I hereby welcome a blogger of awesomepants proportions to my domain: kumquat.

We’ve known each other for about a thousand years, starting back in the WBS days. She’s a relatively new aspiring-to-be-vegan (edit: she pwned me in the comments, haha!) and really excited about vegan cooking. I’m really excited about her going vegan, she was one of the few people that I thought that there wouldn’t be a virgin’s chance in Hollywood of even going vegetarian. Welcome to the awesome side.

Side note: VeganPr0n was created with the intent of hosting multiple vegan food porn blogs, so if you want one, bug me and I’ll hook a brotha up.

Comfort food at its finest.

Even though Spring is just settling in, I decided to make this oft-fapped over Autumn recipe out of Veganomicon. Believe the hype.

It’s surprisingly simple to make, and while there are different sections to make (the ricotta, pasta, caramelizing onions, toasting breadcrumbs), it’s all timed well that while one thing is cooking, you’re preparing the next - everything gets done at once, ready to be put in the oven.

The ricotta in this recipe is a super creamy cashew ricotta. At it’s core, it’s very similar to the crumbly Tofu-Basil Ricotta out of Vegan With a Vengeance (see the Garlic Green Goddess Pizza posts), but blended with raw cashews and no nooch. It almost turns it into a whipped cream cheese type of ingredient - which by the way, this may be replacing the Tofutti Cream Cheese on my bagels (but not in my cheesecakes), it’s certainly more healthy and better tasting. Also, I think it will be replacing the ricotta on future pizzas. I am a convert.

You combine the ricotta with pureed pumpkin, a few other ingredients, caramelized onions, and the pasta, then bake with the sage breadcrumbs on top. I didn’t heed instruction and make the breadcrumbs myself, but in the future I will be sure to do so.

I took a container of the ziti (okay, so I really used penne) with a side salad to work today and I can vouch for the reheatability. Yum.

I made these in honor of my boss’ last day at work, they were great and disappeared in under 15 minutes which disappointed a lot of my coworkers that didn’t get one.

Get your root beer extract online if you’re going to make these. I went to all kinds of stores to try to find it - Whole Foods, Bristol Farms, Trader Joe’s, various health food stores, Cost Plus World Market, even crafty stores that sell cake decorating shit, grocery stores… nothing. Finally, I gave up and bought a bottle of the Torani Classic Root Beer flavored syrup and decided to cut back on the sugar in the cake a little and dump in a few tablespoons of that. It turned out just fine, but I think that if I use it again (it is a big bottle), that I’ll put in more.

I was scared that I had burned the chocolate ganache in the microwave, but I think it was just the taste of the 70% cocoa Green & Black’s bar (which, by the way, are no longer vegan as of last week or so - what the fuck?) Good thing I had bought these beforehand. I think next time I’ll end up with a lower percentage dark chocolate. It set up really nicely and worked well with the sweetness of the buttercream on top, though.

The buttercream is a little different from what I normally work with as the fat content is completely vegetable shortening, rather than half shortening and half soy margarine. It’s a stiffer, more “professional” type buttercream and it’s really gorgeous.  I don’t know if I really prefer one over the other, but it’s a neat contrast.

Pretty simple stuff, the fries and the BBQ sauce are from Vegan With A Vengeance. I just baked the tempeh in the sauce for probably 30 minutes at 350. It was very slightly crunchy when we started eating it, so steaming it a little beforehand would have been a good idea. It was a lot more moist the next day, but I should have gone with the tried and true tofu instead.

I’ve been really lazy about a) cooking and b) porning about it. My pants size reflects this, boo. Also, when I have been cooking, it’s been all in the dessert kingdom. My pants size reflects this, too.

This is the Chai Cheesecake from My Sweet Vegan, with Macadamia Creme from Vegan with a Vengeance on top. I’ve made this cheesecake probably three times since I first tried the recipe, and it’s super simple and extremely satisfying. Just remember that you have to let it sit in the fridge overnight to really let the flavor develop, because it’s worth it. My suggestion is to use the crust recipe from The Uncheese Cookbook, because I didn’t really like the flavor that brown rice syrup brought to the table in the original recipe. (It gave it sort of a burnt flavor, but I’m the only person that noticed it. You’ll probably like it.)

So, I decided that I was going to alter the recipe and make Maccha Cheesecake. I’ll post the recipe here once I’m completely satisfied with it, which should be soon. Gimmie comment feedback, it’ll make me post it that much quicker.

Yum.

Since Carnival is in full swing (so I hear, it’s not like inland Southern California is Mardi Gras central), I thought I’d do a few days of vegan pseudo (and not so pseudo) New Orleans food. I’m sure Guy is rolling his eyes right out of his head at the thought.

Instead of using Joanna’s spice blend, I just used the salt-free variety of Tony Charchere’s (oh ho, I’m such a fucking local now), and tried the vacuum-sealed ‘high protein’ (?) super-extra-firm tofu from Trader Joe’s. I should have probably used my usual organic water packed extra-firm, because this kind is almost rubbery, so it’s probably not ideal for broiling. Other than that, I love that it’s practically a shake-and-bake sort of process. No batter fingers here, thank you very much. I put some Red Rooster on top because it’s a little on the dry side.

The collards are really, really good. (Thanks, kittee!) Of course, being a born and raised Malibu Stacey, I’ve never had them before. These are really smoky and full of flavor, pretty much exactly what I expected. And they’re not full of grease, like I imagine the original recipe to be. And it’s so easy, even dazee can make it.

