Cuppers

I sort of missed the cupcake trend when it exploded a few years ago. I don't know why, but they didn't really interest me all that much. I was more into cookies. Also inexplicably, I have quite recently begun to love the idea of cupcakes. Andy's friends recently had a birthday BBQ, and something made me really want to make birthday cupcakes for them. But I didn't want to make just any cupcake.  This is what I came up with.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing and Salted Caramel

Cake
1 1/2 c. plain flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1 tsp. bicarb soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vinegar
1 c. water

Heat the oven to 180 and line 12 muffin cups with cupcake liners. Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, bicarb soda and salt in a large bowl. In a jug or a small bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar and water. Pour these into the flour mixture and mix gently until combined. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Icing
1/4 c. smooth peanut butter
1 1/2 c. icing sugar
3-5 T. soy milk

In an electric mixer, or with a good fork and lots of energy, whisk up the peanut butter until it's a little bit fluffy. Add the icing sugar a bit at a time until the mixture is crumbly. Add soy milk, a tiny bit at a time, until the consistency of the icing is good. This depends on how you want to put it on - for spreading, thicker is better, but for piping you need it to be a bit looser. Mine was too thick, and the cheap piping bag I bought just couldn't contain it - it exploded at the seams, requiring me to lick lots of icing off my hands which was delicious but also made me feel a bit sick. Make sure the cupcakes are fully cool before putting the icing on top.

Salted Caramel
2 T. vegan butter or coconut oil
2 T. brown sugar
1 T. golden syrup
1 1/2 T. coconut cream (or soy milk)
1/2 tsp. salt, to taste

In the smallest saucepan or skillet you have, mix the butter, sugar, syrup and cream. Put onto medium-high heat and cook, stirring constantly, until everything is melted. Stir occasionally as it comes up to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring pretty often, for 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in 1/4 tsp. of salt, then taste (being careful not to burn your mouth) and see if you want it saltier. Remove the pan from the heat and let the caramel cool to not-quite-molten temperature, stirring every so often. Then drizzle spoonfuls over the icing. The cuppers look best on the day you do the drizzling - the caramel soaked into the icing on the ones that sat overnight.

Sweet, yes, but also fancy and sophisticated and quite delicious. The best part about these cupcakes was that the gift box only fitted 6, so we got to keep the spares :-)

From the Garden

I can't believe it's been two weeks since I've posted last - I am full time now at work, which is good, but also means I am very, very busy. One of the competing demands for my time is the garden, which is going gangbusters.

We've been eating a bit of produce from our own back yard, which I will admit makes me feel very smug. But it's also really delicious! Here is what we've been growing and eating.

One of the quickest crops to grow is radishes, which we love roasted in the oven.

Another easy - and pretty - quick crop is nasturtiums, which have a peppery flavour and make a good salad. This one also features some cherry tomatoes from our garden.

Another one we've had success with is zucchini. We have had so many zukes!

We like them stuffed with garlic bread filling.

Garlic bread zucchini and eggplant pie.

 Or sauteed with kale (from our garden, too), capsicum, and pesto (made with basil from our garden) over pasta.

Grated zucchini makes a good addition to veggie sausage rolls.

But who can go past zucchini in sweets? I think when life gives you zucchini, you make zucchini bread. This is from the recipe in Urban Vegan. 

This plate is full of home grown - zucchini fritters and sauteed kale with nasturtium flowers. There is also a cauliflower casserole, but we didn't grow caulis in our garden.

Apparently kale is so not a warm climate veggie, but this Tuscan Black Kale seems to be going okay in our winter garden.

But Andy's favourite thing in the garden is easily the tomatoes. This is a Black Russian, a heirloom variety, which was beautiful and ripe and delicious, though it doesn't go very red in colour.

We sliced it onto avocado toast and it was delicious, and we can't wait for the rest to ripen up.

Soon we'll have pumpkins and capsicums and cucumbers and spring onions and maybe beetroots, but for now we'll keep eating zucchini a few days a week!

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...'.

Winter warmers

Here are a few of the wintery dishes that we don't often get to eat here in Townsville - but we've become acquainted with them this year!

