Fudge-y.

I have tried so many brownie recipes. Personally, I like cake-y brownies. But I have yet to find a recipe that I absolutely love. Before I was vegan, I had a great recipe. But it didn't veganize super well, and I still need to work with it. Adrian, on the other hand, prefers fudge-y brownies.

I absolutely love the book The Joy of Vegan Baking, I've been using recipes from it for years. One recipe I had never tried was the brownies. Since they were fudge-y, I never thought I would make them. But last night I really felt like baking, but had NO IDEA what to make. I wasn't craving anything. Finally, Adrian and I decided that I should make brownies.

They ended up being delicious! Personally, they are a little dense for me but mega chocolate-y. Like the last recipe, I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose, and organic cane sugar instead of white sugar.

I will definitely make these again.

Anyone have any good cake-y brownie recipes?

Kobo.

I recently bought a Kobo e reader, and I have to say it's great! I wasn't sure if I wanted one, since I hate reading computer screens for a long time. But it's so easy to read, doesn't turn my eyes at all, and is so convenient. I think I love it most for the fact that I can get all the cookbooks I want for low prices (or free!) and am able to have all the recipes in one place.

I've been looking for a perfect lemon poppy seed muffin recipe for years. I've experimented with many recipes but never found anything that I loved. I saw a recipe for them in Vegan Brunch, and decided to try it since I love so many of her recipes.

They turned out really well! While I won't say they are perfect yet, they are so so so close. I did make some initial adjustments, which could even be the reason why I don't think they are perfect yet. I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose. This was my first time using no all-purpose in baked good, and you can't even tell that they are whole wheat. It's wonderful and I will be baking with whole wheat pastry flour a lot more. As well, instead of white sugar I used organic cane sugar. It's just a little less refined.

While at the store today I also picked up some coconut palm sugar, which I'm very excited to experiment with. I have lots of baking plans this week, I can't wait to get started!

Oops.

I am the worst. In the past three days I have made chocolate swirled banana bread, and brown sugar cupcakes filled with chocolate ganauche. They were both delicious, but I forgot to take pictures!

I made a small loaf of the banana bread on Sunday, and sliced into almost immediately out of the oven. While I am not a huge fan of banana bread, Adrian is and well, we had bananas to use up. I added the chocolate to make it more inviting for myself. It was tasty, a little too dense for my liking but Adrian loved it.

Yesterday I made the cupcakes because it was Victoria's Day! My friends and I went to the beach and watched the fireworks, so I brought along some cupcakes. I mixed multicoloured sprinkles into the ganauche so it would kind of resemble fireworks. They were delicious, I was easily make those again.

I'm sorry for the no pictures post. I really need to get a better camera so I can take better pictures/be more excited to take pictures.

Hope everyone had a great long weekend!

Basic.

I had some of the cookie dough from the cupcakes leftover, so I obviously had to make cookies. While chocolate chip cookies are so simple, they are probably my favourite cookie. Nothing beats homemade cookies.

The park was so wonderful yesterday, I think I'm going  to go back there today. It's even warmer today! But now I need to decide what to bring for a picnic...

Double dessert.

I've been baking basically everyday, it's great. I've been trying to try different things, hence the garbanzo bean cakes I made earlier in the week. Yesterday, I really want to make cupcakes, but I didn't want to make plain old cupcakes. So I decided to make rainbow ones. But still, that wasn't enough. So then I decided to bake a cookie inside each cupcake I've seen people do this before, but normally they freeze the dough first so it will still be raw in the cupcake. I didn't  have time to freeze the dough, so I just chilled it in the refrigerator.  And to be honest, they ended up tasting great!

I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from the Joy of Vegan Baking, except tweaked a bit to suit my taste buds. The cake batter was one that I've been working on for a while. I still don't think it's perfect, but it's pretty damn close. And the frosting is from VCTOTW.

These ended up being mega delicious. My friends absolutely loved them, and I really should have made more than 6.

Well, I must get some food ready for a picnic today! It's a long weekend and it's supposed to be gorgeous out everyday, I'm so excited!

Beans beans beans.

I've been trying to eat less soy and fake meat products lately. Which means I'm adding a lot more beans to my diet. It's super easy thought since I love beans and I love challenging myself to make new/different things.

There's this cafe in my hometown that made this delicious chocolate garbanzo bean cake. Every time I went there, I would get a slice of this cake. It never seemed healthy or anything less than indulgent.

Well, it's been a long time since I've had any garbanzo bean cake since it was not vegan. (Eggs!) But today I decided that instead of daydreaming about it everyday, I would just veganize it. I used this recipe and just changed a few things. Obviously instead of eggs, I used an egg replacer. (The brand I use is PaneRiso since it's the only kind I ever see in stores.) As well, I used agave instead of white sugar. Mainly because I didn't have any white sugar. I barely use it anymore so I always forget to buy more. All I did for the conversion is I used just over 1/2 cup of agave, and I took out 1/4 cup water from the recipe. (Basically, I just used 1 tbsp of water per "egg" as opposed to 2 tbsp.) I also baked mine in a cupcake pan, which I greased and dusted with some cocoa powder. They turned out so cute! And quite delicious. I'm going to try freezing some of them to see how well they freeze, but I'm super happy with the result.

I can't wait to have these with some berries and powder sugar for dessert tonight!

Birthday!

I recently celebrated my birthday. While in Toronto, I went out with my boyfriend and friends to the Vegetarian Haven. The meal was absolutely delicious, but I must say the best part was the dessert. We got a delicious chocolate fudge cake with a scoop of caramel pecan ice cream. Yum! Everything at the restaurant is completely vegan, which made ordering super easy.

A few days later, I went to Windsor to celebrate my birthday with my parents. Since there are no vegan restaurants or bakeries in Windsor, I had to make my own cake. I made a delicious chocolate and red velvet cake with chocolate raspberry mousse between the layers and iced in chocolate buttercream. We ate it with some strawberries because that makes me feel better about eating such a rich cake.