Buttercream Frosting

Zachary wants me to blog this as well from Betty Crocker, but this one we did adjust it.  Zachary used Country Crock instead of butter and once used almond extract instead of vanilla. It takes color well!

Ingredients:

3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup Country Crock- just from the fridge is fine.
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla or other flavoring
optional: coloring

Steps:

1 In medium bowl, mix powdered sugar and butter with spoon or electric mixer on low speed. Stir in vanilla and 1 tablespoon of the milk.

2 Gradually beat in just enough remaining milk to make frosting smooth and spreadable. If frosting is too thick, beat in more milk, a few drops at a time. If frosting becomes too thin, beat in a small amount of powdered sugar. Frosts 13x9-inch cake generously, or fills and frosts an 8- or 9-inch two-layer cake.

Zachary's Vegan Chocolate Cookies

This is actually from Loving It Vegan but if it disappeared from her site, we'd be devastated, so we are recopying it here for safe-keeping.

Vegan Chocolate Cookies:

• 1/2 cup (112g) Vegan Butter
• 1/2 cup (100g) White Sugar
• 1/2 cup (100g) Brown Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 cup (125g) All Purpose Flour
• 2/3 cup (56g) Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1 Tbsp Soy Milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 3.5 oz (100g) Vegan Dark Chocolate + more for topping (chopped into small chunks)*

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
2. Add the vegan butter and brown and white sugar to an electric mixing bowl and cream together. Add the vanilla and mix in.
3. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl and mix in the baking soda and salt.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing in by hand until crumbly.
5. Add the 1 Tbsp soy milk or other non-dairy milk and mix into a thick cookie dough.
6. Add the chocolate chunks and mix in. Your cookie dough will be very thick, but sticky enough to easily roll into balls.
7. Roll into small balls and space evenly on a parchment lined baking tray.
8. Bake for 10 minutes. The edges will be firm but the cookies will still be soft in the middle. This is fine, they will firm up as they cool.
9. Press in a few more chocolate chunks to the top of the cookies as they come out of the oven if you like (optional).

Festive Noodles

This is to remind me as best I can - what I made for the Holiday Party yesterday in the Math/Stat department.  Jun Lu liked it so I wanted to write this down.

I roasted the walnuts in the oven and roasted some Hemp Hearts on the stovetop. (Hemp Hearts is a legal safe food product and has nutritional value and has no THC in it! They taste and look a lot like sesame seeds.) I used all the Golden Curry pack and most of a large "Thin Spaghetti" pack.  I used way more oil than probably I should have.  At that point, it was acceptable but it seemed to be missing something.  I added the cranberries for a little extra color and flavor, but the base flavor needed something. So, I added this soy sauce, some of this "Grandma Spice" (chili oil) and also some "Bakon" yeast, which I got at Amazon. The curry and "Grandma Spice" are from H Mart.  I think the Hemp Hearts are from the co-op. That's about as much as I can recall. I don't think I added salt or pepper.  (Accidentally, there is pepper in the photo as well as a lemon which was on my counter, but they were not in the noodles.)

Mint Lemon-Limeade

1/8 cup of chopped fresh mint

6 cups of water (less if you want ice)
1/2 cup of lemon juice
1/2 cup of lime juice
1 to 1 1/2 cups of sugar


1.   Put all ingredients into big jug
2.   Stir
3.   Refrigerate

ZIR

Vegan French Toast

The new neighbors brought over some "country bread" that just looked like it ought to be made into French Toast.  So here is my try:

1c oats
1c flour
1T baking powder
3T sugar
blended.

Then I added several cups of cashew milk and water.
There was slightly more milk than water. By the time I added
the liquid, the blender was 3/4 full or fuller.

I added cinnamon and some oil and a little salt to the mix.

This seems to be working.  It covers more bread than I expected. Probably 1 1/2 to 2 loaves easily. The bread soaks up the liquid faster, so you may need to add a little liquid to the batter as you go, maybe halfway through.

"Beans"

This is just "beans", until I find a better name.

2 t black mustard seeds.
1T oil initially, start heating up those seeds while you cut the..
2 Onions, cut up into half-rings. 
Add to the oil.
1/8 c of Badia Curry
1/8 c of white vinegar
1/8 c honey.

a 15 oz can of beans (white northern, small white etc...)

I kept adding oil as needed to keep the thing from burning or looking dry.
This is served atop rice. Add salt to taste.

Pancakes - Day Three

I'm getting less exact here.. but it worked so I wanted to record it!
I dropped the Oatmeal entirely.  There is still a banana but you can't taste it.

1 2/3 c WW Pastry flour
1 2/3 c All purpose flour
just about 1 Tablespoon of Baking Powder
These dry things in the blender, mixed up and fluffy.

Then, add about 2/3 c Maple Syrup
1 banana
some Disaronno or vanilla or anything to flavor it
And.. lots of water. But I don't know how much.
At least 3 cups, but probably more. I lost track.

Michael thought it was the oatmeal making the texture work out, but
apparently that doesn't matter.  Possibly the trick is the banana?
Or maybe it's the fact that I let the blender run a bit to make sure
everything is all mixed up (thereby working up the gluten?)

But this mixture was very nice.  I used 1/4 c per pancake and this texture
allowed for making things like cars, a cat, a "house".  Stuff like that worked
better with this texture, as it felt "eggy" even though there were no eggs.
I was able to even flip the "cat" with whiskers w/o breaking any of the 6 whiskers.