Strawberry Lavender Gelato

Last week I saw a quart of early season strawberries in my local organic market, and I knew I needed to turn them into ice cream. Last summer I had a strawberry lavender gelato at the restaurant Cafe Green here in DC. While I have really mixed feelings about the food and service at Cafe Green, it was one of the best desserts I have ever eaten. This was my first attempt to replicate it.


Strawberry Lavender Gelato
2 tbsp arrowroot
2 tbsp lavender blossoms
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp melted coconut oil
3/4 C sugar
1 C soy creamer
1 C almond milk
3 C strawberries

Wash & hull the strawberries. Puree and set aside. In small bowl, mix 1/3 cup almond milk with arrowroot and set aside. In medium sauce pan combine sugar, creamer, lavender, and remaining almond milk. Bring to a boil. Stir in slurry until slightly thickened, around 2 minutes. Remove from heat and seive to remove lavender blossoms. Add the strawberry puree to the ice cream base through the sieve to remove seeds, or simply stir in if the seeds are desired. Add lemon juice and coconut oil. Refrigerate until chilled and process according to ice cream machine directions.


For a first attempt I think this was a decent ice cream. However, it is not as creamy as I desired it to be. When I make it again, I think I will slightly reduce the amount of strawberries added and use only creamer.
Are you a fan of lavender? It seems to be one of those controversial flavors that people either love or hate. I have a few more lavender recipes up me sleeve this spring, and am hoping to convince a few more people that lavender doesn't have to taste like soap.

Baked Speculoos Donuts

Speculoos, Biscoff spread, cookie butter... call it what you will, but it's just as delicious by any name. I had a fear that cookie butter was going to be a seasonal item at Trader Joe's so I bought two jars to save. In the same week, I saw not one, but TWO recipes for baked speculoos donuts & realized that Biscoff spread was consistently available at a World Market near my gym.
When one of my friends and I scheduled a baking date but weren't able to make the pignoli cookies she had hoped for, I knew it was time to crack open the jars of cookie butter.
So we set in for a long afternoon of mixing, dough rising, and the heavenly smell of donuts baking. We used both Celine of Have Cake Will Travel's yeast recipe & Nikki of the Tolerant Vegan's cake donut recipe. All in all, it took us around 4 hours to complete both recipes and induce sugar comas. We started Celine's recipe first as it needs such a long time to rise. As you let the dough do its first rise, you have plenty of time to complete the cake donuts. We frosted the cake donuts during the second rise of the yeast donuts. By them time we had finished decorating the cake donuts, it had only been around 30 minutes but I knew I couldn't wait any longer to put the yeast donuts in the oven. They still rose quite a bit during baking, so I don't think it made a huge difference.


I definitely preferred the texture of the yeast donut. It was thick and dense, with a heavy crumb. The extra spices added to the batter really pumped up the flavor of the speculoos. The cake donuts were also incredibly delicious, but their texture just wasn't as interesting to me. However, I definitely preferred Nikki's cookie butter ganache. The chocolate ganache was nice, but the chocolate sort of overwhelmed the speculoos flavor. If you were only going to make one batch of donuts, I would also halve the chocolate ganache recipe. I made a half batch and it went very, very far.
We went for a mish mash of donut and ganache combinations. Their was dipping and drizzling, and crumbling cookies on top. If you are looking for speculoos like cookies, Trader Joe's had a brand called Bistro Biscuits or you can maybe find a bag of Biscoff cookies at a World Market.
These donuts were all phenomenal, but my favorite combination was the yeast donut with cookie butter drizzle and a handful of crushed cookies on top.
We used a jar and a half of speculoos for this project! If you are looking for something else to bake with the speculoos, I've also used it to make snickerdoodles and frost cupcakes. Happy baking!

Bird's Nest Cupcakes

Spring is rapidly approaching. The last few weeks I have seen birds foraging for the best nest building material, and slowly tucking it away in the tall trees in the corner of my yard. I've even seen a few eggs! Robin's eggs are one of the most beautiful natural colors. Growing up it was even my favorite crayon shade. I was inspired by Bake at 350's cupcakes last year, and knew I would try them out this spring.
Obviously not as lovely as hers, but at least no eggs were broken while I was making them. I used by standby sugar cookie recipe. As I already had a leftover batch of frosting laying around, I opted out of the royal icing decorations. As I was attempting to speckle the eggs, I realized this was a mistake. As Bake at 350 had used royal icing, her speckles smoothly sunk into the icing when the brown dye was mixed with water. As I had used an oil based frosting to ice the cookies, I should have mixed my brown dye with a few drops of oil to have the same effect. My water on top of oil mixture led them to dry in a less than attractive manner, giving them the appearance of moldy cookies as my partner pointed out. OOPS! So now you know. It might be easier to just use royal frosting, which is going to look a lot smoother anyways. So much for being resourceful this time.
Just top your cupcakes with a mound of frosting, roll them in toasted coconut, and stick the mini eggs on toothpicks into the cake. I couldn't mind a mini egg stencil, so I free handed them with a paring knife and tried to smooth the dough's edges with my fingertips prior to baking. I also tried to have lots of various shades in the toasted coconut to make them appear more nest like.
This was a lot of fun, and I'm sure little kids would love getting involved in this project. Have you been crafty in the kitchen lately?

