Dear Blog, I'm sorry

Dear Blog,

I am the worst. I have neglected you for so long. I wish I had a good excuse, but I don't. In the span of my absence I have moved into a new apartment, started a garden, and learned how to crochet and play the ukulele. I didn't blog about my awesome birthday or the awesome cake waffles I had for breakfast (you basically just cook cake in a waffle iron, it is in the best thing ever and I want to eat it every day). I didn't share my recent craft projects. I didn't even post pictures of my cousin's visit! I have fed you all these empty promises about being a better blogger, but this time I mean it. Please forgive me.

Yours forever,
Cait

The new apartment. Craft corner, living room, and dining area.

Pineapple plant, new bedroom, dress I finally finished sewing, first harvest from the garden, our favorite dinner as of late: lemon cream pasta with garlicy green beans, my sweet baby pineapple uke

Julian apple pie

This week we took a day trip up to Julian, CA. It's a small gold rush town about an hour away from San Diego but these days they're known more for their apples. Every place had signs for hot apple pie or cider, there had to have been at least 10 on the small main street. We had originally planned on taking home a pie from Julian Pie Co. but unfortunately they were all sold out by the time we got there! We decided instead to pick up a small bag of local apples and make a pie instead.

Apple Crumb Pie

adapted from this recipe

• crust for 9 in pie
• about 6 cups of apples, sliced
• 3/4 c white sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• good pinch of salt

for crumble

• 1/2 c white sugar
• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 1/2 c flour
• 4 tbs butter

1. Preheat the oven to 425 Fahrenheit 
2. In a big bowl, combine sliced apples, sugar, spices and salt. Mix until slices are thoroughly covered with cinnamon sugar. Set aside.
3. Combine white sugar, brown sugar, and flour in a bowl. Mix to combine, then cut in the butter and mix with your hands until butter is incorporated and mixture feels like damp sand.
4. Prepare the pie dish with crust. Fill with apple mixture, then top with crumble. 
5. Cover loosely with tin foil and bake at 425 for 20 minutes. Remove foil and decrease heat to 350 and bake an additional 35 minutes. Let cool thoroughly before slicing!

Recipe Review: dragon noodles

I wanted to share a great recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Budget Bytes. Budget Bytes not only has great recipes accompanied by step by step pictures, but also breaks down the estimated price for the recipe. It's great for cheap-os like me or anyone trying to budget. I've tried a few recipes, including the hummus pizza and the freezer-friendly black bean quesadillas, but nothing beats these noodles. I've made some changes to the recipe, but I've tried it strictly following the recipe and it was still really delicious.

dragon noodles

Adapted from Budget Bytes, original recipe here.

1 package lo mein noodles (sold in my local grocery store as "Chinese noodles")

2 tbsp brown sugar

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp siracha (we like it spicy, you can add less)

~1/2 tbsp peanut butter

1/2 tsp butter

2 eggs, beaten

red pepper flakes to taste

fresh cilantro 

1.Cook noodles according to package. Strain and set aside.

2. Prepare sauce by mixing together brown sugar, siracha, and peanut butter.

3. Heat butter in a saute pan and add eggs, gently move around until eggs are scrambled. 

4. Turn saute pan on low, add the cooked noodles and sauce and stir to incorporate everything. Let cook until the sauce is sufficiently absorbed, it shouldn't take more than a minute.

5. Divide into portions and add a nice amount of fresh cilantro on top and red pepper flakes according to how spicy you want it.

Notes: you can easily use spaghetti or linguini if you don't have lo mein noodles, but I would suggest to over cook them slightly, as lo mein noodles are softer than pasta. I've made it with spaghetti and it was still really good, but we prefer the lo mein.  This amount SHOULD feed 3-4, but honestly I normally use this for two really large portions because we're little piggies. The original recipe called for two tablespoons of butter, and while that sounds delicious, I just couldn't bear putting that much butter in  knowing that I'll be eating half of it. I think the addition of peanut butter makes up for the reduced amount of butter. It doesn't overwhelm the dish, it just adds a little bit of flavor. One thing you don't want to skimp on, though, is fresh cilantro, it really makes the dish! Throw in some tofu, shredded carrots, cabbage, or whatever else and you have a really easy pad thai type dish.

