Happy Birthday to my mom. You weren’t a fan of photos, but you were a big fan of birthdays. I had a great first birthday as you looked on. I wish you were still here so you could see how much I’ve grown! I’m trying my hardest to be just like you: Strong, Independent, Loving, Kind and Confident, all while taking nobodys shit. It’s pretty damn hard, I have no idea how you did it!
Posted in Misc.
– April 11, 2014
These challenges are really hard when baking vegan. This month the ingredients were white chocolate and Peeps! Perfect for spring, but not perfect for vegans.
You can buy (or make) vegan white chocolate but it is rarely on my radar since it was never my favourite. I went down to Whole Foods and stocked up. You can also get vegan peeps via Sweet & Sara but I haven’t seen them locally yet so I actually just used Dandies, which are my preferred vegan marshmallow of choice.
White Chocolate Brownies came to mind when trying to think of a recipe. You can really taste the sweetness of the marshmallows and the white chocolate is pretty smooth. These are quite dense, I didn’t use any leveners outside of the egg replacer so don’t expect much lift. Just dense sweetness 
Ingredients
Instructions
Posted in Recipes, Sweet, Vegan.
– April 10, 2014
First of all, happy birthday to my brother! I miss how you would try anything I cooked or baked in the past, mostly because you were protected by your iron stomach
I started things off blurry er, right with beans on toast. I love this Killer Dave’s bread. It’s so good… and I’m out. Need to put that on the list.
Lunch was another vegan sandwich from Small. The marinated Portobello mushrooms were awesome. We’re moving offices so I need to get my fix. It isn’t worth it to come all the way back down here for this sandwich, but it’s quick and easy right now.
Dinned needed some greens so I had a huge salad. Mixing bowl style. It was a tasty day, missing dessert but I made up for it other days, don’t worry! More sweet posts to come!
– April 9, 2014
Part 2 of E’s birthday. I figured it was bad form to wait another full year to bake for this year’s birthday so I took care of it right away. E had a party and requested a coconut cake. Actually a rainbow coconut cake like I made in St. Louis but well, at least I got the coconut cake part down.
The recipe I used was from Namely Marley. I knew it wouldn’t flop as all of her recipes turn out really great for me. I was considering adding another layer because I didn’t know how many people would show up and if someone was allergic to or offended by coconut. Hey, you never know. But the original recipe fed us all with leftovers.
The cake is very sweet, but it’s special occasion cake. I made the fluffy frosting coconut flavoured as well because I wanted to go all out. This is also so easy to decorate. Spread the frosting, pat with coconut and then you are done. I might have gotten some crumbs in my coconut but nobody cares about that when they see this giant snowball of a cake, believe me.
– April 8, 2014
Man, I think I need to lay off the Lupicia teas for a bit. Another one that isn’t amazing in my book. I tried to make it look pretty though. This was super artificial but at least it tried to be true to strawberry and chocolate. It smells great but I feel like I’m drinking junk food. Oh well, I need to get back into some more natural teas right now anyway.
– April 7, 2014
I’m not participating in this #SundaySupper so I thought I would make a recipe from one of the past challenge! Lisa has a very cool blog, Cooking With Curls and posted a recipe for Baklava Cookies.
I used regular granulated sugar since I didn’t have any coconut sugar but I think I should have made it half brown sugar and half granulated. However, the cookies were still awesome and the husband loved them. I didn’t find them sweet enough but I think that’s because I had sticky sweet baklava stuck in my head. It’s not like we didn’t fight to get the last few for ourselves, so don’t worry about that. A great easy recipe to try out when you want a cookie that isn’t intimidating but a little different.
– April 6, 2014
Grape-Nuts and prunes. I really like both of these things. I’m so darn old. However, I ate all my prunes (because they are awesome), so when I saw this recipe for Grape-Nuts Energy Bars I was bummed.
So I bought some more prunes for the recipe. And then I ate them because I forgot why I bought them. Hey, I can’t keep track of everything I want to try! Found the recipe again flagged to bake but I wasn’t up to going to the store again. I used dates and raisins instead.
Yep. I’m brilliant some days. Anyway, since the prunes would have been a bit more sticky I soaked the fruit and it worked out fine. The hint of chocolate was great (not like I measured, it was probably too much) and these were nice easy bars to make and snack on.
– April 5, 2014
So let’s be a bit more positive on the blog today! Last week was my friend E’s birthday and I’m a pretty crappy friend. I missed baking for her last year because I had a flop and I never got around to redoing the recipe. 364 days later I delivered some Banana Nut Butter Cupcakes to her house, just in the nick of time.
These cupcakes were so easy, and only have agave as the sugar so totally appropriate for breakfast. Plus, the whole frosting recipe only has 1/2 cup of powdered sugar for 12 cupcakes. Healthy right? At least birthday healthy in my book. These were great with of course a strong banana taste but I wasn’t expecting the peanut butter to be such a good match. I probably added more peanut butter to the frosting than called for but that’s a good thing. Sprinkled peanuts on top and called it a success!
– April 4, 2014
I wanted to write how much I loved this tea but I think it is a dud. It’s kind of flavourless believe it or not even with the Cassis and Blueberry. I really like black currant too, hrm. The only saving grace is that it was a black tea, and you could taste the black tea. I guess. It smells okay, it just doesn’t really carry over when sipping. Not a good way to start my Thursday that’s for sure!
– April 3, 2014
I am so very over taking a photo of everything I eat. Seriously. Going back to once a week will help my sanity. However, this did stop me from putting random food in my mouth, so that’s a plus. Wednesday started with toast. I went out to lunch with a vendor, the sandwich wasn’t all that, I was kind of bummed. I made a healthy stir fry for dinner and then made cookies for dessert.
Thursday started with oatmeal and then I had a Trader Joe’s salad for lunch with some pretzels and hummus. Nothing was really filling me up so I had a clif bar. When I got home I sampled some of the Jimmy Bars I wrote about. Dinner was a huge salad and quesadilla with Daiya cheese, beans, and broccoli.
Friday was okay I guess. Toast again, getting kind of boring on the breakfast front but I made a lentil salad for lunch. Snacked on some almonds on my way out the door. We rode to dinner and I got a falafel plate where they drowned my falafel in tahini for some reason. And pickles. I felt SO horrible after this, it wasn’t the right choice (but it was MY choice in restaurants, oops).
Saturday was a rainy day so no tennis. Had beans on toast for breakfast and started baking. Had a bar and then some bread fresh out of the oven. Yum. I dragged the husband to Half Moon Bay so I could get Mushroom Nabeyaki with veggie broth. Perfect rainy weather treat.
Sunday… bread, bread, oatmeal… yep. That’s how I started my day before and after yoga. Went to E’s for lunch and she had a crazy awesome spread. I missed taking a photo of the chocolate cake and small hot cross bun I ate but we’ll all survive. I also made a coconut cake and it was a hit. Dinner was Indian and I was totally done with taking photos.
– April 2, 2014
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