Vegan Pineapple Upside-down Cake!!

My best friend is visiting from Cairo so I had him and a few friends over for dessert tonight. Was a little short notice and I wasn't sure what to make. My roommate suggested making pineapple upside-down cake and gave me a recipe of hers she's been using for a few years from a Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

Knowing my friend Jordan was coming and that I didn't have any eggs, I decided to veganize the recipe. Turned out great!! I promised Jordan I would post a recipe, so here goes....

Preheat oven to 350

Topping:
2TBS vegan margarine(or any kind of vegan butter)
1/3c packed brown sugar
1TBS water

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Stir in brown sugar and water. Poor in to a 9x1 1/2in round cake pan. Arrange pineapple and cherries in the pan and set aside.

Cake:
1 1/3c flour
2/3c sugar
2teas baking powder
2/3c vanilla soymilk (or any non dairy milk)
1/4c softened vegan margarine or butter
egg substitute to = 1 egg. (I used Ener-G Egg replacer, next time I want to try a flax egg)
1teas vanilla

Mix together dry ingredients, then add wet. Mix well then pour into your baking pan. Bake for 30-35min. Let cool for 10-15min, loosen edges and flip on to a plate and serve.

Apple Cinnamon Cake Buddies!

My roommate and I have had some frozen concentrate apple juice in our freezer for a while. I'm not a big fan of apple juice so we were discussing one night what we could use it for. I suggested putting it in a cake of some sort. We decided oatmeal cake would be best and in further talking thought maybe putting apple slices in it would be good too. I discussed it with my mom and another friend as well and between everyone I formed something that turned out pretty awesome and much better then I had expected!

This was not a vegan recipe as I didn't really have time to figure out and test different things to use as an egg substitute. The next batch I think I'm going to just try and use applesauce in place of the eggs and see how it goes.

For the batter:

1 1/4c apple juice concentrate
1c quick oats
Mix together and set aside

beat
1/2c butter(I used vegan margarine)
1c white sugar
1c brown sugar
add:
2tsp vanilla
2eggs

add oat/apple juice mixture.

after that is mixed well add
1 1/2c flour
1tsp baking soda or powder (whichever is fine)
1/2tsp cinnamon
1/4tsp nutmeg

Pour in to lined cupcake sheets.

For the apples in the center I made 'apple pie' apples. I cut up my apple in smallish pieces, lightly coated them in flour... added some brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, a little melted butter and mixed together.



Put a single slice in the center of each cupcake. Bake at 350 for 40min or until done. I would check on them sooner then that.

Pecan Topping:
mix together
3TBS melted butter
1/2c brown sugar
approx 1/2c chopped pecans
touch of cinnamon

After your your cupcake/muffins come out of the oven top them with the pecan mixture. Let cool and serve!

I have a few friends that don't like nuts so for those I just topped them with the same mixture minus the pecans.

Cookies!!

I have been beyond awful at blogging the last few months. Truth is I haven't been doing much experimenting in the kitchen. I'm not really living somewhere that makes it easy for me to cook and bake whenever I want to. I have however recently fallen in love with a vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I asked my wonderful twitter buddies for baking suggestions a while back and had a friend suggest a recipe from Veg Web. Happy Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies is the recipe she told me about. I for years have used pretty much only one recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and I think I will forever use this one now. :)

I altered it only slightly. For the 1c raw sugar, I used 1/2c white sugar and 1/2c brown sugar and made sure to use vegetable oil instead of canola oil. Also decided to add the cinnamon to them. Turns out that cinnamon is a must when it comes to chocolate chip cookies!! Oh! And I used a little less then a cup of chocolate chips.

Try them out, they rocked!! Logan devoured at least 10 cookies in the couple hours he was here that night and took home almost all the rest of them.



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On a slightly different note... I have been inspired by a friend and want to try out vegan caramel.... If anyone has any helpful hints, recipes or anything else that might be helpful in making it please let me know. :)

Brownies & Black beans?!

