Vegan Mocha Fudge Cake

My first vegan cake!

This cake was. . . delicious. The recipe came out of a cute little cake cookbook that my mother in-law gave me for Christmas called 500 Cakes. The original recipe is simply called Chocolate Fudge Cake, but I made it with the mocha fudge cake variation, one of five takes on the original. Both the cake and the frosting have instant coffee in it. And if you like chocolate and coffee as much as me then you should go make this right now. Jenni, are you drinking coffee yet? 'Cause ya should.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

(for the cake)

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
4 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup water
4 tbsp. vegetable oil (I used canola)
1 tbsp. white wine vinegar (apple cider vinegar would also be fine, or even lemon juice)

(for the frosting)

2 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tbsp. boiling water
1 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and cocoa into a bowl, then stir in the sugar and make a well in the middle. Pour the oil, vinegar, and water in to the well and stir together quickly. Immediately pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes until risen and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

To make the frosting, put the oil, cocoa, and boiling water in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir to combine, then gradually stir in the sugar and mix for about 2 minutes until thick and glossy. Add a drop more water if too thick. Pour the frosting over the cake and let it set for a few minutes before serving. [I just whisked it all together, didn't sift the confectioner's sugar or bother with the double boiler, and it was fine. . . ]

A few variations:

Chocolate & Orange Fudge Cake: Prepare the basic cake recipe, using orange juice instead of the water, and adding the finely grated zest of 1 orange with the oil and vinegar. [Note: If you make this you must invite me over to sample. Holy holy.]

Mocha Fudge Cake: Prepare the basic cake recipe, adding 1 tablespoon instant coffee dissolved in 1 tablespoon boiling water with the oil and vinegar. For the frosting, dissolve 1 tablespoon instant coffee in the boiling water before mixing with the sugar.

Chocolate Rum Cake: [I want this one too] Prepare the basic recipe, adding 1 tablespoon rum with the oil and vinegar. [Why stop at 1 tablespoon?]

tofu scramble omelette

It seems I've been keeping a secret, unintentionally, as it came up when I was talking to Mel on the phone last night. I...don't eat meat anymore. It's been a while, maybe since April. I don't really use the "V" word, mostly because I don't have a stance. I never really ate much meat. I was to the point where I never cooked it myself, and was really eating only chicken on occasion. I decided, I really didn't need it. So, out it went.

Enter tofu. I've never really cooked much with tofu. I guess you can say the same thing, I don't see the point. I'd rather more veggies and cheese to the tofu. But, I suppose there is some benefit, like say protein.

Now, most of you all should know by now, I'm not a fan of eggs. In fact, I hate them. Anything that tastes egg-y...yuck. But, recently a vegan friend of mine was telling me about this tofu-based omelette thing, and I was struck by the fact that, the tofu wasn't really there to TASTE like eggs. It was more a vehicle to get the other goodness into your mouth. And, a dream was born. One day, I will wake up on a Sunday, tired and hungry, and I will make an omelette. And it will be good.

That dream came true on Sunday, and it wasn't good. It was DELICIOUS.

I read various things, about omelettes and scrambles. And I decided the omelette route was mine. I diverged from the above recipes, mostly because of what I had on hand. First I began with my filling. I sautéed some white onion and garlic, then I added some asparagus. Once that was mostly cooked I added some fresh spinach. Is anyone else amazed at the significant size reduction of sautéed spinach. I put in so much, and it just shrunk down. And then, when the spinach was all cooked, I added a few tomatoes. Along the way I added some salt and pepper and our Cajun seasoning that tends to go in everything.

I left this on a low burner while I focused on the tofu. I pressed out some of the water, but I wasn't really careful to get it all. Then I sliced it, and put it through my little mini food chopper. It was somewhat paste-y at this point. I added some soy milk, although I didn't measure it - likely just shy of 1/4 cup. I mixed this up. It was still rather paste-y. Then I went to town with some seasoning. Cajun seasoning, salt, pepper, oregano (I think), and something else for sure.

Now, according to the omelette recipe, I was supposed to pour the "batter" onto a hot frying pan. My "batter" wasn't pourable, so I scooped it into the frying pan, and I tried to spread it around. I had some olive oil in the pan, and the tofu began to brown. Then, I put the filling on the tofu batter, and covered it with some freshly grated colby-jack cheese. I covered this, and let it sit for 4 minutes. At thing point, I was supposed to fold the omelette in half. This clearly wasn't happening, but I tried. It resulted in more of a "stirring" of the whole thing. So, this is when I switched from tofu omelette to tofu scramble. I just continued stirring and scrambling the whole mess. When it seemed done (brownish and warm), I scooped it on to a plate. I added more cheese on top, and ate it up.

