Mochi & Passion Fruit Sorbet

There isn't a ton of great ice cream options as far as DC goes. There are generally a few flavors available at some of the local gelato shops, and if you're lucky, there is soft serve as the DC soul food restaurant Everlasting Life. My main go-to for "ice cream" dates throughout the summer is the non-dairy frozen yogurt carried at a number of shops like FroZenYo. My cup normally consists of a tiny bit of frozen yogurt & tons of fruit & mochi. If you haven't ever had mochi, they are like pillowy sweet little marshmallows. Most people make daifuku, which is filled mochi. But that's not what I want in the cup with the rest of my dessert, so I didn't worry about the extra steps.
Buy a pint of Ciao Bella passion fruit sorbet, a box of mochiko (glutinous rice flour) at your local Asian market, and you probably have everything else you need at home. I used Vegan YumYum's recipe, and it takes around ten minutes start to finish. If you cut the mochi with a pizza cutter, it's even faster. Which I realized half way through my process of cutting tiny half inch squares with a chef's knife. After it cooled totally, I tossed the squares in a mixture of half powdered sugar/half potato starch. Easy peasy last minute end-of-summer treat!

KitchenAid Mixer Giveaway!

Right now, we're gonna take a break from the scheduled Vegan MoFo programing so that you have a chance to win my favorite piece of kitchen equipment. There are a lot of smallwares that are vital to baking: measuring cups & spoons, mixing bowls, a rolling pin, and a solid set of cake pans & pie tins for example. I made everything by hand for years. At some point I had a handheld mixer, but I broke it making too many batches of frosting. A KitchenAid mixer was never something I felt like I could splurge on, until I was lucky enough to have my partner give me one as a gift. It's still the best present I have ever received. It opened up my abilities to make all sorts of new things. I don't know if you have ever tried to make soft pretzels without a dough hook, but it's tiresome. And you get lumpy pretzels at best.


When Amanda of Little Lady Little City reached out to me about giving away a mixer as part of her blog's third anniversary, I knew I had to jump on the bandwagon. Just take a few minutes to check out all the rad ladies who are participating in the giveaway, and soon you can be making all the brioche & doughnuts your kitchen can handle. The ice cream attachment is also one of my favorite KitchenAid items. I have used it to make everything from strawberry lavender gelato to rocky road ice cream & cider poached pear sorbet!
The pasta attachment is next on my list. I have been dreaming about making noodles for a while. Homemade pasta makes the best spinach lasgana. I know, I know, I eat savory foods too. I just keep it to myself, because sweets are way more fun.

Please note this giveaway will be active until September 30th 11:59PM EST and will be open to all US and Canada readers. The winner will be chosen at random shortly after the giveaway closes and then will be notified. Once notified, the winner has 48 hours to respond otherwise they will forfeit the prize and another random entry will be chosen. Please note that the color of the Kitchenaid mixer is subject to change due to availability. There are quite a few ways to enter so do one or all of them!

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Brown Sugar Pecan Banana Bread

This recipe is brought to you by inspiration from the cookbook Desserts from the Famous Loveless Cafe. I grew up in rural Tennessee, and Loveless Cafe was the stuff of legends. The last time I was in town, I drove by and there was still a line out the door just like normal. While their cookbook is probably one of the least vegan things you can look through, I found it super comforting. It sent me on a hunt for sorghum & made me yearn for the blackberry bushes & fresh peaches outside my front door. Most of all the Loveless cookbook reminded me that my insatiable sweet tooth is totally a normal thing in the South. We are talking about a place where people pour chocolate gravy on a pile of biscuits for breakfast. So it's no wonder that by the time that I finished flipping through the pages, the banana bread I was making that afternoon couldn't be just banana bread. I had to add extra brown sugar & pecans. Pea-cans y'all. 


Brittany at Real Sustenance, came up with the best vegan gluten free quick bread base recipe. The following recipe is her's just tweaked with a little spice & some sugar swapping.  
Brown Sugar Pecan Banana Bread

2 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose flour blend
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup full fat, canned coconut milk
1 tsp white vinegar
1 1/4 cup banana puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Preheat oven to 335 degrees. In a mixing bowl combine all dry ingredients and mix until evenly distributed. Puree bananas. In a small mixing bowl combine sugars, oil, coconut milk, vinegar, banana puree and vanilla. Mix wet and dry until no visible lumps. Fold in pecans. Pour into greased loaf pan (I normally make mini loaves, but this was an 8x4" pan). Top with additional pecans and brown sugar if you can't restrain yourself likes me. Bake for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

This is the best gluten free quick bread I have ever bitten into. It's got a phenomenal texture & no beany aftertaste. I also tried the recipe with pumpkin purée, but that was no where near as enjoyable. The garbanzo bean flour in the Bob's Red Mill AP blend was too strong for such a subtle flavor. I know this recipe will become a mainstay in my gluten free recipe bank. 

As it gets cooler out I have been craving more breads & muffins, so I have a feeling something similar will show up here again soon.  What's your favorite quick bread/muffin flavor? I don't think anything can ever top blueberry streusel, but I am always willing to give things a chance. 

