Gingerdead Man

Happy Halloween!! I have been holding on to this cookie cutter for a few weeks now, waiting for the right time to use it. And of course it's Halloween! These bad boys are a little spooky, a little gorey, and definitely tastey. I used Isa's gingerbread recipe but upped the spice content a little. Things gotta have a little extra bite on all hallow's eve! To be honest, I was pretty disappointed in the cookie cutter. I only got 2 pipeable stamped cookies out of the 9 I made. I am not sure if I just need a gingerbread that is a lot firmer or what. That cookie cutter is also giant. The cookies are bigger than my hands. And while I have pretty dainty hands, that's still a whole lotta cookie!
It has been a wild month. I can hardly believe that it's over. AND that I managed to post 31 days in a row! And made 27 different things! It's time to take a tiny break and restock my kitchen cabinets. The flour & sugar jars are both empty. I'm out of cans of coconut milk for the first time in many months. I used almost a whole jar of cinnamon! I hope that everyone else had as good of a time as I did. I'm excited to reach a few more round-up posts. Maybe I will even make one myself! What's been your highlight of the month?

Pomegranate Tarts

I was thinking about pomegranates a lot last week when I was making the panna cotta. I realized that while pomegranate juice was really expensive, I had recently gotten several whole fruits for pretty cheap. I looked up a few things on juicing pomegranates, and it's actually really easy! After I separated all the arils from the rind, I threw them in my food processor, then poured that into a fine mesh strainer. After squeezing the pulp for a minute or two I looked down at the measuring cup and was pretty pleased with how much juice I was able to get from the fruit. I reserved at least a third of a cup of arils for the top of the tarts, but from the remaining fruit I was able to get 3/4 cup of juice! That's so much cheaper than buying a bottle of POM.
These tarts are pretty simple. Once you have the juice it only takes a few minutes to make the filling. If you don't wanna go through the hassle of making tart shells, you could also buy pre-folded phyllo cups. They are most often vegan and are so, so convenient!


Pomegranate Tarts
makes three 3" tarts

1/2 batch of shortbread tart dough from Vegan Pie in the Sky
3/4 cup pomegranate juice
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbl cornstarch
2 tbl key lime juice
Prepare the tart dough, fill the shells, and bake them. While the shells are cooling, combine the pomegranate juice and sugar in a small sauce pan. Heat until boiling. While that is heating, whisk the cornstarch into the lime juice. Slowly whisk the lime mixture into the boiling pan. Whisk continually on medium heat until the mixture has thickened to a pudding like consistency. Fill tart shells and top with additional arils if so desired.

Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake with Speculoos Crust

As the last few days of October are winding up I had to rethink what I was going to make a little more closely. I decided to combine a few of my things and make a pumpkin vanilla swirl cheesecake with a speculoos cookie crust. I always see pumpkin cheesecakes with gingersnap crusts, so I decided to tweak it and go with speculoos instead. I also have been trying to use more cookbooks, so I went with a recipe from Emily Mainquist's Sweet Vegan. I thought that I had all the ingredients, but when I started making the filling last night, I realized that somehow 2 of my 3 containers of Tofutti cream cheese had some sneaky little chunks missing. I ended up replacing the missing ~6 oz of cream cheese with vegan sour cream since the ingredients are pretty similar and the taste isn't too different either in my opinion. This might have led to my cheesecake setting a bit more softly than with all cream cheese, but no one seemed to mind. I also added a half tablespoon of vanilla bean paste to the vanilla cream cheese filling, and at least an additional teaspoon of cinnamon to the pumpkin cream cheese filling. I think pumpkin pie is pretty boring, so I was happy to know that this works & would be a fun substitute for the upcoming holiday dessert table.


Speculoos Cookie Crust
enough for an 8-9" cheesecake
13 ounces Speculoos Cookies (one & a half packages)
1/2 to 3/4 cup Earth Balance cinnamon spread
Crush the cookies to crumbs in a food processor. While those are being pulsed, melt the Earth Balance in the microwave. Pour over the cookie crumbs and mix with hands until the butter is fully incorporated. Start with 1/2 cup of melted Earth Balance. If the cookie crumbs still aren't wet enough to hold together when you squeeze it in your hands, then add the remaining spread. Press into the pan's bottom and up the sides. Bake as directed for your preferred cheesecake filling. If you want to use the regular spread, it will be just as good, but the kick of extra spice is really nice here, so I would add a half teaspoon of cinnamon to the cookie crumbs.
After the cheesecake baked I let it set overnight, then topped it with dollops of coconut whip cream and halves of the remaining speculoos cookies leftover from the crust recipe. I was glad to have so many people home from the storm so that I wasn't tempted to eat more than one slice of this cheesecake! Do you have a favorite cheesecake recipe? This is the first one I have ever made. I have never been a huge cheesecake fan until recently. Now that I found a nice springform pan at the thrift store for $2 I feel a lot more compelled to try a few recipes!