Work in progress

Lots of blogs do Working or Work In Progress (WIP) Wednesdays to show what they're up to. This is mine. A tray of birthday cake French macarons waiting to go into the oven.

Cake testing pt 1

I've been testing so many different cake recipes lately which means I've been eating cupcakes for lunch for the past week. I'm not complaining. I have certain requirements with the cake that I need to meet (mainly ingredient wise so I don't waste a lot of egg yolks from my macarons) and it's been proving difficult to make the perfect vanilla cake that meets what I need, but I feel like I'm getting close. No recipes yet, sorry! Just going to tease you with cupcake pictures. Yellow cake with fudge frosting is probably my favorite cupcake of all time. I'm normally not a chocolate person but I can't resist a good fudge frosting. One that's not too sweet and not too bitter. I've been testing frosting recipe after recipe to find the perfect and I currently have a pile of tupperware filled with different recipes to taste test. It's really rough having to do all of these taste testing, you guys. Just horrible.

Homemade sushi

I love sushi. A lot. But I'm vegetarian (no fish!) so sometimes it's hard finding sushi that I can eat. I also hate cucumber, so basically this limits me to getting avocado and some rice if I go to a sushi place. There are a few places in San Diego that do vegan sushi but it's expensive. Making sushi at home is actually really easy and really cheap. I think everything combined cost 10 bucks and that includes all the leftover inarizushi (pocket rice sushi) that provided two extra lunches the next day. I did a bunch of googling to get ideas on what to put inside the sushi but honestly nothing anyone suggested sounded very good. I like the unhealthy kind of sushi with fried stuff and sauces, so here's a quick list of ideas:

Cucumber, carrot, avocado
Jalapeno, cream cheese
Fried tofu sticks, carrot, cucumber, lettuce (or bean sprouts)
Soy ham, pineapple, French's fried onions, teriyaki sauce, spicy mayo (our favorite from Sipz in San Diego)
Sweet potato tempura, teriyaki sauce (one of my favorites)

Basically just throw whatever you think would taste good together and give it a whirl.  Other veggies include: bell peppers, raw zucchini, sauteed/marinated mushrooms, raw butternut squash, green onions/chives, daikon   radish, asparagus, alfalfa sprouts, sun dried tomatoes, lettuce, steamed green beans. Also try fried egg strips, fake meat strips, goat cheese, or cream cheese. Top with panko, sesame seeds, teriyaki sauce, avocado, or spicy mayo. Making spicy mayo is as easy as combining mayo and siracha. Here's a YouTube playlist I put together to see how sushi is put together. It's pretty easy! It's easier to make sushi with the rice on the inside but I don't think it looks as pretty. I don't have a bamboo mat so I put these together with a clean kitchen towel and some cling wrap, no fancy equipment necessary!



You'll notice I haven't mentioned how to make rice. That's because it's kind of a lengthy and difficult process to make it correctly and I'm just too lazy for that. Realistically, you only need to worry about making sure you're using Japanese short grain rice so it's sticky. I just cook it how I normally cook rice and add some rice vinegar to it and break it up with a paddle. It's not the correct way but it works for me. It's actually really fun to make sushi at home so I hope you give it a shot!

Vegan chocolate chocolate chip cookies

Vegan Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

makes 2 dozen 

original non-vegan recipe available here

• 1/2 c Earth Balance
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1 egg replacer (I use Ener-G)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 c flour
• 1/3 c cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 c vegan white chocolate chips (semi-sweet will also work!)

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Cream together Earth Balance and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Prepare egg replacer according to package (For Ener-G it is 1 1/2 tsp powder with 2 tbs warm water) and add to creamed mixture along with vanilla.
4. Sift together the try ingredients. You MUST sift cocoa powder! It's bad news otherwise, so don't be lazy! Add to wet ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
5. Scoop by heaping teapsoons onto an ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool before removing from pan.

 These are really good. Like, really really good. We bought white chocolate chips from Food Fight over the weekend and I have been waiting to make them. It definitely did not disappoint. This recipe is a half batch of the original recipe, but you might want to double it to make the full 4 dozen. They're that yummy.

Cherry vanilla cupcakes

It has been a little bit since I've updated so to make up for it, here's a recipe for cherry vanilla frosting. I made these a few weeks ago with a vegan vanilla cake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but they would taste delicious with my chocolate Wowie cake recipe. I got this recipe from my cousin and used Earth Balance to make it vegan. Earth Balance costs a pretty penny (about$5-$6 a pound), but the Blue Bonnet Light margarine is actually vegan and only costs about $0.75.

