Finnish Cinnamon S's

I haven't been baking much as I always seem to be sick with one thing or the other. Now that I'm better I've done a bit of baking but haven't remembered to take pictures. Oh well. My son's grandmother used to make these cookies at Christmas but she hasn't made them for a few years (as far as I know). So I looked for a recipe and found one for these Cinnamon Cookies that are usually called Cinnamon S's in Finland.

Bread Testing

I am one of the testers for Peter Reinhart's new French Bread recipe. I enjoy being a tester because I like to see how the recipe turns out knowing that it's in its first stage. The dough is made ahead of time and put into the fridge. I made the bread after 3 days and I think it turned out quite well though I need some practice on forming the loaf.

Halloween Eyeball Cupcakes

They are only just starting to sell Halloween stuff here - mostly children's costumes and some decorations, so there aren't any Halloween themed or coloured food items in the stores.

I've made muffins before but I don't remember if I've ever made iced cupcakes. Sweet and Simple Bakes' October challenge was to make Halloween cupcakes. I adapted their recipe to make it eggless and found a milkless frosting to cover them with. I used margarine in the frosting, so it turned out yellowy. I used a black liquorice candy for the pupil and puréed a few strawberries through a strainer and mixed in some icing sugar for the red lines. They certainly look homemade but that didn't stop us eating them all!

Apple Cake

I found another food blog that seems interesting. They post a monthly recipe and participants bake it and post about it. I decided to take part in the September bake at Sweet and Simple Bakes' when I noticed it was to do with apples. Seeing that we are trying to go eggless I used baking powder and vinegar instead of the eggs. I didn't have any vanilla so I left that out. I also used a larger cake pan so it came out flatter. I especially liked the cinnamon and sugar topping!

White Cake

I had some guests for dinner last week and I wanted to make a cake but as I'm trying to be eggless the recipe couldn't have eggs in it. I used a basic white cake recipe but with less corn starch and ½ water, ½ orange juice. When I took the cake tins out of the oven the middles of both of them fell. After I let them cool 10 minutes, I turned them out onto a cooling rack and the middle of the bottom of one of them was still quite moist so I put it back in the oven. I didn't have time to make new ones so I decided to serve them anyway. I used the whipped cocoa cream from this recipe for the icing (we could probably eat it without any cake!). Everyone took a second slice and seemed to enjoy it. I'll use the recipe again.

Oatmeal Patties

I found an interesting recipe for Perfect Patties made with a lot of oatmeal from dinner's ready. I didn't have any Italian seasoning so I use 1 ml of many different spices. I'm eating them today cold with some raw zucchini hummus. I looked at a lot hummus recipes and then just winged it.

Zucchini Bread Testing

I tested another recipe from swell vegan. I wasn't sure what TS would think of it as it had zucchini in it and he doesn't like it but I didn't find that the zucchini was noticable at all. TS liked it too.

Lemonade

We can't buy lemonade here and so I haven't had any for a few years. I searched for a recipe and came up with one that doesn't have as much sugar as many of the recipes online. My son made some for us.

Lemonade

1 part sugar
2 parts water

Heat until sugar is disolved and then remove from heat and let cool down.

2 parts freshly squeezed lemon juice (include the pulp too if you like it)

Add lemon juice to sugar water.

8 parts cold water

Mix cold water and lemony sugar water and serve with ice cubes.

Raw Food Weekend Failure

On Wednesday I put some chick peas to soak in water so that I could sprout them and make some raw hummus. I've been wanting to have a raw food weekend for a while and I've been gathering recipes for it. I made some almond milk on Friday evening so that it would be cold for my breakfast. I put in a few soft dates to make a bit sweet because most recipes seem to call for something sweet in it. I used double the amount of water to almonds but I lost some because it overflowed with so much liquid.

There was enough left to have on both mornings with my raw muesli that I made. I ground the nuts up in the food processor a little while so that they wouldn't be so big. I enjoyed the almond milk with the muesli.

Lunch was zucchini pasta with a tomato sauce. Unfortunately I don't really like tomatoes anymore and I found the sauce to be too tart and left half of it uneaten. Next time I'll try some other kind of sauce.

