Vegan Chocolate Cake

Half way to work this gloomy, rainy Monday morning, my phone beeped to show I had a work email. Since I was stuck in standstill traffic, I checked to see what the header of the message was. To my dismay, it was an announcement that a co-worker whom I was joking with on the previous Friday, passed away that Saturday. Not the news I wanted to hear on a cloudy rainy Monday morning.  The rest of the day became a blur. I KNEW that I had to bake something to cheer myself up.

Tomorrow is my monthly Mommy Pokeno game night and I have to provide dessert. I asked couple of co-workers for some quick ideas which they provided, however, I ended up going with something vegan because we have two vegetarians in our group and didn't want to have to provide two separate options.

Who doesn't love chocolate right?

Ok, DS can do without it but that doesn't mean he doesn't like it.

 

Anyhow! The real test was if  DH would figure out that it was vegan. When he asked what I was making, I said chocolate cake.

 

Process is simple enough: Flour, sugar, cocoa, oil, water, vanilla, baking soda etc. What surprised me was no baking powder BUT you add balsamic vinegar. WHAT? VINEGAR in cake? OH YES. Apparently, balsamic vinegar goes really well with chocolate.

 

Wet and dry ingredients ready for mixing. No machine needed

Took two minutes

 

The recipe said to bake for 45mins at 350 degrees. It took longer to bake and I had to turn the oven down to prevent burning. I made one with vegan cocoa chips and the other without (mainly because I forgot while mixing the first batch). I could  have doubled the recipe, but that didn't work well for me the first time I tried with a new recipe.

 

With cocoa chips

One on the left without

While they were cooling, I made the icing. Also vegan.

 

Side note on the icing. I felt so silly at the store. I starred at the cake section for a while looking for traditional icing containers to no avail. The kind lady that came to help pointed them out to me and I stated "no, that's cake mix". Duhhh, reading is fundamental. My excuse, I had a bad day. She then went into telling me about how she doesn't like the smell of real butter. They just happened to have the vegan butter out with some fresh bread for tasting. I was sold at first tasting.

 

 

After I made the icing, DH walks in to "taste". Talked about how good it was and wanted to do a tasting with cake. He still didn't know it was vegan.

 

Outside is a bit crispy but inside is super moist. DH liked it and stated that the cake would have gone really well with whipped cream. I then kindly told him that it wouldn't since I needed it to be vegan.  Ah ah, was his reply and finished with, well it's still good.

 

SCORE!!! Now hopefully everyone else at Pokeno likes it.

Bok Choy Coucous and Tarragon Chicken

This was a quick meal that took less than an hour to put together.  I seasoned the chicken with tarragon and Adobo (found in the international food section).  As the chicken cooked, I basked it with the drippings.  I had a head of Bok Choy and decided to sauté it and add couscous for the starch.  Came out awesome. I didn't use any recipe guide, just had those items on hand and went for it.

 

Strawberry Scones

Tonight I decided to use some of the many strawberries we purchased on sale.  I wanted scones for breakfast, so adding strawberries was only natural.

I love the simplicity of this recipe and how quick it was for me to make, however, I hated the wetness of it.  I'm not sure if I over mixed it or not but it looks really good.  It only called for three tablespoon of sugar, I thought that was good because it will offset the sugar from the strawberries.  What I forgot was, the strawberries are not that sweet. SO the scones have a bit of a tart taste to them.

Hubby and his ever funny comments, walked into the kitchen and said "my those are some big scones, I'm sure the green giant will be happy if he was here. Oh Oh Oh, she hooked me up!" LOL! Got to love him.

They do look big huh?

What I didn't tell him was that I had already cut them, but was still baking in a circle.

SOOOO good!

I'm back and eating pizzas!!!!!

I feel like it’s being an eternity since I’ve been on here.  Life has gotten busy, and I have slacked off a bit on the baking, but I hope to pick it up again soon.  I started baking not only because of some dream of making the perfect bread, but also for health and economical reasons.  My family has a better selection for breakfast and it saves us money.

In the process, we’ve designated Fridays as “pizza night”.  This past Friday was really busy and with two very tired kids, I opted out of making pizzas.  We decided to do it on Sunday instead. 

What a great dinner that was, it gave me time to search the web for easy yeast recipe and I didn’t feel rushed to make it and have the kids in bed at a reasonable time.

I decided to use the recipe that comes on the back of the Fleishmann’s pizza dough yeast packet.

 

Ann Kroeger’s recipe was great! I did one cup wheat/white, the mixture was easy to make by hand and the dough was nice and fluffy.  I set the oven at 375 and cooked for 10-15 mins.  I think next time; I’ll set the oven at a higher temp and cook for the same amount of time.  It wasn’t brown enough to hubby’s liking, and I ha v e to agree that it could have gone a little longer/higher.

 

 

The last time I used the packet instruction, it had a bland taste. I was wondering why until I realized that I forgot to add salt to the mixture.  I’m not sure if that’s a rookie mistake or if I was just rushing.  This time around, I decided to make a basil crust, I added maybe two tablespoon of dried basil to the mix AND I did not forget to add the salt.

The result was great, the crust was nice and soft the basil g  e it extra flavor. I wonder how it will work if I used fresh basil?  Again, I should have left this to cook a while longer, but the cheese was bubbling so much, I thought it would burn.

 Yummmmm

Oh and both make great leftovers. Since both didn’t cook till super brown, warming them up in the oven provides another day’s dinner. Add salad and viola!!