Raspberry Coconut Ice Cream and Cinnamon Swirl Muffins

Another kind of ice cream: raspberry/coconut. A very simple recipe once again: I puréed about a cup (I think, I didn’t measure those) of frozen raspberries in a food processor, added 3/4 cup of rice milk, puréed some more, strained the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds, added half a cup of coconut milk and 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons of agave, chilled that for a couple of hours and put it in the ice cream machine.

The result is pretty good. I’m not sure if I really like the taste of coconut milk in ice cream. It doesn’t have a strong flavour in here, but you can tell that it’s there. My parents said they kind of like that taste, so I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll try again with a creamier, better kind of coconut milk (this can was really cheap). I sprinkled some shredded coconut on top, which does make it more delicious.

Cinnamon Swirl Muffins, recipe by SusanV. I already wanted to make them when I first read her post, but when Mihl and Liz also posted about how much they loved these muffins, I knew I just had to try the recipe. Well, my fellow bloggers were right, these muffins are really good! I bet they would have been even better if I’d had nutmeg, but I couldn’t find that. My Dad and I both searched the entire kitchen for half an hour, but we really couldn’t find it anywhere, while we always have a little mill with a whole nutmeg in it, a tin of ground nutmeg AND a package of whole nutmegs lying around. My Mom eventually found a little plastic bag with three nutmegs in it (after I’d already taken the muffins out of the oven), but the other kinds still haven’t been found. Strange.

But anyway, the muffins are still great, even without nutmeg. I just had a little trouble getting them out of the muffin pan (I used a silicon one), so the bottoms are all damaged. I only photographed their good side, though, so you can’t see it in the picture!

To end this post, I think last night’s dinner deserves a mention: Stir-Fried Peas and Tofu, from Authentic Chinese Cuisine by Bryanna Clark Grogan (Look, I’m trying to eat with chopsticks!). This is the first thing I tried from this cookbook and not bad at all! I liked making a Chinese-style dish myself at home, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied. The tofu could have been better. I used peanut oil to fry it in, but it wouldn’t become nice and crispy and only a tiny bit brown. In the end I almost burned it, so I just went on and added the broth and other ingredients, but I would’ve liked to have fried it for a bit longer. My mom suggested we might need to buy a new wok, because this one is pretty old, but I’m not sure if that was it. Oh well, this was still a nice stir-fry.

I think I’m gonna go and enjoy the nice weather now, have a great day!

Ice Cream!

After being absent for two weeks for no apparent reason, I’m again back with some yummy things I made lately! I had my last days of school this week and have my first exam on May 19th, so I have a month of studying ahead of me. I’m sure I’ll be able to fit in some cooking and baking, though, so I’ll keep posting pictures!

Because the weather has gotten a lot better over the past weeks, I decided to start using my ice cream maker again. I love making ice cream! I made two kinds so far, but there are many more flavours that I’d like to try next.

Above: almond-speculaas ice cream. To make this, I ground half a cup of toasted and half a cup of raw almonds in a food processor, added one cup of hazelnut-almond-ricemilk, one tablespoon of raw almond butter, half a cup + two tablespoons of sugar and a bit of almond extract and mixed all of that together. I chilled it overnight and put it in the ice cream machine the next day, adding pieces of speculaas a few minutes before it was done. I like this ice cream a lot, but there’s room for improvement in the recipe… I think I’ll use all almond butter instead of grinding almonds myself next time, because I couldn’t grind them entirely and the icecream wasn’t completely smooth. My Dad also thought the icecream was very heavy, so I’d probably use less almonds an more rice milk if I’d have to make it again. Still, it’s a good dessert and I know I won’t have trouble finishing any leftovers…

I also wanted a lighter type of ice cream, so I made this. It’s Lavender-Apricot, made of 3/4 cup of soy yogurt, 1/3 cup of apricot preserves, 1/2 cup of rice milk, 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract and 1-2 teaspoons of dried lavender flowers. I like the combination of these two flavours and the ice cream is very light and healthier than the speculaas one, but it wasn’t perfect either. Specifically the lavender flowers were something my parents were a bit sceptical about: My Mom said they look a little like bugs in the ice cream and my Dad says he doesn’t like the taste and texture the whole flowers provide. My Mom, however, says she does like that taste and personally, I think the flowers make the icecream look pretty, so it’s not all that bad. I would use less lavender next time (and maybe more apricot preserves), as the taste is a little dominant this way. Maybe grinding it or making some kind of infusion and using that would be a good idea… but I don’t know. I still like this ice cream the way it is.

