Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I've been in a really dessert-y mood lately, so please forgive all of the sweets! I hope to post more savory dishes soon. These are red velvet cupcakes that I doctored up from a box. I don't normally use boxes when baking, but Sam wanted to these and I couldn't refuse. I looked around at how to veganize a cake mix and eventually just did my own thing. It worked really well for this particular mix, but I don't know if it would work on others. I also have a recipe for doctored-up cream cheese frosting from a can-- with no Tofutti! My store doesn't carry it and it seems expensive so I never get it but this frosting is delicious without out it!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Ingredients:

Dry:

- 1 box Duncan Hines red velvet cake mix

- 0.5 tsp baking powder

Wet:

- 1.25 cups unsweetened soymilk

- 2 T apple cider vinegar

- 0.5 cup unsweetened applesauce

- 6 T light margarine, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and set up cupcake liners in a cupcake pan. This recipe made 21 cupcakes for me, so I had to do it in batches for my 12 spot cupcake pan.
2. Whisk together the baking powder and the cake mix in a mixing bowl.
3. Combine the vinegar and soymilk in a jar and let sit for a few minutes, them screw the lid on and shake (you can probably just mix it up with a fork or something). This creates a vegan buttermilk substitute.
4. Add the "buttermilk", applesauce, and margarine and whisk well to combine (I just used a fork to be honest).
5. Spoon into liners (about 2/3-3/4 full) and pop into the oven for about 22 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness-- there will still be a few crumbs on the toothpick, but nothing too liquidy.
6. Cool in preparation for frosting.

Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

- 1 can (or 2) Pillsbury cream cheese flavored frosting (Duncan Hines has one too, but I wasn't sure if it was vegan)

- 1 tsp lemon juice

- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Directions:

1. Empty the can into a bowl and use electric beaters to whip it.
2. Add the lemon juice and vinegar-- I thought this made the frosting taste even more like cream cheese, but Sam thought it was a bit too tart, so maybe decrease it to 1/2 or 1/4 tsp each or just use as is if you want.
3. Chill the frosting.
4. Fill a pastry bag with an open star tip and get started making cream cheese roses! (The frosting roses melted a bit after the pictures. This frosting is a little melty for this technique, so feel free to decorate however you want if the melty-rose look doesn't do it for you). But this technique is really awesome so go use it with some buttercream if you have any laying around! Tutorial here.

 Enjoy your cupcakes!

For 1 cupcake out of 21: cals: 124kcal | fat: 4.24g | carbs: 19.70g | prot: 1.56g

For frosting check out the can- I think about 140 for 2 T. The add-ins don't add many calories

Spicy Lemon Dressing

I haven’t posted many savory recipes yet because I’ve been mostly living off of cupcakes and ramen noodles lately. I just haven’t been feeling the cooking vibe—this may have something to do with the fact that my kitchen needs serious cleaning. But I did make a dressing today that is really delicious on noodles, barley, or whatever other grain. I like to add veggies and beans and call it a meal, and if the grains and beans are already cooked its very quick. This dressing is inspired by OhSheGlows though I can't find the recipe I originally adapted it from.

Recipe:

Spicy Lemon Dressing

Ingredients:

6T olive oil

6T lemon juice

2T water

2 t apple cider vinegar

1/2 T fresh ground black pepper

1/2 T salt

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Directions:

Combine everything in a jar or salad dressing container, secure the lid, and shake. Eat on everything. Enjoy!

Per 2 T: cals: 110kcal | fat: 11.86g | carbs: 1.49g | prot: 0.20g

Today I had this with some whole wheat rotini, frozen defrosted peas, and parsley for lunch. It was super yummy and refreshing!

Birthday Cupcakes!

 

I made cupcakes! These are for a friend of mine-- her birthday is today! We have a city league kickball game today and I'm bringing these to the game. I found these super cute sports-themed cupcake liners at the store and thought they'd be perfect for bring goodies to a game and now that a birthday has come up, it's perfect timing.

I made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and brown sugar buttercream. The ones with sprinkles have a chocolate truffle center.

I made everything a day in advance and then just assembled today. I would definitely recommend making at least the vanilla cupcakes in advance-- they tasted funny at first but taste great the next day!

Recipes:

Vanilla cupcakes I got from here.

This recipe made 14 cupcakes, which took about 17 minutes to bake at 350 F.

For the chocolate cupcakes I used the recipe from my rose cake here.

This made 10 cupcakes which baked for 15 minutes at 350 F.