Unfortunately, I took a nap when I got home from work, so it’s now too late tonight for me to get working on the king cakes. Hell, I wasn’t even going to make this, but when I woke up I turned the tv on and Emeril was on (ugh), doing a NOLA theme show and talking about how the food isn’t pretty but it’s damn tasty. I saw that as somewhat of a sign and got off my ass.

Lachesis, a PPK idol, has invented quite a few famous veganville recipes, including the Seitan O’Greatness (which I have yet to attempt.) When she gets her cookbook out, I think she’ll get a million pre-orders from her legion of seitan fans.

She posted food porn on the PPK with this recipe (I omitted the marinated mushrooms and the peas, mostly because I felt lazy tonight), and the whole world persuaded to share the details. The whole world is pleased that she did. It’s easier to make than the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe, which was my mainstay until tonight. However, unlike Isa’s recipe, it’s chock full of soy and there’s not a particle of nooch in sight. When I blended up everything, I opened the blender and smelled… garlic alfredo HOLYCRAPWHAAAT?! As a vegan, when you make ‘cheese’ type dishes, you get a certain tolerance for things not exactly 1000% smelling or tasting like the original version. Cheesecake is the one, rare, exception simply because vegan cheesecake is pretty much impossible not to make to perfection.

If it smells like alfredo, does it taste like alfredo?

You bet your ass.

For future reference, I think I’d at least halve the amount of margarine in the recipe, and maybe add some roasted garlic before pureeing.  This would be great on a white pizza. Mmm.. it is really so very good. I’d feed this to omnis without a second thought.

Beer Battered Chicken-style Seitan & Mushroom Gravy, Steamed Asparagus

Coconut Chocolate Pudding

Yellow Rose Recipes came in the mail the day before yesterday and I wasted no time in making a batch of chicken-style seitan cutlets. My main gripe with seitan recipes is that the vast majority of them are beef-style.  I’ve said it a thousand times, but I hated red meat even as an omni, so beef-style seitan really doesn’t appeal to me. Hail to Joanna for making an amazing, awesome recipe. If I had kneaded the dough by hand and maybe a bit longer (Kitchen Aid mixer dough hook FTW), chances are I could have produced super firm cutlets that would be omni-friendly as a chicken patty sammich. These are so, so, so, so good.

I’m not real great with breading and frying things yet, but I think I did pretty well with these. The tricky part is in the second frying - the beer batter really doesn’t want to stay put. I think in the future, I’ll try dusting the seitan with cornstarch before battering. The mushroom gravy is pretty good, but I think next time I’ll want to try the Vegan with a Vengeance Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy since it’s a little more suited to my personal tastes. I even remembered to steam up a vegetable, I’m a good kid.

For dessert, I whipped up the Coconut Chocolate variant of the Chocolate Pudding recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance. I’ve been experimenting with pudding recipes lately, and while I do like how this one came out, it’s very ‘homemade’ tasting. If you want something that’s ‘pudding cup’ish, go with the recipe from the Sarah Kramer books that’s basically silken tofu and friends in a blender. I do notice that all of these recipes are all chocolate flavored, and I’m wondering how to go vanilla with it. Extract would be too alcohol-y to try to use a lot, so I’m thinking instead of cocoa powder in these recipes, to maybe use vanilla soy milk powder. Go with vanilla flavor (glycerin based) instead of extract? Hmm… I’ll have to experiment.

My Sweet Vegan just came in the mail today (dude, Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe ships their stuff out lightning fast, also buy your vegan cookbooks from vegan stores and not Amazon, ok?), and my fat pants are stretching themselves out in excitement. There’s two things that you’ll probably hear about this book (kind of like how the only thing people know about Asia Carrera is that she’s in MENSA - she’s a retired porn star, her website is obviously NSFW) in the hype and that’s that the author is very young and that she figured out how to make vegan meringue. Hannah also runs Bittersweet, which pretty much every vegan faps over anyway.

The moment I opened the book, I found a bunch of things to be excited about, and with no surprise pretty much all of the cupcakes are making me want to eat them. Go figure. One trick pony-ville over here.

Here’s a short list so far of what’s caught my eye:

Strawberry Love Muffins
Cheesecake Thumbprint Cookies
Maple Pistachio Cremes
Pfeffernusse (they look like the Russian Teacakes my mom loves during Christmas)
Strawberry Spirals
Bananas Foster Cake (though the person I had thought about making it for showed exactly no interest in it when I showed him the picture. So, I think he’s going to get a big “Fuck You” instead of a lovely cake.)
Chai Cheesecake (OHMYGODYESYESILOVEYOUHANNAH)
Decadent Almond Cake
Lychee Cupcakes with Raspberry Frosting (I don’t know about raspberry with lychee, but these look better than the lychee cupcakes in VCTOTW)
Mini Icebox Cheesecake (can you tell that I love cheesecake?)
Pomegranate Ginger Cupcakes
Root Beer Float Cupcakes
Wasabi Chocolate Cupcakes (only because they sound like something you’d trick people with and then laugh when they choked on it)
Pink Lemonade Tartlets
Flaming Hot Peanut Brittle
Green Tea Freezer Pops (I love you. I love you so much.)
Green Tea Tiramisu (Did I say I loved you? No, I want to marry you, Hannah.)

Hope you like fat chicks, Hannah, because you’re gonna chunk me up good!

Also, my cupcake carrier is getting old and too small, someone buy me a Cupcake Courier (in blue) pretty, pretty please?