Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake

Again, allow me to demonstrate how backlogged my blogging is (hey look though…two in the same week!). Kai’s birthday was in December! And being his amazingly awesome friend (…one who loves to bake) of course I was going to make him a birthday cake!

When I asked him what cake he wanted he said “a strange one”. Great. Thanks Kai, that was a lot of help.

Luckily I was able to find a pretty strange one if I do say so myself.

Vegan chocolate avocado cake.

Are your eyebrows raised?

Trust me on this one. It’s worth the adventure.

I got the recipe from Joythebaker, which included this awesome avocado buttercream frosting.

Remember that TV show on Nickelodeon where they would literally just dump green slime on people?

The frosting totally looked like that.

In fact, if I were to have a slime throwing contest (…kai take notes this could be good), I would just make up a ton of this frosting…and chuck it at people.

Despite looking like someone had thrown a ton of green slime on my beautiful chocolate cake,this cake was REALLY good, and very convenient because it did not require milk, eggs or butter (we tend to go through A LOT of butter).

The frosting was the most interesting part. It was really tangy (probably because I added more lemon juice than I probably was supposed to), but it went really nicely with the chocolate cake. It was not as sweet as so many frostings are which was a pleasant change. The only change I would make would be to really make sure the avocadoes are as ripe as the possibly could be. Mine were still a bit hard, and I’m sure I sacrificed flavor for it.

PLAN AHEAD!! (ugh)

So if you’re looking for an adventure in baking, or if you just want a really awesome vegan cake, give this one a shot. I will absolutely be making it again.

Side note, you totally get instant “WOOOWs” for creating a baked good with both vegan and avocado in the title.

Bonus: you can attempt to pass the cake off as “more healthy” because it’s made with avocadoes instead of butter. Healthy fats! (don’t be fooled…it’s still a cake)

Give it a shot.

It’s awesome.

***NOTE*** I forgot to mention that this cake really sticks to the pans (sorry Sasha!!). Make sure you REALLY flour your pan!!

Recipe: Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake

Winter Madness and French Onion Soup

 

Oh my god.

SO many things to post.

So bad at keeping up with it.

My keyboard is tired,  the million web tabs I had open for various projects are closed, I’m awesome at FreeCell again, and my final papers are turned in.

Winter break!

And boy is it winter out there. We are in the middle of a big nor’easter that consists of TWO storms combining together! …I’m a weather nerd. It’s wonderful.

So while the world is a white blur, I figured now would be an excellent time to post this wonderfully warming recipe.

You know the chilled to the bone feeling? That one where you feel like you will never get warm again?

This soup eats that feeling for breakfast.

French Onion Soup. Sounds fancy, but it’s so easy!! And it’s SO good.

So grab an awesome chopping partner, grab some wine, grab some tissues, and sit back and laugh in winters face while you eat this wonderful soup.

 

We had a crying contest to see who would last the longest.

I’m just gonna say I won

 

French Onion Soup

Adapted from Simply Recipes

Ingredients

• 6 large red or yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced.
• 3 Tbs of Butter
• 1 Tbs of olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon of sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 cups of your stock of choice (beef, chicken, or vegetable), or a combination of the two (traditionally the soup is made with beef stock) **
• 1/2 cup of dry vermouth or dry white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 teaspoon of dry thyme
• Salt and pepper
• enough slices of toasted French bread (4,6,8, whatever you want)
• 1 1/2 cups of grated Swiss Gruyere (We used mozzarella because it was on hand)

**The better quality your stock, the better quality your soup! Stock really makes a difference.

Method

1 In a large saucepan, slowly cook the onions in the butter and oil on medium high heat until well browned, but not burned, about 30-40 minutes (or longer). Add the sugar about 10 minutes into the process to help with the carmelization. BE VERY CAREFUL! …I left it for a few minutes and we ended with onions stuck to the bottom of the pot, and had to change to a new pot.

2 Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the stock, vermouth or wine, bay leaf, and thyme. Cover partially and simmer until the flavors are well blended, about 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Discard the bay leaf.

3 Ladle the soup into oven proof bowls or casserole dish. Cover with the toast and sprinkle with cheese. Put into the broiler for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F, or until the cheese bubbles and is slightly browned. Serve immediately.

Bleh this picture does NO justice to the final product.

 

Stay Warm and dry!

-Leah

P.S. It’s Kai’s first ever snow day today!!

Chocolate Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

As a cookie fanatic, I feel that we have been failing you, the reader, in some respects. We can talk about the advanced tactics in bread making all we want, or show you how to make a delicately balanced soup... but without a solid cookie recipe this food blog is lacking. Therefore, I introduce you to quite possibly the easiest and most scrumptious little cookies I've ever made!

Chocolate Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies!!! That's right, chocolate is in the name TWICE! The best part? It has a little bit of oats in it, so you can pass it off as a healthy snack! At least that's the excuse I give myself...

The cookies themselves are rather tender and have a slightly gritty texture (which sounds gross, but really isn't) while the oats give a nice textural change and provide a little bit of a chew. All in all, these are some quick and simple crowd pleasers. The recipe itself is adapted from epicurious and can be found here.

Chocolate Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about a dozen

3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons steel-cut or other type oats
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350F and butter a baking sheet. Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl. Beat the butter in a separate bowl (an electric mixer is recommended to save you a lot of trouble) until nice and fluffy, then blend in your sugar and vanilla extract. Beat the flour, cocoa powder, etc. mixture into your creamed butter. Next, fold in the oats and chocolate chips.

