I Was A Teenage Vegan CookBlog

I had decided to make cookies yesterday morning, and was faced with the usual dilemna of what from my cupboards to put in them (I settled on a little of everything, as usual), when, in a flash of mad brilliance, I decided that rather than simply stirring various objects into my cookies and thus being crushed beneath the endlessly reinvented chocolate-chip wheel, I could blend my fillings together and seal them up inside the cookie, creating an object of layers, of inner and outer dimensions, subtlety of form, and complexity of taste. Unfortunately, the chocolate on chocolate color scheme leaves the visual effect a little underwhelming, but that shouldn’t stop you from appreciating the idea for all it’s palatable, ascetically-pleasing genius. The only disappointment is that those bigwigs in Sweden haven’t seen fit to award me any Nobel Prizes for culinary science. Well, those fools have overlooked me for the last time. From here it’s only one small step to my secret baking laboratory on the moon, from which all of my most diabolical menus will come to delicious fruition. People of Earth, welcome to the house of the circle:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate pieces
• 1/2 cup toffee pieces
• 1/4 cup coffee
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tbsp. margarine
• 3 oz. semi-sweet baking chocolate
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract
• 1 cup margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 measures egg replacer
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Equipment: Food processor, saucepan, cookie sheet, freezer, mixing bowl, oven.

Music: Neptune - The Ballet of Process

Text: Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman

Instructions:

1. Combine the walnuts, coconut, toffee pieces, and dark chocolate in a food processor and grind them into small pieces.
2. In a saucepan, melt 2 tbsp. of margarine over medium-low heat along with 3 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate and 1/4 cup of strong black coffee, stirring constantly. Once they are smooth and fully combined remove the pan from heat and stir in the cinnamon and vanilla and almond extracts. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then stir in the combined ingredients from the food processor.
3. Use a wet teaspoon the measure the filling out onto a greased baking sheet, flattening each ball of filling slightly with the underside of the spoon. Put the baking sheet in the freezer to cool while you prepare the cookie dough.
4. Cream the margarine and sugars together in a mixing bowl, then add the vanilla extract and egg replacer. Mix together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add them to the wet 1 cup at a time. Melt the chocolate chips and stir them into the dough.
5. Use a tablespoon to portion out the cookie dough onto a baking sheet. Remove the sheet with the now-solid filling pieces from the freezer. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
6. Press each ball of cookie dough flat and put a disc of filling in the center. Fold the edge of the dough up around the filling and pinch together to seal. Place the finished cookies with the seam side down on the baking sheet.
7. Bake for 12 minutes. Serve hot (while the filling is still gooey), or refrigerate for later.

My grand scheme may still have a few small kinks to work out (extreme high-altitude cooking temperatures, more “outer-space”-style cookie color scheme, menacing spandex chef’s costume), but in the meantime feel free to experiment with it yourself. You can thank me for this small measure of munificence later, right before I grind your puny world beneath my heel. After that, I imagine it will just be all grovelling, all the time.

We had an entirely post punk kitchen-themed dinner at my place last night. It was a generally carribean affair (though some of the ingredients (maple syrup and soy sauce, I’m looking at you) seemed suspiciously non-indigenous), featuring our interpretations of Jamaican jerk tempeh and seitan served alongside limey coconut rice and “garlicky” kale. Feast your eyes upon our splendiferous bounty:

I went pretty much by the book here, and Russell, Eric, and myself were all pleased with the results. A few small additions included the tempeh, which adds some much-needed protein to the meal (and did an excellent job of soaking up the marinade) some chipotle powder for extra spice, and tomatoes, which go together with kale like peas and carrots. The rice was a little dry, but I think that my unfamiliarity with gas cooking may be to blame. The real stand-out of the the evening, however, was dessert - in this case, the titular cookies and cream cupcakes. The recipe for these came from the copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World that my friend Homefries (who taught a vegan cupcake-making class just this past weekend (as mentioned in last week’s Weekly Dig)) lent to me. They were, as the saying goes, sweet.

Here they are, all orbital and nuclear:

Everybody dance now.

I spent a few hours this past week honing my home croissant-making technique, and I think I have things about as good as they’re going to get. Ultimately, one of the insurmountable problems vegan croissants face is that regardless of the type of margarine or shortening you use and how finely you fold it in, the layers of it all melt into vegetable oil in the oven and run down into a huge puddle in the pan. The end result is a layered pastry that is more tender than flaky. It’s possible that experimenting with oven temperatures will result in closer to the non-vegan version (perhaps starting with the oven really hot will cause the fat to bubble and be absorbed by the dough, for example), but I’ll leave that to you, my intrepid readers, for now. Just be careful when serving these to the French - they can be a little touchy about this sort of thing.

