Cooking day

I cooked so much today! It's been awhile since I've spent this much time in the kitchen, and it was really fun!

First I made a batch of French bread, although I took the shortcut route and prepared the dough in my seldom used bread maker. I think it's the first time I've used it in about three years, but it really came in handy today on the dough cycle, to be able to just put everything in and let it go to work. I took the dough out mid-afternoon, shaped it into 4 small balls instead of one long loaf, and then baked them on some stoneware. We shared one for a snack, spread with Earth Balance and Marmite (yum!), then had another with some leftover minestrone soup that I made last night (sorry, no pictures of either bread or soup).

While the dough was mixing up in the bread maker, I made some vegan vanilla ice cream using a recipe from A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise. This was my first time making vegan ice cream, and it turned out really well! I made the Fancy Pants Vanilla, and modified it very slightly, using almond milk instead of soy milk (I still used soy creamer), and corn starch instead of arrowroot. I ran it through our cheapo ice cream maker for about 30 minutes, then put it in a container in the freezer to firm up more. I'm really excited to try some other recipes from that blog! I think I see a lot of ice cream in our future...

The last thing I made today was apple crisp. I used the recipe that I grew up with, my Grandma's recipe, that has a crumbly strudel-type topping instead of the oat topping most people seem to use. The only thing I changed was subbing Earth Balance margarine for the butter, and I don't know how well that worked. While the apple crisp tasted delicious tonight, for some reason that apples cooked down into mush, and the topping never fully crisped up. I think that real butter may be the key to the perfect crispy, crumbly topping, so if you're not vegan, then by all means stick to the original recipe. I did pop this directly under the broiler for several minutes at the end of the cooking time, which helped somewhat. Regardless, though, this was delicious, even if it was more applesaucy than chunky. I served it topped with several miniature scoops of vanilla ice cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon. So satisfying!

4th of July food

We've had a whole weekend of 4th of July celebrating! Thursday we bought fireworks for the kids, and had an absolute blast firing them off our back porch. I haven't done fireworks since I was 15, and we all had SO much fun! Friday we went over to my mother-in-law's house for the afternoon, then late that evening we set off the rest of our fireworks. We found out that they're illegal in our city (although we're not sure if we are within city limits or not), but you couldn't tell it from the rockets' red glare all over our neighborhood. I couldn't believe how many people were doing fireworks -- and huge ones, like professional display quality. I had no idea you could even buy those! We got one really nice one for free because an employee was tossing it to someone else when we were shopping, and she aimed badly and it hit Brad instead. She felt bad, so she said we could have it for free. Ok! It shot off 36 incredible exploding, spinning fireworks. So cool! Our whole neighborhood was shrouded in smoke from the collective fireworks displays by the time we finally went to bed. Crazy, but oh, so much fun!

Today we're going to Brad's aunt and uncle's house for a 4th of July BBQ pool party, which I'm sure will be equally as much fun. I made several goodies to bring along.

Another batch of sorbet, this time adding some lime juice to the pineapple-orange-ginger mixture. Yum!

And this big bowl of vegan potato salad, using a horseradish vinagrette instead of mayonnaise. Oh, baby!



And a big fruit pizza, veganized so I can eat it, too. Can't wait!





And we're off! See you tomorrow!

Ice cream, sorbet, and TWD scones

This is going to be really short, unfortunately, because it's late and I'm just now getting a chance to sit down and blog. Busy day! Let me just do a quick recap, then I'm off to bed.



I'll start with the TWD scones. They're awesome! Since I'm trying to not eat dairy, and Brad doesn't care for dried apples, I just made cranberry scones instead. Some of the changes I made:

I soaked some Craisins in hot water to plump them up, instead of dried apples
I omitted the cheddar cheese
I used soy milk with vinegar in place of the buttermilk, and a mixture of soy milk and water instead of apple juice,
Instead of an egg, I used 1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 Tbsp water, and an additional 1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder,
Instead of butter, I used all-vegetable shortening.

It worked really well! Brad, his mom, and the kids all loved them! I'm still amazed that the egg and buttermilk replacements worked that seamlessly in this recipe. And I absolutely love what the little bit of cornmeal added to the scones! I never would have thought to include that!



I give these scones a huge thumbs up! Woohoo!

Next let's move on to the frozen desserts I made yesterday and today. I ended up not bringing the vanilla custard to work to make ice cream, because it separated and was all weird this morning when I got it out of the fridge. I did bring the pineapple-orange-ginger sorbet, though, and it turned out beautifully! So yummy! Brad bought an ice cream maker on the way home today (after not being able to find one yesterday), and I put the custard in to freeze. I didn't eat it because of the whole dairy thing, but the kids loved it. Hooray!



The sorbet is by far my favorite, though. The orange and pineapple are so fruity and tropical, and the little bit of ginger I added really enhanced the flavors and gave it a nice kick. I love this stuff! But I did that one better. I put it in a glass like so:



...and the I topped it off with Malibu coconut rum. Oh, baby! What an incredible drink! I may have to just keep some sorbet on hand all the time so I can have one of these whenever I want. YUM!



Off to bed for this tired girl. Good night!