Vegan Ambrosia

I'm not the best cake decorator, but this cake is tasty! My Favorite Cake Vegan chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting Today* is my birthday, so I baked my favorite cake for myself. This cake can be made as cupcakes, a sheet cake, or layer cake. I have 4-inch diameter cake pans that I like to use for this purpose. This recipe made 3 of those plus 4 cupcakes. I'll eat the one layer cake and freeze the rest. Cake Wet ingredients: 1 cup unsweetened soy milk* ⅓ cup applesauce 2 Tbsp canola oil 2 tsp vanilla extract 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar Dry ingredients: 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or all purpose flour) ½ cup raw cacao powder ¾ cup cane sugar 1 tsp baking powder ½ tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt *The combination of the soy milk and vinegar and baking soda/powder is what makes the cake rise. Soy works best here because it needs enough protein for the chemical reaction. You could also do half soy and half another kind of milk, like almond or coconut, or substitut...

Growing up, The Joy of Cooking was my family's go-to cookbook. My mother gave me a brand-new copy when I moved into my first apartment. I haven't used it much in recent years, as it's not terribly vegan-friendly, but I still refer to it occasionally for "standard" recipes that I can modify. I love waffles, and I never was quite satisfied with the vegan ones I was making. Worse, it is a family tradition to eat waffles on Christmas morning, and mine are always shunned in favor of the egg-and-butter variety my brother makes. When I splurged on a new waffle maker  this year, I decided to figure out the secret to the perfect waffle. So I turned to the Joy of Cooking. The Joy of Cooking recipe calls for egg whites, whipped into stiff peaks, folded into the batter. Aha, I said, I can do that with aquafaba ! And thus the veganizing began. I used flax eggs in place of the egg yolks and also used vegan buttermilk (soy milk + vinegar) to give it more height. I played ...

I first had "chuna" salad last summer at O2 Vegan Cafe in Cambridge and found that it filled an old craving. It's an easy, quick, and filling vegan alternative that works in sandwiches, on salads, or just on its own. I developed this recipe on my own from trial and error, but you can easily include your favorite additions. Ingredients: 1 can chick peas (garbanzo beans) 3 tbsp vegan mayo 1 tbsp miso paste 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp onion powder 1-1/2 tbsp capers Instructions: Mix first five ingredients in large bowl, mashing the chick peas with a fork until it forms a coarse mixture, leaving small bean chunks. (It requires a little effort to do it by hand, but I've found the results much more satisfying than the paste produced by a food processor.) Then lightly mix in the capers. I made this for lunch with my friend Anna, who said that her school-age children wouldn't be thrilled by the capers. The nice thing about this dish is that...

One of my greatest joys of summer in New England is eating fresh, local produce. After a long winter, I feel lucky receive such a great bounty of fruits and vegetables from farms in towns I recognize - including my own dense city - and even from our own backyards and balconies. Even though I keep learning, I don't always stagger my planting well enough to have a constant harvest all season. Right now, my own garden is in a transitional moment. My first planting of salad greens is starting to flower, and everything else is not quite ready - green tomatoes, white pea blossoms, purple eggplant flowers. Urban agriculture means growing in raised beds and containers. (Zucchini plants are center right.) A zucchini plant with several green buds at the base. Fortunately, zucchini (or courgette, a dark green summer squash) has something to offer, even before it's time to harvest the fruits. Mine have great big leaves and produce several male flowers a day, but I hav...

I love green leafy vegetables, and we all know that they are healthy.   My current favorite is baby kale; I buy a pound of baby greens in a clamshell from Earthbound Farm or Olivia's Organics for $5, and that lasts me the week.  Most greens are best just simply sauteed with olive oil and fresh garlic.  But sometimes it's nice to mix it up a bit - literally.  Here's a quick and easy way to sneak greens into everyday, delicious food - for yourself or your kids! 1 can (or equivalent) chick peas, drained 2 big handfuls mixed baby greens (about 3-4 cups) 1/4 cup water 2 T tahini (sesame paste) 2-5 cloves garlic (according to your taste) 2-3 T olive oil 1-2 T lemon juice1/4 tsp smoked paprika + a dash for the top 1/4 tsp cumin 1/4-1/2 tsp salt (to taste) Combine all ingredients in a food processor and mix until smooth.  I recommend using minimum amounts of garlic, spices, salt and lemon juice at first and adding more to taste.  Add a dash of...

You know when you have a lot left over from your farm share, you're due to pick up the next one, and you have a chocolate craving? What?  It happens to me all the time. This is what came out of that last combination of circumstances night.  I was not intending to turn this into a blog post, and so I apologize for the paltry poor quality photos.  With modifications, the recipe for the cake recipe was drawn from one on   Yummly , the frosting from a recipe on  Nouveau Raw . Cake: 3-5 small  beets (enough to make about 1-1/2 cups when cooked down) water to cover beets for boiling unsweetened applesauce (if necessary, to fill in for the beets) 1/2 cup soy milk (or other nondairy milk), unsweetened 1 tsp apple cider vinegar 1/4-1/2 cup agave syrup (or other liquid sugar) to taste (I used only 1/4 in my first try, but I'd add a bit more next time) 1 tsp  vanilla extract ...