Pistachio Cream Cupcakes

You might think with my little blogging hiatus that I had stopped baking at home for a bit, but it's actually much sillier than that. I have been baking away and have several things I have been meaning to share with the blogosphere, but haven't really found the time to write. But I think that's actually a good thing. It means that I am learning to relax a little and not feel guilty that about spending most of my free time catching up with friends rather than typing on my keyboard in front of the TV or in an empty coffee shop.
Things have been a little hectic in my life in the best way possible. This week marks the beginning of full time recipe development-testing phase. Yesterday I baked about twelve recipes of 4 different cookies. I picked my favorite batch of each cookie for taste testing. Two of them were approved, and the other two require minor changes that I mostly insisted on. There was even an oatmeal raisin cookie that I actually liked! Who would have imagined it?! I also created a pretty dreamy vegan rendition of the grocery store sugar cookie with that thick creamy frosting. Yesterday I also found out that my assistant has been hired, that the bakery renovation is two weeks ahead of schedule, and that there is now a complete line of natural, vegan food colorings in tons of shades!
The rest of the week I plan on knocking out recipes for the remaining cookies, all the bars & brownie/blondies. Then it's on to cakes & pies. I'm excited to start making lists of all my ingredients I need to order, all the bakeware I need to set up shop, and finally see the labels that will go on all my products!


So today you are going to have to settle for a simple, yet delicious cupcake. You can also be assured that there are several extravagant desserts coming soon as well. This cake is one of my favorite flavors, vanilla bean. Just add 1 tsp of vanilla bean paste or the seeds of 1 scraped vanilla bean to your favorite white or yellow cake recipe.
The pistachio cream frosting is part of the recipe for a vegan chocolate pistachio whoopie pie from Natalie of Bake & Destroy. When I made those whoopie pies, I knew that cream would end up on top of a cake in the near future. It's such a great sweet & salty combination. If you don't want to tint the frosting with a tube of chemical dye, then I suggest using concentrated chlorophyll. I used it for these cupcakes, and got the exact shade I wanted. If you are trying to get a bright green you might notice a slightly salty, earthy taste but you won't notice that if you are trying to achieve a mint color. Also, I highly suggest that no one ever tries to dye sweets bright green with spinach powder. I found out this year that it will make beautiful hand stenciled shamrock cookies taste like vegetables. Live & learn.
I hope everyone is enjoying this really great spring weather, and maybe even the joy of early season produce! What's exciting in your lives?

Lemon Curd Tartlets

Even though I am surrounded by sugar all day, I still crave desserts at home. This is one of those super quick recipes that I can throw together in a matter of minutes to quench that craving. My local super market had a sale on pre folded phyllo cups, and I couldn't resist. Phyllo can be such a pain to work with, so I will willingly fork over an extra dollar to have it ready to fill.
I used a lemon curd recipe from C'est La Vegan that has never failed me. I spooned it into the shells, let it cool, and topped with fresh raspberries.


They are not only quick, but super adorable, and have a great texture. The crunch of the phyllo really makes these bite sized tarts shine. If you don't want lemon curd, try lime or orange! These shells would also be great willed with chocolate pudding and maybe topped with a slice of strawberry or dollop of coconut cream.
I don't know what it is about lemon lately, but I can't get enough of it. I even had a dream about drinking a pitcher of fresh lemonade. Maybe I am craving summer? Do you have dreams about food too?

Snack Attack Cupcakes

I am one of those people who gets sucked into series of TV shows. One of my major obsessions are shows about baking competitions. Sweet Genius, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Cupcake Wars, count me in. So last season on Cupcake Wars, there was an episode where they were required to create cupcakes inspired by movie snacks. The popcorn & peanut cupcake made by Arleen Scavone looked so amazing. They were so many intricate layers. I knew that it would be my task to veganize it eventually. With the midnight premier of The Hunger Games, the most anticipated film release I could imagine, I knew this was the time.


This cupcake is a game changer. It takes quite a bit of effort, especially if you make all of the components yourself, but is worth the time. Several friends whose opinions on sweets I hold in high regard told me this was the best thing I have ever made. That being said, there are definitely a few things I would change if I were to make this again in the future.