One other thing before I go to bed: Appelflappen! They’re sheets of puff pastry filled with an apple and raisin mixture. So simple. I had one piece of regular puff pastry left, so I used that up, the other ones are whole-wheat puff pastry.

I’ll be back soon! Hopefully with more ice cream pictures, because I really, really like ice cream these days.

More Cupcakes

Did I mention the high tea at my school today? Well, there wasn’t a lot of tea (I eventually got one cup), but everyone (over 50 people) had brought something to eat, so there was a lot of food. I made cupcakes, apart from fruit, the only vegan things there, I think. There’s not much to say about them, only that I enjoyed baking and decorating them and I think (at least some) other people enjoyed eating them. So did I, of course. You don’t even want to know how many cupcakes I ate today.

I made half batches of basic vanilla and chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World and a batch of Vanilla French Cupcakes. Both were YUM, I don’t think the texture of the cakes has ever come out this well for me. Was it the oil? The rice milk? I don’t know, but they were great.
As for frosting, I made the Kahlua Chocolate Frosting that comes with the vanilla cupcakes and the Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting from the cookbook.

Now… I don’t have anything else but the pictures, so I’ll leave you with those. I took these in the morning sunlight before I left, which explains the long shadows and yellowish glow on some of them, I guess.

Chocolate cupcake + chocolate ganache = So. Good. Why have I never made this before?! So simple, too. I added sliced fruit to make them look pretty.

I didn’t bother with trying to pipe the frosting into swirls this time, because putting it on with a knife is easier and I’m still happy with the way these turned out.

One of the suggestions at the end of the Golden Vanilla Cupakes recipe in VCTotW are the Strawberry Tallcakes. They have buttercream and strawberries, a perfect combination…

This one has buttercream frosting, mini ganache truffels and chocolate shavings. I really love those truffels…

Finally, here are all of them together in two shots:

Cupcakes and Calzone

Today was supposed to be about doing homework. That didn’t quite work out the way I had planned, but it was still a good day – I made cupcakes!

I hadn’t made them in a while, so I decided to try making a small batch again – I’ll be making more of them next Tuesday. I chose the basic chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World, halved it and made eight cupcakes. Half the recipe would usually yield six, but I guess I got more because I used smaller cupcake liners.

The cupcake at the top is frosted with Peanut Buttercream (from the same book), but, unfortunately, I didn’t like that stuff at all. I could have predicted this – I didn’t love the peanut butter cookies from VWAV, either, because they combines peanuts with a lot of sugar. This recipe has over a cup of sugar in it, as well, so the flavour is similar – I guess I only like peanuts when they’re used in something savory. Oh well, I don’t really regret trying the peanut buttercream recipe, I just know I won’t be making it again. I did frost a couple of cupcakes with it, though, so I hope I can find someone else who IS fond of this flavour to eat them…

The other two cupcakes in the picture are topped with chocolate ganache, which I do love. Very much. It’s so good! I used the suggestion provided in the book to use leftover ganache to make mini-truffels, too, and I love those even more! I used them to decorate the other cupcake and I’ll be using the recipe more often, I’m sure.

My parents weren’t home for dinner, so I made something just for myself:

Can you recognize what it is supposed to be? Well, I guess you can tell from the title of this post – I made pizza today and since I had never tried that before, I decided to make a calzone. It think it didn’t turn out that bad for a first try. I didn’t feel like making the dough from scratch and there was still some whole wheat pizza dough in the freezer from the last time my Dad made pizza, so I decided to use that. It was a little dry, but it was easy to roll out after I had added some liquid.

The filling was based on a recipe I found here (in Dutch), but I didn’t follow it entirely. I started by melting two tablespoons of margarine in a skillet. I added a chopped onion, three (small) cloves of garlic and 150 grams of chopped mushrooms (I used different kinds). I sautéed them for a while and added about three tablespoons of rice flour. Lastly, I stirred in some rice milk, soy creamer and water. I also mixed in some sautéed zucchini, which was a great addition. I added some salt, but I should have used more. The filling was still very good and creamy, but I would add more spices next time.

On a sidenote: it seems the theme I’m currently using isn’t working properly (if you see a yellow/orange colour, that’s supposed to be white). Hmm, I guess it’ll change again soon.

Anyway, I hope all have a nice day/evening! Go wish VeggieGirl a happy birthday!

Salads, cookies, risotto, more cookies and oh, I got tagged!

I’m so disorganized lately! I made food and took pictures, but didn’t get around to posting them. Oh well, here’s a big post with a bunch of stuff that I ate in the past (two?) weeks.