Cherry Vanilla Frosting

• 1 stick butter, softened (or 1/2 stick Earth Balance and 1/4 c shortening to make it vegan, it will be too salty if you use all Earth Balance! Trust me on this one!)
• 1 lb powdered sugar

• 1 tsp vanilla

• 1/2 tsp almond extract

• maraschino cherry juice

• optional garnishes: toasted almond slivers, sprinkles, cherries (make sure to let them drain on a paper towel to remove the liquid or else you'll get soggy frosting pools on the cupcake)

1.  Cream together softened butter (or Earth Balance shortening mix) and powdered sugar, adding sugar one cup at a time, until smooth.
2. Add vanilla and almond flavorings until incorporated. 
3. Add maraschino cherry juice by tablespoon until mixture is light and fluffy.
4. Frost and enjoy!

 

My weekend in pictures

 My weekends are Sunday/Monday and I always look forward to it every week. Since my boyfriend works nights, the weekend is really the only time we can go out without having to go to a late movie, pizza place, or a bar. This weekend we took full advantage of the nice weather in Portland and went to a farmer's market on Sunday and picked up delicious vegan truffles from Missionary Chocolates, as well as some apple cider, salsa, and a little pepper plant. There is a cute fabric shop right down the street from the market so we stopped in there and I picked up some fabric that I'm excited to use. On Monday we decided to have a little picnic in Peninsula Park where they have a large formal rose garden. We brought vegan BBQ from Homegrown Smoker and some coconut battered deep fried Oreos that were crazy good. The "pulled pork" is actually soy curls, and I don't know what they use to make their mac and "cheese", but my recipe is cashew based, so I'm guessing theirs is as well. I know it seems sacrilegious to make BBQ and mac and cheese vegan, but it's actually really yummy.
Now the weekend is over and it's back to doing schoolwork and housework until the next weekend is here.
For more pictures, check out my Flickr page.

Vegan French toast

Seriously! French toast without any eggs. And guess what? It tastes good! Soooo good.

Vegan French toast

adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance

- 1 cup non-dairy milk 

- 1/4 cup chickpea flour

- 2 tbs corn starch 

- 1/2 tsp vanilla

- 4-5 slices of French bread

1. Combine the milk, chickpea flour, corn starch, and vanilla and wisk until dissolved. Pour into shallow pan with slices of bread to allow it to soak for a few minutes.

2. Heat a large pan on medium and spray with cooking spray. Cook on each side for about minutes, until it looks nicely browned. 

If making a lot of French toast, you can heat the oven to 200 degrees and put the finished slices in there to keep warm. Serve with butter, powdered sugar, maple syrup and/or fresh berries. It's delicious!

 

Vegan molasses cookies

I had originally wanted to make hermits, but didn't have any egg replacers and the only eggless recipe I found was one that had coffee in it, which I hate. I did some googling and found this recipe. It says it's supposed to be a snickerdoodle recipe, but it tastes nothing like snickerdoodles and more like molasses (I used blackstrap, so that probably had something to do with it). They turned out pretty good, I just baked them and have already "quality checked" 3 cookies.

Molasses Vanilla Bean Snickerdoodle 
from vegweb.com

    Topping:
    1/3 cup sugar
    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

    Cookies:
    1 2/3 cups +1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    1 cup sugar or vanilla sugar
    1/2 cup canola oil
    1/4 cup molasses
    3 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon nondairy milk
    1/2 vanilla bean pod, seeds scraped or 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. On a large plate, preferably with high sides or a rim around the edges, mix the topping together (sugar and cinnamon) and set aside.

2. In a medium to large bowl, combine all the flour, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to get everything incorporated nicely. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and oil until thoroughly mixed.

3. Stir in molasses, vanilla bean seeds or vanilla extract and nondairy milk. Mix these ingredients together, then slowly sift in the dry ingredients. Use your hands to get a dough to form. Avoid overworking the dough.

4. Take small portions of the dough and roll into walnut sized balls. You can make them bigger, if you so choose, but this size usually yields about 20 cookies. Gently press cookie between your palms and fingers to form little disks/patties.  Carefully pat cookie disks into cinnamon sugar topping mix.

