East Coast Coffee Cake

East Coast Coffee Cake


The cake crumb was light and tender with just a hint of sweetness.  I decided to make this with one of the suggested options of swirling raspberry jam into the batter and I'm glad I did because without that extra bit of flavour and tang, the cake would have been a little bland.  I was disappointed in the topping, all I could taste was flour.  I think it's worth playing around with next time in order to perfect the cake.  Recipe from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. 

Jam swirly coffee cake before it gets topped!

For our weekly cooking challenge my friend and fellow blogger Kathryn over at The Hedgehog in the Kitchen has made some pretty tasty looking stuffing.  Check it out here.

Easy Chocolate Cake



Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

 This is my daughter's favourite and most requested dessert - Chocolate Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking.  I love this recipe because it's so fast and easy to put together.  If you double the recipe it makes a bundt cake and is also great for cupcakes.  I always have the ingredients in my pantry, it doesn't require any egg replacer just flour, salt, sugar, cocao, baking soda, vinegar, vanilla, water and oil.  The cake itself is not too rich on it's own but if you make the chocolate buttercream icing to go with it, the decadance factor goes up a notch.  We enjoy it both ways.   I don't often get a photo of this cake because it gets eaten too quickly and that means as soon as it's out of the oven, I am being pestered for a piece.   As you can see from this photo, there is a slice missing.

Blueberry Orange Muffins

I'm excited beyond belief to be participating in this Vegan Mofo craziness and have spent most of the day in the kitchen.  I've had my eye on the Blueberry Orange Bundt cake recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking for a while now and decided to make muffins for a well deserved afternoon tea break.  I love these cake recipes that come together so quickly with no beaters or mixers etc.  Just combine wet and dry ingredients and pop in the oven, although this one did require a quck spin in the blender for the wet ingredients.

We enjoyed our tea and muffins out on the deck, they were very good, moist and not too sweet but I did detect a hint of baking soda flavour but perhaps that was my fault.      



Blueberry Orange Muffins



Pineapple Pick Me Up!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

I've been feeling a little down lately with all the stress of preparing to move and listening to the caveman who lives below us swearing, ranting and raving all night long.  So to cheer myself up, I decided to infuse the space with the sweet fragrance of pineapple upside down cake.  I've always wanted to make one and happily discovered a simple looking recipe on vegweb.  Unfortunately, I was so anxious to taste the cake it came out of the oven without being tested and when we cut into it, the middle was like mush.  The cake is a basic white cake but the pineapple/brown sugar adds sufficient sweetness and moisture to make this an enjoyable, casual dessert.  

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup pineapple juice/water (see below)

1/3 cup oil

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1 20 oz can pineapple chunks in unsweetened pineapple juice

1/4 cup UNPACKED brown sugar

Directions:

 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

Pour juice off can of pineapple into 1 cup measuring cup - it should be about 3/4 cup juice. Add water to make 1 cup.  In a separate bowl, combine oil, vinegar and juice.

Dump pineapple chunks into the bottom of a 12 inch spring form pan (you could use an 8x8 or other sized spring form, just adjust cooking time). Sprinkle with brown sugar.

Quickly mix wet ingredients into dry, stirring quickly to combine ingredients well and get out the big lumps. Pour into pan on top of the pineapple/brown sugar mix.

Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Baking time will depend on pan size.

Let cool and loosen sides of cake from pan. Remove side ring and place serving plate on top. Flip cake over onto serving plate and remove pan bottom.

 





Cinnamon Coffee Cake

Tonight instead of going to the gym I indulged my sweet cravings by making Cinnamon Coffee Cake with a recipe courtesy of The Joy of Vegan Baking.  My daughter arrived home from the park with her dad, took a bite and asked me what the cake was called.  When I told her she said "I want to rename this Cinnamon Brown Yummy!"  She especially enjoyed the topping calling it "very rough and very good."   I actually wasn't expecting this to be such a hit because it's not very sweet.  I'm very happy to be wrong in my predictions  The recipe called for chopped walnuts in the topping but I couldn't find any so I substituted chopped pecans.

Cinnamon Brown Yummy

Amelia Bedelia Cake

Last night at bedtime, I was reading one of those awful Amelia Bedelia books to my daughter and at the back of the book she discovered a recipe.  I knew what was coming next, M was going to request we make it and I was dreading having to say no.  I thought it would be an egg and dairy laden dessert but when I read the ingredients out loud I was shocked to discover it was vegan!  What!  Cool!