I did make one small change to the recipe I was using in my previous post - the dough was coming out really dry, so I increased amount of soy milk slightly. Also, throwing the dough in the freezer for a half hour between folds makes the whole process immensely easier. If you want to do this recipe right, I suggest setting aside a few hours of the day and having something to distract you while you’re waiting for the various parts to fall into place. Maybe read a book, do a crossword puzzle, call your friends, draw a picture, play some music, take a nap, do your laundry, or, if it’s a nice day, go outside and turn cartwheels until you get dizzy and have to lie down on the grass and rest for a while.

Here’s a little more step-by-step:

The shaped and proofed croissants:

With a light coat of oil and a little flair:

Baked and drained - plain, almond, and chocolate:

Good luck.

An old bandmate of mine would fly into a towering fit of rage whenever he heard the song that today’s title alludes to. It was, he would argue, loudly, so atrociously bad that it shouldn’t even be considered music. Personally, being a decidedly post-Cage-ian listener, I don’t think that the distinction between music and noise is particularly helpful. Which isn’t to imply that I would willingly listen to that sort of execrable pop music (although I do think it has a certain appeal when blasted far beyond the point of distortion on tinny automobile speakers) - as I was trying to explain recently, I have very discerning taste. I wouldn’t say that it’s good taste, really, but rather that I can tell almost immediately what I like and what I don’t, and thus I can say with some fair degree of certainty that I am not, in fact, no “holla back girl” (but wouldn’t it be sweet if I was).

I think I mentioned earlier in this blog that my friend Russell is very anti-banana. He claims that it “is a jerk” because its flavor is strong enough to cover up virtually anything else it’s combined with (I’m really on a sentence-ending preposition roll today, aren’t I). I had purchased a small container of dried banana chunks (which my friend Chris introduced me to, and which are delicious (not to be confused with banana chips, which are disgusting) on my way home from work recently and decided that it was time to put this theory to the test. The result is yet another modification of your basic oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe with a little bit of chopped dried banana, walnuts, and toffee thrown in. Russell was pretty satisfied, but he did say that he preferred the bites of cookie that didn’t have banana in them to those that did. I guess there simply is no accounting for taste.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 measures egg replacer
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
• 1/2 cup dried banana, chopped
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup toffee bits (optional)

Equipment: mixing bowl, hand mixer or mixing spoon, baking sheets, oven.

Music: The BA-NA-NAs (I don’t know if they have an album, or anything - they’re just some local(?) band I saw play the other night who were kind of good, but whom I mostly liked because of their attitude of playful disdain toward the audience. Alternately, simply listen to the Raffi song “Bananaphone” until you go, well, bananas).

Instructions: Make like chocolate chip cookies (it’s not that hard, people).

Ahem:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Blend margarine and sugars together. Mix in egg replacer and vanilla.
3. Add flour, oatmeal, baking soda/powder, salt, and cinnamon and mix.
4. Stir in dried banana, walnuts, chocolate chips, and toffee bits.
5. Scoop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto cookie sheets.
6. Bake for 10 minutes.

In other news, I’m working on my latest batch of vegan croissants as we speak. I will post an update on my inevitable success just as soon as it occurs.

Last week one of the interns in the pastry shop at work asked me if I thought lemon and ginger would go well together in a chocolate-chip-style cookie. I replied that it was a pretty common combination, especially in Asian cuisine, and sounded like it would probably be ok, but it would be a lot better if she worked off a ginger snap recipe instead. Her cookies turned out all right, but but I was pretty sure I could make them better, so returned to a recipe that I’d written a couple years ago for my first cookbook. Originally just slightly spicy vegan ginger snaps with chunks of dried apple thrown in, I decided I’d try adding some crystallized ginger and lemon zest into the mix. I think they turned out deliciously, but don’t take my word for it; if you come early to this show tomorrow night you might be in for a literal treat.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 measure egg replacer
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ginger
• 1 tsp. cloves
• 1/4 cup crystallized ginger, chopped
• 1/2 cup dried apple, chopped
• 1 1/2 tsp. lemon zest

Equipment: Mixing bowl, electric mixer, cutting board, chef’s knife, vegetable peeler (or citrus zester, if you want to get all fancy), baking sheets.