First up, salads.

On this plate: iceberg lettuce, red onion, tomato, kalamata olives, Vcon cashew ricotta and walnuts.

This one has cucumber, tomato, red bell pepper and olives with an olive oil and lemon juice dressing. So refreshing and full of flavour, I love eating this.

Moving on: cookies. Last weekend I had the annual ‘family weekend’ with my dad’s side of the family, where we all get together to do family stuff for a weekend. It was a lot of fun. We stayed in a village called Hapert near the Belgian border. I made some of Dreena Burton’s Home-style Chocolate Chip cookies to take with me, because those are so yummy. Some people tried them and said they liked them, too – yay!

For dinner on saturday (we had dinner at home on friday before we left and on sunday when we got back), my Mum and I made the mushroom/sundried tomato risotto from Vegan with a Vengeance, which was delicious as always:

While I was away, I happened to come across a store (‘Dille & Kamille’ in Turnhout) that sold (edible) dried lavender flowers, something I had been looking for around here but hadn’t been able to find. I bought a small package, but as you don’t need much of it in a recipe, I can make all kinds of things with them now! The first thing I tried:

They’re the Lemon Lavender Cookies from Celine’s blog here. They’re really sweet and special and, above all, delicious.

Look what I else I bought in that same city in a little second-hand store:

A strawberry-shaped teapot! I’d been looking for a teapot and now I found one that I like. I’m drinking so much tea this week because I love ittttt.

Umm, is that it? I think that’s it. Oh no, wait, I was tagged by Coppe about a week ago! To take part in this meme, I have to tell you five new things about myself. OK:

1. I’m a big procrastinator! This often leads to me sitting behind my computer working on school assignments in the middle of the night, the day before I’m supposed to turn them in, drinking a lot of rooibos tea and eating mandarin oranges (apparently I like this combination when I’m really tired?) with my headphones on, listening to music to keep me awake. I admit this isn’t the best way to handle things, but it seems to work for me. Well, not always. Most of the times.

2. I love watching foreign television channels. Since my parents switched to digital television, we have a lot more different channels and though I hardly watch television by myself, I occasionally enjoy watching the British, Spanish or Italian channels. I like the British shows about people looking to buy a house (somehow I hate the Dutch versions of these, but like these programs when they’re in English) and soaps on the Spanish channel. I don’t really understand what everyone’s saying on those (I sometimes catch a few words, like “But … you … now … children!”), but they’re kind of fun. Though unfortunately they’re far from vegan most of the times, I also like cooking shows in any language. It’s still cool to see Italian people sauté onions.

3. My hair is pretty long. People keep telling me it’s getting too long and that I should get it cut, but I don’t really want to. I like long hair. Maybe I’ll dye it. Hmm…

4. I suck at making decisions. Especially when it comes to choosing an education. When I was younger and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never knew what to answer. I still don’t! I hate this, but I guess I’ll just have to deal with it. Right now I feel like I’d really like to go study English, but I feel like I can never be sure. There are so many other cool things, too. Ugh. If anyone has any good advice on this, that’s actually very welcome.

And then I don’t know what city I’m going to, either. I mean, I like Leiden, but Nijmegen is nice as well, and so is Utrecht – and those are only the places I’ve visited! Then there are more places out there that I’ve never even been to, and those are probably awesome as well! GAH

Moving away from my rambling and on to something a bit more cheerful, point five:

5. One of the walls in my bedroom is orange and I love it. It makes me happy every time I look at it and it really makes me feel bad about ever moving out. I think I posted a picture of it on Flickr once, let me go and look for it…

Here’s one:

Pretty orange.

So, there you go! While doing this, I discovered it’s actually quite hard to think of interesting things about me. I guess I’m just that boring. OH WELL.

According to the rules, I have to tag five others now, but I think most people have already done this meme. It’s always interesting to learn more about fellow bloggers, though, so if you’d like to do this (again), I hereby declare you tagged. Oh, and Tuimeltje, I don’t think I’ve seen you do this yet, so I’m tagging you too. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to! But it would be interesting. Umm…

I promise to make my next post more cohesive. It will probably involve more baked goods, as there’s a high tea at my school next wednesday. I think I’m bringing cupcakes.

Oh, thanks to Coppe for tagging me!

One more thing: If you’re in Europe or are planning a trip to Europe and would like to find out more about vegetarian restaurants, hotels, pubs etc., check out this Flickr group! We now have lists for every country represented in the group, which makes it easier to find the place that you’re looking for.

Now… sleep.