 

A stewish mix up of zucchini, carrot, and purple sweet potato, in a tomato & cumin sauce. With some guac, because winter is also avocado season up here.

 

Hearth veggie & brown lentil soup. This had zucchini and carrot and sweet potato and white potato and capsicum and corn and maybe other things. And I made a quick batch of biscuits (American style) with teff flour to eat with the soup. They were maybe the best part of dinner.

A green curry, full of veggies and some pawpaw - the sweetness of the fruit is a good contrast to the spicy curry.

Mac & Peas! Cheesy, nutritional yeasty sauce poured over macaroni and peas and baked until the top is crunchy, served up with some roasted corn and a garlic bread zucchini.

 

This is "Chickpea Broccolikash", or a slightly bastardized version of Chickpea Paprikash from Urban Vegan. We didn't have capsicum so we used broccoli instead, but I wouldn't let Andy call it by its rightful name. We also didn't feel like making spatzle, so we served on noodles. It was delicious anyways.

And to wrap it all up, some lime self-saucing pudding. This is another adapted recipe, this time from ZuckerBaby. Her recipe called for lemon, but we had a fridge full of limes. It was so delicious - a light and fluffy cake with a sweet-tart pudding-y glaze all over it. We assumed it would be best warm, so ate it all straight from the oven.

Work Trip

Although travelling for work is not always the most fun ever, there are worse things. Especially when work trips bring opportunities to eat exciting vegan food with exciting vegan (and non-vegan) people. I spent the past week away from Townsville doing a few different things.

On Sunday I arrived in frigid Melbourne, ahead of two days of executive committee meeting for a professional association. Not that fun. But, made bearable by the really lovely dinner I had with Mel, from Veganise This! Mel not only responded to my "please, will someone have dinner with me?" request, she also picked me up from the airport and then dropped me off at my hotel after dinner. Did I mention how lovely she is?! When Mel suggested we visit the Gasometer pub in Collingwood, I did a quick blog search and found both she and Cindy & Michael had posted about the wondrous vegan pastrami burger, so I couldn't say no. And when we arrived at the pub, I looked at the options but just couldn't get past the idea of that pastrami burger. And it was everything it promised. The vegan goat cheese was really incredible, the cole slaw was a good foil to the rich seitan and cheesy toppings, and the chips were just perfect. The whole thing tasted like caraway and dill, which somehow matched the dark and somewhat gloomy (in a good way!) interior. The apple hot toddy, for just $5, was a good way to beat the chill that I always feel when it's below 25 degrees! The pub was pretty dark so this is the best photo I managed.

Mel blogged about dinner here, and you can see the photo of her meal there. You can also see, at the bottom of the post, the really delicious lemon slice she gifted me. It was such a good snack at the end of two long days of meetings! Thanks, Mel!

Tuesday afternoon I flew from Melbourne on to Sydney for a workshop I had co-organised. I had a free half-day in Sydney, so on Wednesday morning I wandered to Glebe and paid a visit to the Cruelty Free Shop. I got a few things to eat immediately, but most of my purchases made it home to share with Andy.

TVP beef slices, vegan gummy bears, sweet & sara coconut marshmallows, a pie, and a choc-mint truffle ball which I ate straight away!

For lunch, I took advantage of the oven in my apartment and cooked up the Funky Pie.

Funky Chunky flavour, with big chunks of something beef-ish and mashed potatoes, inside of the flakiest puff pastry ever.

Dinner that night was at Mother Chu's, with Andy's brother. I didn't take any photos, mainly because I was too busy stuffing my face with really delicious food. The catering at the workshop was pretty ordinary, vegan-wise, and for dinner on Thursday we all went to Thai Pothong in Glebe where the (slightly modified to suit my vegan-ness) vegetarian banquet was way too much food, all of it delicious. Again, no photos, because I was at a work function, across the table from a sociology rock star (making googly eyes at him, probably).

Since I don't have any more food photos, I will finish off with this bag I bought at Salvo's in Glebe, to carry my (borrowed from work) laptop in style.

Long Weekend Pie

A few weekends ago, Andy and I bought this acceptable but scuffy old table & chairs from a garage sale around the corner.