For over a year my dear friend Jordan has been telling me that when making boxed brownies the easiest thing to substitute for eggs is.... black beans?! At first I thought he was crazy, but the more I've talked to him about baking and had my hits and misses on experimenting with egg replacements the more I thought he was probably not wrong.... Back in May he was kind enough to make me some amazing vegan brownies using black beans! They were AWESOME!! With that being said.... I've still been a bit hesitant to try it myself for no other reason then, I tend to fail lately at baking in the kitchen.

Today, bored and not having much want to do anything at all, I decided that I would try out this theory of his.... I had a pre-packaged bag of brownie mix that my old roommate left when moving out.... Don't like eggs or have any desire to use them.... Figured I'd try it out....

I pureed the best I could a can of black beans and mixed them in with the rest of the ingredients....

I am a convert........ Black beans will forever be used when making boxed brownies instead of eggs!! Try it out!! It sounds crazy, but really.... you can't even tell they are there!

Epic Mocha Cupcakes!! (vegan!)

FINALLY a blog post from me! I've been moving and had a lot going on and my poor blog has been neglected! That doesn't mean I haven't been making some great food in the mean time!

For over month I just kept thinking and thinking about how I could turn my vegan white cake recipe in to a chocolate one.... Then a friend gave me the brilliant idea of mocha cupcakes! I thought and thought and finally one night at like 2am my brain worked out these cupcakes.... turns out they rock! As far as the coffee part goes, I'm not allowed to have it, so I don't often have it in my house, but was given some awesome coffee milk from a friend that I wanted to try and also had some instant coffee packets that I'd been given from my birthday!

The basic recipe is pretty much the same as the white cake, but I'll post it fresh here w/changes included



Epic Mocha Cupcakes

1 cup white sugarhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1/4c vegetable shortening(CRISCO)
2TBS flax + 4tbs water
1TBS vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder(slightly heaping)
1/2c chocolate fudge instant pudding mix
1 packet instant coffee mixed w/just enough water to dissolve it.
1c Pearl brand coffee soymilk


Beat together sugar, margarine and Crisco until smooth. Then add flax/water mixture and vanilla. Add your baking powder and flour, then pudding mix. Mix well then slowly add milk. Mix until smooth. Will be kind of thick, it's okay... they will fluff up and bake nicely.

Pour in to lined baking cups.
Bake 350 for 30-40min

For frosting I just used a basic frosting recipe... powdered sugar, shortening, and vanilla and milk....

I melted down some semi-sweet chocolate chips with a tiny bit of milk in them to keep it smooth and mixed it in to the already mixed frosting, added another packet of instant coffee and called it great! ;)

Vegan White Cake & Lemon Frosting!

I got my kitchen all nice and extra clean today, which of course meant it needed to be dirtied again! I had no idea what I wanted to make so I sent out a tweet and had a friend suggest I make a cake because she has only ever baked one cake ever.... I was a little surprised and decided I'd google white cake recipes and see what I could find... Because to be honest, making cake from scratch doesn't usually end well for me, and vegan cake isn't something I've had much luck with either....

I found this recipe for Simple White Cake and thought I'd try my hand in making it vegan.... SO here goes nothing.... The best homemade white cake I've ever made!

Simple Vegan White Cake

1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1/4c vegetable shortening(CRISCO)
2TBS flax(heaping) + 4tbs water
1TBS vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder(slightly heaping)
3/4c + 1/8c milk

Beat together sugar, margarine and Crisco until smooth. Then add flax/water mixture and vanilla. Add your baking powder and flour, mix well then slowly add milk. Mix until smooth.

Pour in a greased and floured 9in round pan.

Bake 350 for 30-40min

Let cool before taking out of pan, frost and enjoy!

I get bored with playing 'white' cake so I tend to do things like add food coloring to it so it isn't so boring.... I added blue food coloring to the second cake I made. Sorry I don't have a better picture.

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Some side notes with this.... I made a beyond stupid sweet lemon frosting for it. I wouldn't use such a sweet frosting for it, but maybe that is just me, I've never been one for overly sweet stuff.

I made two so that I could make a layered cake... They were a tiny bit on the crumbly side, but I think that is because I didn't let them cool enough before I decided to stack them... Test it out and see what you think and let me know. Let me rephrase that.... The cake is super moist and super yum! The outer edge is what crumbled a tiny bit.

