Cornbread (Pancakes)

This weekend I finally bought cornmeal. I found myself with a craving for cornbread last week, and decided to make a batch. So last night I baked vegan cornbread, and this morning, I made vegan cornbread pancakes.

They were delicious!

With both the cornbread recipe and the pancake recipe I added whole wheat flour. I switched half of the white flour for whole wheat in the cornbread recipe, and it came out great. But for a more traditional cornbread taste, you might try adding a bit more white flour.

The Pancake Recipe:
1 cup white flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup soymilk
1 tsp canola oil

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients and mix well.

It was just that simple! The pancakes were very fluffy, tasted wonderfully like sweet, fluffy cornbread, and were delicious topped with a bit of maple syrup.

Its been a while…

Sorry! I know its been ages since I’ve updated! I’ve just been insanely busy with school and work for the past few weeks. I’ve been running around shooting video for two different video projects I’m working on right now, trying to keep up with my school work, finishing editing on one of the documentaries I’m working on, and all sorts of other general busy-ness.

One of the problems with being so busy is that I don’t have time to cook! So I’ve been buying a lot of my meals for dinner for the past few weeks. And even when I do have time to cook, I haven’t been following a recipe, so most of what I do cook is pretty repulsive. However, this weekend I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping and recuperating, which means I’ve been doing some baking and cooking as well. Here’s what I came up with:

Today I made a tofu, broccoli, bell pepper stir-fy type thing. I marinated the tofu in lemon juice, brown sugar, honey, etc. Then I slapped everything together in a delicious stir-fry. This was delicious on its own, but I also added a peanut butter, soy sauce and honey “dip” on the side, and it was even better.

A lot of the dinner meals I make for myself I don’t really use or write a recipe. This used to work out really well for me when I first started cooking, however my cooking experiments have been less successful lately. To be honest, after I went to Morocco last summer I kind of forgot how to cook without using a recipe. For weeks I was forgetting to add spices to my meals and was left wondering why everything came out so bland! But, hopefully, things are taking a turn for the better.

I also baked some “healthy” cookies today.

One of my friends from work sent me a recipe that he wanted me to make. The recipe was already vegan, but I still changed a few things to suit the ingredients I had on hand.

These cookies are pretty good for having no added sugar! …but its probably all the chocolate chips I added…

2 bananas, mashed
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup peanut butter, creamy, natural
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups old fashioned oats
1/3 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. In separate bowls, mix together wet ingredients and mix together dry ingredients. Mix all ingredients together. Bake on cookie sheet for 12 minutes.

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Green Velvet Cupcakes

If these cupcakes seem eerily similar to a recipe I posted last month, you’re right. Last month, for Valentine’s Day, I posted a recipe for vegan red velvet cupcakes. This is basically the same recipe, except these are Green Velvet Cupcakes.

The Recipe:
1 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp soy milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp red food coloring

Mix together dry ingredients. Add soy milk, oil, food coloring and vanilla. Mix well. Add the vinegar until just blended.
Bake at 350 F for 13-20 minutes.

My Review:
These cupcakes turned out great. They tasted better than my original batch of red velvet cupcakes, because I baked them for the appropriate time. However, they didn’t come out quite as vibrantly green as I was hoping for, but no one complained about the color. And I’m sure if you use more food coloring (I only used 1 tbsp) that it will work out better for you.

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Stolen Banana Bread

I’m calling this banana bread “stolen” because I deserve no credit for this awesome recipe. The recipe belongs to my friend and co-worker Kathleen, who often joins me in Vegan Bake Offs. I’ve eaten her banana bread before, but it has never tasted as delicious as it did last night, eating a slice straight out of the oven. The bananas were gooey and almost caramelized with the chocolate chips to create a delicious, gooey, chocolatey texture.

Ingredients:
3 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup applesauce (I used Mom’s homemade applesauce)
1 cup sugar, a little less than a cup
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
chocolate chips, to taste

Mix together bananas and applesauce. Mix together dry ingredients and add to wet ingredients. Mix well, until somewhat smooth. Pour the batter into a bread pan, and preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake for 50 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean.

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Red Velvet Cupcakes

I’ve never made red velvet cake before. To be honest, I’ve never even tasted red velvet cake before. So maybe I’m not the best judge of quality here… but either way I can assure you, these red velvet cupcakes are the perfect Valentines Day treat.

The Recipe:
1 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp soy milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp red food coloring

Mix together dry ingredients. Add soy milk, oil, food coloring and vanilla. Mix well. Add the vinegar until just blended.
Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. (The original recipe said 25 minutes, but I ended up over baking them a bit, so 20 minutes is just a guess.)

I didn’t go all out on these and make vegan cream cheese frosting. I had the Tofutti, however I also bought bagels this week, and simply decided that my Tofutti would be better put to use on my morning breakfast, than on these cupcakes. (Selfishness is sometimes necessary.)

For the Frosting:
1/2 cup vegan shortening
1/2 cup vegan butter, Earthbalance
3 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup soy milk

Beat together shortening and butter until relatively smooth. Add the powdered sugar gradually, continually beating in more powdered sugar until smooth-ish. Add soy milk and continue to mix. Add vanilla, mix until smooth.

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Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies and Better Food Photography

So many different food experiments happened this past weekend that I absolutely have to lump them all into one, extremely overwhelming post!

First, I’ll talk about my (slightly) improved food photography. I had an assignment last week for my photojournalism course to take photos using an external flash. Now I don’t know about you, but this seemed really intimidating to me at first. I don’t own an external flash, so instead of purchasing one, I borrowed a camera from my work which came with an external flash. To anyone who knows anything about DSLRs, the camera I borrowed might be a little impressive: it was the Canon 5D Mark II. Whoo! Everything was way over my head. There was definitely a learning curve coming from my Sony Alpha A55. So, long story short, I was super intimidated for about a week.

Thankfully…miraculously…somehow… I got over my initial fright and just started snapping photos of food last night. To my absolute delight, they came out looking quite nice! However in the future I’ll try not to shoot everything on a bright blue backdrop (which actually doubles as my bedroom curtains).

So the first thing I baked this weekend was a semi-failure. I baked a pan of slutty oreo brownies, from a recipe I found on What’s Gaby Cooking. These looked absolutely sinful, however, I made the amateur mistake of using salted vegan butter when the recipe actually called for unsalted butter. This was definitely a no-no. The salted butter made the brownies super oily and gross looking. I tried baking them for about 20 extra minutes, but all that did was overcook them and leave them with the curious description of solid yet oily. Gross.

I was quite disappointed in myself. (Also, I took this photo on my cell phone, not the 5D Mark II.)

However, one success did come out of that recipe! In the recipe it requires that you make too much cookie dough, and recommends saving the extra dough to make chocolate chip cookies later. Thankfully, the cookie dough came out marvelously, and I was still able to salvage the day of baking. I made oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies, which were awesome. Sweet, but not too sweet.

They look funny, but they are awesome! And oreos are totally vegan! Doesn’t that blow your mind?

Finally, on Sunday evening I made myself something healthy to eat. It was an offshoot of the brussels sprout potato hash I made a few months back. I basically used the exact same recipe, but substituted broccoli for brussels sprouts. It was still delicious.

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