Gluten Free Roll-Out Pie Crust

 

This is the end of my thirty day cookbook challenge and the begining of the month long madness known as Vegan MoFo. I originally toyed around with the idea of recreating a recipe from each of the cookbooks that I read, but I quickly realized that there wasn't a recipe I was interested in trying from each book. My theme is a little more informal this year. I am solely focusing on pushing myself to keep learning & baking things I have never attempted before. I have an idea to also have weekly themes, but I think even that might be a bit restricting for me. At least the majority of this first week I will be focusing on gluten free sweets. I am not sure yet what else this month will bring. Cookies? Cake? Eclairs? I can easily eat ice cream everyday for a week, so that's something that will likely show up here!


The recipe for the pie crust is from The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook by Cybele Pascal. She is an amazing baker, & I was totally blown away by this cookbook. It's free of the top eight allergens, which makes it a phenomenal resource for so many families. She has a few other cookbooks that I haven't had the chance to check out yet, so hopefully I will find those soon. The pie dough rolled out fairly well after a little bit of chilling, & it cut nicely to boot. Not that you can tell because there's no photos to document the filling (AKA did it ever really happen)but it's a tart cherry pie.


Since I somehow happen to be out of town & away from my laptop during Vegan MoFo again this year, this is my first time attempting to use the Blogger iPhone app. I can already tell that some of the formatting is really wonky on these posts. I will fix it as soon as I am back in town so just bare with me! Here's to a hectic, wonderful month!

Blackberry Lavender Popsicles

Sometimes you just need a little inspiration. I have been trying to push myself to feel inspired by giving myself a project. I set out to read 30 cookbooks in 30 days. I know there are 31 days this month, but 30 was my first thought so I stuck with it. What can I say, I like round numbers. I decided not to set any further restrictions than that it be a recipe based book of some sort. It's fine if it's 25 pages or 200. Doesn't matter it's sweet or savory, vegan or dairy heavy. I just needed to spend some quality time looking at ingredient selection, composition, and thinking about things that I want to make. It's very unlikely that I will make many of the recipes in their entirety. My brain just doesn't function like that. I always make substitutions and change basic ingredients out to fit my preferences. But that's exactly what I needed. Nineteen days in, I am doing well. I have made my way through sixteen books and have a stack ready to be browsed this evening. It's feeling nice to make lists again of things I want to see in my mixing bowl. It feels like a clean slate.


Like most people, I don't have a huge budget for cookbooks. I generally only buy one or two year depending on how many have been released that peak my interest. Last year was sort of an anomaly, and I ended up with 6 new books & a stuffed shelf. This month I have been relying heavily on the library. I have had a library card in every city I have ever lived in. Growing up, we made frequent trips to the library, and it's a trend that has followed me throughout my life. Aside from studying in the giant marble building throughout college, I made weekly treks to the fiction section to pick up a novel or sat in a chair reading magazines to give my brain a rest. It didn't hurt that the library assistant who often checked me out was really cute, and I needed frequent excuses to ask him questions.
The DC library system is even bigger and more wonderful than any of the libraries in my past. Last winter I went on a several month binge on teenage dramas (which there were plenty of). But now that I am using it for food related books, I was happily surprised to find an abundance of cookbooks in the system too. Based on the books that I have brought home, I can tell that they are well used. So I didn't feel too bad if I happened to drip some popsicle juice on one of the pages, which I may have done. These blackberry lavender popsicles are revised from an recipe in an issue of Bust Magazine that I read in one of the comfy couches of the library's coffee shop. I scrawled the recipe on notebook paper in my organic chemistry binder and never made it until this year when I stumbled upon the recipe again online.


Blackberry Lavender Popsicles
adapted from Lindsay Larick's recipe in Bust Magazine
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cups water
3 tbl lavender buds
2 1/4 cups frozen blackberries (approximately a 10oz bag)
3 tbl lemon juice
In a sauce pan combine sugar & water. Bring to a rolling boil. Turn off heat, add lavender, & allow to steep for 30 minutes. Strain lavender pressing down on the buds to release all the syrup. Pour syrup into a blender with blackberries & lemon juice. Puree until smooth. Pour into popsicle molds & freeze for several hours. If you do not enjoy the seeds in the blackberries, you could puree the juice and blackberries and strain that before freezing as well.


While in the winter I found it really convenient to place holds on every book I wanted and have them delivered to my closest branch, this month I have been pushing myself to visit all the branches in my quadrant too. I have made it to three new locations so far, and am hoping to visit another three that aren't too far away by the end of the month. It's great browsing through an online catalog and picking out some books that interest me. But what's really been my favorite thing this month is just walking up to the shelves and looking at all the titles. I have checked out a few books I never would have selected online, which is teaching me a lot about my preferences and taste.
Most of you probably know by now that Vegan MoFo is September instead of October this year. While I originally didn't think I was up to the challenge again, I have decided to keep pushing myself in the right direction. I doubt I will blog every day for the month and I certainly won't have a solid theme again, but I think it's a good motivation. Who's going to join me for the craziness that will be vegan blogging in September? Also do you have any cookbook recommendations? My list is starting to get a little low!

