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!