Cookbook Challenge Tuesday

It's Cookbook Challenge Tuesday and I feel like yet again the stars have aligned to create something perfect. Last week all three recipes went together perfectly as one meal and today, whilst everything didn't go together, they were all super quick and easy! Exactly what I needed as I have a day of appointment after appointment and won't have time to spend more than an hour in the kitchen at one time.

I started the day with a recipe from Viva Vegan. The generator picked page 182, Savory Fresh Corn Pancakes or Cachapas. I'd never herd of Cachapas before and whilst I think I've cooked a decent amount from Viva Vegan I'd never really noticed this recipe before.

I was a little daunted reading through the recipe as it uses a type of flour I'd never used before, unsurprisingly it turned out that I had it in the house - As with most vegans I can't really stop myself when I see exciting stuff that I haven't tried at the grocery store!

The whole recipe was actually surprisingly simple to put together, until now my experiences with Viva Vegan have all be awesome but almost everything has required some advanced preparation or a decent amount of time spent in the kitchen - I'm beginning to think that these are just the recipes I'm picking though, as I said, these were simple! As well as being simple these were really delicious, OMG, seriously, make these now! When the recipe popped up I was a little dubious about the idea of a corn pancake but now I'm a total corn pancake convert. We just ate them with a little margarine as it was breakfast time but I will definitely be making these with the optional cheese and a side of avocado at lunchtime sometime soon.

The second recipe that came up was the Creamy Bleu Cheez Dressing from The Uncheese Cookbook. The recipes I've made from here so far have been a little hit, miss or meh but I like to try new things and until I've made three terrible things from a cookbook it gets to stay in the random recipe generator! My favourite recipe from The Uncheese Cookbook is the Crock Cheeze, I enjoyed both the Chick Cheeze and the Amazing Mac n Cheeze Sauce (although it needed way more nooch!!) and the Fondue I tried was an unmitigated disaster!

I would say that this falls somewhere near the miss end of the spectrum, nowhere near as inedible as the fondue but unfortunately it's main flavour was vinegar. It was so vinegarey that Nick actually asked me whether I'd messed up the recipe and thrown in a whole load of extra vinegar! Unfortunately that definitely isn't what happened, I added more lemon juice to try to offset the vinegar which made it a little more edible, but still, not great.

The third recipe of the day came from Color Me Vegan. I haven't cooked much from CMV but everything I've tried so far's been great especially the Swiss Chard Pie...

This is where I stopped writing to go to the dentist, I really did intend to make the spinach and potato soup but whilst I was at the dentist my phone got stolen (don't even ask!), I then spent the rest of the afternoon using the 'track my iphone' software to chase the man and my phone around town to no avail as he eventually turned it off. I still have no phone, I'm feeling a little ragey and I have to have my wisdom teeth out! What a crap day. We ordered pizza, garlic bread and cherry chocolate sorbet to make it better though so I am happy that I live somewhere where I can get them delivered to my house even though thieves apparently now hang out at my dentist!

Cookbook Challenge Tuesday

I don't think a Cookbook Challenge Tuesday has ever come together as perfectly as this one. The books I pulled out of the bundt pan today were The Urban Vegan, Vegan With A Vengeance and Veganomicon, in that order. As I was picking the pages a plan started to come together...

The Urban Vegan, Page 133, Brussels Sprouts Au Gratin
Vegan With A Vengeance, Page 88, Seitan and Herb Stuffed Mushrooms
Veganomicon, Page 53, Autumn Latkes

...can you see it? All of these things go together!! Unlike the time I made cookies, cookies, and potatoes or french toast, beans, and a burger these are things I could cook at the same time & put on the same plate. Amazing! The other thing about all of these recipes is that I would never have picked them. No chance, I'm meh about brussels sprouts, Nick hates mushrooms and to be quite honest I wasn't entirely sure what a Latke was!

I started by getting all three work areas together...

I was pretty pleased when I realised that each recipe was actually pretty simple and that they all used different cooking methods, one under the grill, one in the oven and one in the frying pan. Win!

The brussels sprout dish from The Urban Vegan was one of the simplest recipes I've ever seen, there are only three ingredients and I could probably have thrown it together blindfolded!

The stuffed mushrooms were the more labour intensive, but really, if you have some seitan knocking about they're easy!

