Puddings and Cakes and Muffins, Oh My!

I've been busy in the kitchen. Since I last posted, I baked potato rolls, which were great on their own, but I used the leftovers to make banana chocolate chip bread pudding. I wouldn't have thought to use potato rolls in a dessert, but the authors of Veganomicon recommended it, and I've grown to trust them. The potato was quite subtle, so the bread pudding definitely did not taste like potato! The combination of cinnamon, warm bananas, maple syrup, and chocolate was comforting and delicious.

Last week, I baked vanilla yogurt pound cake with rosewater. Soft silken tofu gets whirled in the food processor and combined with vanilla soy yogurt in place of butter and eggs, so I didn't have to feel quite so guilty about finishing the entire loaf within 24 hours (or at least I'll keep telling myself that). I've noticed that certain cake-like desserts get moister the longer they sit, and this was one of them. I have yet to figure out why, given that most pastries get drier as time passes.

I also made mocha chip muffins, wherein I found a use for Starbucks VIA Ready-Brew (their fancy name for instant coffee-- I'm generally weirded out by instant coffee, but this tastes so much like drip coffee, I wouldn't know the difference, and I'm a bit of a coffee snob. Also, it's great for baking because it comes in small packets, so I didn't have to purchase an entire jar of instant coffee I would never use again). With a short ingredient list (the only slightly strange item being soy yogurt), these only took a few minutes to bake but were absolutely wonderful. In fact, I believe these muffins may have crossed over into cupcake territory. Speaking of which, I just ordered Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, so expect a lot more about cupcakes. Until then: pumpkin coffee cake with pecan streussal.

Arrowroot and Rosewater

I've had a number of vegan baking adventures since I last posted: lemon bars, chocolate chip cookies, pistachio rosewater cookies, applesauce oat bran muffins, and almond quinoa muffins. The lemon bars were the most difficult recipe (due to all that agar boiling) but yielded the best results. Interestingly, the filling called for arrowroot powder, which is an easily digestible starch extracted from the root of a plant. Like corn starch and tapioca flour, its purpose is to thicken sauces and fillings. I had a small packet of arrowroot in my cupboard due to curiosity, but it turned out that the name is more exciting than the actual product, as arrowroot is a white, odorless, tasteless powder. The crust for the lemon bars used a hefty amount of Earth Balance margarine and resulted in a mess of crumbs, which surprisingly formed a crust right in the pan when I pushed down on them. Again, the agar caused the bars to congeal into wonderfully discreet entities; there was no filling oozing out into the pan. Despite a few agar-related gelatinous blobs in the filling, the confectioner's sugar-dusted lemon bars were delicious and impressed people at the potluck, and I would have had no idea that they were vegan.

The pistachio rosewater cookies were a middle-eastern treat that I baked for dessert following a pistachio apricot couscous dish (for which I used middle-eastern couscous, which is a larger and chewier grain than the kind generally available in a box). Oddly enough, the rosewater was only around three bucks at Whole Foods and came in a nondescript bottle with a few French words and no ingredients listed on the label. An internet search revealed that rosewater is a byproduct of the rose oil extraction process, and really is just as it sounds: roses and water. The result was delicious, very mildly perfumey-smelling cookies, and the nearly unidentifiable taste that wasn't the pistachios or lime zest was the rosewater.

Whole Foods Daze

I suffer from a condition called Whole Foods Daze. The symptoms include things like staring at various bags of chocolate chips for several minutes, contemplating why one is labeled "vegan" is and more expensive despite having the exact same ingredients as a similar bag of chocolate chips. Or pondering whether the sugar I'm about to buy is Fair-Trade and what my conscience versus my budget allows. And then the paranoia sets in. Because I know I look like one of those crazed yuppies in my neighborhood, intensely studying food labels. Plus, so many shiny, interesting products line the shelves: if you're in the market for slippery elm or rosewater, I can direct you where to go. Not to mention the array of fresh, exotic produce like yuca, tomatillos, and burdock root-- vegetables that I've only read about in cookbooks. Mind you, I still haven't cooked with these items, but knowing what they look like and where to find them is a start. All this stimulation shorts my brain circuitry and causes me to stare lovingly at the bins full of Save the Forest trail mix, yogurt-covered pretzels, and golden-hued flax seeds when what I really need is a container of oatmeal several aisles over. My fiance has, at times, had to physically direct me toward the items we actually need and then to the check-out line. He then gently guides me to the exit.

