I think I've perfected the vegan mug cake.

Mike asked me to make him a mug cake for dessert tonight. I usually make adjustments to the mug brownie recipe, but this time I looked up the mug cake recipe. I found this recipe on vegweb.com, but I still wasn't entirely pleased with it, so I made a few more adjustments. So here's the recipe with my changes. Mike really liked it, but I thought it was a bit too chocolaty, so I'm giving a range of cocoa powder.

1/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 c sugar
1-2 tbsp cocoa
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 "egg" (I used 1/2 tbsp Ener-G with 2 tbsp water)
3 tbsp soymilk
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
splash of chocolate extract (optional)

Stir the dry ingredients together in a large, microwaveable mug. Mix up egg replacer and add to dry ingredients along with other wet ingredients. Stir to combine, making sure to get the dry bits along the bottom edges of the mug. Microwave for 3-5 minutes (depending on the power level - mine is 700w and it took 4 minutes) until it looks firm and pulls away from the mug. Eat with a spoon or turn out onto a plate. It tastes pretty good topped with raspberry jam.

I might tinker with this a bit more. I thought about adding a couple drops of almond or coffee extract, since those flavours work well with chocolate.

I've perfected my cinnamon chocolate chip muffin recipe!

Remember these (for those of you in the States) - Betty Crocker muffin mix pouches?


When I was younger and lazier (and not vegan), I used to buy one of the chocolate chip and one of the cinnamon (they made 6 muffins each) and combine them for cinnamon chocolate chip muffins. I have always loved cinnamon muffins, but ever since going vegan and opening my life up to all the amazing creations of vegan baking, I very rarely make a straight-up cinnamon muffin. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a cinnamon muffin recipe in any of my plethora of vegan cookbooks, or even on a blog. Surely I'm not the only person who made cake-sized muffins (all the mix into a 9" round pan) and tried to consume the lot (with margarine, and starting from the middle because I didn't like the crusty outsides), only sharing when I was so full I thought I might be sick (or if there was nothing left but crust). OK, maybe I am. However, I'm sure other people liked those Betty Crocker muffins as much as I did. Here is my closest approximation to those delightfully chemical-filled muffins.

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 1/2 c flour (a-p/plain, a combo of plain and wholemeal pastry, or a good GF mix)*
3/4 c sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c non-dairy milk
1/2 c oil (or do half oil/half applesauce if you want lower fat)
1/4 c plain or vanilla soy yogurt (or any other substitute for 1 egg)
1/2-3/4 c chocolate chips**

Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Line a muffin tin with paper liners.

Sift dry ingredients together and stir to make sure they're all mixed. Make a well in the centre and add liquid ingredients. Stir to combine. Fold in chocolate chips. Fill muffin liners about 1/2-2/3 full. Bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick through the centre comes out clean.

*I've had a lot of success subbing Dove's Farm Gluten and Wheat-Free Flour Mix for plain flour in other recipes. If you have access to this, just use it rather than trying to make your own (it's relatively cheap). If not, hopefully you can come up with a good mix; this one has rice, potato, tapioca, maize, and buckwheat flours (in that order) if you want to try it.
**The bags of chocolate chips we get in the UK are 1/2 c, so it's just easy for me to dump in one bag. If you like more chocolate chips, go for it.

In other news, I'm keeping up alright with some of my resolutions, but not so much with others. I might do an end-of-month review on Sunday.

Oh hai.

Yeah, I totally abandoned this project when MoFo was over. I suck. In my defense, I started working full time, so I was getting home needing to clean and cook after having been at work for 8 hours. It was a bit tiring. I'm off for the holidays now, and the job is still only temporary, but I'll try to be better with this in 2010. I also haven't kept up with the few blogs I had been following, so I've got about a thousand posts to read. I should've started this at the beginning of my holiday.

Speaking of 2010 - HAPPY NEW YEAR! HAPPY NEW DECADE!