Halloween Cookies

It feels like Halloween has come a little early this year. I did most of my celebrating this weekend, watching scary movies with a bunch of friends. Things have gotten a little spooky today as people are preparing for this hurricane. Everything seems to be shutting down tomorrow. It's going to be a ghost town, but I'm ready to snack on popcorn and play a few board games. Hopefully things don't get too bad.
If you have power, then you should consider making some super simple Halloween cookies like these. The ghost to the left is a standard sugar cookie that I have shared my favorite recipe for numerous times. For the regular sugar cookie dough, I also used pumpkin and leaf cookie cutters. The black cat cookie to the right is a new one to me, it's from Hannah's Vegan Desserts. It's a chocolate cookie with a bit of black cocoa powder. The black cocoa lends the cookie a very oreo-esque taste and gives it it's dark coloring. I also used the chocolate cookie dough to make a few bats and tombstones. I searched around for a witch's hat, but to no avail. I should start searching a little earlier next year. On an unrelated note, I think this is either the third or fourth time that I have used one of Hannah's recipes this month. Maybe my MoFo theme should have been working my way through Hannah's anthology.
I hope everyone stays safe for the next few days. It's better to prepare for the storms and stay safe then to regret it later. So stock up on the cookies and almond milk while you can!

Coconut Milk Panna Cotta (Two Ways)

I have spent the last year pushing a lot of boundaries. I decided to try a lot of things that I have never done before, and not let myself back out when I got scared or tired. I made the decision to leave graduate school and take on the challenge of running a vegan bakery. I learned to shoot a bow and arrow. I went rock climbing for the first and second time already. I'm also trying to push myself in realm of sweets. I keep trying to become a more proficient decorator. I still haven't played as much with fondant or gum paste or sugar as much as I would have liked. But I have learned to make amazing vegan caramel and even made a few layered cakes that I was pretty proud of. MoFo was also a first. The first time I committed to very actively baking at home for a solid month and sharing what I learned. I've also tried to make several things I never tried before. I made cobbler and caramel apples even though it was a bit unfamiliar. I tried to be a little more creative and not be as afraid of messing new recipes up. This panna cotta is one of those things.



As someone who made agar plates for microbiology labs repeatedly for a few years, I should be innately comfortable with agar. But cooking with it is a little bit different. I have only been able to find agar flakes, which are a bit different than the powder. The flakes take a little longer to rehydrate, a little longer to dissolve, and you need to add a little more than you would for the powdered version. I twisted this recipe a little to try and use agar flakes. I could tell they weren't dissolving yet, so I kept boiling away. I poured four different glasses at 4 different points in the boiling to see what worked best. It's just my lab training kicking in. I replaced the powder with 2 tablespoons of flakes, and boiled it for 4 minutes before pouring it in the glass. That gave me the most creamy consistency. You don't want to boil it any longer than this or you will end up with rubber (like you will notice if you look at the picture with the spoon). If you still see undissolved flakes, you can easily strain them out through something with a fine mesh. But you will want to soak that strainer immediately, or you will experience ten minutes of hell trying to scrub it all out later. This pomegranate panna cotta that really intrigued me, and while I would have made it pomegranate juice isn't easy on the pocket book. I decided to go a different route and just add a thick layer of seeds to the top of the cup. The tart crunch of the seeds was a really nice contrast to the creamy subtle panna cotta. The second version was topped with a thin layer of cranberry reduction. It's the same reduction that I made for the cranberry white chocolate ice cream. It's tart and bright. And while I like the appearance of the second jello layer, I prefer the way the reduction will easily move around the cup as you take bites. It's a shame to only get a few small bites with tartness at the top of the dish. I also tried to add vanilla bean paste to add a nice swirl of flecks throughout the panna cotta, the majority of the flecks fell to the bottom. A girl's gotta try.

Caramel Stuffed Mocha Cookies

At the beginning of the month, once of the first things I made were the caramel stuffed apple cider cookies. It was a really nice coincidence that Spencer's Market had the caramels that I used on sale. I ordered two packages of the sampler packs, because I hadn't tried any of the other flavors. I opened the box and was wondering what I should do with the java flavored caramels. A little light went on in my head, and I decided to to put them inside mocha flavored cookies. I tweaked the recipe a little to add cocoa and espresso. The cookies were by no means perfect. I sprinkled a little extra sugar on top because they didn't seem near as sweet as the apple cider dough (which in retrospect makes total sense since the concentrated cider have tons of sugar in them). If you want to try them, I replaced 1/4 cup of the flour with Valhrona cocoa and added 2 tablespoons of ground espresso. The coffee flavor went largely unnoticed, so next time I might even add a teaspoon or two of coffee extract. I might play with the ratios a bit more next time so that the cookies crack a little more on top too. But overall, I am fairly pleased with them. These cookies were a very decent attempt to bake, photograph, and write about something on a sick day when your head feels like it might explode. Here's to hoping this cold doesn't last for too long!

Cranberry White Chocolate Ice Cream

Cranberry White Chocolate Ice Cream
3 cups almond milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup sugar, divided
3 cups cranberries
1/2 cup water
1 tbl vanilla extract
1 tbl vodka or coconut oil (to help it freeze softer)
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
In a saucepan combine the berries with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water. Allow to come to a boil, and simmer for at least 10 minutes until the berries have burst and the sauce is fragrant. After it has cooled slightly, you are free to strain this if you want your ice cream free from pieces of the berry. Reserve 1/4 cup of sauce for later.
In another pan heat 2 1/2 cups of the almond milk with 1/2 cup sugar. While this is coming to a boil whisk the cornstarch into the remaining milk. Once the mixture is boiling, whisk in the cornstarch slurry and heat until it has thickened slightly. Once it has cooled slightly stir in the unreserved cranberry sauce, vanilla, and either voda or coconut oil. Allow to cool completely before churning. After the ice cream has churned to a soft serve consistency stir in white chocolate chips and drizzle in remaining cranberry sauce. Allow to freeze for another hour if a firmer texture is desired. Top with more fresh berries or additional chips.