Music: Tristan da Cunha - Instanter

Instructions:

1. Chop the dried apple and crystallized ginger into chocolate-chip-sized pieces, zest the lemon (if using a vegetable peeler, go over the pieces with the chef’s knife until you have them finely diced), and set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 350.
3. Cream the margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl, then blend in the egg replacer and molasses.
4. Add in the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices (you can sift them together in a separate bowl beforehand if you want, but unless you really suck at stirring I don’t think combining them directly is going to be a problem), and stir until evenly mixed.
5. Fold the dried apple, crystallized ginger, and lemon zest into the dough.
6. Use a tablespoon to scoop out portions of the dough, roll it between your palms to form a sphere, then dip the top sides into a bowl of sugar and place on a cookie sheet. These will spread out quite a bit as they cook, so unless you like my hexagonal cookie style you might want to leave a little extra room between them.
7. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and allow to cool thoroughly.

This recipe produces a pleasingly moist and chewy cookie. If you’re more into the actual “snap” part, you can try refrigerating the dough, portioning it out into logs, and then slicing thin cookies off of them. Alternately, prepare the cookies as above and leave them on the pans as they cool, then simply put them back in the oven and bake them again (maybe at a slightly higher temperature) until crisp.

I know I said that I’d put the whole messy Army business behind me, but then the Army Times went and published a letter that I written to them on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. You might be able to buy a copy at your local newstand (which may or may not include an accompanying and doubtlessly militaristic photo of yours truly), but if not you can definitely read it here on their website. Pass the word along.

As for culinary content, my longtime internet acquaintance Homefries stopped by my kitchen earlier this week for some collaborative cookery. While our powers combined did not result is us transforming into some giant vegan battle robot, they did result in a few exciting baking creations:

the danishes (I think that’s the correct plural) pictured above are, clockwise from the left, cardamom tangerine, cinnamon apple, ginger plum, and raspberry jam, with touches of grand marnier, rum, cognac, and soy cream cheese, respectively, and were based on a recipe posted a couple months ago on this very cookblog. The cupcakes - chai with almond-buttercream frosting topped with crystallized ginger and sliced almonds - were based on some internet recipe and were, as Russell demonstrated, frighteningly delicious.

I’ve been making a lot of croissants at work recently and decided to take my newfound experience home and attempt a vegan version in my own kitchen. This has proven to be something of a challenge. In a professional bakery one has access to rolling machines (which make the whole laminating process much quicker and easier), climate control (which keeps the fat from melting as quickly), and industrial strength mixers (that ensure a smooth and evenly mixed dough), whereas my kitchen at home, while lovely, involves wielding a partially-functional rolling pin on hand-mixed dough atop too little counter space in the oppressive heat, all of which wouldn’t be so bad if I could just find a brand of margarine that didn’t begin to melt with 30 seconds of its extraction from the refrigerator.

My first attempt at rolling out the dough was a total fiasco owing to my selection of “Smart Balance” margarine (in retrospect was really stupid of me because it was obviously more of a spread than anything else (when you’re laminating dough you need the most resilient margarine you can find - anything that comes in one of those circular tubs just isn’t going to cut it)), which oozed out the sides of the dough immediately upon application of pressure from the rolling pin. My second attempt was more of a partial success, once again due mostly to shopper error; I bought “Earth Balance” sticks that I assumed were margarine, but which in fact turned out to be shortening. The lamination step went ok, and I was able to make some relatively croissant-like shapes, but the end result tasted more like a biscuit than anything else. I bought some other margarine at the store yesterday and am eager to give it another go. In the interim, here is a step-by-step overview of the process so that you can all follow along at home.

The recipe that I used comes straight out of On Cooking - the only changes I’ve made are converting the weight measurements (which, while useful in a professional kitchen, are a great source of frustration for me at home, since I don’t know offhand how many rods of flour there are in a hogshead, and google calculator is only helpful when it comes to converting non-imaginary measurements) into standard volumetric cooking ones, reducing the batch size, and substituting margarine for butter and soy milk for regular. If you can get your hands on a used copy of this book, do it (I’m sure there are tons of culinary school students trying to unload theirs after each semester), but its textbook-high price tag is a bit steep when you consider that the majority of the chapters concern cooking meat.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups bread flour
• 1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups soy milk
• 1 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast (1 packet)
• 1 lb. (2 cups) butter

Equipment: Large mixing bowl, rolling pin, counter space, waxed paper, plastic wrap, refrigerator/freezer, baking sheets, oven, perseverance.