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For my frosting I used about 1lb powdered sugar, 1/2c-3/4c Crisco (vegan margarine will work just as well) and about 3/4 can lemon-aid concentrate (from can), creamed it all together and yum! Add your lemon-aid slowly and only add until it gets to your desired lemon flavor.... Add some food coloring if you want, keep in fridge until ready to use.

I added some yellow food coloring to it, for a happy yellow to contrast the blue of the cake.

Veganized Killer Cookies!!

Some time last year I posted a recipe for Killer Cookies... It's a recipe I got from a friend years ago, and is by far the best chocolate chip cookie ever! Sadly... It wasn't a cookie I could share with my vegan friends... So I made it a goal to revamp the recipe, find vegan chocolate chips and figure out a way to substitute the eggs and guess what?! They ROCK!! The best part about it is all of my friends devoured them and none were aware that I had made them vegan! Yay for that!

The only downfall to this recipe is that it is huge! It makes 80-100 cookies depending on how big you make them, so I recommend halving it.

Vegan Killer Cookies

1 3/4c Shortening
2c sugar
2c brown sugar
4 heaping TBS ground flax + 8TBS water mixed (use for egg)
2tsp vanilla
3c flour
2tsp salt
2tsp baking soda
6c oatmeal

1/2 to 3/4c chopped nuts
1/2 to 3/4c coconut
1 12oz package chocolate chips

It'll be a little on the dry side, pour in some vanilla soymilk or whatever milk you have handy until slightly sticky. Scoop them in to 1in balls.

Bake at 350 for 9-12min

Haven't forgotten about you!

This blog might not be getting updated as much as I'd like to for at least a few weeks... I've been taking these new pills to help balance out my system and I've been so incredibly nauseous since I started taking them that any thought of food just makes me more queasy.

Also, I am moving!! I am moving back to my old apartment complex downtown! I am hoping to be done moving by the 13th. Will be busy packing and gradually moving stuff over during the week and might not have internet for the first week or so that I am there.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I didn't forget about my blog, just a little busy with life right now. Will hopefully return soon!!


Here is a recipe I have been meaning to post for a while.

Black Bottom Banana Cheesecake Bars

Bottom:
4oz cream cheese (room temp)
1 egg
1/2c butter
1 box chocolate devil's food cake (i used triple chocolate cuz that's what I had on hand)

Mix it all together, it'll be kind of like a dough and spread in the bottom of a 9x13 pan

Top:
2- 8oz packages of cream cheese (room temp)
2 eggs
1c mashed banana (about 3)
1c powder sugar
1 teas vanilla

Cream all that together then pour over the bottom.

Bake at 350 for 45min or so

I think you could just use a regular cheesecake recipe for the top and it would work just the same, or maybe even a different fruit....

The only problem I had was that the cake part seemed to finish baking before the cheesecake part was done. I haven't worked out the kinks of it yet, but did enjoy them and was glad it was fast and easy to put together. :)

Killer Cookies

Killer Cookies

1 3/4c Shortening
2c sugar
2c brown sugar
4 eggs
2tsp vanilla
3c flour
2tsp salt
2tsp baking soda
6c oatmeal

1/2 to 3/4c chopped nuts
1/2 to 3/4c coconut
1 12oz package chocolate chips

Bake at 350 for 9-12min

Makes 80-100 cookies

This is a HUGE recipe so I usually only half it when I make them. I got this recipe from my friend's mom years ago.

An odd fact about them... Not putting the coconut in completely changes the taste of them, still good either way though. When there is coconut in them they seem to taste like they have raisins in them even though they don't, which I like because I like the taste of raisins but I'm not a big fan of the texture of them.

Potato Chip Cookies!!

Have you ever had potato chip cookies?? They are amazing and super easy to make and easily turned into a vegan friendly recipe!! I like to add food coloring to the dough and make the colorful for kicks! :)

1c butter
1/2c sugar
1 1/2c flour
1tsp vanilla
1/2c crushed potato chips.

you blend the butter & sugar together then add everything else. roll them into little balls then push them down with a cup that has sugar on the bottom.

bake them at 350 for 8-10minutes.


I like to add food coloring just for fun to them :)