Then, two weekends ago, we had a long weekend. The public holiday on Monday was Townsville Show Day - for American readers, the Show is the equivalent of the County Fair, and I *love* that it gets its own local public holiday. I haven't ever actually been to the Show (though I did once enter the baking competition). But who doesn't love a free day off? We used the long weekend to refresh the table and chairs. Andy had sounded down the top, which was a lovely light coloured wood. But those curvy, turned chair legs were not going to be easy to sand. And I didn't want to restain the nice-looking wood to that bland brown. So, how about bright blue?!

Painting was stupid and not fun. For three days, we primed and painted. My back was sore, my legs were sore, my bum was sore. But, at the end of the three days, we had a beautiful new dining set!

While the paint was drying, I used some of the time to cook. I made some pie filling, so later in the week we just had to put it into pastry and bake and dinner was done.  The filling was mainly eggplant, with a few other veggies and a thick vegemite gravy mixed through. It was thick and wonderful and very tasty.

And when we baked it up, it got all golden and flaky and beautiful.

And, served up with some easy roasted radishes, mushrooms, and corn, it was the perfect meal for two tired people on a cold night.

But we must have been bitten by a painting bug, because this weekend just gone, we used one of our work-free days to turn our bathroom from this...

To this.

It is the first room we've painted in our house, and it feels good! I've got big plans for the rest of the place!

Winter Desserts

I know it is a little ridiculous to complain about the cold, cold winters we have here in Townsville. I know that our winters are similar to Tasmanian summers. I know that Canberra got to -5 in May this year. I know that I grew up in a place that regularly got to -20 in the winters, where our university emailed around "frost bite warnings" on the coldest of days, letting us all know that more than 5 minutes spent outside was detrimental to our health.

However. There is something to be said for acclimatising to the tropics. And the fact that our houses and buildings are not designed to be warm. And the paltry winter wardrobes that Andy and I (and most NQers) own. So although many of my friends are the opposite, revelling in this winter weather and complaining about the heat, I spend far more energy (and social media status-updates) whinging about the cold. 8 degrees last night is not my idea of "beautiful tropical weather". 

The upside of being cold is having plenty of appetite, and being able to satisfy it with hearty, warm meals and desserts that are off-limits for most of the year in this place. So when I saw Kate's recipe for golden syrup dumplings on a cold day, I knew I had to make them. They were easy to do, though when I make them again I will use a bigger pan - they need a bit of space, I think, to get truly puffy-fluffy-delicious.

As I'd never had golden syrup dumplings before, I followed the recipe exactly, with my only flourish the topping of the dumplings with chai vanilla ice cream. But, when I make these again (and I will, since we're not yet halfway through winter), I think some strong boozy flavour in the syrup would add a certain something, cutting through the cloying sauce and adding to the warming sensation - scotch springs to mind, or perhaps some fruity liqueur.

Feeding Tika

Neither Tika nor Nacho are vegetarians - both eat mainstream kibbles (Nacho started out on VeganPet but she abruptly stopped eating it after a few months so we switched over). However, both love various veggies and other "human foods", so we are happy to oblige them. For Nacho, green peas, dried TVP crumbles, oats, mashed pumpkin, nori sea weed, and especially raw corn are just tops. We're still working out what Tika's favourite foods are, but she seems fond of pretty much anything except for capsicum and star fruit so far - she even ate a pear core that our neighbour-baby gave to her.

Though they eat meat-based kibbles, none of the extras we give them will ever be animal based. It is easy and quick to make dog treats that Tika scoffs down, we make chewy dried sweet potato slices for her to clean her teeth on, and we supplement her dinner each night with a bit of extra something. We do this because it looks tastier than the kibbles, to give her a bit of variety, and because it is cheaper - especially once our veggie garden gets growing and we have more sweet potatoes and zucchinis and chokoes and other veggies than we know what to do with (I hope). The only draw back - and sorry if this is TMI - is that all the veggies turn Tika into a serious poop factory. I guess that means she's getting plenty of fibre, but it does mean we have to clean up more around the back yard, and watch where we walk.

(Nacho doesn't like treats, as such. I once tried combining pumpkin and oats - two of her faves - into a biscuity treat and she wouldn't even sniff it. Even mixing peas & corn makes both a little less appealing to her.)

