homemade jam instead of grape jelly & Concords). Anyone else feel like giving it a go?

P.S. I can't help it -- I'm also making Wheat Free Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for a certain Birthday Boy I know... Mmm... cookies...

Update: (Sunday afternoon) I went to three different grocery stores, and there were no Grape Nuts to be found! To be fair, I wasn't expecting Trader Joe's or Whole Foods to stock them (I was right), but when I went to Andronico's they didn't have any on the shelf, and the employees were incredibly unhelpful. My mission continues tomorrow, when I try a fourth store and hope that the universe stops thwarting me at every turn. At least it gives me an excuse to keep buying wine -- everyone has such good deals! So as a consequence, my wine rack is completely full.

Duh: Vegetables are good for you.

Tara Parker-Pope blogs over at The Well, a New York Times blog, and yesterday she posted "The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating", a fairly comprehensive list of foods that aren't incorporated into the average person's daily diet. (Pro tip: Check out the comments for some great recipe ideas and Tara's replies to her readers, some of which betray her closet case of bitchiness.)

Your mom already told you that beets are good for you, and Richard on Top Chef reinforced this idea on the cookin'-with-kiddies episode this season. Cabbage is so delicious, and often overlooked. Also, most people slather cabbage in mayo and think they're doing themselves a favor. Newsflash for these folks: the mayo offsets your attempt at health. TPP is quick to suggest an alternative -- here's a recipe for Asian Slaw with Peanuts from Epicurious. Personally, I'd skip the peanuts and throw on some sesame seeds to substitute the crunch and avoid the overpowering nut flavor, since I dig the taste of cabbage.

For anyone who eats spinach avidly (one of the superfoods that usually makes these top lists), swiss chard is probably a known substitute, especially because it's prepared so similarly. At my favorite farmer's market, the chard is such a pretty sight that one can't help but be tempted by the bright stems, especially in winter when everything else in season is so void of color. Canned pumpkin and frozen blueberries are great tips for high antioxidant foods that can be kept in the cupboard/freezer year-round. I like to substitute purréed pumpkin for the eggs & water portions of the readymade recipe for a boxed chocolate cake -- it makes for a great, fluffy vegan cake when you're short on time -- but don't forget the oil or it won't puff up enough!

Of course, all the aforementioned basically boil down to the following: Eat More Freaking Plants (with apologies to Michael Pollan for butchering his lovely original phrase). To add irony to the eye-roll, what should appear on the RSS this morning but TPP's latest missive: "Lying About Your Vegetables".

Meat.

As a former vegan, pescavegetarian (no meat or dairy, except fish -- a short lunch break made the sushi place across from work semi-obligatory), and ovovegetarian, but currently an unapologetic meat lover, I've wondered how I can cut back on meat in a practical way -- still able to enjoy the occasional slice of bacon, without the side of guilt. Apparently, someone at the New York Times has been reading my mail -- this week saw publication of the article "Putting Meat Back In Its Place", which is basically a consumption guide for those of us who'd like a little less factory in our farm (or just feel guilty about eating so much meat, or whatever -- Mark Bittman lays out the irrelevancy of the readers' motives in the first paragraph), and are willing to cut back on the amount of flesh-based food in our diet.

Though longtime restricted-diet adherents will probably find most of the recommended steps to be old hat ("4. Buy more vegetables, and learn new ways to cook them"), there is an undercurrent in the article that demands we reconceptualize meat, perhaps think of it the way we're also being asked to think of fossil fuels -- something precious, a commodity not to be considered infinitely renewable, a luxury. I enjoyed the subtlety of Bittman's article. He's one of my favorite food writers, because he's never negative, just excited about coaxing his readers toward a positive, and that skill is displayed plainly in this week's article.

My favorite way to cut back on meat is to have vegan dinners at least once a week, which is surprisingly easy when you pool all the leftover veg from the meatier nights of the week. Throw the veg in a cast iron skillet, cook it down in a bit of wine or veg stock, throw it over couscous or quinoa, and add some pre-cooked garbanzos or lentils on top. Yum! And totally meat-free.

Of course, if I ever decide to return to my former meat-eschewing ways, I'll always have this to keep my palate happy.