Friday, October 24, 2008

Kitchen foolery

This is a scattered entry, but bear with me...

I baked up some of my beloved Red Mill Irish Soda Bread:


I mixed in dried cranberries and apricots.



Oatmeal for breakfast with banana, flax, AB, maple syrup.


Skim latte with honey for lunch:



Leftover tempeh and tofu with bbq sauce:



Sweet potato with Brummel & Brown, yogurt:


All together, with an Embodi:




Oh, sweet lordy, the things this kitchen has seen in the past 18 hours! Picture this: 1 AM, exhaustion has set in, when I realize the bone-shaped marshmallows (yes, I know, marshmallows are sold at the store... but these were bone-shaped!!!) need to sit at least 10-12 hours. Meaning, I couldn't wait until morning to do it. So I got the sugar and corn syrup boiled, but realized all too late that we do not have a candy thermometer. Soooo I took the oven thermometer and plopped it right into the boiling sugar water. Maybe not the smartest thing to do, but it worked.... We don't have electric mixers, so after about 15 minutes of using an egg beater trying to make" nearly stiff white peaks", falling asleep at my seat, I remembered my sweet, amazing, SAVIOR Miss Sarah had them. And she was awake and nice enough to let us borrow not just those, but extra sugar. What a gal. So, stiff peaks attained, ziplock substituted for pastry bag, I started making "a small figure eight, a five inch straight line, another figure eight..." over and over... but, it got a little messy, and a little out of control:




It was about 2:30 at this point... Jalene and I were in hysterics for about 15 straight minutes, tears streaming down our faces.

Betty Ford got a lick for being such a good kitty.


Perfect excuse for hot chocolate!


I don't even want to think about how much marshmallow fluff I ate. Blegh my tummy hurt last night! The funniest part is, when I came home from school to finish up the baking, I turned on the oven to preheat it for a cake and completely forgot that I'd put the bones in there to keep them away from the cats, so...



Looks like Jiffy Puffed it'll be!


The lemon squares I made were also from Veganomicon.


Makes 12- 24 bars. Crust: 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 2/3 cup confectioners' sugar, plus additional to decorate the finished bars 1/4 cup cornstarch
1 cup vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance, original flavor), melted

Filling:

1 1/3 cup water
3 tbsp agar flakes (available at WF; it's a thickening agent)
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/8 tsp turmeric
2/3 cup lemon juice (about 1/4 of mine was the bottled kind, I ran out of lemons)

3 tbsp arrowroot powder
1 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
1/4 cup soy milk

Lightly grease a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

Prepare the crust: Mix flour, confectioners' sugar, and cornstarch in a mixing bowl. Add margarine in spoonfuls and blend until mixture resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle mixture into the prepared baking pan and press firmly into an even layer (I used my ghetto fabulous "rolling pin", AKA vanilla extract bottle, to make this easier). Refrigerate for 30 minutes and preheat oven to 350. Bake the unfilled crust for 25 minutes, remove from the oven, and let cool.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling: In a saucepot, soak the agar in the water for 15 minutes. Use
the time while it soaks to zest lemons and squeeze juice. mix the arrowroot into the lemon juice to dissolve.
When the agar has been soaked for 15 minutes, turn on the heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes, or until agar is completely dissolved, bout 3 minutes. Turn down the heat to medium and add the arrow root miture, then add the lemon zest and soy milk. Whisk constantly until the mixture thickens, about 5 minutes. It should not be boiling, but low bubbling is okay.


Pour the mixture into the prepared crust. Let cool for 20 minutes and then refrigerate for at least 3 hours, until the filling is only slightly jiggly and has set. Use a sifter or a fine-mesh strainer for sprinkling the bars with confectioners' sugar (again, we don't have either of those so I used a sieve... it takes a little longer but it worked alright). Slice into squares and serve.

1 comment:

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

Soda bread, sweet potato; baking with the kitten; Veganomicon lemon bars.... SO MUCH FUN!!!!! :-D