Oh. Em. Gee. Guilt-free cupcakes

With blurry photo-documentation, unfortunately.

I actually managed to make vegan, sugar-free cupcakes. And they taste good! They're not as sweet as sugar-sweetened cupcakes, of course, but they're lightly sweet and yummy.

• ⅔ cup soy milk
• ½ tsp apple cider vinegar
• ⅔ cup unsweetened applesauce
• ⅓ cup canola oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole wheat flour (use all-purpose for less texture, if desired)
• ⅓ cup cocoa powder
• ¼ tsp salt*
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¾ tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners. Mix wet ingredients together in one bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir to incorporate, until no large lumps remain. Pour mixture into liners until ¾ full. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a large cupcake comes clean.

* this iteration uses salt, but I think I will omit it next time; the salt is a bit too overpowering in this version

For the icing, I winged it. The following measurements are approximate:

• 6 unsulphured Medjool dates, pitted
• one avocado, peeled and pitted
• scant ¼ cup cocoa powder
• splash of soy milk (or until the icing is suitably moist)

To the bowl of a food processor, add the dates and pulse to coarsely chop. Add the avocado and pulse further. Scrape down the sides of the bowl when necessary. Add the cocoa powder and pulse further, again, scraping the bowl down when required. Add soy milk as needed.

Pipe the resultant icing on your cupcakes and eat to your heart's content!

July 31 update: it's official, using all-purpose flour and omitting the salt makes a better cupcake. Yay for half-batches!

Hot enough to proof bread

When I woke this morning, we were down to two slices of bread from our weekly loaf, so I chose to make a new loaf, rather than buy one.

Rather than gently pre-heating the oven as a proofing area, I thought I'd try proofing outdoors, under a loose layer of plastic wrap. The two risings each took about half the expected time and the resultant bread has a fantastic crumb.

A dairy- and milk-free quiche!

As mentioned previously, my dietary restrictions are making my food choices look more and more vegan, so it should come as no surprise that my weekend craving for quiche resulted in me researching vegan quiche recipes. Girl Makes Food's Vegan Quiche looked promising, but my own vegan reference cookbook, Vegan Recipes, suggests flavouring the custard-replacement with mustard, rather than garlic powder, and that seemed like a better fit for my Quiche Lorraine/Florentine hybrid. A quick taste of the not-a-custard also indicated that a splash of apple cider vinegar was called for, and I'm very happy with the results. This might not be the prettiest thing to come out of my kitchen, but it certainly is delicious.

My recipe follows:

• single crust worth of my much-touted go-to pie crust dough
• one small onion and one large shallot, chopped, sautéed and allowed to cool
• about 250g frozen spinach, steamed, drained and allowed to cool
• one package prosciutto, thinly sliced, lightly cooked and allowed to cool
• vegan custard "slurry", omitting garlic powder, and adding dry mustard and cider vinegar to taste

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place the dough over top of a pie or tart pan, gently push it into the bottom and trim (if desired). Fill the crust with onions, then spinach, then prosciutto, distributing evenly. Pour the "custard" over top and smooth out. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Allow to set slightly before cutting.

Chocolate Caramel Shortbread Bars

I have no idea where I found this recipe for chocolate caramel shortbread bars, but I knew I'd have to make a variation of it from the moment I saw it.

Mine were made in a 10 ½" springform pan, lightly greased for easy removal. I used the provided shortbread recipe, but with icing sugar (rather than granulated) because I have icing sugar to use up. I also substituted vegan margarine in place of the butter. Likewise, the chocolate topping recipe was followed almost exactly, with vegan margarine again and agave syrup rather than corn syrup. I had to break drastically from the linked recipe's caramel component because of the high amount of dairy in it. I was inspired by a recipe I found for vegan dulce de leche. My version follows:

• 1 can full-fat coconut milk
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ¼ tsp vanilla
• ⅛ tsp baking soda (to prevent curdling)
• salt, to taste

Combine the first four ingredients in a small saucepan, stir. Over medium heat, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and allow to gently bubble, stirring every 10 minutes or so, for about 2 hours. These steps make the vegan dulce de leche.

To make the caramel topping, heat the dulce de leche to "soft ball stage" (although I see I ought to have gone to firm ball stage) and pour over the cooled shortbread. When that has cooled fully, pour the chocolate topping over that, smooth it out, sprinkle with sea salt and place in the fridge to chill. Kara and I got to these before they were fully set, but they were too tantalizing to pass up.

As for the results, the caramel and chocolate were so good, but I confess that I would have liked a shortbread base which was less crumbly and more like a familiar candy bar with similar ingredients. Next time, I think I'll try adapting the shortbread recipe from this knock-off recipe.

Food for thought, Part I

Debbie Does Salad: The Food Network at the Frontiers of Pornography

by Frederick Kaufman for Harper's Magazine from 2005

Vegan Stroga*not*

Meal planning around here tends to involve choosing three different dishes which we intend to go for a couple of dinners worth of servings each. I've recently been able to convince Matt that having a meat-free dish every week makes good economic, health and environmental sense, so there's usually a meat-less dinner option in our weekly dinner menu.

I've got a small selection of vegan cookbooks and cracked one open last week for inspiration. I hit the mother lode when I discovered a meatless take on traditional Beef Stroganoff, so I thought I'd try my hand at making one for tonight's dinner.

My version follows:

• olive oil, for the pan
• 3 leeks, washed, green parts trimmed off, and thinly sliced
• 2 large shallots, sliced lengthwise
• medium yellow onion, halved and sliced lengthwise
• 16 oz. mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
• water
• ½ head of roasted garlic
• 12 oz. container of vegan sour cream
• salt, to taste
• pepper, to taste
• splash of apple cider vinegar
• dash of dry mustard

Sautée the onions, shallots and leek in the olive oil with salt until they have softened and begun to caramellize (mine went a bit over, but you couldn't tell from the finished product), add the mushrooms and continue sautéeing until the mushrooms start to lose some of their water. Add water to the pan and cook until you're satisfied that the flavours have melded (keep adding water to the pan as necessary so that the mixture doesn't dry out). Squeeze in the roasted garlic and mash it into the mixture. Add the sour cream substitute and stir well to incorporate. Season with the salt and pepper, and sparingly with the cider vinegar and dry mustard. Serve over noodles and be amazed that something that tastes this good doesn't have any meat in it.

Dairy-free peanut butter pie!

It's probably been close to a decade since I had peanut butter pie, what with the fact that I've had a mild peanut sensitivity for as long as I can remember, and that the recipe for the pie usually contains whipped cream and cream cheese. Still, I've been toying with the idea of making a dairy-free version for years, and was finally inspired enough to give it a shot today.

I based it on Canadian Living's Chocolate Peanut Butter pie recipe, which I have in a Canadian Living Holiday Best magazine that I've had since shortly after moving out of my parents' place. I used vegan margarine and pre-packaged Oreo crumbs for the base. Vegan cream cheese, WOBButter and more vegan margarine were included in the filling. Additionally, I made up a batch of Mocked Whip Cream from the Friendly Food cookbook to substitute for the whipped cream called for in the recipe.

The filling was surprisingly easy to make. For future reference, I should note that I've had better success using Earth Balance margarine in the mocked whip cream — it just ends up fluffier. All I had to do to really enhance the flavours was add a bit of salt. Then I shaved some chocolate over top and placed the pie in the fridge to set. We should have a fantastic dessert after dinner tonight!