Back in business

So, you may have noticed that Easter was a few weeks ago.  Which means I am no longer officially vegan (trying to do it recreationally for breakfast and dinner, but definitely NOT for baking).  So I needed a really incredible recipe to mark my re-entrance into the world of baked goods with butter.  These Cadbury Creme Egg brownies were totally it.  I had two boxes of orange flavored Cadbury eggs (my favorite!) leftover from an unfortunate (for my mom) incident in which she forgot that it was me, not my sister, who liked the orange ones.  Chocolate orange is one of my favorite flavor combinations anyway, so I threw about an orange's worth of zest into the brownie batter.  The result was deliciousness.

Cookie dough balls

So, as a person going through a breakup, I wanted chocolate, but I didn't really want to work for it.  As a vegan, my options were limited.  As a person who just moved, I couldn't remember where I'd left half my kitchen.  And thus, these came to the rescue.  Four ingredients.  No baking.  Moderately healthy.  Huge win.

I thought they were amazing.  Everyone else was kind of like "Why the hell are you still making this vegan shit?" So if they look good to you, make a batch and decide for yourself.

Double chocolate chip cookies

So I basically took the recipe from last post, and threw in some cocoa powder.  Unfortunately, I was out of regular flour and thus had to use whole wheat - always a mistake, in my book.  The cookies were being made for the generous souls helping me move, so I wasn't super inclined to go out and get normal flour, as it would have been one more thing to haul to the new place.  But, overall, decent.

Vegan chocolate chip cookies

So, the thing that originally drew me to vegan baking was the possibility of eating cookie dough sans fears of salmonella.  My first experience with this was in college with a vegan friend who invited me over to bake cookies, and I was shocked by their deliciousness.  I'm pretty sure she used the recipe from Silk, so so did I.  I did swap out almond milk for the soy milk, because soy scares me slightly.  These are full of margarine so they are not pretending to be healthy like my brownie attempts, but they were about a million percent  better received by my hungry coworkers.  There was some general disbelief as to their vegan-ness, which is probably a good thing when it comes to baking.

 Alas Trader Joes did not have the preferred Earth Balance "buttery stick" (saying "buttery stick" never gets old), so I had to settle for buttery spread.

Also apparently my brown sugar was super lumpy.

But it evened out once I added in the almond milk.

They look like regular cookies...

...and they taste like them too.  Vegan WIN.

Hideous blogging backlog

I'm sorry if you (my approximately 1.5 person readership) have missed me the past month.  I've moved apartments and gotten stuck with no internet for a month (thanks, AT&T), gone through a breakup and gone off veganism (those last two are not related).  However, none of this has stopped me from baking, so I'll be blogging all the stuff I've made over the past month, and then move on to bigger and better things (hello, bourbon balls!).

Banana chocolate chip muffins

I hate the word moist.  It just sounds gross.  Moist.  Moist.  Moist.  Yuck.  Unfortunately it's a word that describes all of the vegan baked goods I've made thus far.  I guess it's not that unfortunate, as moistness is usually considered a good thing.
Anyway.  Banana chocolate chip muffins.

Fork - 3 out of 5 for banana mashing effectiveness.

Raw sugar.

I used half whole wheat and half regular flour.

I only made half the recipe, and it came out to be more like 7 muffins rather than the 6 it should have been.

Muffins.

Overall, these turned out well.  I'd say eat them quicker as opposed to slower, as they get super gooey being stored in tupperware, to the point of seeming almost too mushy, like an overripe banana.  Still, tasty, and didn't taste 'vegan'.

Just can't get enough

I'm so lazy about this vegan baking it's ridiculous.  After two rounds of disappointing brownies, it was back to avocado mousse, this time with orange, because chocolate orange is one of my favorite flavor combinations.  I recognize that it is not for everyone - I once brought chocolate orange brownies to a dinner party, not realizing the hostess hated chocolate orange, and it did not go great.  But this mousse, it did.

I never have any idea what actual quantities I use.  It was roughly one avocado, the zest of one orange, 1/2 cup of agave, and probably close to 3/4 cup cocoa.  I started out with 1/2 cup on the cocoa but it definitely needed more.  It's also much better when it sits in the fridge for a few hours so the flavors can actually blend.