After reading the recipe I quickly worked out what a Latke was, a fried potato pancake not dissimilar to a hash brown. This recipe uses sweet potato, carrot and beetroot in place of potato and I think I made a bit of a mistake here. I've never actually cooked with beetroot before having only recently developed a taste for it and I picked up a packet of cooked beetroot at the store. I think that how runny my latke mixture was means that I shoulda used raw beetroot, there were no disasters though, I just had to be super careful getting them into & out of the pan.

I was super amazed at A, how delicious everything was. I enjoyed everything which given that these were recipes I felt a little underwhelmed by upon reading was quite a surprise. And B, how well everything went together given that they were randomly chosen, from different cookbooks, and not things that you'd immediately look at & put together.

The noochy brussels sprouts were great, I usually save sprouts for Christmas lunch because they're traditional, eat one or two, and leave the rest. These? I ate the whole lot and I'd definitely make them again. The stuffed mushrooms were delicious, as you can see from the picture I decided to do big mushrooms instead of the little ones recommended in the recipe and that worked out pretty well. I really liked the herby seitan stuffing and I'd consider making it to stuff inside almost anything! The latkes were probably the star of the show though, not necessarily because I liked them most but because I was most surprised by them. As I said earlier I'm a new convert to beetroot after years of trying, sweet potato is pretty low on my much loved veggies list, and usually, if something has fennel in, it I'll run screaming in the opposite direction...well, not literally, but you get the idea! I really didn't think I'd like these but I was totally won over by their earthy, sweet flavour and crispy fried outsides. What a great meal!

Cookbook Challenge Tuesday

The great vegan.in.brighton cookbook challenge is back! This challenge began two years ago as part of Vegan MoFo when I decided that I needed to use my cookbooks more. I devised the recipe generator to help me pick truly random things to make, things that I may not otherwise have chosen. If you haven't tuned into one of my cookbook challenges before I pull the name of the cookbook out of a hat, or, as was the case this week, a bundt pan. Next I use a random number generator to pick the page. I shoot for two or three recipes a day & there's no re-picking even if it's something I'm not sure I'll like! 

The first cookbook that came out of the bundt pan today was Hearty Vegan Meals For Monster Appetites by Celine Steen & Jonie Marie Newman. I was super excited about this as it's one of my newest cookbooks and I hadn't made anything from it...until today! I've actually banned myself from buying new cookbooks until I've cooked at least three recipes from every cookbook I own and hopefully this challenge will mean that I can get back to the bookstore soon. Today the generator picked page 67, Baked Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Holes. 

These yeasted doughnuts were a surprisingly tricky start to the day. It took four tries for me to manage to activate the yeast! Four! On the first attempt I totally messed it up & threw the yeast into the cold soya milk, duh. I blame the jet lag! I tried to rectify it by adding the other warm ingredients but surprisingly that didn't work. Not at all! The second and third tries were more confusing, I warmed the milk, I even used my candy thermometer to make sure that it wouldn't be too hot or too cold and the yeast still didn't activate! At this point I realised that it probably wasn't just my brain fog causing the problem but the yeast itself. Thankfully I had some little packets of yeast hidden in the back of my cupboard and once I used those things turned out just fine.

After leaving the dough to rise under the radiator in the bathroom it was time to make them into 'holes'. This was super simple and just involved using an ice cream scoop to pop them into a cinnamon sugar coated muffin pan.

After another 40 minutes of rising & 20 minutes in the oven out popped these beauties.

These were delicious and had the added bonus of being bigger than your average donut hole! I don't see these lasting very long! This was a total cookbook challenge win, I never would have chosen this recipe as I'm not usually the biggest cinnamon fan but these were great. The authors weren't wrong when they say that they're just as good as their fried counterpart.

The next recipe to come outa the generator was from 500 Vegan Recipes, another book written by Celine & Joni and another cookbook that the generator always seems to lean towards. The recipe it chose was the Monte Cristo Reuben. Now that's what I'm talking about! A fried sandwich?! Hell yes! The first good thing about this was that it uses slightly stale bread, perfect after my toastie post yesterday and secondly it seemed kinda simple! Sauerkraut was easy, I picked up an enormous jar for about £1 and I'll definitely be using it again soon. The only thing I needed to do was whip up some seitan. I chose the Smokey Seitan Roast from Vegan Diner because, in the spirit of the challenge, I wanted to make a new-to-me recipe.

This was one of the easiest things I've ever made! You basically mix all of the ingredients together, form it into a loaf, wrap it in a tea towel and then steam it.

I was a little worried about fitting the roast in my steamer basket...