The truffle center was my own recipe as follows:

Ingredients:

4 ounces baker's unsweetened chocolate

3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

3 tablespoons corn syrup

2 tablespoons margarine

1/2 cup soymilk

1/4 cup powdered sugar

Directions:

Chop the chocolate and add to a bowl with syrup and margarine. Heat soymilk and pour over chocolate. Stir for about a minute until chocolate is dissolved then add powdered sugar. Refrigerate until completely chilled. This will make way more than you need for 1/2 the cupcakes (maybe not too much more if you do all of them) but more truffle filling is never bad, right? Just roll into balls and roll in cocoa powder and you have homemade chocolates!

For the brown sugar buttercream I used the recipe from here. I added about 3/4 tsp molasses because it wasn't brown-sugar-y enough for my tastes and I think it turned out great!

And for the vanilla buttercream I just used a hand mixer to mix together 1/4 cup shortening with 1/4 cup margarine and beat in about 1 lb powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons of water. You can also add vanilla extract or bean, but I was out of both-- so I guess mine's just kind of neutral buttercream, not vanilla after all.

Assembly:

I used 20 of the 24 cupcakes because that's all that would fit into my cake carrier. I cut a cone-shaped piece out of half of the cupcakes (5 chocolate and 5 vanilla) and molded some of the truffle ganache into a cone to push into each one.

Then I frosted half of those with brown sugar frosting (the star-tip swirly ones) and the other half with vanilla (the smoother ones). I added coarse sugar sprinkles to the ones with truffle centers so you could tell them apart. Then I frosted the rest. So since I mixed it up so much you can have a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting, or a vanilla cupcake with a truffle center and brown sugar frosting, or a chocolate cupcake with brown sugar frosting.... or so on.... so many possibilities!

Champagne Citrus Sorbet

It's been forever since I've posted. I was really sick and then really busy but things have calmed down now-- thank goodness! This is what I chose to do with my first minutes of freedom. It is just ridiculously good. I had some champagne hanging around from Valentine's Day that had lost it's fizz, so I didn't really want to drink it, but I didn't want to waste it either. If you made this with a fresh bottle, it might retain some of it's fizzyness-- that would be amazing. Anyway, this is amazing too.

Champagne Citrus Sorbet

makes 5 .5 cup servings

Ingredients:

1.5 cups champagne, divided

.5 cup sugar

1 T corn syrup

1 cup freshly squeezed grapefruit juice

.5 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp zest (from just grapefruit or mixed)

Directions:

1. Add 3/4 cup champagne, sugar, and corn syrup to a small pan. Bring to a low boil and then simmer, stirring, for about 10 minutes, until sugar is completely dissolved and some of the alcohol has cooked out.
2.  Pour into a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients, and stir.
3. Chill overnight (or in the freezer for a while) and then freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions. Transfer to your storage container and freeze about 2 hours before scooping. Because of the alcohol in this recipe, it won't freeze solid and stays scoopable!

Notes:

• I'm sure you can use other kinds of citrus or even other fruits (I'm thinking strawberry!)
• You can increase the sugar if you want, up to a cup, but I didn't find it necessary.
• You can omit the corn syrup, but it's supposed to give it a smoother feel.
• You can omit the zest, which I might do next time since the sorbet itself is so smooth. I couldn't decide if the zest detracted from the texture or added some interest. Either way, it's delicious.

Enjoy!

cals: 176kcal | fat: 0.10g | carbs: 31.55g | prot: 0.51g

Adapted from here http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/champagne_sorbet/ and here http://userealbutter.com/2012/01/05/pink-grapefruit-champagne-sorbet-recipe/

Vanilla Chocolate Rose Cake Tutorial

I am so proud of this little cake. I'd never made a layer cake before (well there was one awful attempt a year ago on Valentine's). Anyway, this recipe was my inspiration, which led me to I Am Baker blog, which I am now obsessed with. I Am Baker isn't a vegan blog, but it's full of creative and beautiful baking ideas and a lot of these awesome ideas can be veganized. I thought I'd share my favorite chocolate cake and buttercream recipes and do a tutorial on how to build a layer cake. Besides being my first layer cake, this is also my first tutorial... Here goes!

