Showing posts with label Kathy Hester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kathy Hester. Show all posts

Thursday, October 18, 2012

2 Soups and 1 muffin

As we've already discussed in a previous post, I love soup! And with the colder temps approaching (finally it's starting here in Sicily as well!..), I can easily whip up a pot of soup 3-4x a week!

The other day a creation happened quite accidentally actually. I planned to make a dish from my[click!] Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure cookbook,  but sure enough, I didn't follow the intructions to a 'T' and ended up having a more liquid-y red bell pepper/potato mix. I wasn't in the mood to have it like that over quinoa or anything, so I just added some more vegetable broth, some soy milk and home made vegan tofu 'sour cream', salt, pepper, smoked paprika, done! Blend it all up and this beautiful 'Roasted red bellpepper potato soup' was born! :) 

-By the way, that book is one of my very first veg books I got years ago when I became a veg and a great book to have if you're veg*n and love your pressure cooker! All of the recipes can be easily veganized! ;) -


Take 3-4 small potatoes, 1 whole red bell pepper (roasted before in the oven), 4-6 cups of water/veggie broth, cook in pressure cooker for ~3 minutes, let the pressure come down for ~5 min naturally, then release and open the lid.
Add 2-3 Tbsp tofu 'sour cream' and a splash of soy (or any other plant) milk, salt, pepper, smoked pepper.. everything to your own personal taste, blend, done!

I just added some roasted zucchini and some nutritional yeast for the extra healthy boost! ;)

 Who doesn't love 'Chicken' noodle soup!? Especially when it's cold and rainy outside (like it was that particular day here) and just cozy to have this kind of soup!
I didn't follow any specific instruction/recipe but just diced up 1 small onion, sauteed it in some water, then added 2 diced carrots, 1 diced stalk of celery, 1 c (already cooked) chickpeas, 4-6 c water/veggie broth (I actually used 1 frozen 'cube' of Kathy Hester's [click!] Vegan Slow Cooker 'chickn' bouillon' and then later added 1-2 Tbsp of [click!] Bryanna's home made chicken broth powder).
After ~5-10 minutes I added some spaghetti pasta broken into ~2" pieces (which were still too long! Next time I'll use smaller pasta to begin with!), cooked it for another 10 minutes and done! At the very end I added a handful of vegan 'chick'n strips' just because I was in the mood to, but it certainly would work well without too!


On to my sweet tooth recipe! ;)
A long time ago I stumbled across Cleo Coyle's[click!] Coffee House Mystery website after having bought a few of her Coffee House mystery books and looking forward to reading them. One recipe in particular caught my eyes, the ones for 'Coffee Shop Doughnut Muffins'! Oh I was so going to make them!!! I simply veganized the original recipe and it was a huge hit in my house!!! ;)
  


 You can find the original recipe here:   Doughnut Muffins

My veganized version:

~*Vegan coffee shop doughnut muffins*~

For the batter:
*6 Tbsp apple sauce
*6 Tbsp coconut oil 
*1/2 c vegan sugar
*2 egg substitutes (I used Ener-G)
*1 c plant milk (I used home made oatmilk)
*2.5 c flour (I used 2 c ground oatmeal, 1/2 unbleached white AP flour)
*1/4 tsp baking soda
*2.5 tsp baking powder
*1/4 tsp salt
*1/2 tsp cinnamon

For the topping:
*1/4 c vegan sugar
*1 tsp cinnamon
*2 Tbsp vegan 'butter'

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F and prep the muffin tins with liners, gently sprayed with some cooking spray. [If you use silicone muffin forms, you won't need liners, of course!]

To make the batter mix the apple sauce and coconut oil together with the sugar with an electric mixer. 
Make the egg replacer (3 tsp Ener-G + 4 Tbsp warm water), let sit for a few minutes. [You can also use flax meal, 2 Tbsp ground flax seeds + 6 Tbsp water.]
Add the plant milk and the egg replacer to the sugar/oil/apple sauce mix.
Sift in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, mix just until it's all comined.
Fill each muffin cup with 1 scoop of the batter (an ice cream scoop works well for that) and once all tins are filled, bake for 20-25 minutes until an inserted tooth pick comes out clean.
Let the muffins cool completely.

Once the muffins are cooled out, you can finish them with the cinnamon-sugar topping:
Melt the vegan 'butter' and mix the cinnamon with the sugar in a small bowl.
Brush each muffin top with a bit of the 'butter' and immediately dip it into the cinnamon-sugar mix.

Voila, ready! Now put on a nice brew of coffee and enjoy one of those muffins with a cup of joe! =)

Nutritional value (calculated for my ingredients above; might vary slightly if you use other plant milk and/or flour!)
Per muffin: 
156 calories, 6 g fat, 22 g carbs, 1.6 g fiber, 10 g sugar, 2 g protein

~*~*~*~ 

Stay tuned for more veganized recipes from Cleo Coyle's Coffe Shop Mystery books! ;)  

Sunday, July 1, 2012

The Vegan Slow Cooker

I'm finally trying to get myself better with the weekly menu planning and decided to blog from now on, which book I will cook from in the current week!

For this week I've picked Kathy Hester's "The Vegan Slow Cooker".
I love the convenience of being able to put everything in one pot (some prepping steps before don't bother me) and have it all ready a few hours later.  

Even though we have A/C in the house here, I still appreciate not heating up my kitchen, so using a crock pot/slow cooker is another big plus right now in the summer time!


I've already made 2 things from the book; the 'Foolproof Focaccia' bread (page 161) as well as the Chickeny Bouillon (page 19). 

The Focaccia bread was delicious; maybe a tad too thick for my liking.. I've used the entire dough this time. Kathy suggests one can do so *or* split the dough in half for 2 thinner Focaccias, which I'll try next time! The taste was great though and again, the convenience of the CP just perfect! 

I didn't grease the CP well enough *blush* so I had to split the bread while it was still in the CP in order to get it out!



The fresh Focaccia bread in 'action' with some faux tuna as well as sun dried tomato & white bean mix as well as some pickled artichoke hearts fresh from the market! :)

I currently have the Balsamic Onion Marmalade (page 30) in the CP; it'll be ready for tonight's pizza and smells divine!!!
I'll keep this blog updated with the dishes I'll be cooking! =)

Update: The Balsamic Onion Marmalade:





Soo good on pizza!

Alright, next up is the Eggplant Tofu-Ricotta Casserole! (Pg. 94)

I actually forgot to plug the crock pot in yesterday and only realized it late afternoon! *duh!!!* Clearly it was too late for having this for dinner that very evening but luckily it was done cooking before I went to bed!
Well.. I guess because of having kept it in the fridge over night, the sauce got soaked up a bit, so it wasn't as saucy as it would have been freshly out of the CP, but the flavors were still great! 

The tofu-ricotta made it all thicker than my Norma sauce (tomato sauce with eggplant) and I'm sure I'll use this tofu-ricotta mix for many other dishes in the future as well! ;)