I Was A Teenage Vegan CookBlog

I swear that if this blog was actually my baby (and not in some cliched metaphorical sense) I would have long since been tried for criminal neglect. I mean, it hasn’t yet contracted sudden infant death syndrome or anything, but I do keep leaving it locked up here in the backseat unattended while I run off to finish some last-minute errands. Maybe if I had me a husband to look after things while I was gone. . . this is what it looks like when blogs grow up in broken homes.

My most recent excuse is that I spent most of the past few weeks in such far-flung, exotic locals as France, Switzerland, Italy, and New Jersey, and was for the most part bereft of both cooking implements and the internet. Touring Europe was a pretty good time, aside from the fact that all of the people there speak some crazy moon language, and that depending on how much of a tourist you are a cup of coffee costs between a dollar-fifty and $12. Also, I think I might have started suffering from peanut butter withdrawal, so this week’s recipe should definitely be good for what ails me. Based loosely on a brownie recipe I got from one of the classes I taught with homefries, these have been hailed by all who have tasted them as not only the best brownies, but in fact the best things ever. Having recently surveyed the entire history of Western civilization in ruin form I would be tempted to agree. But don’t take my word for it. . .

Ingredients:

• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup corn (or brown rice, agave, etc.) syrup
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup cocoa
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter

Equipment: Mixing bowl, cake pan, electric mixer, sauce pan, oven, refrigerator.

Music: Belly Boat - Dear Robert Hanoy

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly oil a rectangular cake pan.
2. In a mixing bowl or measuring cup, combine the oil, syrups, soy milk, and vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the salt, flour, cocoa, sugar, and baking powder. Add in the liquid ingredients and mix until combined, then fold in one cup of chocolate chips.
4. Pour the batter into the cake pan, spreading it evenly, and bake for 22 minutes.
5. While the brownies are baking, combine 1/4 cup soymilk and margarine in a small mixing bowl and blend. Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, then add peanut butter and mix until fluffy. Set aside.
6. Remove the brownies from the oven and set them aside to cool, using the refrigerator or freezer to accelerate the process if desired.
7. In a saucepan, heat 1/2 cup soymilk until it starts to bubble. Remove the pan from heat, add the remaining cup of chocolate chips and whisk together until the chocolate is fully melted and combined. Set aside to cool slightly.
8. Spread the peanut butter frosting evenly across the top of the brownies. Drizzle the melted chocolate on top of the frosting, spreading it with a knife or spatula to form an even coat.
9. Put the brownies in the refrigerator to cool until the chocolate frosting has set. Slice into squares and serve.

On an unrelated note: for those among my readers who live in the Jamaica Plain area, do I have a treat for you! I was just down in your neighborhood yesterday, dropping off some zines for the paper trail distro and putting in a couple of hours with homefries, who has started whipping up some delicious vegan desserts for Fiore’s bakery on South Street. I made a batch of vegan tiramisu for the occasion (astute readers will recognize it from the first volume of i was a teenage vegan cookbook), which, while I wasn’t able to stick around and try it out myself, no doubt turned out deliciously. If you’re in the area and in the mood for tiramisu, flan, fruit pie, cupcakes, or whatever else h.f. has cooked up, stop on by and support the slowly encroaching veganization of your local businesses.

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.

 

I have somehow accumulated, mostly through maternal and paternal munificience, a slew of peridodical subsriptions to such publications of worth and reknown as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Wilson Quarterly. While all of these are the definite article (except you, “The” National Geographic. For shame), The Week is the only one that not only lives up to its name, but also includes an entire page devoted to frequently delicious-looking and occasionally vegetarian recipes. This past week they featured a recipe for cake from none other than my newly (and thankfully) departed home, Maryland. Feeling a twinge of something entirely unlike nostalgia, I decided to tackle this eight-layered behemoth. Then I read the ingredients list again and realized that it not only called for “evaporated milk” (whatever that is), but also, instead of actually being a recipe from scratch, instructed you to purchase one package of yellow cake (!) mix “preferably Duncan Hines”. Then I remembered how much I disliked living in Maryland and decided to make an almost entirely different and improvisatory cake recipe altogether. This is madness? This is Cake Town.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cups cocoa
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. baking pwdr
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 1/4 cups soy milk
• 1/2 cup veg. oil
• 18 tbsp. corn syrup
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 10 tbsp. margarine
• 3 cups pwdrd sugar
• 1/2 cup pnt butter
• 6 oz. choc. chips
• 8 oz choc. bar

Equipment: Oven, Mixing bowls, 3 (or more) cake pans, egg beater, whisk, saucepan, rubber spatula, refrigerator, cake plate.

Music: Smart Went Crazy - Con Art

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly oil and flour cake pans and set aside.
2. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk together.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together 2 cups of soy milk, the oil, 1 cup (16 tbsp.) corn syrup, sugar, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth.
4. Pour the mixture evenly into your cake pans and bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on how many pans you’re using, what size they are, how much of a rush you’re in, and how much time elapses before you remember to set the timer) until the cake is firm, it has begun to pull away from the sides of the pan slightly, and a (steak) knife driven into its heart comes out clean accompanied by the shrieking sound of the demise of its damned, immortal soul. Set cakes aside to cool.
5. Divide chocolate/candy bars in half. Chop one half into fine crumbs and the other into medium-sized chunks (or shavings if you have a box grater and want to get all fancy). Store these in the fridge for now.
6. In a small mixing bowl, beat 1/2 cup margarine, the powdered sugar, and 1/4 cup soymilk until smooth, then mix in peanut butter to taste.
7. When the cakes are fully cooled, remove the first one from a pan (a good way to do this is to put one hand palm down on top of the cake and turn the entire pan upside down so that the cake is resting on your hand, remove the pan (gently prying at it with a knife if you need to), then putting a plate on the bottom of the cake and flipping it back over onto the table). Spread the top of it liberally with peanut butter frosting all the way out to the edges. Sprinkle the frosting with the finely chopped chocolate bar bits.
8. Repeat step 7 (minus the whole cake flipping bit) with the remaining layers, including the top one.
9. When all of the layers are assembled, melt the chocolate chips in a saucepan or microwave and stir in 2 tbsp. margarine and corn syrup while still hot. Quickly pour the mixture on top of the cake and use a rubber spatula to smooth it out and work it down the sides.
10. Cover the top of the cake with the coarsely chopped chocolate pieces.
11. Refrigerate 2-3 hours before serving, or until you just can’t wait any longer.

Everyone was pretty amazed by how well this cake turned out, which is good because it keeps the illusion of my kitchen wizardry alive through a relatively small amount of effort. A large part of the actual credit goes to peanut butter and chocolate, which were welcome accomplices as always. I guess I should thank Maryland for giving me something fairly distasteful (in a suburban americana sort of way) as inspiration for my little culinary insurrection. Granted, my cake doesn’t have eight layers, folds, or divine wu-tang sword techniques, but three is a perfectly respectable number, downright Christian, if you will, and that I’m sure should make our feisty neighbors to the South just as pleased as punch.