Chocoholic's Delight

As I had mentioned yesterday, I decided to make some ice cream, and resorted to my favourite ice cream book, Vice Cream. I made the Chocoholic's Delight (for some reason, I feel like I've made this before...ah, I just checked my photo file and I did make this recipe, but without the chocolate chips). I made a sub for the purified water, and used organic chocolate soymilk instead for extra creaminess and chocolate flavour! My new blender did a much better job at pulverizing the raw cashews than my food processor did.

I just realized that I don't have a snack for this week at work (somehow bringing in my ice cream seems a little impractical). I saw somewhere that someone made a banana split loaf from Vegan Planet, so I'm going to check the recipe and hope I have all of the ingredients or come up with a recipe of my own that incorporates the browning bananas on my counter and homemade freezer jam that I made.

Honestly, I Don't Have an Imaginary Sister...

Yes, this blog is called ‘Two Vegan Sisters’, although I seem like the Blog Hog Sister. Tracy truly does exist – despite not posting her photo nor any entries over the past week. She is busy moving into her new house (which I have yet to see). I can’t wait to see what she will cook first in her gleaming new kitchen! Thankfully there won’t be any fluorescent lights like in her old house – the photos taken in that light probably didn’t make for good blog fodder.

And now onto food - In addition to making tasty treats on Tuesday night, I decided to make another batch of ice cream using the Chocolate Delight recipe from Vice Cream. As you may note in an earlier blog, I tried another recipe from this same book, with fantastic results. Only thing was the ‘cream’ seemed a little gritty. I had thought that this could have been caused in part from the natural peanut butter that was added to the recipe, but the other night, after a taste test, I confirmed that the gritty texture is also caused by the ground cashew base. I have to think of something that will grind these nuts much smoother than what my current food processor can do. And buying cashew nut butter is not a financially-viable option. Otherwise, I’ll have to live with the grit, or maybe try straining it. I was going to add some crushed Oreo-style cookies, but at the last minute, I found the ice cream’s almond extract flavour made it seem like a chocolate-almond ice cream, with bits of ‘almonds’, yeah…’almonds’ crushed into it.
Anyways, I didn’t post a pic of the ‘soft-serve’ style from when the mixture came out of the ice cream machine. This is because I made a dark chocolate variety of ice cream, that would cause critics to be grossed out by my creation. Instead, I stuck it in the freezer overnight and scooped it into a bowl, which you see below.

Guilty confession – I didn’t make it onto the elliptical on Tuesday night since as I was turning out the light in my office, I noticed an odd dark blob in the hallway. I turned my light on only to confirm my worst fear - a big kahuna spider. I’m petrified of spiders, and was forced to run downstairs, grab my central vac hose, and suck it up (that doesn’t sound very vegan of me). I was so stressed out from that experience that I decided to vacuum my upstairs, to ensure that the spider was safely in the central vac cannister in the garage. While that frightening episode forced me to avoid the basement - and hence, my elliptical - for fear of running into another spider of that magnitude, it did allow me to get half of my vacuuming done :)

Day of (Un)Rest

I was a busy girl today! Kyle is feeling a little under the weather, as he is busy at work installing the ice for the curling rink. So I wanted to make him a yummy dinner to help lift his spirits. I cooked up 1/2 a recipe of Seitan from Vegan with a Vengeance, then used two of the three seitan chunks to make Jerk Seitan. I use red onions and red peppers instead of what the recipe calls for to add more colour. This was my second time making it, and I wish I had more time to marinate it (the recipe says to marinate the seitan for one hour, but the first time I made it I marinated it overnight - much better). Nonetheless, it was great! I served it over steamed brown rice, with some broccoli on the side. Kyle really liked the broccoli - all I did was sauté it with garlic-seasoned rice vinegar and soy sauce, and sprinkled it with sesame seeds.


For Dessert #1, I pulled out some of my Peanut Butter Chip Ice Cream from yesterday. My mom and stepdad came over and taste-tested this earlier in the day, and were very complimentary! My mom isn't a fan of soy, and she said that she never would have guessed that that was a main ingredient!

I'm posting a new pic of the ice cream, since my aunt had logged onto this blog earlier in the day, and said it looked like dog sh*t. I had stuck it in the freezer overnight, and scooped it out today. I'm a bigger fan of it this way, rather than the soft serve, sh*t style :)


And now on to Dessert #2...earlier in the week, I finally received my copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I am on the Post Punk Kitchen site rather frequently, and have been very jealous of everyone else making tons and tons of cupcakes - it was now finally my turn! I haven't eaten a boston cream donut for I don't know how long, so I knew that this was the first cupcake I would make! I got a little scared when I read that the filling required agar - I have not ever had any luck with that stuff. It either never dissolves, or it does absolutely nothing to thicken or glossen (I don't even really know what it's supposed to do). I followed Isa's instructions for when using flakes instead of powder, and it seemed to turn out A-OK. I was however getting a *little* worried, since there was only like 1/3 cup of soymilk in my pot with the agar, and after 10 minutes of cooking, there wasn't much liquid left. I stirred that thing the entire time, just like the recipe said, because I knew that if I stopped stirring for just one minute, it would likely burn and crust on the bottom of my pan.

When it came time to fill the cupcakes, I tried to think of something else to use instead of a pastry bag. I was expecting to use a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off, but I then remembered back to Xmas of 2001 or something, when I asked for and received a Tupperware 'decorating' tool. I have no idea why I wanted that back then, as I certainly didn't plan on decorating cakes or anything. But man, that tool was perfect for filling the cupcakes! It comes with a variety of tips, and you can stick on the lid and store the contents in the fridge. I had extra filling left over, so I'm going to make a second batch of cupcakes on Tuesday night.


After like 3 hours of slaving away at these cupcakes, I was SO pleased with the final results:



Needless to say, I didn't do my vacuuming :) There's always tomorrow...

I Scream, You Scream...

Well, it doesn't look the most appetizing, but I made some Peanut Butter Ice Cream from Vice Cream, and it was actually pretty good! Five minutes after I piled it into my bowl and it half melted, I decided to snap a pic. Better late than never!

My friend Sam came over after a long day of shopping, and we thought this would be pretty quick to make. I was surprised how well my food processor ground the raw cashews, so I'm looking forward to making a 'plainer' recipe without the gritty natural peanut butter to see just how well they process. I used chocolate soy milk instead of the purified water, and added some chocolate chips (honestly, I DON'T eat chocolate chips with everything, although they have made more than a few appearances on this blog...).

We were going to make the Boston Cream Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but it would have taken way too much time. I'm going to make them tomorrow along with Jerk Seitan. I had reserved Sunday for vacuuming, but cooking and baking is way more fun instead. Maybe I'll vacuum after all of that...