Luscious Fibers, Food and Family

daring bakers: Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna

I actually completed the daring bakers challenge last night but I was too tired to post. While the end result of this challenge was creamy, rich and very tasty, it took me most of the afternoon to make.  I would definitely make it again, but I would probably cook it in stages and just assemble and bake on the serving day.

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

The major part of this challenge was to make the spinach pasta noodles from scratch. This was not so intimidating because a made pasta a month or so ago and found it fairly easy. For this challenge I used Bryanna's vegan pasta recipe and it turned out great. Who says you need eggs for good pasta?

There were two sauces for the lasagne; a bechamel sauce, which is very easy to make vegan and a traditional country ragu, which I've never made before but managed to veganize. I decided to use vegan sausage for this recipe, not something I would normally do, but it worked out fine.  The ragu was probably the most labor intensive, it took over 2 hours to make. There was lots of stirring and reductions, but the end result was a very flavorful and creamy sauce.

Here are a couple images of the final dish. I'm looking forward to leftovers later today....

daring bakers: flourless cake and ice cream

This month's  Daring Baker's Challenge was a challenge indeed! So much so I needed an extra day to finish it.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

You might be asking, "How does one makes a vegan flourless cake which is generally full of eggs?" Thankfully, there are many talented vegan bakers who have developed wonderful recipes to work from. I knew right away that I wanted to try BitterSweet's Lucky Chocolate Cake. I originally read about it on New Year's Day and I was completely intrigued. For the ice cream recipe I did some searching and found a coconut based coffee ice cream. I'm not really fond of soy based frozen desserts so I was quite pleased when I found this recipe.

Both the cake and the ice cream were very easy. The cake was so moist and chocolaty. I decided to use my cupcake pan because I didn't really have an other pan that seemed suitable. I'm glad I did because the cakes didn't take as long to cook and they were so sweet and small.

The ice cream, even after being challenged by a broken ice cream machine, was fantastic and we will surely make it again. It had a *really* strong coffee flavor, but that was ok with me because coffee ice cream is my favorite.  All and all a great month.  Here is a picture of the final product...

Oh, I neglected mention one important thing about the cake. I also didn't tell mum and Grant until they had finished their serving. I should answer my earlier question of how does a vegan make a flourless cake without eggs?  Why with beans and tofu of course.  I never would have thought of it, but it worked perfectly.  Here are a couple pictures of the ice cream base being warmed and incorporated and the cake prior to its first step of processing the black eyed peas and tofu until nice and smooth.

daring bakers: tuile cookies

This month's  Daring Baker's Challenge was the delicate and beautiful tuile cookie. I've been wanting to make these cookies for quite some time so I was very happy when it was revealed as January's challenge.

This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Lucky for me, Lolo had already developed a vegan version of this recipe so I was able to lean on her amazing skills. Unfortunately, her incredible skills didn't translate to my work. Everything tasted good, but the cookies didn't set up quite right and that made it difficult to shape them. I was able to get one cookie into a bowl shape...

I paired the cookies with a chocolate mousse from The Joy of Vegan Baking and some fresh strawberries.  As I said, all very tasty but most of my servings looked more like this...

Hopefully I'll have better luck next month.  Tonight for dinner I made blackened tofu from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan, and some garlic spinach. The tofu was a very easy, fairly fast and yummy dish. We'll definitely be making it again.

daring bakers: caramel cake with caramelized butter frosting

November's  Daring Baker's Challenge was a cake! It's my first challenge to bake something sweet. The last couple have been savory, so I was excited to try a more traditional baked good.  This month's recipe, Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, was brought to us by Shuna Fish Lydon and hosted by Dolores, Alex and Jenny.

I only had to make a few modifications to make the recipe vegan (EnerG to replace the egg, almond milk, Earth Balance, and a little extra baking powder) and I was happy about that as I'm still learning about vegan baking and how to veganize a recipe.

I decided to make cupcakes rather than a full cake. I also made some crystallized sugar drizzles for a little decoration.  Grant was my tester of the final product and he said they tasted really good. I like the cake, it has a subtle flavor but is *very* moist. I also like how the caramel in the batter makes the cake top a little crunchy. The frosting was way too sweet for me. I actually liked the cake with no frosting.  It was another good challenge and I'm looking forward to December!

daring bakers: pizza crust

October's  Daring Baker's Challenge was pizza and not just any pizza, this was two-day recipe. Oh and part of the challenge was that we needed to take pictures (or have someone take pictures) while tossing the pizza.  Let's say I was a bit skeptical from the get go. Why does any pizza crust have to take two days??

So the recipe was taken from “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart.  It called bread flour and other basic pizza crust ingredients. There was some mixing, some kneading and then resting over night. Then the next day some more resting (2 hours) on the counter before tossing, dressing and cooking. The recipe made 6 - 8 inch pizzas.  All in all I thought the recipe was pretty easy, not necessarily efficient, but not hard. And I have to say this was the BEST dough I've ever tossed.  Of course I've tried throwing my pizza dough in the past and it rips or shrinks or is lop-sided, but not this crust. I was tossing and stretching and tossing and laughing and tossing really high, just for fun, and it held up perfectly.  It wasn't sticky...it didn't shrink...and it didn't rip.  I was truly impressed with the dough and myself. Check out me throwing the dough around.

I'm going to share with you 3 of the pizzas I made.  The first pizza was fresh tomato, roasted garlic, caramelized onions (yum), sun-dried tomato, olives and some teese (oh and no sauce).  I loved the caramelized onions...the sweet onions with the salty olives were so good.  As you can see the crust was fairly thin and crisp. I think my mother would really appreciate this recipe.

The next pizza, sauteed mushrooms, green peppers and Italian tofurkey sausage with roasted garlic, teese and red sauce.  This pie was also very good and had more traditional flavors that I grew up with.

The last pizza was my attempt at a dessert pizza. I sprinkled on some cinnamon sugar and a little earth balance margarine.  It smelled good cooking, but when I took it out I could see that some of the sugar had caramelized a bit too much and was kind of burnt. (In the future I'd turn the oven down a bit...500 degrees was too hot.)  But that's ok, because I then layered on some pumpkin, maple spread that I had made a few days before for dipping graham crackers.  This pizza was also tasty, even with the crispy sugar parts.

I think this was a successful challenge and I will make this crust again.

daring bakers: lavash

September marks the first month that I've participated in the Daring Baker's Challenge.  It's a challenge that I've had my eye on for many months and I decided to join for September.  In previous challenges, bakers made amazing pastries and cakes.  Happily this months challenge seemed a little easier than past challenges and it was vegan, which is not usual.

So the challenge was to bake lavash crackers, with toppings of your choice, and a dip to go with.  The whole process went very well. My dough had the right feel and rolled out nicely and fairly even. I only had one small area that bubbled.  I used poppy seeds, sea salt, sesame seeds and cumin seeds as my toppings. For my dip, Curried Carrot Dip from Veganomicon.  Grant and I enjoyed the crackers with a little white wine. The crackers we very tasty, though only the edge pieces were crunchy so they probably could have cooked a bit longer. The dip was really good. It's made with toasted sunflower seeds so it has a little crunch. 

It was a good month to become a daring baker and I look forward to future challenges.