The short answer is that I’ve been being stalked by Scientology.

I wish I were kidding.

They’ve been harassing my parents, my ex-husband, myself, etc. I’ve moved residences a couple of times, and they still managed to figure out where I live. They’ve posted my personal, private information (cell phone, email addresses, flickr/facebook accounts, name, parent info) on the Internet in an attempt to intimidate me. Those First Amendment rights sure are somethin’, and I’ll practice mine peacefully thankyouveryfuckingmuch.

Attention, Visiting Scientologists: Did you know Incident II is nothing more than the XENU story told in OT3? And that OT8 = You mocked up your own past lives. Enjoy your stay!

Anyway, I’ve decided to let it all out in the open and stop hiding. I’ll cook and post about it where I Xenudamned well please. And to prove it, here’s some mighty fine Rootin, Tootin, Enturbulatin‘ Marble Cupcakes.

Recipe is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, they’re the marble cupcakes, with one half batch vanilla and one half batch chocolate buttecream piped with the same bag.

This was one hell of an experiment, and I’m surprised that I didn’t fuck them up. They were extremely well-received, so much so that I didn’t get to try one. Oops.

I haven’t really been cooking lately because I haven’t been eating so much, thanks to the medication I’m on. However, I did make some cupcakes for an event last week.

S’mores, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Pomegranate Ginger, from My Sweet Vegan

It’s too hot for me to update with any substance, sorry. The S’mores cupcakes are basically graham cracker cupcakes with chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream, and shaved chocolate and a graham cracker garnish. The Pomegranate Ginger are a cake of pomegranate and crystallized ginger, with a drizzled pomegranate glaze and ginger buttercream.

Rather than keep whining about being a fatty (I’ve gained back roughly half of the 50 pounds I lost a few years ago, boo), I’ve decided to join up with a bunch of PPKers and start the 6 week induction to the Eat To Live diet. Now, time restrictions with working full time and going to school at night, doing the whole “let’s make massive salads all day” thing is going to be difficult, so for the first couple of days, I’ve been more or less winging it, trying to follow the general guidelines, and where I’m not, keeping the calorie and fat intake low. As you can tell from the blog, everything I eat is sweet, whether or not it’s desserty - I have a major sugar addiction. I need something like Eat To Live to completely get me off of the refined sugar and get me into some decent food. So, naturally, here’s a dessert post.

That’s sum delicious copypasta; leftovers again?

On the left is a Sexy Low-Fat Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Mousse, on the right is a Margarita Cupcake. This is here mostly because a) I just decorated them this morning (on the second day of my diet, I was asked to make cupcakes for a coworker’s birthday. Not fair.)  and b) the Margarita Cupcakes look a fuckton better than the last time I made them for the same co-worker’s birthday last year. I toyed with doing something really espresso-y like Tiramisu so that there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of me wanting to even taste them, but I barely had the energy to make these last night. Not to mention that I don’t keep any sort of coffee in my house, and didn’t want to run out and buy any.  Side note: I haven’t eaten any of the cupcakes yet, and I don’t think I’ll succumb to their siren song (I usually have a test cupcake right out of the oven of both batches, and then at least one at work the next day. Ugh.)… but I did let myself have a few leftover swirls of the mousse. But, it’s silken tofu based, so other than the bag of melted chocolate chips in it, it’s not that bad of a slip up.

Last week I had my final wisdom tooth pulled, resulting in a weekend spend alone and not going to this month’s PPK potluck - again. So, I made Green Tea freezer pops from My Sweet Vegan and pretty much just ate those and watched a marathon of The Girls Next Door. Odd choice, I know.

My mold makes 10 of these, which turned out to be 2.5 batches of the recipe. In the future, unless entertaining, just stick with one batch.

The recipe is pretty much a cooked pudding, which solves my non-chocolate pudding quandry - use powdered sugar. Yay pudding pops! Fuck you, Bill Cosby!

The upcoming food porn probably isn’t going to be gourmet, blow-your-ass-off impressive, but it will be healthy and I won’t care because I’ll be wasting away to nothing. Yes, Virginia, there are Fatty Von Fattenstein vegans.

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.