VeganMoFo 15: Tagliatelle Alfredo

For today’s MoFo post, I had originally planned to make the English muffins from Vegan Brunch or the Stuten from Mihl’s blog (preferably both). I even woke up extra early so I had enough time to make some bread, only to discover that there wasn’t any yeast left in the house. I figured I could pick up a new package on my way home later today, but when I finally arrived at the supermarket a few hours ago, it turned out they were all out of yeast, too. Such a shame! I guess I’ll have to make these recipes some other day. And I had to think of another topic for this post!

Anyway, when I got home, it turned out my mother was feeling a bit under the weather, and there wasn’t much food in the fridge left to make dinner with. I needed a fast and simple recipe, so I immediately started looking through my cookbooks and quickly decided on the Penne Alfredo from Yellow Rose Recipes by Joanna Vaught. It requires only very basic ingredients and making the sauce takes about as long as it takes to boil the pasta. Perfect!

Did I mention that it’s delicious, too? I made the recipe even easier by using cashew butter instead of cashew pieces, store-bought Cajun spice mix instead of homemade, and tagliatelle instead of penne (saving myself another trip to the supermarket). On the side, we had a salad, some broccoli, and a chickpea cutlet (all things that happened to be in the fridge).

It felt like a bit of an improvised meal because I threw it all together so quickly, but I guess that’s just the time it takes to make this recipe. I even forgot to measure everything precisely, and it still tasted great! It’s just an awesome recipe. My parents loved it as well. I definitely recommend you to try this dish for yourself!

Now I have to hurry and go catch my bus! I’ll be back soon.

I love exams!

Well, not really, but these parties of people who passed their exams are giving me a great opportunity to bake. I’m not sure if cookies or cake really make a proper gift, but people seem to like them so I guess it’s alright.

Strawberries are in season and as my parents couldn’t stop buying loads of them, I decided to make my friend the Lemon Almond Cake from Yellow Rose Recipes. It’s topped with sliced strawberries, a lemon glaze and toasted almonds. I used less glaze than this recipe made, because I didn’t want to cover it entirely. I love how this cake tastes, though don’t think it would hurt the recipe to use less sugar. The crunchy almonds on top were great.

Apart from the cake, I made a bunch of cookies. The ones I love the most? These:

They look a bit odd in this picture, but it’s the best one I have: Celine’s Double Chocolate Cookies. As I mentioned in my last post, these are so good. I’ve made them at least five times to give away and I had quite a few myself as well… I also made another batch of her Booze it Up Nut Butter cookies, making sure I added enough fat to the batter this time. I didn’t have cashew/macadamia nut butter and was almost out of peanut butter, so I used part almond butter. They turned out very well this time, I’m glad I tried again! I forgot to take a picture, unfortunately.

I made more cookies, but didn’t take pictures of those, either. They were these Whiskey Cookies. They taste awesome, though the flavours in there remind me more of autumn than of summer so I’m not sure why I’m making this time of year, but anyway – I liked them. I’m just wondering if maybe I did something wrong, as mine seem to have turned out different than Celine’s. She mentions how the cookies are crispy, while mine really are more chewy or cake-like, as someone in the comments there discribed. The dough was also different than the cookie doughs I’m used to, it was much more elastic. Interesting! These cookies were fun to make. And to eat.

So yeah, I’ll make sure to remember to take more pictures next time. Come to think of it, I do have some cupcake pictures to share:

I didn’t make them myself, these are Rosey’s Cupcakes, which I bought at a local organic farm last weekend. I chose the chocolate cupcake in the upper picture and had a piece of every cupcake in the other picture. They were very different from the cupcakes I’m used to (the ones from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World), more like muffins, in my opinion. I think it was partly because the frosting was much less sweet than most of the VCTotW cupcakes. In any case, I loved that chocolate cherry cupcake and it was pretty awesome being able to buy vegan cupcakes so close to home. And they all look so pretty.

One last awesome thing. One of my friends threw a barbecue beach party yesterday and made sure there was some vegan food for me – including this delicious falafel!