When I made the cookies, I found the dough to be very crumbly. It was kinda gravelly... perfect for our gritty cookies! You are going to want to moisten your hands a bit, then try to compress the dough into small balls. Depending on the size of cookie you want, I might suggest around a big tablespoon worth. Also, the cookies are apt to REALLY flattening out, so if you don't want a thin and crispy cookie don't flatten them out on the baking sheet (or you could even chill the dough for a bit).

Bake for about 10 minutes or a tad more and pop em out! They may not feel very done, but they do stiffen up as they cool.

As I said, super easy and delicious!!!
Ith gu leòir!
~Kai

Hawaiian Haupia

Recently I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic for home. For whatever reason, the chilled and snowy landscape of Massachusetts hasn’t been satisfying my longings for Hawaii. Strange, I know. To fight off the blues, I decided to make a dessert from home for a recent potluck we’ve hosted. The dish happens to be a coconut gelatin called haupia. It is the sort of thing that you don’t generally eat a ton of in one sitting, but is found at every luau or Hawaiian food place. If you don’t like coconut or jello, stay away. However, if you love coconut in any shape or form like I do, then this is an easy must try.

The recipe makes 20 small servings, takes 5 ingredients and only about 15 minutes of active time.

1 can of coconut milk

1 cup of milk

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of water

½ cup of cornstarch

Start off by heating the coconut milk, milk and sugar together in a large saucepan until all the sugar dissolves and

the mixture is fairly hot.

In a small bowl mix the water with the cornstarch. The cornstarch will keep settling on the bottom, so you will have to mix it frequently. I suggest trying to mix it with your hand, because it does this strange thing where it becomes texturally REALLY interesting…

Back to the recipe- While stirring furiously, add the dissolved cornstarch and water into your saucepan. Crank the heat up if necessary to get the mixture to that point JUST short of boiling and continue to stir as if your life depended on it. The coconut goop will start to thicken, but keep going until the surface begins to hold its shape (when the stirred part stays raised instead of melding back into a solid surface of white).

At this point you can give your wrist a break, remove the concoction from heat and hunt down a dish to let it set in. Depending on how thick you want your cubes I would recommend an 8x8 or even a bit smaller. When you have the dish picked out, go ahead and pour the mixture in as evenly as you can.

Pop the dish into the refrigerator for at least an hour, cut into small cubes and serve!

Yes, that easy. I suggest keeping the haupia chilled until you are about ready to serve, but the whole thing should keep for a week if covered well.

E'ai ka-kou!

~ Kai

Failgels or The Case of the Mushy Bagels

November wasn't my proudest of baking months. For whatever reason, I fell into a slump of botched baking experiments. They all had such great potential, but really seemed to end up a disaster... My bagels in particular were a terrible disaster. They tasted right and looked pretty, but something happened to the holes and the dough around that center part remained mushy, despite repeated baking and even attempts at toasting it dry. It wasn't even that the dough was uncooked- it became actual MUSH. You may ask why I am posting a failed recipe... well it's because I think I figured out what might have gone wrong, and I want to put the challenge out to you to try the altered recipe and discover if the recipe turned out as great as I hoped it would. Also, I took really pretty pictures of the process and I want to post them!

The actual bagels came out prettier once baked, but I forgot to snag a picture of them once they came out... Oops!

The recipe is a (now) modified version of one I found on Allrecipes. I made a whole wheat version, added my own topping, and cut back on the boiling time. You can find the original here.

Makes approximately 12 smaller bagels or 8-9 larger ones.

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 packets of instant-dry yeast (or just dump in 2 tablespoons and a bit like me!)
1 1/2 cups of warm water
3 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of salt
and either 1 tablespoon of sugar or 3 tablespoons of baking soda.
3 tablespoons of onion flakes
1 tablespoon of dried garlic powder
3 tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds
1/2 a tablespoon of salt

First, like all yeast-tastic doughs, we start with activating the yeast. The recipe here is unusual in that instead of activating the yeast with the water, then adding it to the dry ingredients, you first mix 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour with the yeast. Also mix separately the water, sugar and salt, then add it to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly for a bit.

Start mixing in the rest of your flour gradually, until you have a somewhat stiff dough. Flour a clean surface lightly and knead that sucker for about 10 minutes. Cover it up and let it rest for 15 minutes.
When that's done, divide up the dough into however many bagels you want to make. Shape each into a ball, then poke your finger through the middle and slowly enlarge the hole. I recommend a larger opening than you think reasonable, because it will rise and you don't want that space to close back up! Cover the bagels up and let rise for 20 minutes.

You should now start up a big boiling pot of water, though there's no need to fill it really high. Add either the sugar or baking soda (depending on what you decided on) to the water. Now some of you may find it odd to boil the bagels, but it's the process it undergoes when getting boiled that gives it that super crispy crust you love about bagels. Let's not jump the gun however, first broil those bad boys at 450 for just a minute or two on each side. NOW toss em into the water in small groups and allow to sit at a simmer for just about 1 minute then take em out and lightly pat em dry.

I am a sucker for everything bagels, so go ahead and mix those last ingredients together (or whatever you want to top your bagels with) and sprinkle generously on top of the bagels. You can even go ahead and give it a light pat to make sure it sticks nicely to the gelatinous feeling dough (if you've ever made bagels or pretzels before, you know what I'm talking about).

Lightly grease a baking sheet and bake at 375 (oh yeah, you should probably preheat the oven) for about 35 minutes, flipping half way in-between. At this point they should be looking amazing, and with any luck they won't have the consistency of dumplings in the center!

Es gezunterheyt!
~Kai

P.S. If you are brave enough to try this, please let me know how it turned out!