I. The Cupcake
I haven't ever made a vegan pound cake, and I didn't feel like toying with the Cupcake Wars recipe. I used the vanilla cupcake from VCTOTW, with the addition of vanilla bean. I folded in the suggested amount of peanut brittle chopped into smallish pieces & baked them. When I took them out of the oven, I was pretty disappointed. The peanut brittle in the cake had fallen to the bottom a bit more than I anticipated and completely melted into the cake to form a gooey mess. I threw away 3 of the 15 cupcakes that it made because they were too gooey. The rest did firm up a bit as the peanut brittle resolidified during cooling, however I would add much less brittle next time if at all. I think it might me better to make a brown sugar cake and just throw in a few handfuls of crushed peanuts.

II. Caramel Icing
The inspiring cupcakes were filled with butterscotch. While you could easily make a vegan butterscotch pudding to fill the cakes with, I didn't go this route. I knew my cupcakes were going to be a bit too moist already, so I didn't want a filling to make them even wetter. I instead spread a thin layer of caramel on the tops. I think the caramel was nice as it didn't add another flavor to the already wild cupcakes. I used this caramel recipe, and only heated it to 230 degrees F. I made the whole batch a few weeks ago and store it for when caramel is needed. You can just warm it up to spoon onto cupcakes or ice cream or what not.

III. Fudge Icing
I used the recipe suggested from the Cupcake Wars site. DON'T USE IT. While I subbed agave for the corn syrup, I followed the rest of the instructions. The frosting was far too thick to pipe, and had a really terrible clumpy, gross texture even though it tasted fine. I would just stick to your favorite chocolate frosting.

IV. Caramel Corn
I didn't make my own caramel corn. I know it isn't difficult, but mine always comes out a bit too sweet. Which is fine when I am eating it alone, but not when you are layering it into an already sweet cupcake. I used a bag of Angie's Caramel Kettle Corn. This stuff is amazing. It's salty and just a hint of caramel sweetness. It's perfect for this cupcake.
I'm going to go ahead and warn you that caramel corn absorbs moisture rapidly. You could make the cupcake up to this point, and then wait to layer the caramel corn until shortly before you are serving them. By the next day the cupcakes had lost all of the spectacular crunch the caramel corn originally offered.

V. Vanilla Buttercream
I used a standard vanilla buttercream, similar to the one in VCTOTW. However, I use a bit more shortening and less butter than they suggest to make the frosting a bit firmer and more stable at warmer temperatures. I think it also makes it pipe a little nicer.


So there you have it. I followed all of these steps and then topped each cupcake with another piece of caramel corn. I wish I had vegan M&M's to throw into the mixture, but Whizzers have stopped being manufactured so there are no options any longer. If you don't have a problem with eating beeswax, then you could use Kopper's dark chocolate lentils.
Now you have a cupcake intricate & tasty enough to compete with The Hunger Games. I feel like these cupcakes are fit to be a gluttonous dessert in the capital. If you haven't read the book series, I highly recommend it. If you have, are you going to see the movie? I am always so torn over movies being turned into films, but I hope it can live up to my expectations. I am so excited to go to my first midnight movie screening ever! Have you gotten sucked into the wave of Hunger Games mania yet? Are you going to attempt making this cupcake? May the odds be ever in your favor!

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

When I first looked through Hannah Kaminsky's My Sweet Vegan, the first recipe I was drawn to was the root beer float cupcakes. Maybe it's partially because they were great enough that she chose them for the cover photo or maybe by minor obsession with root beer. Either way, it sent me scouring the internet for a bottle of root beer extract. I have tried three kinds of root beer extract, and my favorite was a random Amazon find from a store called Faerie's Finest. The other two were from small stores and both tasted incredibly artificial and their flavor baked out quite a bit. This root beer extract hasn't done me wrong. I have gone through several 2oz bottles, so last time I needed it I just made the plunge and bought an extraneous amount of extract.
The first time I made these cupcakes was over a year ago, and I was a little disappointed when they looked like a vanilla cupcake after baking. Since then I have added around 1/4- 1/3 cup of cocoa powder to the batter, which gives them that quintessential root beer color. I also normally don't drizzle ganache on top of the cupcakes, so the cocoa powder adds that hint of chocolate flavor that would be lacking. I also topped these cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting, because it reminds me the most of a scoop of vanilla ice cream.


I have had all sorts of other root beer flavored baked goods on my to make list lately. I saw a few really beautiful chocolate root beer bundt cakes & an adorable batch of root beer float cookies! Hopefully I have time to get that far down my never ending list soon.
Lately my list of things to do has been a lot less fun than turning on my stand mixer & oven. It's been a lot of laundry, errands, and avoiding doing my taxes. What's on your to bake list?