Blog about: Baking too much.

Since I tend to brag about all the delicious vegan food I make and eat on Facebook, many people have asked how I do it, having a newborn attached to me and a toddler running around (and before that, being pregnant with a toddler, and before that, working with a baby...). The answer: choices! Prioritizing. Necessity.

I love food! I like being healthy(ish). I live on a budget (ish). Therefore I cook homemade for myself and my family. I am also creative and enjoy making things, and food is a practical outlet for this energy. I also like external validation, and delightful food provides a nice quick fix. I work for my junk food, so at least its not as impulsive as it used to be, although I impulsively bake things from time to time.

I do make sacrifices in my life to do the things I like to do, including cooking and baking. I don't exercise as much as I should, although I do try to be active in day to day life to make up for this. It's more sustainable anyway. Also my house is a mess! Well ok I have seen worse. And I try to tidy before I have company AND I do TRY to keep it clean. Inevitably though, it is a mess. Being organized and clean just doesn't come naturally to me, so I don't waste my time forcing it. This gives me more time for food.

These past couple weeks have been busy for a few reasons. One is that now that Otis is here, I can spend more time on my feet in the kitchen. Having a baby also attracts visiters, so I baked some things to freeze and have in case of short notice drop ins. The second is that last week my mother in law and sister in law visited so I made some meals in advance, as well as some desserts to have on hand. Third is the Vegan Pie in the Sky cook book I got for Christmas. I had to try a bunch of recipes, I couldn't resist! I made the apple pie, the pumpkin, the blueberry, the coconut cream and the blueberry cheesecake (which I converted to strawberry cheesecake).

Hello apples.

Strawberry cheesecake. Contains no actual cheese. Main ingredients: Cashews, tofu, banana, strawberries.

Fattening up my sister. Smores, coconut cream pie and strawberry cheesecake. It makes you wonder, do I love her, or hate her?

 These new recipes were really good. Only one complaint, many recipes call for crusts made from pre-packaged cookies crushed up. That’s fine and good sometimes, but I would love to make all my crusts from scratch. Oh well.
I'd like to share a recipe that I love:

Seriously amazing. These are my new big strips. The shredded version is finer and still so good.

http://kirstenskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/04/coconut-bacon.html
My vegan-loathing mother said she liked this coconut BETTER THAN BACON. What else can be said?
Instead of water I usually use the coconut milk. I also don't peel the brown skin off the coconut, and I use my food processer to shred it. This week I used the larger blade to shred it (the one that you would use for say, scalloped potatoes?) to make bigger, meatier pieces, and it turned out really well. We use it on BLT's, stuffed jalapeno peppers (Super Bowl food!), vegan pizza, toast with peanut butter (Elvis style) and anything else we can think of.

The test batch for vegan stuffed jalepenos, made with Tofutti cream cheese and sour cream creamed together topped with coconut bacon and Daiya "cheddar style shreds." (Excuse the iPhone photo!)

Actually the pizza is my husband Randy's specialty. He makes it pretty much every Saturday. We use the breadmaker for the dough as it makes it perfect. Toppings include olives, mushrooms, green peppers, coconut bacon and Daiya "mozzarella style shreds."

I tried a few new recipes this week too, including one for croissants:
http://www.sabjimatablog.com/2011/05/17/recipe-vegan-croissants/
This recipe was a little vague, but I learned from it and next time I think these will be great. I rolled them wrong sorta, but they were still good. If the recipe had been more detailed it would have seemed overwhelming and I might not have felt up to trying it.
I also tried this one (using regular whole wheat flour):
http://veganyumyum.com/2009/04/graham-crackers-and-dandies/
We had just bought some new vegan mini marshmallows and used these with s’mores, mmmm. I did take her advice and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, I recommend it.

Cinnamon sugary goodness. I am not great with making equal cuts. Next time I try harder.

Smores are a treat because vegan marshmallows are both hard to find and expensive!

Now here is one I HAVEN'T tried yet, but desperately want to:
http://greytveganlife.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/%e2%99%a5-the-vegan-baileys-project/
I am coming for you, vegan Irish cream!

Last night I made cinnamon buns, and they turned out really well. I used my bread maker to knead the dough and let it rise in there. Then I rolled them out, added the sugar etc, let them rise in front of my wood stove and refrigerated them until this morning, so we had fresh hot cinnamon buns for breakfast with no work to be done on a lazy Saturday morning! Except that I made the coconut cream cheese icing this morning, but that is really easy. With cinnamon buns for me the issue is more the time than the work. Letting the dough rise is torture when all you want is the hot sweet goodness. Doing the leg work the night before eliminates most of the wait. Oh yes, the recipe I use is basically from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowicz. For the icing I used about 1/8 cup coconut spread (margarine or shortening would also work), 1/8 cup vegan cream cheese (creamed together), 1-2 cups icing sugar with 1-2 Tbs soy milk mixed by hand. Makes a nice rich cream cheese frosting and a happy belly.

Good morning glorious buns!

Oh the aroma.

Prepare to die, cinnamon bun.