Pumpkin Waffles – Vegan With a Vengeance

I own an old school cast iron cook-that-bitch-over-a-flame Belgian waffle iron… that I’ve never used before. I was going to post when I made the first attempt, but I wanted a happy ending, so it had to wait until now.

Attempt 1: Actually, the second of the three gigantihuge waffle slabs that the batter allotted. The first one looks like the third one, pictured below. This one wasn’t so bad and it froze well for later breakfast eating.

Attempt 2: Oh, the shame!

Attempt 3: A few days later, I get my happy ending. Jake was supposed to show me how to use the iron properly, but he ended up making all of the waffles himself because he kept getting distracted. I think I picked up the gist of it, though.

Heat the fucker up on both sides until the gauges read in the middle (mine say cold, bake, hot), then plop the batter in the middle of the iron, don’t even bother trying to fill it. Watch the gauges, but it’s more of a listening thing. When it stops sizzling on that side, flip it over and do the same. You can try to peek after a while to see how it’s doing, but DO NOT PRY THAT BITCH OPEN LIKE A GRILLED CHEESE SAMMICH. If you do, you’ll be making sink waffles. Do you want to eat out of the sink? Huh? Do you?

Anyway, these freeze up really nicely, so I got to have waffles at my convenience while running out the door for work.  As for Captain Jacob, Princess Waffles Can Never Be Good Without Eggs? When I asked him if these would make him stop bitching about vegan waffles, he said yes. At least I think he said yes, it’s hard to talk when your yap is full of waffle. I think I’m going to go for the Banana Nut Waffles out of Veganomicon next.

Trader Joe’s did me a total disservice by introducing me to vodka sauce as an omni, mostly because theirs is super creamy – it should be, it’s got both romano and cream cheese in it. Well, fuck that. This is better.

This is the first “real” recipe I’ve made out of Veganomicon and it’s fucking nummy. It’s got a little heat to it, and the creaminess comes from almonds, courtesy of an immersion blender. I could probably eat the whole batch, but I probably shouldn’t.

Because everyone else is doing it. And because I’ve been foodporning a lot lately.

The tofu is perfectly respectable, but the mashed potatoes and gravy ZOMGNOMNOMNOM.

These aren’t the fancy fondant and royal icing sugar skull cupcakes I was planning on making earlier this month until my Halloween/Dia de los Muertos spirit inexcusably flew the coop, this was a true off the cuff let’s make cupcakes right this second, and oh hey I should try out the skull pans I bought impulse. And, they’re pretty ugly… but they taste good.

The pans are fairly cheap and each makes 4 cupcakes. I found that the batch facilitated both pans that I have, and there was enough left over to make a super cupcake in a Pyrex baking cup. In doing so, I stumbled across something that I wasn’t even aware that I was looking for: the tv dinner brownie.  You know, those tv dinners that have nuggets, crinkle-cut fries and brownie batter in separate sections? You’d eat your little heart attacks, and your warm and slightly gooey brownie/chocolate cake/whatever it was trying to pass off as would be on the same tray in its own delicious way. The supercupcake in the baking cup that I couldn’t resist eating while still warm from the oven? Totally a super delicious version of that, and it comes in it’s own little cup. I think I see a TV Dinner night coming up…

Anyway, other than piping big fat swirls, I have no decorating experience and it shows. Ziplocks FTW. I did one half slightly dusted with confectioner’s sugar as an experiment, and one half naked. The sugared side was a lot harder to work with, unsurprisingly.

For the first time ever, I have made homemade seitan that didn’t turn to brains. The secret that I was missing? Don’t let your broth boil. Sauteed, it does look eerily like some sort of red meat. (Okay, I thought I wouldn’t go here, but it reminds me shape-wise of the year my mom served beef tongue at Christmas and made everyone try it without telling them what it was. Way to go, mom.)

The instructions call for the udon and the veggies to be as cold as possible, the sauce to be room temperature, and the seitan to be warm – and if you follow the instructions as written, you’ll get all of these down right. There’s a lot of ingredients, but it’s quite a simple recipe to put together. Don’t be like me and not measure the amount of shoyu you sprinkle on the seitan as it sautees – better yet, use low-sodium shoyu (I used tamari. Bad miharu.) This is definitely not a dinner for one and keep the rest to eat off of the rest of the week recipe; serve this for a summer dinner party and make sure there’s enough seitan and peanut sauce to go around.

Edit: Here’s a reheat from today, bowl style.