5. Place on prepared cookie sheets, sugar side up and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges turn a faint golden brown. For a softer cookie with a chewy edge, bake for about 10 minutes. Allow a few minutes for cookies to cool before removing from sheet pan, then transfer to wire cooling rack and allow to completely cool.

Wowie cake!

Wowie cake is a family favorite. The recipe dates back to the Depression, and is super easy to make and is vegan friendly! I haven't been grocery shopping in almost two weeks, so my kitchen cabinets and fridge are pretty bare but I've been jonsing for something sweet so I whipped this up with just a few kitchen staples.

Wowie cake

1 1/2 c flour

1 c sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c cocoa 

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbs vinegar

1 c cold water

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 c oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients. Make sure you sift the cocoa! Normally I don't bother sifting, but after baking professionally and completely ruining a 10 pound batch of chocolate cookies because I didn't sift the cocoa, I will never make that mistake again! Add the wet ingredients and pour into an 8" square pan. 

Bake for 35 min.

Either insert a toothpick to see if it comes out clean, or poke the middle of the cake. If it's spongy and pops back up after you poked it, you're good to go!

p.s. The cake batter tastes pretty good, too, and because it contains no raw eggs, it's totally safe to lick your spoons.

If you try this recipe, please let me know! It can be used when you're low on supplies, but it's good enough that it could easily become your go-to chocolate cake recipe. You can frost it with buttercream, or do a simple chocolate glaze over top. Another family favorite is to make these into cupcakes, and drop a mixture of cream cheese, an egg, sugar, and chocolate chips into the center before baking and frost with a chocolate glaze. mmmm...

nom

strawberry cake with vanilla frosting

Just a quick post in between my classes. I really really really do not want to have to go to my physics lab tonight. I thought maybe eating some cupcakes would help motivate me, but now I only want to curl up in bed and take a nap. Three more hours and I can nap and eat all the cupcakes I want!

Last Minute Christmas: Holiday Treats

grapefruit marmalade and blueberry lime jam, blogged by me here

lemon coconut bread from Baked Bree

Are you a little short on funds and time this year and still need Christmas presents? Bake up some treats for the people you love! Just take a little extra time to package them up carefully and they'll look sophisticated and make lovely gifts. I've compiled a few recipes that will look elegant when simply wrapped up with a bow or placed in a tin, and arranged them according to skill level/time. After they taste the treats, people are sure to ask for the recipe, so write it down on a index card and hole punch the corner so you can thread your ribbon through it before you tie it onto your gift.
These are just suggestions some to get you thinking. I like to try find recipes that use interesting combinations of flavors and are something that the recipient might not have tried before, but you could use old family favorites or whatever you like. Don't feel confined to cookies... quick bread or yeast breads, jams and jellies, pickled items, and candies are all surprisingly easy to make and would make wonderful gifts. All of these recipes can be made at least a week ahead.
Stay tuned for the next Last Minute Christmas post with gift and crafting tutorials.

Christmas time!

All you need are candy canes, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, pom poms, and a hot glue gun.

All last night I had dreams about making Christmas decorations with Martha Stewart. It was the best dream ever. I've already made some candy cane reindeer over the weekend. They're so easy and great to stick on the tree, give away to people you know but don't know enough to give them anything for Christmas, and tie on to Christmas presents. I'm currently working on making some stockings today. I was trying to wrap up some Christmas presents yesterday and realized I didn't have any wrapping paper or paper bags, so I thought the only logical thing to do was to make everyone a stocking to put their presents in instead. This makes total sense, right? It's slow going for the first one because I'm still trying to figure out exactly how one goes about making a stocking, but hopefully the next two are faster.

 These mini wallets are also great for small Christmas gifts. You can put all of your gift cards in them so you have them in your purse but they aren't crowding your wallet. How many times have you forgotten your gift card at the house when you were at the store? I do that all the time. I always forget I have gift cards. I will be making a tutorial on how to make these wallets in the next few days, and will make a big post for a bunch of last minute Christmas crafting ideas.