Supper was suppose to be hummus in a red pepper. Some of the chickpeas sprouted faster than others, so when it was time to make the hummus I picked out the ones with longer sprouts and left the rest to use on Sunday so that they would have another day to sprout. The hummus was really horrible! I struggled to eat it but I couldn't and gave up on my raw food weekend. I threw the rest of the chickpeas, tomato sauce, chopped up red pepper and hummus into a saucepan with some veg broth and cooked it. Much better, but I won't do that again!

I also had a simple raw coleslaw with supper. I like it a lot.

I'm hoping to try again someday but I'll have to find new recipes.

Recipe Testing

I didn't realize it might be a bit difficult for me to do recipe testing. I'm so used to omitting from recipes ingredients that we don't eat or can't get here, that I didn't think about it when I volunteered to recipe test for swell vegan. I've only tested two recipes so far because TS hasn't been home much. The first was a kidney bean dish which I liked because the kidney beans tasted milder somehow.

The second was a chick pea stew. I added some potatoes instead of serving it with rice because we just had rice the day before. I left the cumin out because TS doesn't like it, meaning to add some to my portion, but I forgot all about it! I hope to remember next time.

Silly Me

Last week we had some oven french fries. After I turned the oven off I put my carrot sticks and red pepper into the oven to heat them up. Guess what I suddenly remembered today?

Coconut Pudding

Yummy, yummy. I'm so glad that I emailed Celine at have cake, will travel for the coconut pudding recipe that she mentioned. I made it the same day and I'll be making it again. I used half of the tin of coconut milk for our dinner (not vegetarian) and decided to use the other half to make the pudding. I have never used coconut milk before so I didn't know that the milk separated into thick on the top and thin on the bottom. Supper got most of the thick and the pudding the thin, but it was great anyway. I put too much sugar though because I didn't half the recipe correctly into metric, as I was concentrating on making supper, but we ate it anyway! I don't have anything to put a boiling hot liquid into other than mugs, so that's what I used.

White Cake Search: First Contestant

I want a white vegan cake for my birthday in the fall so I've decided to try out some of the recipes online. The first white cake was made as a late Mother's Day cake for me. I filled it with raspberry jam and covered it with half of the chocolate frosting recipe. I found it better the next day but only gave it 3/5, though my son gave it a 4.

Flour Tortillas

I usually only buy one type of bread because my son takes a snack with him to school everyday and this bread is good for sandwiches. I've found though that it upsets my stomach and I've been trying to find something for me but I've been throwing out more bread than I've been eating. When I saw these flour tortillas on the Your Vegan Mom blog and saw how simple they were to make, I thought that I might try to make just a few and see how my stomach liked them.

Two Small Flour Tortillas

1 dl flour (I'm planning on trying other flours)
1 tsp liquid margarine or oil
¼ dl warm water
dash of salt

Mix ingredients with fork, adding more water if too dry or more flour if too sticky. Knead for two minutes. Cover and let rest for 2 hours. Heat frying pan. Divide dough in half and roll out thinly on a floured board. (I forgot to add the salt, so before rolling them out I sprinkled a few grains of salt on top and then rolled them. I suppose I didn't need to add any salt as my topping was salty anyway.) Fry on each side for 30- 45 seconds.

Raw Brownie Balls

I've been wanting to try these for a while but I didn't feel like washing the food processor just to make these. I'm trying something for supper that needed the food processor so I made these first.

Raw Brownie Balls

½ dl almonds
3/4 dl pecans or walnuts
1-1/4 dl chopped dates
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1½ tsp water
coconut

Process nuts, dates, cocoa powder and water until nuts are finely processed. Form into balls and then roll in coconut. Refridgerate for a few hours before eating.

Jelly Donut Cupcakes

For the First of May (May Day?) I was looking forward to making the jelly donut cupcakes. Sugar donuts are a tradition here for May Day but I don't really like them. Well I made them, and though they were quite good, I don't think they tasted like donuts. But I've never tasted American donuts, so what do I know? When I was searching for the recipe I noticed that in some of cupcakes bloggers made, the jam had risen to the top. I had the opposite problem. The jam sank to the bottom and we had to use a spoon to eat it. I think I'll make the cupcakes again but I'll leave the jam out of most of them and try putting a bit of jam on top of a few before baking, to see if it sinks to the bottom.