...because of the handle in the middle but it fitted down one side relatively easily! After 50 minutes of steaming I was delighted to find this perfect looking seitan roast inside the tea towel. What a beaut'!

 

As soon as Nick walked through the door we got stuck into making sandwiches. First we dipped the bread into the savoury french toast style batter before frying each slice and then piling in the seitan, sauerkraut, and red onion filling. We also added a healthy dollop of Veganaise.

This was a truly epic sandwich. Like, on par with the sandwich I had at The Chicago Diner epic. This sarnie has made me even more excited for Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day another of Celine's books and one of the first cookbooks I'll be buying once my self imposed cookbook ban is over!

Cookbook Challenge Day XI

After taking a day off from cooking yesterday I was back with a vengeance today! I picked up the cookbook challenge for its final day with another three new recipes & tackled a haunted gingerbread house for a little Halloween gathering I'm having on Saturday!

Two of the recipes came from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan today, you might think that this was a coincidence but I'll admit that it was pure cheating on our part! Eat, Drink & Be Vegan did come out of the hat once & as per the rules Nick was meant to pick one recipe from it, unfortunately once he saw the picture of the Orange Sesame Tofu with the Coconut Lime Basmati Rice there was no stopping his rule breaking! I have to admit it sounded like a really delicious combo so I figured why not? They're our rules & we can break 'em if we want to!

This was an awesome meal & I'll definitely be making both of these recipes again. The tofu marinade is a mixture of soy sauce, maple syrup, sesame oil and orange juice with some arrowroot to thicken it. I'd probably sprinkle on a few less sesame seeds next time but mainly because they're kinda expensive! The coconut rice recipe suggests that you serve it with a lime wedge but we both preferred the rice without the extra lime, I think the recipe is limey enough as it is & the extra lime kinda overpowered the coconut flavour.

The next book out of the hat was Veganomicon & Nick was instructed to pick a dessert so that we wouldn't be eating two dinners! He chose the Tea-Poached Pears in Chocolate Sauce. We don't often make desserts, there are quite often brownies, cookies or other dessert like things lying around but I don't often whip up a fancy dessert.

I think I'm actually in love with these poached pears! I actually kinda hate tea and I was worried that the tea flavour might overpower the delicious flavour of the pears & subtle orange zest, thankfully that was not the case. You need to let the pears cool for around an hour before eating them & I'm happy to say that they were well worth the wait & this was a truly delicious dessert.

Cookbook Challenge Day X

Just like yesterday I picked the cookbooks for the challenge out of a hat and Nick chose the recipes, unlike yesterday I had to do the cooking myself! His first pick of the day, Apple-Pie Crumb Cake Muffins, came from Vegan With A Vengeance. This is one of my oldest & most loved cookbooks and I was excited to be cooking a new recipe from it.

These muffins have grated apple, chunks of apple and apple cider for triple-apple-awesomeness! The only problem was that I realised after starting to make the recipe that it included apple cider, you don't get apple cider in the UK... well, Strongbow's technically made from apples but I don't think that counts! If I'd had some apple juice in the house I'd have subbed that but a quick look in the fridge told me we only had orange so I used soya milk. This is why you're meant to read the recipe all the way through before starting it isn't it?!

These muffins are perfect for autumn. I used in season British Cox's apples and I don't think my soya milk sub caused any damage. The sugary crumb topping gives these muffins that perfect muffin top crunch and the surprise chunks of apple inside are reminiscent of the inside of an apple pie. Perfect.

The second recipe of the day was meant to be the Blackberry Skillet Pie from Vegan Diner but sadly the ridiculous price of blackberries meant that this one wasn't going to happen, I picked again and Nick decided on the Cocoa-Nut Quick Bread from 500 Vegan Recipes.

This sweet loaf is full of cocoa and coconut and the coconut is blended to make a powder, as you can see from the photo I didn't quite get that bit right! This loaf's really chocolattey and has a delicious crisp top. I think I'm going to make Nick take the rest of it to work tomorrow so that I don't eat it all!

The final recipe of the day is from Yellow Rose Recipes, Nick was so impressed with the taco meat recipe we used on Sunday that he picked another of the authors TVP based recipes, Sloppy Joannas. We had some homemade burger buns from Vegan Diner in the freezer so this was a really quick easy meal.

We've never had Sloppy Joes (or Joannas) before but we'll definitely be making these again. Sloppy Joe's are really, really good, like a sloppy burger... I guess that's the point!

