The Rediscovery of Vive le Vegan

Vive le Vegan is the only Dreena Burton cookbook I currently own and full of amazing recipes, but somehow I keep forgetting to look those up when I want to bake something. This weekend, however, I had some free time and decided to try the following things:

Fudgy Brownies. So good. Even better than the ones from my previous post, I think, though I really like walnuts in there too.

Chocolate Chip Cookies, which I had never ever made before in my entire life, so it was about time. I still haven’t found chocolate chips anywhere here (though I didn’t feel like spending much time looking for them, either), so I made do with a chopped up bar of chocolate. That worked fine as well, only the chunks are uneven and there are tiny specks of chocolate all throughout the dough. Whatever. Delicious!

Maroccan Chickpea Patties (here served with brown rice, carrots and snap peas). Again, not the best picture, but I can assure you these patties were a success! My mother and I made them together to have for dinner. When we’d finished shaping them into patties we figured it was too much for three people, so only put six patties (we made them rather small) in the pan and saved the rest for later. However, we turned out loving them so much we fried up the other ones as well and eating them all in one evening. They took some time to make, but were well worth the effort.

I also made another (double) batch of Veganomicon chocolate ice cream and mixed some of the fudgy brownies, some sliced banana and walnuts into it to make an extra decadent dessert. I messed up a bit (the machine’s bowl was too small, ingredients weren’t cold enough, blah blah blah) and ended up putting everything in a big bowl in the freezer and stirring it through every half hour or so to keep it smooth. Didn’t work as well as the ice cream machine would, but it’s a really good batch of ice cream anyway. No picture (yet?), sorry.

Also, I went to Rotterdam friday and had lunch at Maoz. I’d always wanted to try the falafel salad, and now I did:

You get three falafel balls and get to compile your own salad by picking from the salad bar. Yum! I still like falafel in pita bread best, but this was a nice change.

Oh wait, there’s more Vive le Vegan stuff! Today’s breakfast:

Pancakes! They started out as the Apple Oat Pancakes, but then I realized I wanted to make something with banana and switched to the recipe on the page next to it – the Banana Bliss Pancakes. So these are Banana Oat Pancakes, shaped into hearts using a cute little utensil that I got from my friend Annika on Saint Nicholas’ Eve. The first few (not visible in this picture) fell apart, but in the end I did have some clearly recognizable hearts. Yay!

Ten Minute Brownies

From the first vegan cookbook I owned; the Student’s Go Vegan Cookbook by Carole Raymond. I hadn’t looked at it for a while, but I picked it up again when I was looking for something easy to make and the ‘ten minute’ part of the recipe’s title caught my eye.

Not that I could make the brownies in ten minutes – apart from the fact that they take 25 minutes to bake, I would only be able to make them that quickly if I had all the ingredients ready. That wasn’t the case, as I had to make the applesauce from scratch and spent some extra time crushing walnuts and measuring and melting the chocolate.

Nonetheless, this was the second time I made this recipe and I like it a lot. This time, I left out all of the oil and used more applesauce, which still resulted in a delicious brownie. The whole thing did fall apart a bit when I wanted to put it on a plate, but that was probably me being impatient and clumsy.

Anyway, now that I’ve made my first brownies, I’d like to try some other recipes as well. I’ve been wanting to make the Fudgy Brownies from Vive le Vegan ever since I got the book, so maybe those will be next!

Happy new year :D

I hope you all (well, whoever is reading this) have a wonderful 2008! Above is a picture of the bowl of oliebollen that I made to celebrate the new year. I used the recipe that Lena posted on this forum, which worked very well! they turned out just they way I wanted.

I should put more effort into taking appetizing pictures of my food so that when I make something, I can actually post about it as well. Good idea for a new year’s resolution, maybe?

Though I didn’t take many photos of it, I thought the meal my mother and I made for Christmas was pretty fabulous. We had invited some family to dinner and decided to make a couple of different dishes so people could choose from a variety of things. Here’s what the menu looked like:

- Soup: two different kinds; Celine’s Creamy Tomato Soup and a pumpkin soup from a cookbook by Linda McCartney. Oh, I did take a picture of Celine’s soup:

- Greek salad: we wanted to let everyone compose their own salad the way they wanted to, so we put all the ingredients on the table in separate small bowls to let everyone take what they wanted. I also made focaccia (from Veganomicon), which we served with a olive tapenade based on the recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes. And it rose, my bread rose! I was very pleased with my soft and fluffy homemade bread.
- Pasta with roasted vegetables: The idea was pretty simple; we cooked some pasta and made different sauces to eat it with. I made three pesto’s: the Sundried Tomato pesto from Vegan with a Vengeance, the Lemon Artichoke pesto from Yellow Rose Recipes and the, umm, regular pesto recipe from YRR.
My mother made ‘Provençal tian’ (it’s from a book called Low Carb Vegetarian, but I think the same recipe is online here), a delicious dish of roasted mediterranean vegetables that I loved. It’s really a shame that I was already so full… Anyway, that was nice combined with the pasta. Oh, I also made the Parmesan from YRR, but I had completely forgotten about it until I found it in the fridge when most people had already finished their pasta. Pity. Oh well, I’ll just eat it myself!
- Dessert! I made two things: the Tiramisu Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and the chocolate icecream from Veganomicon. Both were liked, but I think people were most surprised about the vegan icecream – as I was myself! I’ve had some good vegan icrecream, but this was really amazing. It must be the silken tofu that makes it so good – and of course the chocolate. So yeah, I’m looking forward to using that recipe again very soon!

Not a very clear picture, but those are the two vegan desserts on one plate. Yum yum.

All in all, I think everyone enjoyed the food they had! There was enough variety for everyone to have at least something they liked. There were also a lot of leftovers, but as those were mostly pesto and tapenade, both of which can easily be used in all sorts of ways, I didn’t mind at all.

Now I should go to bed – after New Year celebrations and all, I could use some sleep. I really hope to be back soon with some nice pictures to post, but studying for exams is probably going to get in the way of that. Meh. I’ll do my best :)