Lavender Lemonade

There have been a lot of thoughts on my mind lately, but I have been trouble keeping track of them all. A brilliant idea will hit me like a strike of lightning, and disappear before I can write it down. I will wake up from a dream with lots of hazy allusions that I am not sure how to interpret. I feel ready to run & ready to settle at the same time. I keep thinking about how little I have seen and done, and wondering when I will fit all the things I want to do in. Because if we don't make time, nothing will get done. I have been baking away, but none of those things will magically appear on the internet unless I take the time to sort through the extraneous photographs and turn some of this noise in my head into cohesive sentences.
Today Greg and I went to Roosevelt Island and wondered around the paths. We talked about driving across the country. How I haven't ever seen the Pacific Ocean. How we should visit all the cities we have never been to and see all the friends we haven't seen in too long. We are starting to feel a little stagnant in this city. Weighed down by the things we don't enjoy here. Hopeful about starting over in a new place. But here we are wondering swampy forest paths we have never seen before in a city I have only lived in for 2 years. When is it giving up too soon? When is wanderlust just a state of mind?
Lavender is one of those haunting ingredients. Much like honeysuckle, it reminds me of the country and smells like home. But as a flavor it morphs into something entirely else. More elite. Something you see infused in chocolates or ice creams in fancy shops in the city. Sparingly used, but perfection when it's done right. A middle road I am searching for.


Lavender Lemonade
makes just shy of one gallon

1/2 cup dried lavender flowers
2 cups sugar
approximately 14 lemons
12 cups water

In a stockpot combine 4 cups of water with the sugar. Bring to a boil & remove from heat. Add lavender, stirring until all flowers are soaked. Cover & allow to steep for 30 minutes. Strain, pressing out all the simple syrup. Juice all your lemons. Stir juice & lavender syrup into remaining water. Stir, sip, & adjust to your preferences. Depending on the tartness of the lemons, I sometimes use a few more. I also have a tendency to reserve a little syrup just in case the lemons are sweeter than normal.


The other day it started lightly raining as I was driving my long trek home. I saw a bright flash of light and instinctively assumed it was either a red light or speed camera. I am so disconnected from nature, that lightning didn't actually cross my mind until I saw the second flash. Later that night we sat in a beautiful, old movie theatre. All I could think about was how long it's been since I have been to a drive-in. I love the city, but I love being in the middle of nowhere. Where I do fit in this paradigm? There's a beautiful sunset over DC, but I certainly won't see the stars tonight.

Coconut Cream Pie

This summer has been escaping me at every twist and turn. Until this past week I hadn't gone swimming or seen the beach. I hadn't taken a spontaneous trip or gone a picnic. It's certainly been hot, and I have the bug bites to remind me of the season. But I wasn't getting any of the fun. The last few days I worked really hard to remedy that. I made it to my first Fort Reno of the summer, where I shared this coconut cream pie with a handful of friends on a picnic blanket while we listened to music as the sun set. It was a repeat of the pie I made for 4th of July, but somehow hadn't managed to post yet. It's been a busy summer full of moving, long work days, and nights with little sleep. I can't complain too much. Things are going well, and I am actually quite happy.


I managed to arrange a whole weekend off (a rare occurrence for me!), and used it to make my first trip to Ocean City. I swam in the ice cold ocean. Salt water does amazing things for my hair & my heart. I dug my feet deep in the sand and took a quick nap. A friend and I ooh-ed & ahh-ed over cake decorating books for several hours of the drive. We took silly photo booth pictures. A rampant child kicked sand all over us while running between our towels. A disgusting amount of sugar, soda, and Wawa soft pretzels were consumed.


Coconut Cream Pie

1 nine inch pie crust
3 cans full fat, canned coconut milk
1 1/2 cups shredded coconut
1/2 cup blended, extra firm silken tofu
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Toast your coconut in a frying pan over medium heat until it becomes lightly browned. Don't neglect it, it will cook fairly quickly and burn the instant you forget about it. While that's toasting, puree your silken tofu. In a 2 quart stock pot, combine 3 cups of coconut milk (that's just shy of 2 cans, so you will have a little extra), one half cup of the tofu, the sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Whisk it until combined, then bring to a boil over medium-low heat. Remove from heat, stir in 1 1/4 cup of toasted coconut and vanilla extract. Pour into your pie crust and allow to chill overnight. When you place the pie in the fridge also throw in your remaining can of coconut milk to make coconut whipped cream. The next day top your pie with whip & remaining toasted coconut. If you are really impatient you can probably get away with only chilling the pie for 4-6 hours, but keep in mind that the flavor really does further develop overnight.


I am hoping to see a little bit more of summer before she leaves again. There's still so many things to be done. I haven't picked any ripe fruit or visited the city pool. I need to read a book in the sunshine while I drink giant glasses of iced tea. There's at least a few more pitchers of lemonade & little day trips in my future. Don't go away so soon. I will miss you when you're gone.