Cookbook Challenge Day IX

I've decided to shake things up for the last few days of the cookbook challenge! I'm still picking the cookbooks out of a hat but instead of using the random number generator we haaaave *drum roll* the Husband Generator! Nick said that he'd do all of the cooking on Monday if he could pick the weeks recipes, um, okay!

The first cookbook outa the hat was Veganomicon & Nick chose the recipe for Banana Nut Waffles. I knew he'd pick either waffles or pancakes this week & this recipe was a great choice. I've had my eye on it for a while because I love the banana flapjack recipe from Vegan Brunch and I'm also a big fan of nuts in waffles.

These were delicious! Nick did a great job especially because it was his first time using the waffle maker, next time I might cook them on a slightly lower heat so that they firm up a little more but there definitely will be a next time.

After breakfast we popped out to buy ingredients, post some parcels & to retrieve all of my halloween decorations from the place I used to work, when we got back there was a pile of post waiting for us which included this great coincidence!

My pie book & a movie about pie, awesome! I'm so excited to get cooking from Vegan Pie In The Sky...I might even have to sneak a recipe into tomorrow's cookbook challenge!! UK peep's just a heads up, Amazon is still saying that the pie book can't be shipped until November 11th but the Book Depository has them in stock & is getting them into your grubby pie loving hands within 48 hours.

Whilst I read my new cookbook Nick got started on the second recipe of the day the Bakery-Style Crispy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies with a hint of Maple from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur.

These are seriously THE best chocolate chip cookies EVER. Try them now! Nick said that they were really easy to make but also that he'd never really realised how much sugar goes into cookies!! These cookies are definitely bakery-style, when Nick & I were getting together we used to go to a little local cookie place called Ben's Cookies and their chocolate chip cookies were my favourites, these cookies are just like them so they bring back great memories as well as being delicious! Nick's decided that this is his favourite cookbook & I love that he even has a favourite cookbook so thanks Kelly!

The third cookbook out of the hat today was Vegan Planet, Nick found it quite hard to chose a recipe from this book because it's huge and a bit intimidating and has no pictures. I tossed a few ideas out there and after showing him a picture of the Mac and "Cheese" on Susan's blog Kittens Gone Lentil he was convinced that was what was for dinner. As an ardent onion hater Nick wasn't too impressed that this recipe contained a whole onion but after realising that it was blended he was happy to proceed!

I served mine with broccoli & Nicks with peas and we both loved that it was topped with breadcrumbs. I really should do that more often because it makes everything all crispy & delicious. Sadly aside from the delicious topping we found that this mac & cheese was a little flavourless. The recipe says to use 2 tsp of nooch (that's nutritional yeast!) but Nick knows that that's now how you make a good mac & cheese and threw in 2-3 TBS instead. Unfortunately even that alteration didn't make this cheesy enough for us & it was more like a creamy pasta bake than a macaroni cheese. We added a lot of Parmazano sprinkles though & it ended up being a satisfying cheesy dinner even though we probably wouldn't use this mac & cheese recipe again.

Today's been awesome, I can't believe I've eaten so much delicious food & had three things to blog about without having to cook anything. Isn't Nick the best?!

Cookbook Challenge Day VIII

Today the Cookbook Challenge seemed to be insisting that I had friends over for dinner with it's three easy to prepare ahead dishes that would all go together well as one meal. I'm not one to argue with the recipe generator so that's what I did!

My first recipe of the day was the Chipotle Lime Two Bean Hummus from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Hummus is usually pretty easy to throw together and this was no exception even though I had to open two tins of beans rather than just one!

The hummus is made from both chickpeas & kidney beans and the chipotle flavour comes from Tabasco. This isn't a recipe I'd have picked, there are a lot of hummus recipes scattered between my many cookbooks and as I never have Tabasco in the house, well, until today, I would have skipped it for a more pantry friendly recipe. I was worried this would be too spicy but even I couldn't really detect any spice, I might even add more Tabasco next time.

My next recipe of the day isn't actually from the cookbook challenge but as I was having friends over for dinner I thought I should pull out the big guns & make 4 dishes. I'm a firm believer that hummus should always be accompanied by pitta bread so I e-mailed one of my bff's for her recipe.

This simple flatbread recipe only contains five ingredients but I realised too late that the recipe calls for fresh yeast rather than either of the kinds of yeast I actually had, I decided to guess at active dry yeast & continue anyway!

These certainly didn't turn out as well as Kip's pitta bread usually does but I don't think they're half bad for a first attempt. They look more like a flat bread roll than a traditional pitta but they tasted great so who cares right?!

