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.