Peanut Butter Creem Cheeze & Chocolate Chip Brownies

My goodness! I don't know if it is even possible to add any more gooey goodness to these ones!

Ingredients:

For the batter:
1/2 cup Margarine
1/2 cup Dark Chocolate Morsels (Semi Sweet)
1 cup sugar
Equivalent of 2 eggs (I use Bob's Red Mill or Ener-G)
1/3 cup Peanut Butter (I prefer creamy)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp chocolate extract (or more vanilla)
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 additional cup Dark Chocolate Morsels (Semi Sweet)

For the topping:
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese (I like Toffutti Brand)
1/4 cup Peanut Butter
1/8 cup soymilk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a sauce pan, melt margarine and 1/2 cup chocolate morsels on LOW heat, stirring until melted. Remove from heat to cool. Line an 8x8x2 baking dish/pan with aluminum foil and LIGHTLY spray with cooking spray and set aside. Stir sugar into melted chocolate mixture until dissolved. Add peanut butter, egg replacers and vanilla. Mix well, but don't overmix. In a Seperate bowl, mix together flour and baking soda. Add Chocolate mixture to the flour and combine. Fold in the additional cup of Chocolate morsels. Spread batter evenly into prepared baking dish. For the topping, combine the peanut butter cream cheese and soymilk in a saucepan and heat on LOW until just warm enough to combine well and become easily spreadable, maybe 2 minutes max. Spread evenly accross the top of the brownie batter. With a butter knife, drag through the topping, back and forth, to create the marbling effect on top. Bake 25-35 minutes. These brownies are gooey inside, so the "toothpick in the center trick" doesn't work for this one. Trust your gut on the doneness. You'll know. If you want a more cake-like brownie...Try upping the flour to 1 full cup, upping the baking soda to 1/2 tsp and adding in 1/2 tsp baking powder as well. In addition, try "whipping" your egg replacers to semi stiff peaks (this works better with Ener-G than with Bob's Red Mill) and folding them into the batter just before pouring it into the pan!

Just out of the oven.

Ready for me to stuff in my face!

Southern Fried Tofu Fingers with Mushroom Gravy

If I eat these for dinner, I serve them with Gravy and maybe some mashed potatoes. If I am haveing them for lunch, it's plain with ketchup.

Joanna's Spiced Applesauce

This is really tasty. It's very grown-up for applesauce. It also tastes really good over Ice-Cream.

REMINDER: This is a test recipe from Joanna's Yellow Rose Recipes.

PLEASE BUY THIS BOOK WHEN IT COMES OUT!!!

Hot Apple Turnovers

YUM! These little gems are perfect on their own, and very portable, but I like mine warm with Soy Vanilla Ice cream melting over the top!

Cashew Curry "Chicken" Salad

This is really spicy! I like it warm, but it also serves well cold on a sandwich or in a wrap.

In a bowl:


On a Sandwich:

Potato Cheeze Soup

Hearty and comforting. This is a thick rich soup. Recipe from my upcoming book..."Cozy Inside."

Joanna's Twice-Fried Beer-Battered Seitan

I have been neglecting my duties as a good little recipe tester, so I vow to test more of Joanna's recipes before I leave for Portland.

Tonight I made Joanna's Twice-Fried Beer-Battered Seitan for dinner.

The beer batter is excellent! I am used to doing the dip and dredge method, so this was an awesome change. I made two batches, my cutlets were small, one dipped in the panko, and one not (per Dan's request) and I have to say that I almost liked it better without the panko. It has an almost "fish and chips" texture that Dan and I really liked, especially dipped in ketchup, and during dinner we kept thinking up different things to dip in it. So far, we think making corn dogs with that batter would be the shiz'nit. But why stop at that, we are also thinking, okra, pickles, tofu...

I took a few pictures, but I have to apologize for the crappy porn. Not my best work.
Nonetheless...excellent recipe!

No Panko

Panko

Burgers & Fries Take 2

I am still a cheap date. I told Dan, I just wanna stay home have a few beers and make Burgers and Fries, AGAIN! Funny thing is, I could only finish one and a half beers! But the Burgers and Fries came out PERFECTO!

Edamame Burgers, Sweet Potato Fries and Chipotle Dipping Sauce:


For historical significance, here is the link to the original Burgers & Fries:
http://justthefood.blogspot.com/2007/01/vwav-burgers-fries.html

Guacamole & Super Nachos

I was really craving nachos, but what's nachos without guacamole. So first I had to make the guac...then I got to make the nachos.

These Nachos were piled high. Tortilla Chips covered in Nacho Cheezy Sauce, Black Beans, TVP taco meat, more cheeze, salsa, more cheeze, guacamole, Easy Tofu Sour Creem, green onions, jalapenos, and of course, more cheeze!

Easy Tofu Mayo & Easy Cheezy Sauce

A few staples from my new book, Cozy Inside, scheduled for release in July.

Easy tofu Mayo on a baked seitan and onion sammy:



Easy Cheezy Sauce on veggies:

"Chicken" Fried Seitan with Gravy

Tonight's Dinner. Definitely comfort food.