It was so delicious, that I ran to give some to RO'D. He's pretty skeptical when it comes to these types of things. Veggie burgers, lentil tacos, tofu stir-fry, it takes some convincing. But, I tried. I said "Try this, it's delicious!" He asked "what is it?"

"Tofu scramble"
"oh, with egg replacements?"
"No, with tofu!"

So he ate a bite, and thought it was great. And said, "Wow, you can't even taste the eggs!"

"because, it's tofu!"

This is a winner!

My new favorite Cornbread recipe

I tend to bake late at night, I'm not sure why, I just do. So last night, around 11:30pm, I decided to whip up a new recipe I had found on allrecipes.com for Cornbread.

Who doesn't like cornbread? I've always made the super easy, somewhat healthy recipe on the package of cornmeal. It uses just a little oil, you can make it with one egg and one egg white, not too much sugar, it's great! But cornbread was on my mind recently, yes with Thanksgiving coming up, but I was also delightfully surprised when I went to dinner at a little cafe recently to be given a deliciously yummy and BUTTERY piece of cornbread while waiting for our meal. What a great idea! And way better than the typical bread basket. So I was craving a more buttery unhealthy cornbread recipe and came across this one below. It's not overly buttery either, but in my opinion, it's kind of perfect, and a recipe I'll be holding onto for a while. The best part? You can make it at 11:30pm and it will be done by 11:30pm. . . of course daylight savings time helps.

Grandmother's Buttermilk Cornbread

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk (duh, I didn't have buttermilk. . . let 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice sit for ten minutes and there you go -- a tip I learned from Jenni!)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8 inch square pan.
2. Melt butter in large skillet.* Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.**

* I used my 3 quart saucepan, which was big enough to later mix everything else into, and didn't have to dirty a bowl.
** It will only take 30 minutes unless you use part or all whole wheat flour instead of the all-purpose, but why would you do that? Need I remind you that there's already a stick of butter in there?

spinach & cheese = a match made in heaven

I'm trying out new recipes for Thanksgiving and holy holy have I got one for you to try.

It's very possible that I like anything with spinach and cheese, especially Gruyere cheese. I tried this recipe today though and thought it was extra wonderful so I wanted to share it. Even the picky husband liked it! So here we are, Spinach Gratin, brought to you by everyone's most favorite and fabulous chef, the Barefoot Contessa herself, Ina Garten:

Spinach Gratin

Ingredients

* 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
* 4 cups chopped yellow onions (2 large)
* 1/4 cup flour
* 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
* 1 cup heavy cream (I used all whole milk, no heavy cream)
* 2 cups milk
* 3 pounds frozen chopped spinach, defrosted (5 (10-ounce) packages)
* 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
* 1 tablespoon kosher salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saute pan over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until translucent, about 15 minutes.** Add the flour and nutmeg and cook, stirring, for 2 more minutes. Add the cream and milk and cook until thickened. Squeeze as much liquid as possible from the spinach and add the spinach to the sauce. Add 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese and mix well. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Transfer the spinach to a baking dish and sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan and the Gruyere on top. Bake for 20 minutes until hot and bubbly. Serve hot.

**Next time, on Thanksgiving if not before then, I will saute the onions a little longer, until they're not just translucent but golden brown. The best part of the gratin was the golden bits of cheese around the top edge of the dish, so I think if you get the onions to brown a bit too it would have that delicious sweetness and crispness that this dish needs.

Are you ready for some football?

Saturday was UTs first home football game, and the event was not going to go off without some sort of celebration. There was a gathering of sorts (normally I call these things tailgates, but recently someone has gotten very angry with my description of tailgates not being actually in a truck in a parking lot) So, I guess it was a BBQ. Full of people all in their burnt orange. All with tickets to the game. Who all walked over to the game together. A tailgate.

Anyway, a celebration of this magnitude required some new and delicious snacks. I'd recently scored a Rachel Ray magazine in the airport (ok, recently, the end of July), but it takes me a long time to get through all the things I like in her magazine. So far I've made three DELICIOUS dishes.

The first one was some simple couscous. You cook some couscous, garlic flavored if you dare. To it you add about a cup of chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries, golden raisins, chopped green onions and crumbled feta cheese. Oh boy, it couldn't be simpler. Or more delicious. I did not bring this to the football game, but I did debut it for a friends birthday back in August.

