Baking to fill a void..or at least warm my apartment!

My apartment is cold!! Brrr…so this is my favorite time of year to bake. Not only does it satisfy my sweet tooth but it also warms up the place. I love multi-tasking..ha!

First up was something that I wanted to do over the holidays but it didn’t happen. We love stollen (see Mihl’s blog for more..she’s the expert)..except that most stollen that we can buy around here in the Boston area isn’t vegan and has raisins, the one food that H avoids more than anything. I don’t get the whole raisin avoidance thing..but we all have things that we can’t stand to eat right? Mine are..well, what don’t I like to eat? Obviously anything not vegan but, hum, hard to think of anything I really, truly hate. Must ponder that..there must be something?! Back to stollen, I knew that I wanted to replace the raisins with some candied orange peel and candied ginger. And I also knew that again I would turn to Mihl’s blog whenever I want to take a German recipe to vegansville..she’s my subject area expert on the matter. The result was incredible! It yielded three mid-sized loaves stuffed to the nth degree with a marizpan that I made myself (and was a bit cruncher than expected because my grinder broke). We quickly gobbled these up with the help of our upstairs neighbors. Everyone loved them even though I ran out of Earth Balance and had to “frost” the stollen with a little marzipan to keep them moist.

Stollen ready for the oven

The final product

Next up was a recipe from “Eat, Drink and Be Vegan” from Dreena Burton. Have you checked this book out yet? It’s great..I’ve got it on loan from the library right now while I evaluate whether I want to buy it or not and I think this one is a keeper. I tried her “Cocoa Banana Muffins” on a cold, snowy day (do you crave banana bread during a snow storm? I do!). With some cinnamon and nutmeg to spice up the cocoa tones, this muffin is really special. The original recipe calls for spelt flour but since I didn’t have any (and wasn’t leaving the house no matter for what), I did half wheat flour/half white flour. I suspect the texture would be different with spelt and I look forward to checking that out next time!

Cocoa Banana Muffins

Vegan Hot Chocolate: Coco-cocoa!

Oh, how I HATED those 4th grade book reports. I mean, let’s just put the pretense aside, no one listened to a word of anyone else’s report and rushed out to buy the book, right??! Thank goodness book reports are a thing of the past (only to be replaced with powerpoint presentations, conference calls and software demos if you are me..ha ha ha!). Nowadays, my book “reporting” is all for pleasure..and oh yes, pleasure it is when you are reading vegan cookbooks. Yes, I really read them..the introductions are usually pretty interesting and I just love it when the authors include funny little notes or side stories about the recipes! Now I have a bit of a vegan cookbook problem..I’m addicted. I just love ‘em! So when a friend of mine mentioned that he and his wife had several mealtime successes from Dreena Burton’s Eat, Drink and Be Vegan, I thought, to the library. Which is–in my case–just a few mouse clicks away. The book arrived right before Christmas and I made the Lemon Garlic Pasta for our main course and the Egg Nog Pie with Rum Sauce for dessert. I think the pasta could have benefited from doubling the sauce (that was my fault, not the book’s) but it was still tasty. The Egg Nog Pie was a big hit though! I was a lazy blogger and didn’t take a picture but luckily my mother did:

Egg Nog Ice Cream Pie w/Rum Sauce

Next up to try was the coco-cocoa, a coconut milk hot cocoa. Absolutely delicious! Most vegan cocoas I’ve tried with almond or soy are, well, okay..but not great. The coconut milk adds a creaminess that is hard to achieve with soy or other nut or seed milks. I topped it off with a few Dandies’ vegan marshmallows that I scored from the Boston Vegetarian Festival last month. Served with a few Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Joe-Joes and what a chocolately love fest it was!

Coco-cocoa with Candy Cane Joe-Joes

Candy Cane Joe-Joes From Trader Joe's

Coco-cocoa with Dandies' Marshmallows

Since it’s going to be four degrees outside tonight and not warm up a whole lot more tomorrow, I’m planning on having another cup of coco-cocoa very soon. And yay–so can everyone else because the recipe is posted here!

Check out the TofuXpress giveaway at “I Am Gluten-Free” as well as some of her amazing recipes!