Butternut Squash

As far as I can remember I've never tasted butternut squash and all the time I've been living here I haven't seen them in the store. Last week a department store was having a theme week and one of the products was butternut squashes, so I bought the smallest one. Then I had to find a recipe. I was thinking of a soup but I thought that the other ingredients would blend in with the squash and we wouldn't know what it tasted like. I found a recipe on cooks.com for Butternut Squash au Gratin and used it as is (minus the onions, of course), which is quite strange for me as I usually tweak it to our tastes. If I ever come across one again, I'll buy it though I'll try another recipe.

Nutty Hummus

We're new to hummus so I haven't spiced it too strongly. I think I only made it once last year. TS didn't like it but I decided to try it again. We were having broccoli soup for supper and I thought that this would be nice to have on crackers to go with the soup. TS didn't want to try it! I gave him one cracker with some on it and he said that there was some taste that he didn't like. I took out the cumin bag and had him smell it and he said that he thought it was that. Next time I'll divide it in half before adding the cumin and make some without. It would be nice to have something different for sandwiches.

Nutty Hummus

4 dl (400g tin) cooked chickpeas, rinsed and drained
½ dl pumpkin seeds
½ dl cashews (salted)
1 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp water, or more if needed
¼ tsp cumin
¼ tsp paprika powder
¼ tsp dried parsley
dash chili powder
dash pepper
salt to taste

Purée pumpkin seeds and cashews in food processor until fine. Add rest of ingredients and purée until smooth.

Caesarish Salad Dressing

Now that I'm able to post pictures instead of just looking at them on the camera, I can get back to blogging. I found a vegan caesar salad dressing recipe some time ago but I didn't write down where I took it from and now I can't find it on the internet. I've changed it anyway.

Caesarish Salad Dressing
1 part ground almonds (I've been using cashews because that's what I have)
1 part nutritional yeast
1 part lemon juice
½ part soy sauce
½ part olive oil
pepper to taste
water to thin to your taste

Process nuts and nutritional yeast in food processor. Add rest of ingredients and process until smooth. Add water, if you want.

The dressing in the picture also 1 part pumpkin seeds and no water. I don't think that I'll use that much pumpkin seeds again. Maybe I'll try ¼ part.

Eggfree Pancakes

As we haven't gone vegan yet, I'm still using dairy milk. I wanted to use up some of the soy yogurt I bought but didn't really care for. I want to try to use eggfree recipes when I can so this recipe is based on a vegan pancake recipe that I can't seem to find anymore. This one from foodgeeks is similar. We both liked them.

Eggfree Pancakes

3.75 dl flour (used 1.75 dl whole wheat, 2 dl white)
1½ tbsp baking powder
dash salt
4 dl milk (this time used 1 dl soy yogurt, 3dl fatfree milk) (could use part milk, part water)
2 tbsp oil

Mix dry together. Mix in wet. Oil frying pan and fry on each side until golden.
These are thick. Maybe try a bit more liquid next time?

Parsnip and Lentil Soup

I found a recipe for Parsnip, Potato and Lentil Soup over at vegan eating for one. I changed some of the ingredients and came up with my version. TS ate it quite slowly so I didn't ask him if I should keep the recipe because I liked it and want to make it again but he didn't seem to enjoy it too much. I think it might have been the spices because I haven't used turmeric and cumin together before. Actually I haven't used them very much at all.

Parsnip and Lentil Soup
1 celery stalk
1 medium carrot
1 medium – large parsnip
4 – 5 medium potatoes
2 dl brown lentils, well rinsed
1 litre water
¼ tsp each cinnamon and oregano
½ tsp each cumin, turmeric and parsley
1 tsp each olive oil and soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste
½ tsp lemon juice

Peel (except celery) and dice all of the vegetables. Place vegetables in cold water and bring to a boil. Add lentils, oil and spices and reduce heat to a simmer. When lentils and potatoes are cooked, add lemon juice and serve.