Chocolate Cake

This cake recipe is my favorite. I've cut it down and adapted it from this recipe at FatFree Vegan- my favorite vegan blog and the first one I read! The cake is really moist and yummy and a bit denser than a regular cake, but with chocolate, that just makes it better! It's really easy, since there's no sifting or mixing with an electric mixer and everything can go in one bowl. This recipe makes 1 6-inch cake or 11 cupcakes or 32 mini ones-- with all of the changes I've made to the original, I need to tweak it so it's just a bit more to get that 12th cupcake and those thirds-of-teaspoons worked out. I hope you enjoy it anyway!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder (I use Hershey's, 2 T regular and 1 T dark)
• 2/3 tsp baking powder (I use 2 rounded 1/4 teaspoons)
• 1/3 tsp salt (again, a rounded 1/4 tsp)
• 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1.5 tbsp canola oil
• 2 tsps white or apple cider vinegar mixed with 2/3 cup water

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F. Put the first 5 ingredients in a bowl and use a fork or a whisk to mix

2. Then add the rest of the ingredients and stir to incorporate, but don't over mix-- a few lumps are ok.

3. Then use some shortening or margarine and your fingers to coat your pan and then dust it with cocoa powder-- this makes sure that the cake doesn't stick after it's cooked.

4. Pour the batter into your prepared pan.

5. Bake for roughly 37 minutes (that's what mine took). Set the timer for about 25 minutes and then check in intervals until a toothpick comes out clean.

6. When I took my cake out of the oven , while it was still warm, I used a clean towel to press down the middle where it had puffed up. This will make your cake even for stacking, but it will also make it denser, so if you don't want that, don't press it down and even off the top when it's cooled. Next time I think I'll not press down and I'll just slice off the top once it's cooled. And I'll also cool it for an hour or so, remove from the pan, and then finish cooling in the fridge, rather than put the whole pan in the fridge-- I think that might have affected the cake's texture as it was different this time than usual.

7. That's it for the cake. Now on to frosting!

Per one cupcake out of 11 cals: 94kcal | fat: 2.05g | carbs: 19.06g | prot: 1.36g

Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1/3 cup margarine (Earth Balance recommended, since it's stiffer than some other vegan margarines available)
• 3-4 tbsp water

Directions:

1. Measure out your shortening and margarine into a bowl (or loaf pan in my case).
2. Add a couple of cups of powdered sugar and start beating with an electric mixer.
3. As your frosting starts to come together, add a little water, then a bit more powdered sugar, until a really thick, smooth consistency is reached. It'll look like this:

Filling

For the filling I smooshed up 7 golden oreos and mixed them with about 1/4 cup of the frosting. The next morning when I went to assemble the cake I had to add about a tablespoon of water to the mixture before filling the cake because it had hardened.

Assembling

Alright, now back away from your cake and frosting. Cover everything (again, I would remove the cake from the pan next time--  I dusted it with cocoa powder when I removed it to keep it from sticking to anything). Put it all in the fridge and step back. Preferably overnight or at least a couple of hours. You might think you'll die of anticipation, but I'm pretty sure you won't. I almost broke down and got everything back out at 11pm but thankfully, I was worried I'd be so tired it would be ugly, so I resisted. This is what went wrong on my first horrible attempt at a layer cake-- not the tired part, the not waiting part. Not everything was cooled enough and it was a huge, sticky, slidey, sugary mess. I should see if I can find a picture of it somewhere. It was really bad (but still tasty).

Anyway, so whenever your cake and frosting have cooled, you're ready to start assembling. Take all of your parts out of the fridge, like so:

1. Cut your cake in half. I just got out a big knife and stood the cake up on it's edge and eyeballed it. I'm sure there are better ways to do this.

2. Mix a little water with your filling if it's dry and then put in on your bottom layer, not going quite all the way to the edges, like this 

 

 3. Put your top layer on top of the filling.

 4. Frost the whole cake, trying to cover any cake underneath, to  give you a clean smooth surface to decorate.

5. Then snip off the end of your pastry bag, slip your large star tip in, and fill it up with frosting.

6. Starting on the sides, and starting in the middle of a rose, swirl around until you fill the side of the cake. Make sense? No? Well then, follow the amazing tutorial over at I Am Baker. I really love that blog!

7. Finish up your roses in the middle of the top and step back to admire your creation. Slice into your masterpiece and enjoy!

I made this into 10 slices instead of 8 since it's so rich and sugary. So...

1/10 of cake including frosting and filling: cals: 367kcal | fat: 14.37g | carbs: 60.54g | prot: 1.73g

It's intense, but yum. I'm totally having a slice for breakfast as I type this. Probably not best idea ever, but probably also not the worst. Have a beautiful day!

