Vegan MoFo - Cookbook Challenge: 500 Vegan Recipes (pt 1)

We're now into the third week of Vegan MoFo!  Time is flying!  We're also in week 5 of the Cookbook Challenge, and this week is 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni-Marie Newman.

This morning afternoon I made the Peanut Butter Pancakes (with Freenut Butter, of course).  I made the first half of the batch as per the recipe and the second half with chocolate chips.

Apologies for the pic - I forgot to take one before I started eating.

As suggested, I ate these with some raspberry jam.  The plain ones were a bit meh, but the chocolate chip ones were really good.  Mike quite liked both, though he had the plain with chocolate spread.  But he usually doesn't like PB stuff, so they must have been good.  That said, I find that a lot of stuff that has cooked PB (apart from cookies) almost seems like the PB flavour is baked out (like when you cook with alcohol).  Things that have a strong PB flavour tend to be uncooked (ice cream, buttercream, etc.) - I'm not quite sure why that is - which is why it kinda annoys me when I make something with a cup of PB and don't taste any PB, especially since the stuff I use isn't cheap.  But what can you do?

Oh, I should also say that the batter for these was crazy thick.  I could've made waffles with it.  Those up there didn't just fluff up - that's how thick the batter was.  They also took a while to cook, so these took me over an hour all told.  They also created a bit of a mess with mixing in the PB.  I don't know that I'd make these again just for us because they're a bit of a time-consuming hassle.  But they were tasty.  Oh, and as Mike pointed out, they turned green on the inside.

I made the Chili and Cornbread Pie for dinner (sorry, too lazy/tired to take a pic).  Let me start off by saying this - the instructions are wrong.  There's no way in hell all those ingredients can fit in an 8" square pan.  The chili alone came up to the top of my 10" cast iron skillet (which is the proper vessel in which to cook cornbread).  I ended up putting everything in my cast iron Dutch oven.

The chili was a bit odd - despite all the spices, it still felt a little bland, though that could be sorted with a bit of salt.  It also wasn't as saucy as I'm used to.  The cornbread was some kind of Yankee concoction - more flour than cornmeal, which felt a little wrong (as did the suggestion that it would be cooked in a glass pan - honestly).  Other than that, it was pretty good.  I'd make it again, but I'd change it a bit (like more liquid in the chili and more cornmeal in the cornbread).

We're going out for dinner tomorrow, so it'll be another restaurant review, but I might also make something else from 500VR.