Here is a basic idea of the extras we feed to Tika. She was a skinny girl when she moved in with us, so we were first trying to fatten a little and now we're trying to maintain an ideal weight - so if your dog is on the, ahem, fluffy side, you should probably cut back on the rice.

1 c. rice
2 c. water (or bean cooking juice)
1 tsp. vegemite
1 tsp. chicken or beef stock (vegan, of course)
1 potato, chopped
1 sweet potato, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 ear of corn, cut off the cob
1/2 c. green peas
1/4 c. peanut butter

In a saucepan, bring the water, vegemit, stock powder and rice to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover and let simmer for about 8 minutes. Then, stir in the potato, sweet potato, and carrot. Replace the lid and continue to simmer for another 8 minutes (check it every now and then to make sure it doesn't burn on the bottom). When most of the water has been absorbed, turn off the heat, stir in the corn, green peas, and peanut butter. Combine it really well, then replace the lid and let it cool. This makes enough for at least 2 weeks' worth of dinners, so we freeze half.

When we serve this up to Tika for dinner, mixed with her kibbles, she pushes the kibbles aside to get to this rice mixture. We don't always make this - sometimes it is more like plain rice, or whatever veggies we've chopped for ourselves that night for dinner. But this is her hands down favourite dinner, and it's good enough for us to eat, too.

Random Things

The wonderful Mel recently bestowed upon me the Food Stories blog award, which demands that the recipient share a random fact about themselves, before passing the award on to 5 other bloggers. I occasionally "win" awards like these, and I think I most often go "Oh, how lovely, I must get to that." And then I promptly forget about it. So I will certainly feel no ill feelings towards the five of you who I nominate if you forget, or just don't feel like participating in this. But, in the spirit of random facts, I have a few random images to share, with a random fact each.

The place I grew up is about a 2 minutes walk from this small town War Memorial. My dad actually organised the transport of this tank to its final location. Andy and I visited when we were in the US in October. It was not that exciting, really, but hey, a tank!

We got solar panels a few weeks ago, but there is no space to plug the inverter into our meter box so they are just sitting up there doing nothing. We have to wait another month before we will get any sun-powered electricity!

Tika loves going for walks, especially to the beach, but she is too naughty to go off lead. Instead, we bring a really long rope so she can run around and go into the water without making us swim with her.

Nacho makes a point of sitting on every single piece of furniture, box, bag, or other new thing we bring into the house. Like this dining table we bought from a garage sale and are sanding down and refinishing.

Now, to spread the story telling love... I will pass this on to:

• Emma, from Vegan Food for the Hungry Student
• Kate, from No Meat and Three Veg
• Nadine, from Plant Life
• Claire, from Almost Skinny Vegan Food
• And Dee, from Cycling Paradise (not a food blog persay, but good stories no less!)

All five bloggers tell interesting stories that I love to read, so if you haven't checked them out recently, or ever, you should pop along to their blogs and read some of the tales they tell.

Sprout-centric

At the grocery store last week, Andy and I found brussels sprouts for $1.45 a kilo. They're usually at least $6 a kilo, so this was a Very Good Deal. So naturally, we grabbed a 1400 grams. So we've been eating brussels sprouts with every meal. Sadly, we've used them all up, but here are two of the uses we put them to.

 Our favourite, and most common way, of having brussels, is roasted in the oven. These ones were bite-sized, so we left them whole. Tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper. We also sometimes add lemon juice, or garlic, or herbs. Always delicious. On the plate with the brussels - an epic plate, I will admit - is roasted beetroot, roasted corn, and Balsamic Roasted Veggies (recipe from Urban Vegan).

This is a sad, unflattering photo, but the food was very good to eat. This is a caramelised onion & brussels sprout quiche. The quiche filling I used is from VegNews, which involves cooking 1 1/2 cups of besan in 4 cups of water, flavouring with black salt, and letting it thicken and then cool before baking. The result is probably not that eggy, but is pretty delicious. And brussels sprouts were really good in quiche - something I was originally sceptical about.

What is your favourite way to eat brussels sprouts?