Left to right: homemade marshmallows, caramel corn, almond toffee, chocolate and French sea salt caramels

The post will also contain links to recipes. Having such a big family, I used to just make them cookies or candies for Christmas and put them in nice tins. You can find tins just about everywhere, and they normally don't cost more than two bucks. You could also try your luck at a thrift shop and see if you can find any nice vintage tins. The tins look like a lot of work, but they're great if you have tons of people to give gifts to and not a whole lot of money. Just make a few batches of different candies or cookies and distribute them throughout all the tins. They'll think they're getting spoiled with all the different goodies. Christmas is coming up fast, and if you're like me you've left everything to the last minute. Hopefully my next post will help out just in time.

grapefruit marmalade

I went on a canning spree yesterday. I made four pounds of grapefruit marmalade, two pounds of blueberry lime jam, and one pint jar of earl grey infused figs to send to my cousin. I'll update about the blueberry jam later (it was DELICIOUS!), but right now here's the grapefruit marmalade recipe. I followed the recipe from Preserves by Catherine Atkinson, but below is what I changed and did differently.

grapefruit marmalade

2 lbs red grapefruit
1 lemon
5 cups of water
6 1/2 cups sugar
granulated pectin (the recipe doesn't call for it, but my marmalade was liquid

1. Remove grapefruit and lemon peels with a vegetable peeler and set aside. Juice both grapefruits and lemon into a large pan.
2. Cut up citrus peels into thin strips or however desired and add to pan with juice.
3. Add water and allow juice, peels, and water to simmer until the peels are very tender, about two hours.
4. Add sugar (and I added 3/4 of a packet of pectin) and bring to a hard boil for 10 minutes.
5. Turn off the heat and skim off the foam. Pour into pre-sterilized warm jars. Be careful.. it is REALLY hot!
6. Lid and process jars (if desired)

To process jars, bring a large pot of water (enough for 2" above the can) to boil and using a special jar lifter lower your cans into the water. The screw top should be tight, but fully tightened. The glass will expand during heating and may crack if the screw top is too tight. Process the jars for 5 minutes, then use the jar lifter to remove them and set them on towels and leave them alone for 12-24 hours. Any unsealed jars can be put in the fridge.

Hello, Pickle

Also... I made pickles!!

APPARENTLY, you're SUPPOSED to harvest cucumbers with the spines still on them. I didn't know this and I was waiting for all of them to fall off. They were starting to turn yellow so I googled it and it meant that they were over ripe! They taste fine and aren't soft, but the seeds in some of them had started to harden so I had to pick all of them out. I don't like cucumbers, and I absolutely hate pickles, so I don't know what I'm going with 3 half pint jars of them.

peaches come in a can, they were put there by a man

Well, not these peaches!!
I am so happy about how this pie turned out. Normally my pies look ugly, with a mashed crust that's too dark, and the inside is mushy and bubbles out all over the place. I've just never been able to make an all around GOOD pie before, so I was nervous when I first attempted this peach pie.
You see, my dad LOVES peaches, and he especially loves peach pie. Originally I was going to use canned peaches, but I figured I'd go all out and buy fresh ones, despite the extra effort and money.



Look at that baby. Delectable!

I used..

5 cups of peaches, peeled and sliced
lemon juice to squeeze over the peaches while preparing the pie shell
1/2 cup flour
1 cup white sugar
some cinnamon and nutmeg. I didn't really measure it.
a dash of salt (sorry! I don't measure unless it's something that's going to affect the baking)
butter to dot the top
1 egg, beaten, for an egg wash.


I preheated the oven to 450 and combined the flour, sugar, spices and salt and mixed, then poured it over the peaches to cover them. It got pretty gloppy, so I may have had too much dry ingredients.
I used a 9" pie pan (from Pioneer Pies, a favorite restaurant from Oklahoma) and poked holes in the bottom crust, plopped the filling in and put small pieces of butter on top before putting on the lattice top. I then rolled the excess dough from the bottom up over the edges of the lattice and crimped. It worked pretty well! I put an egg wash over every exposed piece of pie crust and stuck it in the oven for 10 minutes, then turned it down to 350 to bake another 30 minutes.

My only problem with this is that there was too much liquid. I think this may have been because of the extra dry ingredients the subsequent glopiness of the filling before baking. I would try to decrease that next time I bake this. Other than that it tasted really good! It didn't have that thick syrupy filling that grocery store peach pies have. It wasn't overly sweet, and the cinnamon and nutmeg really gave it a good flavor. This pie was definitely worth the effort, the title of this post, however, was not, as I now have that Presidents of the United States of America song Peaches stuck in my head.