What Kate Ate

I have so much food to catch up on! This post is about a bunch of peanut buttery goodness I made around graduation time this May.

First are no-bake peanut butter chocolate bars that I made for the bonfire my friends and I had to celebrate the end of the school year. Normally, I equate no-bake with quick and easy, but these were a hefty undertaking! They comprise three layers: a graham cracker layer with chocolate chips, a peanut butter cream layer, and a chocolate layer with peanut butter drizzles on top:

Between crushing up the graham crackers, creaming the margarine by hand for the bottom two layers (as I have no mixer), and melting the chocolate, these were a labor of love. But they went over well! They are very, very rich, and I couldn’t eat more than a bite, myself.

Second are some peanut butter cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Actually, they are chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling and chocolate ganache. They were supposed to have frosting on top as well, but I didn’t have time for that before I had to take them to wherever they were going. Even though I didn’t get to make frosting swirlies, I did get to use my frosting tips for the filling. Among all my kitchen gadgets, I think this set of frosting tips that I got for Christmas a couple years ago is my most prized. I throw a minor tantrum if I think one of the tips is missing.

The best part of these cupcakes was the peanut buttercream frosting filling. I like this frosting for two reasons: first, I like how the word “butter” belongs to both “peanut butter” and “buttercream” in the name. Second, I like how it tastes like love.

Here are the finished cuppas. Note the spiffy new silicon cupcake liners I have. They are second only to my frosting tips in the hierarchy of beloved kitchen possessions.

Those of you who have kept up with my blog thus far probably think that the only things I eat are combinations of chocolate and peanut butter in dessert form. In truth, I mostly make these things for special occasions, and I post about them because they are more beautiful and exciting than the curry I had for dinner. It was quite a good curry too. I really should post about it.

Bonus picture! I am officially a college graduate. That’s me in the middle with two of my very bestest college friends. I miss them already.

I still have a huge backlog of food porn to talk about! It includes pumpkin-coconut bread, ice cream, pancakes, lemon-blueberry bundt cake, and mutant peppers, to name a few.

What do Oprah Winfrey and the slice of mousse cake I had at lunch today have in common? If you don’t know the answer to this one, you might visit the “About” page of this blog for a quick hint.

Ready? Wait for it…..wait for it….

They’re both vegan.

For the next twenty one days, at least. Let me explain. Oprah just announced that she is about to embark on a 21-day “cleanse” in which she will drop the caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and animal products from her diet. Sounds like a heck of a lot of food to forgo, no? Well, from what I understand, the cleanse has multiple purposes–it will be both a health cleanse and a spiritual cleanse, she says, in which she makes an effort to think about the “animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony.”

Now, Oprah has touched upon the topic of vegetarianism on her show in the past. Several years back, when she found out that cattle are fed the remains of other cattle–that they are quite literally made into cannibals–she announced that she would never eat a hamburger again. And guess what! Sales of red meat dropped noticeably. And, well, the Texas Beef industry got a little miffed and delivered her a big, fat “food disparagement” lawsuit. Because, gosh darn it, how dare she infringe upon their right as Americans to turn a profit through cruelty and exploitation! The suit was dismissed, but Oprah has been reluctant to touch vegetarianism with a ten foot pole ever since.

And that’s why, when I found out about Oprah’s 21 day flirtation with veganism, I didn’t believe it. Granted, she does not use the words “veganism” or “vegetarianism” to describe her experiment. But this is for the better, I think. The word “vegan” is still quite scary to many people. But the fact of the matter is, vegan recipes are starting to pop up on Oprah’s website!

Who knows what will come of this. Maybe she’ll be miserable and give up on the third day. Or maybe she’ll love it and keep this lifestyle for good. I sure hope so! Either way, the thought that legions of Oprah lovers across the country might be inspired to think about the impacts of their diet and maybe even make some small changes is incredibly exciting to me.

