Finally got around to making Pudding Chômeur

Vegan Pudding Chômeur!

I used The Quaint Kitchen's recipe, making a batch-and-half to ensure I'd have enough to fill 6 ramekins. The vegan yogurt I used was President's Choice Coconut Cultured Yogurt, and I the plant "milk" was just the septic-packaged stuff I keep in the pantry (I think this time it was Silk brand).

Mini loaves of bread!

Here's the recipe I used as a reference. I ended up subbing in 1/3 of the flour with whole wheat flour, as well as 15 g of vital wheat gluten. I also used melted margarine in place of the olive oil.

Butter Chicken Pizza!

I've been using up leftover butter chicken (when such a thing exists — this one's made with KFI's Vegan Butter Chicken Sauce) by using The Kitchn's No Knead Bread recipe as a jumping-off point for making a batch of pizza dough (replacing ⅓ of the a.p. flour with whole wheat flour), putting that on a sheet pan, and topping it with the yummy-ness.

It's been such a hit that it gets made fairly often around here these days.

Beef Birria Tacos!

Made up a pot of beef birria last Friday, using Joshua Weissman's Beef Quesa Tacos as my jumping-off point. My adaptations included having all 3 lbs. of beef be beef rib "finger meat", using 6 guajillo chiles in place of all of the chiles, freshly-ground black pepper in place of the peppercorns, and replacing the fresh oregano with half the amount of dried oregano. The flavour is amazingly complex and satisfying.

The picture above is of the beef birria served on half-corn and half-flour tortillas, with quick-pickled shallots (salt, sugar, and lime juice were added) and fresh cilantro. This is one of my favourite things to have ever eaten.

Pumpkin doughnuts with coconut glaze

I've had Pro Home Cooks/Brothers Green Eats/Mike G's "Healthy" Doughnut recipe on my to-do list ever since it was published a couple of years ago. The promise of a good, but not overly sweet, doughnut glaze was tempting. I took the occasion of Caty's birthday a couple of days ago to make my own version (as, obviously, mine cannot include butter, milk or eggs).

Kabocha Pumpkin Doughnut

• one 398 mL can pureed pumpkin (the stuff in my cupboard happened to be organic)
• 4 T (60 g) vegan margarine, melted
• 1 cup (250 mL) hemp milk
• 1 T (15 mL) honey
• 1 T yeast
• the equivalent of 2 eggs in egg replacer powder
• 5 cups of flour
• ½ t salt

I melted the margarine and added the room-temperature hemp milk, pulling the mixture off the heat. It was lukewarm at this point and I added the honey and stirred in the yeast. Into the large bowl of my stand mixer, I added the flour, egg replacer powder and salt and used the dough hook to stir it together. Once the yeast mixture had formed a sponge, I added it and the pumpkin to the flour mixture and began the mixer on low. The original amount of flour called for in the recipe has nowhere near adequate, so I kept adding flour until I ended up with a wet dough, banking on it needing to rest to stop being sticky. I allowed that to proof, covered, for about an hour, then punched it down and began cutting out the doughnuts, laying them on parchment squares on a baking sheet for easy removal. Those were allowed to proof further, for an hour, under a floured cloth. For this batch, I fried the two "extra" doughnuts day-of, and allowed the remaining 12 to do a slow-rise overnight in the fridge. I can't say that the pumpkin really brings anything to this dough, unfortunately. It makes the dough denser than my ideal doughnut would be, but could be a good fritter base if I wanted to experiment with spicing it in the future.

As for the glaze, I adapted the original recipe as well.

Coconut Glaze (makes two batches worth)

• ~1 cup (half a 498 mL jar) coconut manna
• 1 tsp gelatin
• 1 T hemp milk, plus enough to get to desired consistency
• ¾ cup icing sugar
• pinch of salt
• ~1 tsp vanilla

I'd tried to use the recommended amount of sugar, but found that it was barely sweet, and would definitely not be sweet enough to make the doughnut worth eating, so I had to bump up the amount considerably. I am, however, a huge fan of using the coconut manna as a "filler"; it makes the glaze coconut-flavoured without being overpowering. I also found that the gelatin didn't cause the glaze to set up as nicely as it did for the original recipe — it was still a bit gel-like even when "dry". That said, I'd absolutely work with this again, seeing about omitting the gelatin entirely next time, and maybe using a coconut milk (or citrus juice!) instead of the hemp milk.

This was a decent "start" towards something really good, but I can't claim that I thought it was a great substitute for a traditional yeasted doughnut.

Refined-sugar free matcha cake!

A recent trip to the local "hippie" store saw me bringing home my first ever tin of matcha powder, which called to mind the green tea castella cakes which were ubiquitous in our old neighbourhood. I thought I'd try adapting the refined-sugar free cake recipe I developed several years ago. This version, then, uses:

• ⅔ c. coconut milk
• ½ t. apple cider vinegar
• 1 c. pitted dates (the Medjool ones were unavailable), soaked and drained
• ⅓ c. avocado oil
• 2 t. vanilla extract
• 1 c. packed all-purpose flour
• 1 T. matcha powder
• ¾ t. baking powder
• ½ t. baking soda
• ¼ t. salt

This cake was baked in a greased loaf pan for about 20 minutes at 325° F. The cake is very lightly sweet, tender and fluffy. It's a hit!

Snow day, so cookies!

Kara helped me bake up a batch of Mrs. Fields Chocolate Cream-Filled Hearts from the (very) out-of-print Mrs. Fields Cookie Book: 100 Recipes from the Kitchen of Mrs. Fields, or, at least, I think that's the book this recipe came from. Caty got it as part of a Scholastic order back when we were in elementary school, and I've long-since photocopied out the recipes I liked most. Strangely, I think this is the first time anyone in our family has made this recipe, but it's a keeper!

My only complaint has more to do with the butter substitute I use than the recipe itself. I've been using Earth Balance Soy Free in my baking so that I don't risk causing digestive troubles for myself, but it doesn't handle as well as butter does: it's much softer, which means that any attempts I've taken at making a sugar cookie (as in this case), results in very crumbly dough. I find I have to let it warm considerably before there's any structural cohesion while raw. When it's baked, it makes a good cookie, but getting it there is a task!

I also used a mini can of coconut milk for the heavy cream, and added a pinch of salt to the dough and the ganache.

These are good!