Here’s the awesometastic cupcakes that I made for the bake sale, and were pretty much the first stuff to sell out on my end of the tables. (I have a gift. A cupcake gift.)

Root Beer Float Cupcakes – My Sweet Vegan

Root Beer cake, chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes – VCTOTW
(Chocolate Mint cake, mint buttercream, melty chocolate ganache)

Raspberry Jelly Donut Cupcakes – Veganomicon

I didn’t get to test any of the cupcakes, as I wanted to sell them all, and I had never made the chocolate mint ones before so that was sort of a disappointment. Also, I finally got a hold of some root beer extract so I got to use that in the root beer floats instead of that weirdo Torani syrup. I suppose I’ll get to taste them next time!

Also, the jelly donut cupcakes are the easiest thing in the world to make, but I keep screwing them up! When I made them for a friend for Passover, I forgot to add the sugar before dumping all the batter into the cup liners. Before I made this pictured batch, I forgot to add the oil before doing the same. Also, I had a nice chat with a customer of the bake sale that couldn’t get his jelly to sink to the middle of the cupcakes to save his life. I thought maybe it was his baking powder or soda getting inactivated, but I’m hardly a food scientist. Hell, I can barely even get it right myself – but damn, they are good.

Not pictured: The green tea walnut biscotti from Vegan Cookies Take Over Your Cookie Jar, that was a little cajun on the bottom. I’ve been commissioned by a generous donor to make another batch, along with the root beer floats – all for a $1000 donation to Doctors Without Borders. Wow.

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 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.

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.

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?