Double dipping and lots of oil is the key to deep fried deliciousness. I'm pretty sure you can use any seitan, but I make my own. And I do it the long, tiresome old fashioned way, and boil it. Just dredge the seitan in a flour mixture (flour, pepper, paprika, whatever spices you like) then dip the piece of seitan in soy, rice or coconut milk, then REDIP it in the flour mixture and really coat it on thick. Make sure you have A LOT of oil (I usually put enough so that there is about 1/4" in the bottom of my skillet) already hot and ready to go in the pan and drop 'em in. NOT HEALTHY, but really crispy and yummy. This method works well on tofu too.

Secret Ingredients

Normally I just post pictures of food and recipes, but I thought this was an important subject so here you go. I am also going to permanantly place this list in the sidebar so it is easily accesible.

I just bought "The Vegan Sourcebook" by Jo Stepaniak. It's awesome. It's not a cookbook per say, rather a guidebook to nutrition and veganism. There is a chapter on secret ingredients. ARRRRRGHH! My life is being turned upside down! I thought I was pretty good about sniffing out sneaky animal ingredients, apparently not.

Here is a list of what to avoid, although she does mention some of these ingredients can be sourced from plants or animals. Research them first to make sure. Some of these are obvious, but some are not:

Albumin
Anchovies (duh)
Shortening (can be animal or plant)
Calcium Stearate
Carmine
Cochineal
Capric Acid
Casein
Clarifying Agent, aka fining agent
Diglycerides (can be animal or plant)
Disodium inosinate (can be animal or plant)
Emulsifiers, aka surfactants, wetting agents, surface acting agents (can be animal or plant)
Flavor Enhancers such as disodium guanylate, MSG (can be animal or plant)
Folic Acid (can be animal or plant)
Gelatin (duh again)
Glycerides, mono-,di-, and tri- (can be animal or plant)
Glycerols or Glycerine (can be animal or plant)
Isinglass (except Japanese isinglass which is made from agar)
LactoseLactic Acid, (only if it's synthetic lactonitrile is it vegan)
Lanolin
Lard (another duh)
Lecithin (can be animal or plant) she notes commercially this is mostly made from soybeans, although it can be made from egg yolks
Magnesium Stearate (can be animal or plant)
Monoglycerides (can be animal or plant)
Myristic Acid or Tetradecanoic Acid (can be animal or plant)
Natural Flavorings (can be animal or plant)
Oleic or Oleinic Acid
Palmitic Acid (can be animal or plant)
Pancreatin
Pepsin
Propolis
Rennet
Royal Jelly
Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate (can be animal or plant)
Stearic Acid or Octadecanoic Acid
Suet
Tallow (Found in many WAX PAPERS!!!)
Vitamin A (can be animal or plant)
Vitamin A2 (can be animal or plant)
Vitamin D (can be animal or plant)
Whey

S#@! on a Shingle

Otherwise known as "Beans on Toast." This is my protein packed version of a breakfast classic.

Maple Corn Fritters

This is one of the recipes from my upcoming book "Cozy Inside." They are Maple Corn Fritters smothered in Earth Balance and Maple Syrup.

Spidey Cakes

Saturday was my nephew, Dominic's, 7th birthday. I was asked to be in charge of cupcakes! Vegan cupcakes really ARE taking over the world.

His party had a spiderman theme, so I made both the vctotw Basic Chocolate cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream and Fluffy White cupcakes ( http://shmooedfood.blogspot.com/2006/01/fluffy-white-cupcakes.html ) with vctotw Cream Cheese frosting. My mom and I decorated the tops with spiderwebs (the gel frosting I used for this was found at Tall Mouse and is made with Agar!) and I made little tags with Dominic's face morphed with Spiderman's.





The kid's loved 'em, and no one missed the eggs!

Curry Split Pea Soup

mmmm...it makes me feel all cozy inside. teehee.

Brownie Cookies & Coconut Creem Cheeze Sandwiches

Do I even need to say anything?

Garlic Hummus

So good. Lots of extra sesame oil and pine nuts. Delicious with warm flatbread.

It's Almost Done!

And will soon be available for download...within the next few weeks. I will keep you posted!

I am so excited!

Here is a Draft of the Cover:





I used ppk'er comments as my testimonials on the back cover. Tee-hee. I guess I should ask these folks if it's ok before I go ahead and publish it.

Sopranos Sparks Dinner Tonight

With only 2 episodes left, I thought I'd make Italian to celebrate.

Red Veggie Lasagna

Something Magical Happens...

...when your family invites you over for a barbecue and you find out they went the extra mile to make sure the margarine had no whey in it and they made EVERYTHING vegan!


Boca Burgers with Soy Cheese and all the fixins, Baked Potatoes, Corn & MacUncheeze Casserole

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Creem Cheeze Frosting and a Rasberry

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think this was the best photo I've ever taken of a cupcake.







I used a recipe someone posted awhile back on the PPK forums for "Fluffy White Cupcakes" and added lemon extract and lemon juice and lemon zest to the batter. They came out really, really fluffy and moist.

YUM.

The frosting was just 1 tub of Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese, 1/4 cup of Earth Balance, 1 tbsp of lemon extract and lots of confectioner's sugar. Topped with a fresh rasberry and a tiny pinch of lemon zest.

They just seemed so sophisticated and grown up.

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are a tester recipe for a cookbook that I am testing for. They are super yummy!