Vegan MoFo Day 14 - Cookbook Challenge Week Part VII

I slept until lunchtime today (if you eat lunch reeeeally late!) & when I got up I ate a whole world of toast, which was awesome but sadly it means I've had a bit of a failey day on the Cookbook Challenge front; by the time I'd cooked anything it was actually pitch black outside.

First outa the 'hat' today was The Urban Vegan, I bought this cook book pretty recently & hadn't cooked anything from it - until today. The generator picked page 14, Brownie Bites. "Hell Yeah" I though, this is my kinda recipe!

I made one change, the author suggests half wholewheat & half spelt flour, I went for 2/3 plain & 1/3 spelt. As far as I could tell this didn't mess up the recipe or anything because these were delicious, really god-damn delicious! The only thing I'd say is don't wait the 15 min's for them to cool, these are at their gooey best eaten as soon as they're cool enough to handle - don't be as impatient as me though, if you try to remove them from the pan immediately they'll fall apart & you'll have to eat them outa the muffin pan with a spoon & that'd be just terrible!

Second recipe of the day was from Vegan With a Vengeance and the generator picked me page 71, White Bean & Roasted Garlic Soup. Now this certainly isn't something I'd have picked as I don't really like soup BUT the one soup I loved happened to be a roasted garlic soup from a bar called Ruups in Vienna so for soup this seemed promising.

I decided to start by making my own stock, I went renegade with this one & didn't follow a recipe.

I threw all my peelings from the week into a pan with a bit of leftover parsley, some garlic cloves, celery & a parsnip that'd seen better days & simmered for 1 hour 30 min's.

Yup, those are my sunglasses on top of the microwave, I wear them when I'm peeling onions!

I'd never tried to make my own stock before, for some reason I'd gotten it into my head that it'd be too much of a pain in the ass & that stock cubes are super convenient so why bother - it turns out I'm an idiot! This was so easy & do you know how much salt's in a stock cube?! I'm definitely going to be making my own stock from now on.

Anyway, back to the soup; this was one of the easiest things I've ever made, seriously.

I served it with delicious local organic bread from the Infinity Foods Co-op but sadly I still don't think I really like soup - maybe if I'm sick I'll come back to this but I'd probably double the garlic & maybe make it more brothy? I did love the flavour the roasted garlic added to the soup & I'll definitely be roasting more garlic in the future. Also, the recipe suggests that you use a food processor to blend the soup & I did this before taking the picture. Afterwards, once I'd tried it, I decided it was still a bit lumpy & gave it a good old blend in my Kitchenaid blender - it was much creamier & if you have a rubbish food processor I'd definitely suggest blending your soup.

I'll be back tomorrow with the final part of Cookbook Challenge Week & hopefully I'll get up & into the kitchen before dark - which in my kitchen is around 3pm.