So, after my daughter extracted a promise from me that we would make it first thing in the morning, she happily went off to sleep.  I love the rare days at home when I can devote an afternoon to browsing through my cookbooks, baking treats and planning future meals.  Lately, those days seem far and few between but happily today was one of them.  

We quickly assembled the ingredients from the pantry and my only complaint was that it called for everything to be mixed in the baking pan with a fork.  I found it a little tedious getting the wet and dry ingredients mixed properly in the darn corners.  It would have been much easier and faster to use a large mixing bowl.  This is a great recipe to make with kids because they can do it all from start to finish with minimal assistance.  It was moist and not too sweet but I found some inconsistency in the batter because it was mixed in the pan (and shhhh don't tell anyone but we didn't sift the dry ingredients).

Amelia Bedelia's Sheet Cake

3 cups of flour
1 3/4 cups of sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup of cocoa
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups water

Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa directly into an ungreased 9" by 13" pan.  Add oil, vinegar, and vanilla.  Pour water over all ingredients.  Mix with a fork until smooth..

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Okay, so we didn't exactly sift the dry ingredients. 

Mixing with great concentration.

Chocolate sheet cake fresh from the oven.

Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream

I'm so excited!  For the first week of the vegan cooking challenge I decided to make Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream from Veganomicon.  I wanted to attempt something completely new and a little bit fancy in honour of my husband's birthday.  There is quite a bit of prep work involved in this recipe.  Eggplant, zucchini and potatoes were peeled, sliced and roasted on trays.  I seem to have severely underestimated the amount of shrinkage the vegetables would undergo and only prepared one tray for each.   I would recommend doing one and a half or two trays of each to end up with enough for layering.  As the veggies roasted, I prepared the tomato based sauce on the stove and the pine nut cream in the food processor.  Once all of the components were ready, the layering began and then back into the oven it went.   

I was a little disappointed in the flavour of this dish.  I've never had regular moussaka so I had nothing to compare it to but for the same amount of effort I would much rather eat a scrumptious lasagna.   I'm not sure if I did something wrong apart from over-roasting the potatoes and I am quite obssessed with eggplant so I was sure this was going to be a hit.  I'm glad I gave it a go even though it turned out to be not among my favourites from this collection.  

Eggplant-Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream

Joining me in the challenge is my talented friend Jeannette who does not (yet) have her own food blog.  She has submitted the following:  

For my first entry in the Vegan Cooking Challenge, I made a zucchini cake that I found posted on The Post Punk Kitchen.  But, as my husband will attest, I never follow a recipe to the letter. SO, I read the posts following the original recipe post and made a few adjustments of my own. Here is my modified recipe:

Ingredients

3 cups grated, unpeeled, fresh zucchini
2 ripe bananas, mashed well
1/2 cup canola oil
3 cups flour
1 cups sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. Vanilla

I omitted the ground walnuts and the chocolate chips. I also took the cake out of the pan after 5 minutes and ate it warm.

My Results:

I got a sweet, moist and firm zucchini cake. It was not as “tender” as it would have been with the full cup of oil, but it was not dry. I could have used a tablespoon or two of liquid to thin the batter, because it was fairly stiff. I never peel zucchini before grating; I like the green flecks. I mixed the sugar into the flour by mistake. If I had mixed it into the wet ingredients, it might have helped pull some of the liquid out of the zucchini. But, it didn’t matter because this cake is very good, even with my modifications.

I am curious about using soda instead of baking powder. Soda needs an acid to react with. I wonder if baking powder should be used? Is this something vegans do not use?

Jeannette's Zucchini Cake

Coconut-Lemon Bundt Cake

I made this cake for my husband's birthday even though it's not the usual frosted confection typically eaten at such occoasions.  Before it even had a chance to cool down and receive the recommended sprinkling of icing sugar, slices were being snuck out of the kitchen while I was busy preparing dinner.  It was a hit with the adults and my very, discriminating daughter ate 3/4 of a good sized piece.  She's usually a strictly chocolate girl so that tells me something.  The shredded coconut lends the texture an unexpected chewiness and combines nicely with the lemon flavour.  This cake would be perfect for afternoon tea.   

Recipe from Veganomicon. 

Coconut-Lemon Bundt Cake