Category Archives: Recipes

I’ve been baking more often than I’ve been posting, but like I mentioned earlier, I prefer to only post the recipes of things I’m happy with.

I made these bacon-soynut butter cookies, which were just a bit too greasy and had an odd texture… there was no flour in the recipe, just sugar, bacon and soynut butter, pretty much.

Decidedly not vegan.

Then I made some potato onion poppy seed loaves. And supposedly those were pretty good, and the batter was good but I never actually got to taste the finished product so no, I cannot endorse it yet!

But anyway, since I can’t ever make normal things and I have a big ol’ box of cornmeal in the pantry, I looked up “cornmeal cookies” and found this cornmeal lime shortbread cookie recipe, from Vegan Mother Hubbard. Small alterations of mine included mixing by hand as opposed to a mixer, and using margarine as opposed to earth balance.

I think mine were about 2.5 inches in diameter, and that made 22 cookies.

Pleased to announce that this recipe’s a keeper. The cornmeal gives it an interesting flavor, and goes well with the lime, but there’s enough fat in there so that the texture isn’t overwhelmingly grainy. Good stuff.

#nofilter

I’ve actually been baking a lot since school’s been over-

School is over! Maybe forever! I have a master’s degree!

Anyway, since I don’t have to spend the evenings and weekends in academia land, I’ve had the free time to experiment with new recipes. None of which have been written about individually because I wasn’t 100% satisfied with them (except for maybe the cornbread, which I didn’t take a picture of anyway, go figure). That’s not to say that anything was totally awful or unappreciated – I just don’t feel like posting the recipe for something if I wouldn’t recommend it for someone else to try.

Especially not chocolate chip cookies.

tastydough

They’re one of those standard goods that I feel anyone who’d call themselves a baker needs to have go-to recipe for, and I haven’t found mine. I tried making some a few weeks ago, and while the dough was delicious, they came out flat, crunchy and very greasy – not what I was going for. Therefore, I am not posting the recipe. My mom did give me a couple tips on how to get a fluffier texture, so I’ll probably make another attempt soon.

These lemon cake things were another taste-good, texture-not-so-much effort:

lemonrocks

Don’t let the glaze fool you, these came out dry and dense, and I honestly could’ve used them as weapons a day later. The recipe said to bake at 350 for an hour, which I think was far too long.

Buuuuut last weekend I made margarita cupcakes, and I was actually pleased with how they turned out!

neondelights

This recipe is apparently from “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World,” which is by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, of Post Punk Kitchen fame. She knows what she’s doing. These are moist and delicious and didn’t even require an egg replacement. Your kitchen will smell like tequila (added bonus?)

Cupcakes (makes 12)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Fill a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.

2. In a large bowl, mix together lime juice, lime zest, soy milk, oil , tequila, vanilla and sugar.

3. In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add to lime mixture and stir until just combined, then spoon into muffin tins (this is low-viscosity batter, it will be messy).

4. Bake for 20-24 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the cakes spring back when lightly pressed.

5. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

6. For the frosting, cream together margarine, soymilk, lime juice, tequila, and 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar.

7. Add in more sugar as needed to make frosting stiff, but spreadable. I added some cornstarch, as I ended up running out of sugar.

To be honest, you could probably halve all the liquids for the frosting and be all right. No matter how stiff it looks in the bowl, it will spread out over the cupcakes just the same, so you don’t need a lot of it (you can see I added too much to the top two in the photo and had to wipe away the excess). Enjoy!

As in the fruit, date. Perhaps not as approachable as say, apples or raspberries, at least as far as dessert fillings go. Which I get, I mean they’ve got a pretty strong flavor. But every spring I actually get mild cravings for them, probably because my mom’s version of charoset always had dates in it. And the tastes pairs up well with oats. So, a few weeks ago, I took a stab at these oatmeal date bars.

Recipe stolen and tweaked from the Rollin’ Oats Market and Cafe website. I omitted the walnuts and added cornstarch, since the dates weren’t thickening up their own (maybe nuts are a thickening agent?)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Medjool dates, coarsely chopped (this seemed roughly equivalent to a 12oz package, maybe slightly less)
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups water
• Pinches of nutmeg and cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups white flour
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 cup margarine or non-dairy butter alternative

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a saucepan, combine dates, WHITE sugar (I used the brown by mistake at first, it was annoying to fix), and water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, and add spices and cornstarch. Stir occasionally, 10-15 minutes, until dates are soft & mixture is thick.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, oats, brown sugar & baking soda. Knead in margarine until dough forms. Press half of dough evenly in the bottom of a 13″x9″ pan. Bake 15 min. until lightly golden.
3. Spread date mixture evenly over hot crust. Sprinkle remaining oat mixture on top. Bake 25 minutes, until golden. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack before cutting.

NB: Again, make sure you use white sugar for the date mixture, brown sugar for the crust. Also it helps if you can sharpen your cutting blade before pitting and chopping up the dates – that step is probably the most time consuming.

And voila! They came out really well. I have no clue what the serving size is for date bars, so we’ll just say this recipe makes however many servings you want it to make, depending on your appetite.