Here are my food-related resolutions:
1) Keep up with this blog.
2) Use my cookbooks more often - I might need to give myself another cookbook challenge. I just bought 5 new ones (one of which is by the person I'm testing for [see below]). What I need to do is flip through all of my cookbooks and make a list of the recipes I want to try. Then, DO IT!
3) Update my food porn - I probably have 100+ pictures on my camera right now. I just couldn't be bothered uploading everything. I only hope that I can remember what everything is.
4) Make use of more of my kitchen gadgets - I have loads, but some of them I hardly use. I also keep getting more. But at least I've already made a start, of sorts. I made cheese toasties for lunch with the sammich plates on my combo waffle iron. And I've got hoppin' John going in my new slow cooker (Xmas present from Sam).
5) Be a better tester - I'm testing for a cookbook that should be coming out around March (yeah, quick turn-around). So far, I've only tested one thing (well, 2 if you count the accompanying dip). I need to keep up with the posts so I don't let Alicia down.
6) Eat better food - This will hopefully come with #2, but I need to keep on using fresh ingredients, eating more veg (and maybe more fruit, now that I have something to make smoothies with), eating less processed stuff and fatty stuff, and making more from scratch. This will also help with #4, since I'll be getting more use out of my bread maker and my new bread knife.

Other resolutions:
1) Kinda food related, but not exactly: Keep up with the cleaning - Wash the dishes within a day of using them, keep the bathroom clean so I can take a bath every once in a while, and hoover at least once a week (instead of only when people are coming over if I can be bothered).
2) Get a permanent full-time job - I kinda have to wait until I get my leave to remain sorted (yeah, I still don't know about that), but once I get that back, I'm gonna keep applying for jobs until I get one.
3) Keep up with exercising - I paid a ton for my gym membership so I could get free yoga and pilates, so I should actually go to those classes. I also want to start doing aquaerobics and/or swimming.

Oh, and to answer Mo's question from my last blog post: A crumpet is basically a single piece of bread-type thing. They're cooked on a griddle rather than baked, and they have more baking soda (or is it powder?) so they have holes in the top. English muffins generally don't have the holes, and they're baked, and they're usually split apart (unlike crumpets). Does that help?

MoFo finale - crumpety goodness

I can't believe MoFo is over! This month has been yet another reminder of the awesomeness of veganism and the vegan community. I've really enjoyed writing this, and I'm so glad I was convinced to start this blog and join in the MoFo. I actually did 31 posts! I'll definitely keep up with blogging, though probably not daily like the past month. I've also really enjoyed reading other people's posts, though admittedly I only read a few blogs. I might go back and catch up when I have some down time.

In my final MoFo post, I'll discuss the wonderment that is the crumpet. According to the source of all knowledge, aka Wikipedia, crumpets are actually Anglo-Saxon in origin. It's traditional British food! For those who've never had a crumpet, the greatness lies partially in simple breadly goodness, but also in what's not there - those holes in the surface that allow your toppings to ooze their way down through the entire crumpet. You end up with a bit of mess at times, but then you just mop it up with your crumpet!

I introduced my sister to crumpets when she was here for my wedding and graduation. She so desperately wanted to take some home that we tried to go to Tesco both the night before her flight, and around 6 AM the morning of her flight (which was only a few hours later). Sadly, they hadn't restocked. But she's since found crumpets at home, so I don't feel the need to send her boxes full of crumpets.

I may have mentioned this before, but crumpets are the perfect conveyance for almost any topping, sweet or savoury. I've eaten them with nothing but margarine, but they also taste great topped with golden syrup, maple cream, hummus, fake cheese spread - pretty much anything you might put on bread, but melty things are especially good.

Vegan Dad has a crumpet recipe. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan on making it soon (I even bought crumpet rings!).

For your delectation, here is a picture of some delicious crumpets with a touch of margarine and maple cream.

Jack is watching over my crumpets while holding some Yogi chai with soy milk. Mmm.

Cookbook challenge, week 10, day 6 - Get It Ripe

Yesterday, Mike came home from work and almost immediately asked me to make him some shortbread. My last attempt at shortbread was a bit of a failure. I tried to make millionaire shortbread, which has a layer of caramel, then a layer of chocolate, topping the shortbread layer. My shortbread was really crumbly, and I burned my caramel, which ended up tasting more like burnt toffee. It was kinda sad, yet still delicious. But this time, Mike just wanted straight-up shortbread - no frills.

So, as promised, I made the Shortbread Cookies from Get It Ripe.


I subbed margarine for coconut oil because I didn't have the patience to liquidize, measure, refrigerate, and then dice my coconut oil. I also threw some chocolate chips into half the batch. The flavour and texture of the shortbread is really nice.