Veggie Soup and Sunshine Burgers

This is what I've been having for lunch for the past 3 days-- so yummy!

So I noticed (or rather, Sam noticed) that in the background of the picture in this post, there's a sneaky little visitor. That's Stanley the Seal. He belongs to this little guy.

This is Yosemite (and me in my pj's behind him). And I just realized that he looks giant in this picture because of the angle of the camera and his relation to me-- he weighs about 8 pounds, he's pretty small. Anyway, that's one of our our amazing pups-- I'll introduce the others another time! Now it's on to recipes... Well, sort of recipes. The pita sandwich is one of these amazing veggie burgers from The Vegan Chickpea in a pita with some spicy mustard-- that was weird, I just typed "hummus" after "spicy", I wonder if that means I secretly want some spicy hummus, I'll have to look into that-- anyway, veggie burger in pita with mustard and iceberg lettuce. I think iceberg gets a bad rap from foodies sometimes. Sure, it doesn't have the good looks, nutrition, or varying tastes of your darker greens, but it's delicious in it's own right. It's light and crunchy and really cheap, so that's good too. I used the sunflower seeds I had left over from making sunflower butter-- which by the way, was gone after a week and a half, yum! The only things I changed in making the sunshine burgers is that I doubled that batch and made 4 patties, meaning they were bigger, and I left out the garlic. You''ll probably want to make a double batch of these, they're seriously good.

And now for a recipe from me, sort of. I say sort of because it's a "throw everything you have in a pot" kind of soup, but it's the method I use over and over.

The ingredients are highly variable, but this is what I put in this last time:

Directions:

1. Add the olive oil (or canola, or other neutral oil) to a large soup pot and then start chopping.
2. Rinse everything and chop roughly, adding the chopped veggies to the pot as you go.

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 3 large carrot
• 4 stalks large celery
• 1.5 medium onion
• 2 large zucchini
• 4 large summer squash
• 1 medium sweet potato
• 1 poblano pepper, de-seeded for less spice or with seeds left in
• 1 clove garlic, minced

3.      Then add the crushed tomatoes and their juice-- I add fresh chopped tomatoes instead when they're on sale. Then rinse your split peas and add them to the pot as well. Then fill your (very full) pot the rest of the way up with water, stopping when the water level reaches about 2 inches from the top. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, simmering for 30 minutes.

• 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1.25 cups uncooked split peas

4. After 30 minutes, add your Old Bay Seasoning (my favorite way to season veggie soup), collard greens, and mushrooms and simmer for another 30 minutes.

• 2 tablespoons Less Sodium Old Bay Seasoning
• 4 cups, or 1 bunch collard greens, de-stemmed and chopped roughly
• 9 large button mushrooms

This recipe makes a whole bunch of soup. I usually make it when the veggies go on sale during the season and freeze some of it to enjoy later. It’s also really low calorie, meaning it’s good for people eating lower-calorie, or meaning that you can eat it with bread and margarine, whichever way you want to look at it. I hope you guys enjoy!

Per 1 full cup: cals: 59kcal | fat: 0.42g | carbs: 12.47g | prot: 3.98g

Sunbutter

Like many others, I've been trying to cut back on processed food. My husband Sam is allergic to nuts but he can eat Skippy brand peanut butter without a problem usually (it makes him itchy sometimes, but it's not life-threatening). He loves pb&j's and peanut butter cookies, but my thought is, if Skippy is so processed that someone allergic to nuts isn't allergic to it anymore, maybe it's a bit too processed. So I've been thinking about sunflower seed butter, but it's expensive at the store. So I set out to make my own. I don't have in process pics but there are some great ones at Peas and Thank You. I don't have a food processor either, or a high-powered blender, but my trusty ol' Oster did the job. Mine doesn't have any added oil but I did add a bit of salt and just a hint of honey (or agave, or maple syrup, or just sugar).

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups roasted sunflower seeds
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp honey or other sweetener

Directions:

1. Add the seeds and the salt to your blender and start blending.
2. When the mixture gets stuck and isn't moving through the blender, stop and push it around (I did this with a butter knife).
3. The seeds will get ground up and then will start getting a bit clumpy.
4. At this point, I stopped the blender and did some errands, because the blender was getting overheated.
5. Then blend some more, still stopping a lot to push things around. It will start getting really smooth.
6. Add the sweetener and blend some more. It should get smooth and creamy. If it never gets smooth, add a tablespoon or 2 of a neutral tasting oil.
7. Transfer to a jar and use like you would peanut butter. Enjoy!