Music: Climax Golden Twins - Imperial Household Orchestra

Instructions:

1. Mix the flour, salt, and sugar together in a mixing bowl.
2. Heat the milk until it reaches 90 degrees (slightly higher than room temperature) and stir in the yeast.
3. Add the yeast mixture to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until combined, adding more flour or milk as necessary to make the dough stick together. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead it on a lightly-floured surface for 5-10 minutes. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky (don’t add too much flour, or it will be too tough - try wetting your hands as you knead it to keep the dough from sticking to them), and you should be able to tear off a small piece and stretch it out in your hands so that it forms a thing, translucent sheet (this is called the “windowpane test”). Place the dough ball into a lightly-oiled mixing bowl and cover it with cloth or plastic wrap and allow to rise for one hour.
4. Unwrap the sticks of margarine from their packaging and wrap them together as a block using plastic wrap. Take your rolling pin and beat the block until the separate sticks blend together and become pliant.
5. Cut a piece of waxed paper to the size of a baking sheet and fold it in half. Remove the margarine from the plastic wrap, and put it inside the folded waxed paper roll it flat, trying to make the edges as neat and squared as possible. Place the finished sheet into the refrigerator to cool.
6. Roll the ball of dough out onto a floured surface until it forms a large rectangle twice as large as your sheet of margarine and about 1/4″ thick. Place the margarine on one side of the dough and fold the other side over on top of it like the cover of a book.
7. Roll the dough out to 1/2″ inch so it forms a long rectangle, dusting the top regularly with flour to keep the rolling pin from sticking. Fold the long ends in toward the center in thirds, like folding a letter. Repeat this process two more times, putting the dough in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes in between folds to keep the margarine from melting.
8. Wrap the dough in plastic and return it to the refrigerator for a couple of hours if you plan on shaping it later that day, or place it in the freezer to keep it for the next day. When ready to shape the dough, remove it from the refrigerator and roll it out into a long rectangle about 1/4″ thick. Take a pastry/pizza cutter and trim any ragged edges, then use a ruler to outline the desired shapes. For traditional croissants, cut isoceles triangles with a base of 4 inches and a height of 10, placing your fingertips at the tips of the base, lightly apply downward pressure and roll toward the apex of the triangle, then take the points of the croissant and curve them slightly inward. For filled croissants, cut 4″x 6″ rectangles out of the dough, place a line of filling (blocks of dark chocolate, a line of almond paste, soy ham and cheese, etc.) along one of the 4″ edges and roll it toward the other end. Place the shaped croissants on waxed paper on a baking sheet and either return to the freezer to await baking, or cover with plastic and set out to rise immediately.
9. Allow the croissants to proof (rise) for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until doubled in size. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Brush the croissants lightly with vegetable oil, and add any desired garnishes (sliced almonds for sweet croissants, say, or pepper and rosemary for savory). Bake the croissants for 15-20 minutes, or until crispy and browned. Remove from them from the oven and allow to cool, then serve plain, or with your favorite jam, jelly, or preserves.

My housemates were pretty satisfied with how this batch of croissants turned out, but I think there’s definitely plenty of room for improvement, so I’ll try again sometime over the course of this coming week and post my results along with any further tips, tricks, revisions, or addendums. One thing I haven’t found a suitable vegan replacement for it the egg wash (which goes on immediately before baking and that I’ve replaced with vegetable oil above), the function of which is to provide the finished croissants with a glossy sheen, crispy exterior, and deep brown color. It’s more of an aesthetic effect than anything else, so I won’t be heartbroken if I can’t simulate it somehow, but if anyone has any suggestions I’d be happy to try them.

It’s possible that when it comes to eating I may just have an unusually high tolerance for repetition, but to me the combination of chocolate and peanut butter never really gets old. I’m certainly interested in trying new things (and, assuming that the results are at least partially successful, will be posting some of my more recent experiments in the coming weeks), but when faced with my housemates insatiable appetite for cookies it’s nice to be able to fall back on something so tried (and tired) and true. So, why don’t you try this cookie recipe on for size?

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 measures egg replacer
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup soy milk

Equipment: Mixing bowl, egg beater, microwave, baking sheets, oven.