In other news, I found vegan goodness in another unexpected place today! To celebrate being my receiving the student worker’s award at the library where I work, my wonderful supervisors at work took me out to lunch at Aladdin’s Natural Eatery, a Mediterranean restaurant in Ithaca. When we were done with our fabulous meal of pita-falafel-olives-hummus-eggplant happiness, I took a cursory glance at the dessert case, which I expected to be barren of vegan delectables. But lo and behold, there it was: Vegan Chocolate Mousse Cake. I kid you not. Now, this was before I heard about this Oprah business, but had it been afterward, it might have been too much for my fluttering vegan heart to bear. Here is what remained of it after everyone had tasted a forkful:

I have made vegan chocolate mousse before, and with highly satisfactory results. But this mousse was unlike any dessert I have ever tasted. I defy any lover of sweets–omnivorous, herbivorous, or otherwise–to distinguish it from it’s non-vegan counterpart on the basis of taste, texture, or mouth feel. I was so in awe of it that I asked the gentleman at the front desk for a list of ingredients. “How, good sir, is this accomplished?” I begged him. Alas, the restaurant orders its dessert from, well, God himself, and there was not a box to be found in the back room. But I will ask again next time I visit. Mark my words, Gadget, next time…

If you are on the fence about veganism, take heed, ye nonbeliever! There is one reason, and one reason only, to go vegan. It is not about abstaining from thousands of acts of murder over your lifetime. Nor is it about arming yourself against cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. These are just the fringe benefits, folks! Truly, if there is one reason to go vegan, it is for the sweet, sweet loving that may be delivered to your door by your friendly neighborhood postman for the low, low price of kindness and compassion!*

In February, I organized a care package exchange with my fabulous veg*n friends. Care package exchanges are just like the secret Santa’s you did in elementary school (religiously motivated celebrations of materialistic wealth in the public school system! Don’t you love it?) but without the blatantly gender-specific toys that someone else’s mother picked out from the dollar store . As organizer-in-chief of this event, I gathered up all of our addresses, tossed them into my secret Santa hat, and matched them into random pairs.** Then we each assembled a treasure box of goodies based on the likes and dislikes of our partners. We even have a name for our exchange–BBV’s: benevolent baking vegefactors–so named because baking tends to be central to the care package experience, though it is not required.

Now, we know from previous posts that my two favorite things are pineapple and coconut. But my three favorite things are pineapple, coconut, and sending people letters and gifts. So, assembling a care package is absolute bliss for me. I had the pleasure of making a package for lovely Miss Laura, who writes the Vegan University column at tastebetter.com. As happenstance would have it, Laura and I have remarkably similar interests. In fact, I am not yet convinced that I didn’t accidentally match myself up with myself. Specifically, we both like tea, scones, and Anne of Green Gables. This actually complicated matters quite a bit; while the package was a breeze to assemble, I secretly wanted to keep it for myself and pretend like it was lost in the mail. It was a trial, but I persevered.

The package looked like this:

Clockwise from the left, we have Really Good Vegan Raisin Scones, Kiss-Ass Molasses Cookies, a mug with an assortment of teas, a recipe box, a crocheted cupcake, coasters, and mini cookie cutters. Sadly, I hadn’t the foresight or the willpower to take pictures of the package I received from Kelsi, my own BBV, but let me tell you, it was chock full o’ coconutty goodness.

A thoughtful package can make a person’s day. In an earlier exchange this past December, I received my package on what felt like the longest day of my college life: a five-hour Teach for America interview followed by several hours of studying for a final that same evening. But when I arrived home, I found a package from “Cali,” my oh-so-benevolent benefactress. Inside was an assortment of goodies of the knitting, tea-drinking, and baking variety, including these handmade stitchmarkers:

The package changed my day entirely.

In conclusion, a reassessment of my favorite things in life is in order:

1. pineapple coconut

2. pineapple

3. snail mail

4. Anne of Green Gables tea

5. tea Anne of Green Gables

6. Colin Firth/knitting/running/red wine (about equal on any given day)

7. spreading happiness to the people I love with simple words and actions

8. cupcakes/Lost (again, about equal).

*Shipping and handling not included. Some restrictions may apply. Offer not valid with any other offers, discounts, or promotions. Valid within the continental United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

**Bold-faced lie. I created an Excel spreadsheet, assigned each participant a number, then used a random number generator to produce a second sequence of numbers. I then juxtaposed these lists to generate a set of pairings.

Cookie dough is a strange creature. Everyone likes to eat cookie dough, but no one really considers it a legitimate treat. It’s one thing to eat a tube of Tollhouse when you are sitting around watching The Girls Next Door or Sound of Music in sweatpants with your friends on Thursday night. It’s quite another to say at the dinner table, “Why yes, cookie dough would round out this meal quite nicely.” Why is this so? Some people are afraid of salmonella and still hear their mother’s voice foreboding death upon raw dough consumption. Daft omnivores, just leave the eggs out! Also, cookie dough is seen as the lazy person’s dessert. It says, “Well, I was making cookies, but they looked so delicious, and I was too hungry to bother baking them, so I just ate the raw dough!” I say, if you want to eat cookie dough, eat it like you mean it! Stand and proclaim, “I just ate a spoonful of pure margarine, refined sugar, white flour, and vanilla extract, and I enjoyed it!”