I had a couple of problems with this recipe. First of all, the directions tell you to use a food processor, but my food processor is really only an attachment to my immersion blender, and it wasn't big enough to fit all the ingredients. So I bunged everything in a bowl and used the dough hooks on my hand mixer. The directions then tell you to turn out the mixture onto a clean surface and knead into a ball. The dough was so sticky that it stuck to the countertop. Once I got around to the rolling stage, it stuck to the rolling pin and the countertop, and it didn't want to come off the counter after I'd cut the cookies. I ended up having to roll and press each one by hand, which was annoying because I really wanted to use my forest animal cookie cutters.

Because I have a small oven and only one cookie sheet (right now), I had to do these in batches. I ended up making the first batch far too big, as you can see from the picture, but I still had to do 3 batches, so these took a really long time. I really don't know if I'd make these again, given all the problems I had and the time it took, even though they are really tasty.

I've finally uploaded pictures from the last couple of days, so I'll go back and add those to previous posts.

MoFail - projects and stuff I never got around to

This here is another catch-up post. I will get in 31.

I had lots of plans for this MoFo, my first but the third for a lot of other participants. Unfortunately, I'm just lazy, and I couldn't be bothered to do most of what I planned. Here are the things I never got around to:

1) A master index of all my recipes - The idea was to put all of my recipes (from cookbooks, blogs, etc.) into a spreadsheet, listing them for every ingredient they contain, so that if I needed to use up my hoisin sauce, I could just search 'hoisin' in my spreadsheet and find every recipe that contained it. There were two reasons I wanted to do this - first, I have a lot of cookbooks and bookmarked recipes, and it would be great to see at a glance what my options are to use up the spinach that's about to go off. The other is that some of my cookbooks don't have the best index, so even though I'm sure an ingredient is mentioned, they might not be listed under that ingredient because it's not a main component. Maybe I'll get around to this if I don't get a contract around Xmas.

2) Clean out and inventory my cupboards - I probably really should do this, especially after the lost cinnamon incident (I swear I bought a package of cinnamon, but I couldn't find it). The thing is, I know most of what's in my cupboards, and more importantly, where to find it. I don't need to be able to see the labels on my herbs and spices to know that the turmeric is against the left side, third from the front, and the thyme is just behind the paprika. But having an idea of what else is in there (so I don't buy and open another bag of pasta before finishing the last) would probably be a good thing.

3) Using stuff I never use - I've got so much cooking equipment. Probably not as much as some people, but I still have a ton. And some of it I never use. I've had my food mill for about a year now, and I think I've used it once (maybe twice). I've used my crepe pan once. I have cookie cutters and a springform pan that are still in their wrapping. I should really make use of this stuff, especially since I paid for most of it.

4) Monday Movie Night - This happened once. To be fair, this was mostly down to my friends not being able to turn up (when it did happen, only one person turned up). I would've liked to have done this more often, because I really enjoy cooking for a lot of people, but nothing much I could've done about it.

5) Make sushi - I bought all the stuff for it. My tempeh might end up going off (again) if I don't get around to it. But I just haven't done it. It's a bit daunting, I guess, but even if it isn't perfect, at least I would have tried.

Of course, there's still later today and tomorrow, so I might be able to do at least one of these things. I might do the sushi. Or maybe I'll make use of my forest animal cookie cutters when I make Mike's shortbread cookies.

I'll leave you with a link to a blog post I really liked about how much being vegan doesn't suck. I have to get ready to go do my volunteer thing, so I might elaborate on this in another catch-up post, but I just wanted to share it.

Cookbook challenge, week 10, day 5 - Get It Ripe

Tonight I made Pinto's Refried Bean Burritos from Get It Ripe (pictures to be added later).


I didn't mash the beans because I just couldn't be bothered (and Mike has issues with mashed things, I think). I had a layer of brown rice, a layer of beans, some shredded lettuce, and a few spoons of Alpro Soya plain yogurt. They were tasty enough, but just kinda meh. I dunno. My typical burrito usually has some kind of 'meat' (usually mince cooked with taco seasoning), but I didn't bother with that this time because, really, the beans and rice are enough protein. But it was just missing...something. I do have to say, though, that the beans took almost no time to make (well, if you're starting with cooked beans) - no more than 15 minutes. If you're in a huge hurry, you could do quinoa instead of rice and have a pretty decent meal in less than 20 minutes.

Mike came home and requested shortbread, so I think I'll be making the shortbread cookies from GIR tomorrow.