Amelia Bedelia Cake

Last night at bedtime, I was reading one of those awful Amelia Bedelia books to my daughter and at the back of the book she discovered a recipe.  I knew what was coming next, M was going to request we make it and I was dreading having to say no.  I thought it would be an egg and dairy laden dessert but when I read the ingredients out loud I was shocked to discover it was vegan!  What!  Cool!

So, after my daughter extracted a promise from me that we would make it first thing in the morning, she happily went off to sleep.  I love the rare days at home when I can devote an afternoon to browsing through my cookbooks, baking treats and planning future meals.  Lately, those days seem far and few between but happily today was one of them. 

We quickly assembled the ingredients from the pantry and my only complaint was that it called for everything to be mixed in the baking pan with a fork.  I found it a little tedious getting the wet and dry ingredients mixed properly in the darn corners.  It would have been much easier and faster to use a large mixing bowl.  This is a great recipe to make with kids because they can do it all from start to finish with minimal assistance.  It was moist and not too sweet but I found some inconsistency in the batter because it was mixed in the pan (and shhhh don't tell anyone but we didn't sift the dry ingredients).

Amelia Bedelia's Sheet Cake

3 cups of flour
1 3/4 cups of sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup of cocoa
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups water

Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa directly into an ungreased 9" by 13" pan.  Add oil, vinegar, and vanilla.  Pour water over all ingredients.  Mix with a fork until smooth..

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Okay, so we didn't exactly sift the dry ingredients. 

Mixing with great concentration.

Chocolate sheet cake fresh from the oven.

Pizza!!!

Yes!  Today is the day I made my first Daiya cheese pizza.  The excitement and tension level in my kitchen this afternoon was off the charts.  The dough we purchased at Whole Foods on the weekend turned out to be gluten-free and when I unwrapped it from the packaging it just fell apart.  There was no way I was risking my pizza on that crappy dough so I pulled out my recipe books, found a simple one with lots of great instructions in Vegan with a Vengeance and got to work.  After a frustrating and lengthy search for yeast in which I re-organized my pantry, I was then faced with the dilemma of figuring out the equivalent of 1/4 ounce in teaspoons of yeast.  I have bulk yeast instead of those individual wee packets but with a quick google found this great conversion site called metric-conversions.org.   It's 1/2 tablespoon in case anyone wants to know! 

It's a good thing I started early because for a five ingredient recipe this takes a little time.  After mixing and then kneading for a good ten minutes, (my pre-pizza gorgefest workout) I left the dough under a damp towel to rest for an hour.   

The crust when baked was not as tender as I'd hoped.  It felt fine while I was kneading it but I think it may be my fault for not letting it rest long enough.   I was too hungry and excited to wait much longer than 15 minutes afer the second punch down and kneading.

We made three pizzas, one with just cheese for my daughter and two with veggies.   As an experiment, I laid the Daiya down first with the vegetables on top while the other had the Daiya on top of the veggies.  I think I had really high expectations for the cheese, never a good idea because as far as I'm concerned it did not live up to the hype.  It was good and melted well on one of the pizzas but the pizza that had the cheese on top was a little dry and not as gooey.   Flavour wise, again it was just okay, definitely not as salty as regular cheese.   Despite my reactions to the product and dough, I managed to scarf down an entire dinner plate sized pizza all by myself.  Now I need a nap. 



Daiya on top.





Melted Daiya pizza bite.

Daiya cheese underneath veggies stood up well. 

A trip to Panacea

I've been hearing about Daiya vegan cheese for several months and fantasizing about eating a hot, gooey pizza with melted cheese.  It's one of the few foods I do occasionally miss eating a plant based diet but I know those darling baby cows and their mamas are worth it.  Apparently, not only does Daiya taste great, but it's supposed to shred, melt and stretch like regular cheese.  So when I recently discovered that Toronto had an all vegan store called Panacea (at Bloor and Bathurst Street), I gathered together my little family and off we went in search of this miraculous product.  We arrived and were immediately offered assistance by the owner Ken Bontius and his business partner.  Not only were they incredibly friendly and helpful but they also engaged us in delightful conversation.  We spent an enjoyable 45 minutes wandering the aisles and chatting. My daughter was offerered an organic lollipop upon entering the store and then spent quite a few minutes contemplating the treat section at the front. There is a little bit of everything including organic vegan groceries, snacks, cosmetics and personal care items, cookbooks and reference materials and organic fair trade clothing and accessories. The shelves and displays are as tidy and clean as can be.  I will gladly stop by and shop whenever I'm in the area.  

I have also been searching for vegan graham cracker crumbs all over the city without any luck and was hopeful that I would find them there.  Alas, I was informed that this product was nowhere to be found but Ken told me he had contacted the owner of Sweet and Sara who makes handmade vegan marshmellows and treats in the U.S. in order to source them.  After taking a quick look at the Sweet and Sara product page and ingredient list I notice that they use graham flour and not premade graham cracker crumbs which makes sense so I think some further investigation is in order.  