The second cookbook I pulled out of the hat for today was the The Complete Guide To Vegan Food Substitutions and the generator chose me page 178, Quinoa Lentil Pilaf.

This pretty dish is flavoured with orange juice and caraway seeds & I love that it uses roasted salted cashew nuts. It's also the perfect accompaniment to recipe number three the Quiche from You Won't Believe It's Vegan. I've made quiche plenty of times before using my go to recipe from Vegan Brunch but I have to admit that I've never made the pie crust myself before. I don't usually cheat completely & buy the pre baked pastry case but I do usually buy the pastry in a block & just roll it out myself & I'll admit that I was tempted to do that today...

...but I reminded myself that I was going to need to make pie crust when Isa & Terry's pie book arrives anyway & I also remembered that Nick & I had received some of those fancy ceramic baking balls as a wedding gift so I stopped being a wuss & got on with it! The crust is coconut oil based which I was surprised by, I was worried that my savoury quiche would turn out, well, coconutty, but it hasn't and the crust was perfectly crispy & didn't crumble when I cut it.

I decided to grate some of the cheese I made yesterday into this quiche & it definitely worked out well. It was really delicious, there's only one slice left and I think there might be some fighting over it tomorrow.

I also chopped up some veggies to go with the hummus & here's the whole spread...

I think I'll be making all of these dishes again and I'm happy that I'm no longer scared of pie crust!

Cookbook Challenge Day VII

The first cookbook that came out of the hat today was The Best Veggie Burgers On The Planet & the recipe, the Inside-Out Cheeseburger Seitanic Stuffer. This is a recipe I've had my eye on since buying the book so I was really excited to have it pop up in the challenge. Now you (well, I) can't really have a burger without a bun so I decided to cheat for recipe two & choose a bun recipe myself. It had to be something new though so I turned to Vegan Diner, the newest addition to my cookbook collection, and picked the recipe for Old-Fashioned Hamburger Buns.

I was a little suspicious of the bun recipe as it didn't include any warm water but of course it was fine. These were great & I'm enjoying practicing baking bread. Tomorrow, I'm going to try my hand at pitta bread!

The Inside-Out Cheeseburgers require a little bit of forward planning, they take an hour to cook but you also need to make the cheese filling which has to set in the fridge for an hour before being used. That said they were pretty simple to make even after I managed to throw in the whole ammount of vegetable stock when I was trying to halve the recipe...oh well, now we have leftovers! I served them on the Old Fashioned Hamburger Buns with mayonnaise & vegi bacon. I realised as I was taking the picture that it would've been prettier with some lettuce & tomato but sadly there was none in the house!

The burgers were both crazy delicious and massive. I thought they were even better than the Bacon Cheeseburgers I made recently for Football Food Sunday. The cheese on the inside was perfectly melty & I loved the seitan patty. I also love how versatile these burgers are, as Joni says in the book she's included her four favourite stuffing recipes but really you could stuff them with anything. I have plans to change the flavourings of the seitan a little and bread these to make a vegan chicken kiev.

My third recipe of the day was from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I was meant to make these Roasted Almond Cookies with Fleur de Sel last week but I got tattooed instead so I made them today. I'll apologise in advance for the terrible picture, it was dark in my house by about 3pm today & apparently no amount of photoshopping's going to fix this shot!

These were easy to make even though I realised at the last minute that I needed to roast my almonds...clue's in the name there Jojo! This certainly isn't a criticism but the cookies didn't turn out how I'd expected, I hadn't noticed that there were oats in the recipe until the last minute & for some reason I'd assumed they'd be a crispy cookie rather than a soft one. I also have to admit that I was suspicious about topping a cookie with salt but as usual Isa & Terry weren't wrong, these are really delicious! I'm about to go & eat a 5th!

Cookbook Challenge Day VI

The cookbook challenge is back for it's third week & I have to admit that cooking three new recipes a day is stressing me out a little. I'm tired & my arms are killing after chopping 8 tonnes of potatoes (slight exaggeration!) & lifting massive pans yesterday and I've actually been thrown out of the kitchen by Nick for being too stroppy! He's made me sit down, listen to Less Than Jake & drink this...

I'm not entirely sure what it is but it's incredibly alcoholic & it has three straws. Awesome. He's currently cooking the rest of recipe three for me so that I can tell you all about one & two.

First out of the hat was The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes and page 61, Garden Muffins. I had very high hopes for these, I love both zucchini muffins & carrot cake and these contained elements of both.