I am spending the evening recovering from Whole Foods Daze. Once again, I managed to fill my basket with items I was convinced I needed at the time for some very important baking projects. The baking question of the week was: Should I make pistachio rosewater cookies or that vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe from the post-punk kitchen website? The answer I came up with: Bake a half-batch of each. Very smart for someone on a budget. Yet, despite the additions to my basket, for the first time in perhaps Whole-Foods customer history, my bill came to under twenty bucks. Perhaps they gave me a discount due to my obvious condition.

Veeeguhn

My mom can barely say the word "vegan."

"It sounds so restrictive," she said. "Veeeguhn."

Our conversations on the topic sound something like this:

"I made these delicious almond biscotti yesterday."

"Yum! What cookbook did you use?"

"Vegan Planet."

"Eww."

What I find interesting about this exchange is that one of things I love about being a vegetarian is the diversity and abundance of foods that I discovered that I had no idea existed way back when I ate meat. I grew up believing that dinner always consisted of three things: a piece of protein hanging off a bone, a starch (usually a shriveled baked potato with Butter Buds, some weird fake butter substitute in powder form, or plain white rice), and a frozen vegetable. We had more types of baked chicken than I care to remember: lemon chicken, barbecued chicken, herbed chicken, chicken with some kind of oatmeal topping...it was like the scene in Forest Gump where Bubba talks about all that shrimp. A really exciting dinner meant we were having sloppy joes.

All that changed when I became vegetarian. I had to re-conceive my entire food schema. What else could dinner look like? Imagine my surprise when I learned that a meal did not have to contain three discrete items. It did not even have to contain two. Dinner could be multiple bowls of a hearty lentil soup, a plate of spinach and rice casserole, or a helping of Thai peanut noodles. I always tell people who are considering becoming vegetarian that simply removing the meat from their diet is not enough, at least not if you want to be a healthy vegetarian. You have to actively seek out varied ways of replacing the meat in your diet, and that doesn't mean that you must have a slab of tofu every night where the steak would otherwise be (though you would never hear me advocate against a juicy piece of grilled tofu marinated in soy sauce and ginger, but I digress). On my path to becoming vegetarian, I discovered grains I never knew existed (quinoa, an ancient grain of the Incas and the only grain that is a complete protein, is now a staple of my diet), increased my consumption of beans and legumes, learned about the varieties of squash. Also, I eat a lot more peanut butter. At any rate, this has forced me to pay much closer attention to what I put in my body and how I feel when I am eating too much, or too little, of a particular type of food, and at the risk of sounding New Age, eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains makes me feel more connected to the earth.

Now, I must go connect with, I mean stir, my homemade applesauce that I have simmering on the stove.

The Elusive Agar

Some vegan substitution are easy: soy or any non-dairy milk (rice, almond, oat, even hemp milk) and Earth Balance or vegetable oil for butter. Others are more obscure. For example, many people are unaware of the fact that gelatin is made using animal byproducts and is a common ingredient in Jello, yogurt, and even some breakfast cereals. Fewer people know what to substitute for gelatin. However, agar (also known as "agar agar"), a sea vegetable used more extensively in Asia, can be purchased in flake or powder form. After the agar is boiled, it can be used as a thickening agent. Thus far, I have only found the elusive Agar at Whole Foods, and it was a bit pricey, but it yielded the most congealed pie I have ever baked. The coconut cream pie (from the cookbook Veganomicon) did not spill a gooey mess all over the pie pan. Oh, no. Each slice (enhanced by coconut extract) was its own separate unit. Thus, I have been converted to the ways of the agar flake. Next week: Lemon Bars.