Ken Bontius - owner of Panacea

M outside Panacea

Spaghetti and Beanballs

This was an insanely busy week and thankfully I had decided ahead of time to prepare something relatively simple.  My challenge recipe for week two was Spaghetti and Beanballs from Veganomicon.  The bean balls are made with mashed up kidney beans, seasonings, bread crumbs and some wheat gluten.  We liked them but weren't thrilled so to speak.  I guess I'm not a huge kidney bean fan because they tasted too bean-y to me.  The leftovers are going to work with my husband.    Next week I promise to make something more attractive and hopefully delicious!

Spaghetti and Beanballs

And here is Jeannette's yummy looking submission:

We had a rather late breakfast today, so we didn’t want a big meal. I decided to prepare Curried Cashew Couscous from the book Vegan Express by Nava Atlas. This dish was very quick to prepare, as the recipe promised. I did leave out the ginger and the scallions (I don’t like either taste), and I added an extra ½ cup of green peas. I don’t own any “fragrant” oils, like walnut oil, so I used 2 tablespoons of good quality virgin olive oil.


The resulting dish was very pretty to look at, slightly orange from the curry and turmeric. The peas and dried cranberries added a nice pop of color. The curry was very subtle, but tasty. You could add more curry and/or the ginger for a spicier taste, but it isn’t necessary.

I am surprised by the high calorie count per serving in the nutritional information given with the recipe. There are 400 cal for the cashews and 260 for the oil, which comes to 165 cal/serving at 4 servings. That leaves another 250 calories per serving for everything else, so I think 414 cal/serving is high, especially as it makes a lot. I think it is a pretty healthy and tasty side dish. We ate it warm, but it could be good cold. I think I might add more fruit to it, too, like apples, or maybe shredded carrots.

Curried Cashew Couscous

Roasted Kale = Yum!

Kale is one of my favourite vegetables and one of the few my daughter will eat so I don't know what took me so long to try roasting it.   The bunch I had in the fridge was looking a little sad so I decided today was the day.   If I don't eat some greens every day I notice myself getting cranky so it's always nice to discover a new way to prepare them. 

I tossed the kale in a bowl with a little sesame oil, sesame seeds and a pinch of salt, threw it in the oven for 10 minutes and voila!   Easy, healthy finger food.  We gobbled up the entire pan in a few minutes.   Another tasty option for the topping is olive oil and nutritional yeast.

She ate almost the entire plate!

Crispy Roasted Kale

Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream

I'm so excited!  For the first week of the vegan cooking challenge I decided to make Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream from Veganomicon.  I wanted to attempt something completely new and a little bit fancy in honour of my husband's birthday.  There is quite a bit of prep work involved in this recipe.  Eggplant, zucchini and potatoes were peeled, sliced and roasted on trays.  I seem to have severely underestimated the amount of shrinkage the vegetables would undergo and only prepared one tray for each.   I would recommend doing one and a half or two trays of each to end up with enough for layering.  As the veggies roasted, I prepared the tomato based sauce on the stove and the pine nut cream in the food processor.  Once all of the components were ready, the layering began and then back into the oven it went.   

I was a little disappointed in the flavour of this dish.  I've never had regular moussaka so I had nothing to compare it to but for the same amount of effort I would much rather eat a scrumptious lasagna.   I'm not sure if I did something wrong apart from over-roasting the potatoes and I am quite obssessed with eggplant so I was sure this was going to be a hit.  I'm glad I gave it a go even though it turned out to be not among my favourites from this collection.  

Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream

Joining me in the challenge is my talented friend Jeannette who does not (yet) have her own food blog.  She has submitted the following:  

For my first entry in the Vegan Cooking Challenge, I made a zucchini cake that I found posted on The Post Punk Kitchen.  But, as my husband will attest, I never follow a recipe to the letter. SO, I read the posts following the original recipe post and made a few adjustments of my own. Here is my modified recipe:

Ingredients

3 cups grated, unpeeled, fresh zucchini
2 ripe bananas, mashed well
1/2 cup canola oil
3 cups flour
1 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. Vanilla

I omitted the ground walnuts and the chocolate chips. I also took the cake out of the pan after 5 minutes and ate it warm.

My Results:

I got a sweet, moist and firm zucchini cake. It was not as “tender” as it would have been with the full cup of oil, but it was not dry. I could have used a tablespoon or two of liquid to thin the batter, because it was fairly stiff. I never peel zucchini before grating; I like the green flecks. I mixed the sugar into the flour by mistake. If I had mixed it into the wet ingredients, it might have helped pull some of the liquid out of the zucchini. But, it didn’t matter because this cake is very good, even with my modifications.

I am curious about using soda instead of baking powder. Soda needs an acid to react with. I wonder if baking powder should be used? Is this something vegans do not use?

Jeannette's Zucchini Cake

Coconut-Lemon Bundt Cake

I made this cake for my husband's birthday even though it's not the usual frosted confection typically eaten at such occoasions.  Before it even had a chance to cool down and receive the recommended sprinkling of icing sugar, slices were being snuck out of the kitchen while I was busy preparing dinner.  It was a hit with the adults and my very, discriminating daughter ate 3/4 of a good sized piece.  She's usually a strictly chocolate girl so that tells me something.  The shredded coconut lends the texture an unexpected chewiness and combines nicely with the lemon flavour.  This cake would be perfect for afternoon tea.   

Recipe from Veganomicon. 

Coconut-Lemon Bundt Cake