Sadly the muffins didn't rise at all, if anything they actually shrunk a bit. They were incredibly gummy too & I actually couldn't eat them at all. Muffins are definitely the thing I have the most trouble baking, I love the spelt zucchini muffins from the Babycakes cookbook though & I think I'll stick to them in future.

Second book outa the hat was The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions and the generator picked the last recipe in the book, Chococado Pudding.

Now, I have to say that I love every other Celine & Joni recipe that I've tried (Hello Seitan en Croute!) but I just don't think that avocado in a chocolate dessert is for me. I'm not usually a pudding fan (in the American sense of the word) but the texture was beautiful & it did taste great but I just couldn't get over the avocadoey aftertaste. It's a ridiculously quick recipe though so if you have the book give it a try, maybe you'll have a better tolerance for avocadoeyness in desserts than me.

The third book of the day & the book that Nick's currently reading on his chair in the kitchen...yep, he's taken a chair in there, why've I never thought of that, is Appetite For Reduction. Now after yesterday's football food feast I was pretty happy to see this book. It's one of my favourites & I've been cooking from it a lot this year so it took a few tries with the generator to come up with a recipe I haven't tried, we eventually settled on page 28, Sanctuary Chef Salad. Now to be honest I've never made this because I'm kinda lazy and it has a lot of steps. There are essentially 5 recipes in one here & you have to cook & cool the roasted cauliflower, baked tofu & eggplant bacon before you can dive headfirst into your meal. It's definitely not a quick weeknight meal the first time you make this but once you've made it you'll have dinner or lunch sorted for 4 days if it's just you eating.

This salad is totally worth the effort. It's amazing! It's also huge and has a tonne of fun things in it. The eggplant bacon is perfectly smoky & crisp, the roasted cauliflower is better than I'd ever imagined roasted cauliflower could be & the baked tofu was always going to be a favourite. I made a couple of changes, I hate raw onion so there was no point including it & I couldn't find the correct sprouts so I just went for a random mix that I found at my local co-op. The real surprise with this meal was the dressing, I usually hate dill but I was brave & threw it in there anyway and it's really really good, like, really fucking good, eat it with a spoon good. This salad also made Nick like eggplant! Crazy! We can't wait to make this again.

Cookbook Challenge Day V

The recipe generator's cookie bias is continuing in full force this week! First outa the hat were the Orange Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Kelly Peloza's The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur. I was happy to see this book again so soon because the Jam Thumbprint cookies from the other day were great and, well, it meant that I got to eat cookies again!

These chocolate chunk cookies certainly weren't a disappointment . The chunks of chocolate make a change from chocolate chips & I actually really liked the orange flavour. These cookies reminded me of a Chocolate Orange, y'know that non-vegan ball of orange flavoured chocolate segments? They made me think of christmas because chocolate oranges were the gift of choice between my friends & I at school!

Next out of the hat was Veganomicon & the generator chose me page 109, Lemony Roasted Potatoes which I served with the next recipe outa the hat, the Firestorm Falaf-hell from Please Don't Feed The Bears.

The potatoes were amazing! I think I might've chopped them too large or something though because these took around 2 hours to cook rather than the 55 min's the recipe suggested! The potatoes actually went perfectly with the baked falaf-hell but only because these aren't really falafel, not as I know them anyway. They didn't contain any parsley, cumin or coriander and were more like a lemony chickpea burger. They were delicious but I think I'll stick to the baked falafel recipe in AFR next time I want something to stuff in my pita pocket!

That should have been the end of the challenge for today but as I have a tattoo appointment tomorrow I decided to make one of the recipes meant for tomorrow today. I know that I'll be too wiped to make three recipes, including TWO more cookie recipes tomorrow...seriously this recipe generator is biased, either that or I have too many baking books?! Anyway, as it came out first I baked the Black & Whites from Hannah Kaminsky's first cookbook My Sweet Vegan. These NYC inspired cookies are massive & iced with both white & chocolate icing, hence the name.

These soft cookies were fantastic, seriously, I think that they're what dreams are made of! They're perfect. I love My Sweet Vegan but I don't turn to it that often because the recipes do often use quite expensive ingredients (this one had margarine, a lot of icing sugar and sour cream) and the recipes can often be quite time consuming. That said everything I've ever made from this cookbook has been completely worth the time & cost, one of my favourite recipes ever is the Silken Chocolate Mousse Cake & I'll definitely be making these cookies again.

