Monday, July 30, 2012

Blogger Baking

There are so very many wonderful recipes around the internets that I often see, think would be good, and then forget about as soon as I navigate away from the page. But recently I have discovered Pinterest as a way of organising bookmarks, and I find it much more useful than standard old bookmarking.

I've pinned several recipes from blogs and recently made a few, with varying degrees of success.

First up, I made a Cromwell Tart, a recipe from Joey at Flicking the Vs. When I originally saw the recipe, and clarified one of the ingredients, I thought okara would make a good substitute... but then when I got around to making the recipe I didn't have any okara to use, so I made it with egg replacer powder, instead. I also added a bit more milk than Joey, mainly on accident, but it didn't really seem to affect the recipe. I also used a biscuit base, instead of a shortcrust pastry. After 30 minutes in the oven it was pretty fluffy but seemed baked through - but I wasn't sure, so I left it in the hot oven for a bit longer. The result was pretty yummy - smooth and moist and quite delicate.

The second was Kari's lemon slice, which I had previously eaten in Melbourne, made by Mel. You can tell this is a good recipe, because it's been getting around. In addition to being delicious, it is also super easy to make, and aside from lemons, uses only ingredients that we always have on hand. Still, I made a few alterations, and had a few issues. First of all, I used sunflower oil instead of melted margarine in the base, because I don't have a microwave and melting margarine is just too much work. This wasn't such a problem - the biggest issue was that I needed to oil the baking paper, because when I tried to slice up and put away the slice, it stuck big time. The other adjustment I made was to add a dash of tumeric, because who doesn't want their lemon slice to be bright yellow?!?
You should definitely make this - the lemon topping is yum.

Finally, I made tofu fish fingers by Mel. I followed the marinade recipe pretty well - to the point that I even bought "vegetarian stir fry sauce", which is not something I do often. But I used polenta + desiccated coconut instead of bread crumbs, and I baked my fingers in the oven instead of frying. They were good - a little dry, because of the tofu I used, but with a nice flavour (and the dryness actually did remind me of the fish fingers I used to eat as a child).

So, Pinterest is a winner for me, because it means finally getting around to using these recipes that other bloggers post that make me go 'ooh, yum...'.

9 comments:

vegan.in.brighton said...

I love Pinterest for bookmarking recipes, so useful! That lemon slice looks great, I always make the recipe from Veganomicon.

Hannah said...

I'm still avoiding the time-suck of Pinterest, but oh golly it's tempting to join up sometimes! Loving the idea of polenta and coconut as a coating for crispy wonder.

Joey said...

Nice tart - more milk looked like it made things better *runs off to adjust recipe*

Am adding the lemons slices to my to bake list right now. It's a long list, what can I say?

Kari said...

Now that is yellow! What a colourful twist - I will keep tumeric in mind when I want to up the yellow-ness of dishes in future. I still have Mel's fish fingers bookmarked so was interested to hear your adjustments for that too. I'm also adding that tart to my 'to make' list as I love bakewell tart; a vegan version would be wonderful!

Kari said...

Also (can't believe I forgot this in my first comment), thank you so much for the link back and I'm still so delighted that you're enjoying the slice :)

Mel said...

I love the colour in the lemon slice, it looks even more scrumptious! It's interesting that the tofu was a bit dry, I wonder if it was the type of tofu you used or because of oven baking. Glad you liked it though, it's been repeated here already.

urban vegan said...

It all looks carbolicious and lovely. I feel better just having looked at the photos.

Gina said...

I love Pinterest! So many recipes that I notmally would have forgotten to try now make it onto the grocery list. That lemon looks lovely, I love lemon snacks!

Vaala ◪ said...

Pinterest is perfect for that (as long as I remember my password which I seem to routinely forget). I used to bookmark recipes I wanted to try but they just get lost in a maze of lists.
I might have to try the fish fingers. Sounds like something M would really like plus it reminds me of childhood as well.