Music: Les Savy Fav - Go Forth

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 and set aside two baking sheets.
2. Cream 1 cup of margarine and both sugars in a large mixing bowl, then beat in the vanilla and egg replacer.
3. Combine all of the dry ingredients and stir them into the margarine mixture one cup at a time.
4. Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave, allow them to cool slightly, and add them to the dough.
5. Form the dough into 1″ balls (you can roll them between your palms to get them nice and round), and place them on the cookie sheets, leaving enough room between them for them to spread out.
6. Bake the cookies for 10 minutes and set them aside to cool.
7. In a small mixing bowl, beat the remaining 1/2 cup of margarine together with the powdered sugar, peanut butter, and soy milk until smooth and fluffy, then put it in the refrigerator to chill.
8. If making sandwiches, evenly distribute the frosting among the bottoms of half of the batch of cookies, then take the other half batch and sandwich the tops and bottoms together. For a more manageable dessert, divide the frosting among the tops of the entire batch of cookies and leave them open-faced.

Personally, I think that the chocolate/peanut butter concept (rather than apple pie, or what have you) is the most truly American of desserts, especially since we as a country/continent are primarily responsible for foisting both ingredients on the world. I feel like we should all sit down and write a strongly-worded letter to whomever is responsible for deciding these sorts of things and present them with a list of our reasonable and pressing demands, the one about our new national dessert being second after my recommendation that we change the official bird of the United States to the pterodactyl. Also, what the world needs now is moon bases. Several moon bases. Not just for you and me, but for everyone.

We decided to celebrate Bastille Day in decidedly bourgeois fashion this year by hosting a french brunch for dinner party, complete with vegan “french” toast, mimosas made with Italian “champagne”, and no small amount of “intellectual” pretension (although to be fair, no culottes were worn, no dissenters were imprisoned, and no cake was eaten). Much like it’s historical impetus, the party was a (state-)smashing success, and while the Fete Nationale won’t come around again for another year, you can celebrate this brunch any time.

Our main course for the evening was the aforementioned french toast with brandied pear compote and rustic potatoes with soy sausage and peppers on the side. The potatoes were very similar to those featured in an earlier recipe I posted here, so I won’t go into detail again, but I will say that baking them in the oven at 450 degrees for about a half hour before frying them is definitely a good idea. The recipes for the french toast (which appears in the second volume of “I Was A Teenage Vegan Cookbook”) and the compote (which I sort of made up on the fly) are as follows:

Ingredients:

• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 loaf of bread
• 1 cup soymilk
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• Vegetable oil
• 3 ripe pears
• 1/4 cup margarine
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 tbsp. brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ginger
• 2 tbsp. Grand Marnier

Equipment: Frying pans.

Music: The Books - Music For A French Elevator

Instructions:

1. Mash the bananas together with the soymilk and 2 tsp. of cinnamon and pour into a shallow bowl or pie plate.
2. Heat 2 or 3 tbsp. of vegetable oil on high until very hot (cooking in oil that isn’t hot enough will result in most of the batter sticking to the pan). Olive oil has too low a smoke point to use for high temperature frying, so try canola or safflower instead. Keep the bottle on hand and add more oil to the frying pan as needed.
3. Slice the bread and dip it into the batter, making sure to cover both sides completely. Drop the pieces into the frying pan and cook until the the edges on the bottom look crisp, then flip over and repeat for the other side. Remove finished pieces of toast from the pan and reserve on a baking sheet in the oven (set to 230 or so degrees) until all of the pieces are done.
4. In a separate pan, melt the margarine along with the maple syrup and brown sugar. Slice the pears (making sure to remove any stickers and seeds) and add them to the pan. Add the cinnamon and ginger, stir thoroughly, and cook until they soften. Add the Grand Marnier, reduce the heat, and simmer until ready to serve.

The French get sort of a bad rap these days (Freedom Fries, anyone?), and I guess the results of their revolution were ultimately pretty terrifying, but they definitely know how to party, by which I mean smoke cigarettes, wear berets, and suffer existential crises. . . . I think I can see where things may have gone awry. Remember, folks: A dinner party without dancing is a revolution not worth having.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I spent most of yesterday in patriotic fashion, lounging around at a barbecue, eating veggie burgers, drinking beer, throwing the old baseball around, and waiting for things to explode. Also, I made cupcakes:

The recipe for these is basically the same as the chocolate peanut butter layer cake one that I posted a couple of weeks ago with a few key differences, namely that they only have one layer and may require an adventurous midnight excursion to your local 24-hour grocery store to buy those elusive little foil cupcake cups. If you want to get all fancy-pantsy you can use a pastry bag to inject your cupcakes with frosting filling - all you have to do is poke a hole in the center of them with one of your fingers, stick the nozzle in there, and fill ‘er up. The previous cake recipe will make a batch of 24 cupcakes, but it can been easily halved, quartered, or otherwise altered to meet your own complex-fractional needs.