Enter the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie. This concoction is a recent vegweb favorite and appears to be adapted from similar nonvegan recipes out there through trivial substitutions. It comprises three layers: a brownie layer, a cookie dough layer, and a chocolate glaze. You bake the brownies, let them cool, spread cookie dough over them, and slather the whole thing in melted chocolate. The result is a classy dessert which embraces cookie dough as the foundation of a dish rather than closeting it as a shameful late night snack.

While the yields of the various layers were off–I ended up with several doughless brownies–these goodies are a trifecta of cake-like, fudgy, and crunchy. In fact, the brownies are so cake-like that referring to them as brownies is a transgression against the brownie gods. Slicing them was also a challenge-the lighter brownies sagged beneath the dense dough and hard topping. I had to use my sharpest chef’s knife to slice them apart.

Even though this recipe would benefit from a firmer brownie, I think we’d be hard pressed to find a person who did not enjoy this elopement of brownie and cookie, baked and unbaked, and chocolate and chocolate-chip.

Update! I brought these to a party at work, and my friend Alex said, “Well, I don’t usually eat dessert, but I have to save room for those.” He ate one and took about five home. By the end of the party, the entire pan (the size of a cookie sheet) was gone. Cookie dough brownies: SUCCESS.

The best things in life come in cups. Don’t you agree? Tea, boobs, and cupcakes come to mind, but surely you can think of many others.

So far, I have made a handful of the cupcakes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The cookies and cream variation of the chocolate cupcakes were eaten before documentation could occur, which gives you an idea of their radness. But this quartet of cupcakes is just as scrumptious.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

Hello, why didn’t someone think of peanut butter cupcakes earlier? Clearly, it takes a vegan’s unmatched culinary creativity to think up these cups of glory.

I made these for my friends for New Year’s Eve this year. I topped them with chocolate buttercream instead of ganache because I felt rather Martha Stuart that day, I suppose. I also sprinkled on some chopped peanuts and plopped a chocolate-covered peanut on top. And with that, this paragraph has reached its quota of the words “chocolate” and “peanut butter.”

Pineapple Right-Side-Up Cupcakes turned Piña Colada Cupcakes

When it comes down to it, there are really only two things I love in life: pineapple and coconut. I mean, really, let’s not complicate life. Getting caught in the rain is shitty. And I’m too tired to make love at midnight on the dunes at the cape. And hey, maybe I am into yoga! But piña coladas are forever.

These cupcakes are so moist because they have crushed pineapple in the batter. The topping is easy–you just glop on more crushed pineapple. But I, however, was inspired by the bottle of Malibu sitting on my countertop and decided to drink add a couple shots to the topping to make piña colada cupcakes. They were brilliant. I topped each one with a raspberry. Festive, no?

Lemon Macadamia Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream

These cuppas are oh-so-classy. Lemon was simply destined for macadamia nuts just as Elizabeth Bennett was destined for Mr. Darcy. And just as Colin Firth is destined for me, though he doesn’t know it yet. But neither did the lemons.

I toasted the nuts beforehand to make them good and golden. They really are pretty, even without fancy piping. And the lemon buttercream is divine.

S’mores Cupcakes

These are the only s’mores I will ever need in life. The cake itself has graham cracker crumbs (genious!) and is so yummy. I’d like to make a whole sheet cake out of it someday.

I sprinkled graham cracker crumbs over the buttercream, and I used some leftover chocolate chips from some other recipe to make a small amount of ganache for some of the cupcakes. Next time I think I will use a big round frosting tip to make the frosting even puffier, like the ice cream cones at Dairy Queen.

Trivia time! Why do they call them “cupcakes”? The obvious response is, “Because they are baked in cup form, smart ass!” But some also speculate that the word “cup” refers to measurements–that a “cup cake” was something you made by using one cup of this, two cups of that, and so forth. “Cup cake” is a cousin of “pound cake” in this sense. But in my mind, this is a “cup cake,” not a “cupcake.” A “cupcake” is it’s own separate entity, whereas a “cup cake” is just a special kind of cake with a certain recipe. In my opinion. Just saying. I won’t slap you if you call a “cupcake” a “cup cake,” but I might twitch a little.