Cookbook Challenge Day IIII

Wow, I can't believe we're into the second week of MoFo already! I'm loving reading so many new blogs and cooking even more than usual. Today is cookbook challenge day & I knew it was off to a great start when I pulled Vegan Planet out of the hat & the generator came up with page 457, Apple Cinnamon French Toast. This was a very weekendey start to the week but my husband works on a Saturday so Sunday & Monday are his days off, perfect.

I really really like French toast but I've never actually attempted to make it before. Of course I decided to use my new love, the Grill & Griddle again...I swear they're not paying me to link to it every day! I just love it!

The recipe was very simple but as I'm not very awake in the mornings I managed to throw in the full amount of sugar even though I was halving the recipe. Normally I'd give up on my halving at this point & throw in another 1/2 of everything else but, alas, I was out of applesauce so it wasn't to be. I figured that an extra 1/2 TBS of sugar probably wouldn't do too much harm & I was correct.

It turned out great & it definitely wasn't too sweet, I actually added quite a lot of extra maple syrup after the picture was taken! I would say that next time I might try a different bread, I'm unsure what the perfect bread for French toast would be though, I'm guessing a baguette? I would also use a different apple topping, probably the one Isa used to top these Apple Pie Pancakes, it's thicker, has more flavour and doesn't use oil.

After a morning of grocery shopping & visiting my tattoo artist to see the artwork for my next piece it was time for lunch. I'd pulled The Urban Vegan out of the hat & the generator directed me to page 128, Haricots Verts et Tomates. This French inspired green bean & tomato dish is sweetened, either with sugar or agave - I went with agave, and stewed until the tomatoes break down.

Of course I couldn't just have beans for lunch & as I'd opened a new box of silken tofu to make the French toast I decided to make this omelet from the blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. I filled it with vegi bacon, Cheddar Cheezly & chopped tomatoes.

I have to say that the omelet ended up being the star of this meal. Whilst I thought the beans were okay I found the sweetness a little odd, they weren't really to my taste & I probably wouldn't make them again.

Nick took one look at the bean recipe (he's a hater!) and had one of yesterday's burgers for lunch, on a toasted bun with peanut butter, vegi bacon, melted cheese & tomato ketchup. I think he might be a genius!

The third recipe of the day comes from 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes & the generator threw out the Chewy Chocolate Peppermint Cookies. Awesome. I made a cookie recipe from this book last year during MoFo & it also contains the recipe for my favourite banana bread.

This recipe is a little more involved than a cookie recipe I'll ever end up using regularly, melting chocolate is a bit of a hassle & I prefer to bake with oil rather than margarine, but they were definitely worth it. Because the cookies have both cocoa powder & melted chocolate in the batter they pack a double chocolatey punch to the tastebuds & once the peppermint icing was added they were pretty damn perfect .

Just outa the oven...

The recipe says that it makes 2 dozen cookies but it became apparent that if I was also making them 1 teaspoon in size like the recipe suggests I'd end up with closer to 50 cookies rather than around 20. I decided to make the cookies 2 tsp in size & ended up with 30 cookies, pretty perfect.

Here are the cookies after they were iced with a simple soya milk & sugar icing which is flavoured with peppermint extract.

These were seriously the hardest thing I've ever tried to photograph at night! I'm trying not to hold it against them though because they are delicious!

That's it for day 4 of my cookbook challenge but I'll be back with more random eats tomorrow!

Cookbook Challenge Day III

After all of yesterdays sweet treats I was happy that the generator threw some savoury stuff at me today. First out of the hat was 500 Vegan Recipes & the page, 354, Beer Rolls. I've made some really delicious things from 500 Vegan Recipes before, the Seitan en Croute and the Caramelised Onion Tart with a Sweet Potato & Sage Crust really stick in my mind, so I had high hopes for the rolls.

I've never really made bread before today, I've made bagels & pizza dough but never actual bread, so I knew this would be a challenge. First off I had to seek some help from my American BFF to find out what the UK equivalent to sucant was (it's rapadura whole cane sugar btw) & then I had to work out what kind of beer to use. I went for Budweiser after checking my VeganXpress App in the supermarket because it was the only vegan American beer I could see! Whilst reading through the recipe I was a little surprised by how long baking bread was going to take but also by how simple it was, sure it takes a while but during all of the waiting I went to the gym, hung up the laundry, cleaned the kitchen & watched some Jersey Shore so it's the kind of cooking I can get down with!