Next I tried some potato salad. I didn't really follow the recipe all that well, because I didn't have some things - like fennel. At first I had to google image search what fennel was so I could figure out where in the store to find it. And then when I found it, it was going to cost me a whopping $5. And something I saw on google suggested that it tasted like black licorice. No thanks. So I've modified the recipe. But, it's so delicious. You quarter (or eighth, seriously, who can eat a quarter of a potato) small red potatoes, and cover them with just enough water and salt (the salt in the water is key, according to one of my roommates who thinks my food needs more salt in it). Boil these and let them cook until they are soft, but not mushy. Then you combine 1 tablespoon of dijon mustard, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and 3 finely chopped green onions. The first time I made this I had some asparagus, so I cut the tips and sauteed them a little in a pan and added those to the potatoes when they were done. The second time, I added nothing. Like I said, I didn't use fennel. I used dill. And what seemed like a bunch. I'm not sure how much. I kept sprinkling and stirring it into the dijon mixture, until it tasted good. Then you combine the potatoes and the dijon mix, and stir it up. And, good lord, it's delicious. This was debuted during a boat adventure on Lake Travis, and remade for the football game. Both times, it was a huge hit. Added bonus, for those of you who are interested - this dish is also vegan.

And for my last recipe attempt, and I must say the most fun, I tried beer-battered green beans with a tarragon aioli sauce. I was a little afraid of the beer-battering, but this was so much fun. First it was 2/3 cup of beer (I think I threw in a little extra for good luck, but they did taste beer-y, so maybe a whole can/bottle is too much. I didn't use the whole thing, a girl needs something to drink while she cooks!) 1/2 cup flour and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. Let this sit there for a bit. Then I made the aioli, which was a whole lot of mayonnaise, tarragon (I used dried), dijon, garlic and salt and pepper. I really just kept putting stuff in and tasting, until it tasted good and I had a quantity that seemed appropriate.

Then, for the frying! I used about 2.5 cups of vegetable oil in a pan and turned the burner to high. I stuck a candy thermometer in there, to gauge the temp - RR says get it to 375. This happened quite quickly. When it's starting to hiss and sputter you're basically there. I dropped a small bit of batter in, and it formed a ball and floated to the top sizzling. That means I'm good. I whisked the batter a little bit more, and I threw my washed and trimmed green beans in. I stirred them around a few times to get them nice and coated. I dropped them into the oil in smallish batches, and the batches all tended to clump together - which actually made for easy flipping. I tried to flip them after about 2 minutes, and took them out when they were golden in color. They were probably lighter than golden. I let them dry off on a paper towel.

Sadly, because I live in Texas where it is hotter than hades, I then put them in a tupperware container and in the fridge. Next time, I will not do this. They got a little soggy. Or, they were just crispier before going in the fridge. But, they still tasted great - and were a crowd favorite. Also, without the aioli to dip in, these are vegan (right? I don't see anything vegan-offensive in there).

These three recipes are so terribly simple, and so delicious, I'm sure to make them again and again...and again!

Impromptu Pizza, sort of

While at Trader Joes one day, I picked up some of their fabulous herb pizza dough and pesto among other things. A few days later, I still didn't have a specific plan per say for the pizza, but my mother in-law was over, we were hungry, so I whipped something together.

I didn't have any tomato sauce and didn't want to use ALL pesto for the sauce since I already had the super flavorful herb dough. I did have some cherry tomatoes, probably left-over from the frittata in the post below, and red onions, so I sauteed those up with some olive oil, salt, pepper, dry basil, and garlic powder. When it was saucy and cooked, I stirred in some of the pesto and cooked it for another minute or so. I rolled out the dough, brushed olive oil on the crust, and spread my tomato, onion, and pesto mixture onto the rest. on top of this, I added whatever shredded cheese I had in the fridge. I think it was a mix of Mexican blend, mozzarella, and cheddar. On top of this I put some chopped green bell pepper and a bunch of fresh baby spinach (also, left over from the frittata. . . ). I baked it up and it was REALLY GOOD. I think sometimes the best meals are born when you're not prepared and need to use what you've got!! Mmmmmm.

Anyone for brunch??

Okay, are you still with me? There's yet more catching up to do!

I had some friends over for brunch a few weeks ago and made my first frittata! I'm not a HUGE egg fan, something Jenni and I have in common, but did want to give this a try. It's a Spinach and Potato Frittata that I added cherry tomatoes to. I also used at least double the amount of spinach that this recipe calls for and had to finish it off in the oven because it didn't set on the stove. Oh, and don't forget the salt! It needs it. Scott ate it, like most things, with ketchup, and really liked it.
















For this brunch party (and also for my own brunch birthday party in February!) I made Baked French Toast. Holy holy, this is good stuff. I make it with ONE stick of butter instead of two (OH Paula. . . ) and double the cinnamon in both the casserole as well as in the topping. No syrup needed. Delish!