One for Two

The weather here is not very nice, and like every Remembrance Day, it was miserable. Since I didn’t have any plans during the day yesterday, I thought that I could either a) vacuum and clean bathrooms or b) cook/bake something yummy. Things were headed in the right direction for Option A when I started cleaning my closet to find clothes to donate to charity. Once I finished in my closet, I went into my office closet to find more clothes, only to end up on the computer. I then found recipes that looked fun for Option B. You know where this is headed.

I thought that I should bake up a tasty meal. But given that it was only 9am, I scratched that plan for during the day in order to bake a scrumptious treat. There is a recipe I plan on making for Christmas – vegan buttertarts – so I thought it might be good to test them in advance.

Upon reading the recipe, I noticed that I would make a few substitutions…maple syrup for the brown rice or corn syrup, and as a result, an extra tablespoon of powdered egg replacer with a little less water. Since I didn’t have any pre-made tarts, I decided to make up some pastry and just put it into my muffin tin. Bad idea – everything was going smoothly, until the tart filling puffed up so much and seeped out of the pastry shell. Since the muffin tin was not flexible, it was too hard to get the tarts out of the pan. I decided not to take a photo of this catastrophe.

Next time: I will buy little foil tart pans that are flexible. Good thing I tried this out before committing them to a family dinner!

After reading Thursday’s post by Tracy, I decided that I would give this 5-ingredient cookbook another shot.

I was going to buy store-bought gnocchi, but the ‘lactic acid’ ingredient made me nervous. I remember seeing a homemade gnocchi recipe in VwaV, so I decided to give that a try.

It turned out great! Here is the uncooked result:


I could have used some tips/graphic to show me how to get the fork imprints to stay on each piece, but wow – it was so easy and tasty! Kyle was a pro at making all of the gnocchi – he was way better than I was...so serious:


I made the same sauce Tracy made but with spinach instead of swiss chard. Yum! So for the day, I had one success out of two recipes.

I have now vowed to only make cupcakes once every month, otherwise, I will put on too much weight. Plus, I think I will appreciate them more! I think it’s a wise decision given that I will be making Xmas treats in a few weeks, and it’s hard enough to have willpower to avoid eating whole tins of cookies. I can’t wait to start posting some pics and recipes of our family treats.