To start I mixed together the dry ingredients, and then the wet - the wet ingredients included beer, hence the name, but also water that had to be 38 Celcius. That was quite a challenge as I kept getting distracted & letting the water drop in temperature. Next up was trying to find somewhere warm for the bread to rise, our house is currently a little chilly because our radiators aren't working but I solved the problem by taking the dough into the bathroom with me whilst I showered & leaving it there to let the steam do it's thing once I was done!

I was so excited that these turned out so well, look, they're like real bread!!

These rolls are really delicious, I'm eating my third right now & I made the first into a sausage sandwich...

...which was of course delicious!

The only bad thing about these rolls coming up is that bread was part of my 'New Foods Friday Challenge' for MoFo & now it'll feel like cheating so I need to come up with something else to go alongside the Paella, Pierogis & Tamales I'll be making. Any ideas?

Surprisingly the second name out of the hat was 500 Vegan Recipes. I guess I shook the hat too well... or not well enough! The generator picked me page 164 the Leek, Bean & Rice Medley. I like rice, beans & leeks so it definitely looked promising.

The recipe was really easy to follow and whilst it needed two pans you were't really using them at the same time so it's definitely an easy weeknight dish. The rice, both wild & brown, takes a while to cook so as long as you throw it in the pan when you get home you can still have dinner on the table in around an hour. I'm so glad this recipe popped up, it's full of gorgeous flavours & I'd never have thought to put pecans in a hot rice dish myself.

The more I cook from 500 Vegan Recipes the more I love it & I'm hoping it comes out of the hat again before the end of the month.

Now I was meant to make a third recipe today, the Quinoa, Tofu & Kale with Walnut Pesto from Color Me Vegan. I'm not particularly hungry after all of that bread and rice and beans though so I'm going to save it for tomorrow & spend the rest of the evening reading MoFo blogs rather than cooking.

Cookbook Challenge Day II

Yesterday was the start of the cookbook challenge & I continued today with another three recipes. First out of the hat was Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Amazing. I was very pleased with this start to the day! The random number generator picked me page 107 the Coconut Lime Cupcakes but as I'd already made these (I've made quite a lot of recipes from VCTOW!) I had to pick again. This time the generator directed me to page 89 where I saw the recipe for Apricot-Glazed Almond Cupcakes.

This actually might not have been a recipe I'd have made if it hadn't have popped up in the challenge, I haven't had the best results baking with soy yoghurt in the past & I'm very much a chocolate girl when it comes to baking cupcakes for myself.

I'm so glad the recipe generator picked these cupcakes though. They're unbelievably good & I think I've actually been convinced that there is a cupcake better than a chocolate cupcake! These remind me of an apricot version of a cherry bakewell, one of my favourite pregan desserts that I still haven't gotten around to veganising...partly because a cafe just around the corner from my house sells a vegan version! I picked toasted almonds for the topping just because I thought they'd be more fun than regular almond slices & I really enjoyed decorating a cupcake with something other than buttercream for a change.

The second cookbook of the day was Kelly Peloza's The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur. This was shaping up to be a very good day indeed! The recipe the generator chose was the Vanilla Thumbprints & it looked like a great easy recipe. I also liked that the baking with jam theme was continuing.

This is one of my newest cookbooks & whilst I've spent a lot of time flicking through it & bookmarking recipes this is actually the first recipe I've baked from it. You can use any jam you like in the cookies & I picked raspberry. These cookies are so fucking delicious that I actually had to stop Nick eating them straight from the baking tray because I was running out of cookies to photograph! They're also super simple to make & don't use any complicated ingredients. The only thing I did differently to the recipe was that I pressed them down a tiny bit before baking the second tray because my first batch were a little rounder than the picture in the book.

I was amused when the third recipe of the day came up as the Prosecco Spritzer from The Urban Vegan. Apparently the universe doesn't want me to eat any real food today! Whilst I do drink alcohol I certainly do not drink expensive prosecco on my own on a Tuesday afternoon so I decided to make this drink with soda water & cranberry juice rather than the suggested prosecco.

Nick has the day off work today & he doesn't ever drink alcohol so the non-alcoholic option was a good way for him to join in with the fun too. I definitely like this drink, in fact I am about to pour myself a second, and I will happily make the alcoholic version one day.

Today has definitely been a fun day but I do currently have a bit of a sugar buzz after eating two cupcakes, 8 cookies & a glass of cranberry & soda water. I think I might need to go & find myself something sensible to eat! See you all again tomorrow!