Vanilla Gluten Freedom and Chocolate Cherry Crème Cupcakes

April 2nd was Liz's Birthday and since she is one of my favorite people in the world, I decided she deserved a cupcake tower.  I made Vanilla Gluten Freedom Cupcakes with Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting and Chocolate Cherry Crème Cupcakes.

The Vanilla Gluten Freedom cupcakes had Corn Flour, White Rice Flour, Tapioca Flour and Quinoa Flour.  These were four different kinds of flour that I have never tried baking with before.  

  

I wasn't sure how these would turn out, but they looked just as good as any other vanilla cupcake I have made in the past.

I topped these little guys off with Blue Vegan Buttercream Frosting and Birthday Sprinkles!

The Chocolate Cherry Crème Cupcakes started off with your basic chocolate cupcake

After coring out each cupcake I filled them with homemade cherry filling topped with vegan buttercream frosting.  I replaced the cake that I removed and topped THAT off with more frosting and shaved dark chocolate.

They couldn't have turned out more perfect. 

Liz LOVED the cupcake tower! 

I was a bit worried that the gluten free cupcakes would be less delicious than the chocolate cherry crème cupcakes.  Although the chocolate ones were a gourmet decadent dessert the gluten free ones were just as delicious.  I  have to, embarrassingly, admit that  Jared and I made sure to steal a couple of them to take back home with us before the night was over.

 I had a great time celebrating with Liz and was happy to have been able to share my love of baking with one of my bestest friends on her birthday! 

Meals with My Honey

It's been a while since my last Blog post.  I have been busy with school as usual, but my spare time has been spent on Cloud 9 with my main squeeze.  Over Spring Break we spent everyday together snuggling, listening to music, and laughing until the sun came up. Amidst getting to know each other, we also spent some time cooking together in the kitchen.

Since Jared wasn't a vegan, I wanted to impress him with how delicious vegan food can be, so I made my famous Orange Tofu.  He loved it and I as expected, this dish excited his taste buds.

After days and evenings spent either forgetting to eat because we were having so much fun, I decided we needed something healthful in our tummies.   We made Pasta de los Angeles and Chili-Lime Rubbed Tofu.

This was just what we both needed.  Angel hair pasta loaded with shallots, garlic, jalapeno, cilantro, tomatoes, lime, black beans and spinach.

The tofu was rubbed with chili powder, and salt and soaked in a sauce made of olive oil, lime juice, soy sauce, garlic and lime zest.  After it was flavored up we baked it and it created the perfect side for the pasta.  I could eat this tofu all day!

On one of our last nights of Spring Break, we wanted dessert, so we made Chocolate-Rum Pudding Cake.

This delightful cake was spiked with Bacardi and filled with chocolatey goodness.

The only thing it was missing was a giant scoop of vegan vanilla ice cream.  

I love spending time in the kitchen with Jared.  He picks up where I leave off and everything seems to come together faster with him there.   After 10 days of cooking and eating vegan food together, he decided to make the big switch and is now beginning the process of becoming a vegan.  Either he really likes me or he just really likes to eat my food.

Peanut Butter, Jelly and Agave Cookies

A couple Sundays ago my niece Olivia and I had another baking date where we experiment with healthy cookie recipes.  This time we made Peanut Butter Agave Cookies.

This week Olivia added everything to the bowls herself.

She of course had to sample each ingredient as it was added.

It's always fun to bake with unrefined sugar.  It makes me feel less guilty about eating the final product.  This dough was made of: Agave nectar, brown rice syrup, canola oil, peanut butter, almond milk, ground flax seeds, vanilla extract, almond extract, all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, baking soda and salt.

Olivia had a blast making cookies and is becoming a champion at shaping them herself.

As we began forming the dough into cookies Olivia decided that peanut butter cookies could not be complete without jelly. So, we made half of the cookies jelly filled.

These cookies were very tasty, but I must admit that the jelly filled ones were the better of the two. I am so lucky to have such an inventive niece working with me in the kitchen.

Vegan Family Dinner Southern Style

A few weeks ago we had Southern Style Vegan Family Dinner.  My head has been in the clouds with school and life, so I am just getting around to posting about this super fun experience.

We usually drink wine with Family Dinner, but wine didn't seem to be a good fit for a down-home Southern meal.  I decided to make Sweet Tea so that some of us could spike it with Jim Beam. 

 

Thanks to Tony spending three hours tracking down every green tomato in the city of Chicago, Leia was able to start our meal out by making Fried Green Tomatoes.  She served them with a dipping sauce that she made out of  Cholula Hot Sauce and Lemon Juice that paired fantastically with them. They were delightfully delicious!

I decided to make Southern Fried Tofu with Biscuits and Gravy.  I haven't eaten fried chicken in a VERY long time, but I think the tofu tasted a lot like it.  The biscuits were a bit thinner than I would have liked and the gravy was a tad too sweet, but over all it was pretty yummy.

 Sarah made Kale and Mustard Greens with Garlic and Onions.  I think this was my favorite part of the meal.  They were perfectly cooked and seasoned.  I could eat these all day!

Frankie and Keyanna brought a vegetable tray and fruit salad. I was happy that we had fruit for dessert, because I decided to make a new dessert recipe that I am working on and it failed miserably.  Those are the breaks when working on a new idea. 

 We had another great event full of food, drinks and laughs.  I am looking forward to our next family dinner in a couple weeks... Southwest Style.

Orange Agave Chocolate Chip Cookies

My niece, Olivia, and I have set ourselves on a journey to bake healthful cookies together a couple times a month.   Last week we made Orange Agave Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Since Liv loves baking almost as much as her Auntie Courty does, we have a blast together as we discuss and sample each ingredient before we add it to the bowl.

With just a few simple ingredients we made a delicious dough.  It had: Agave nectar, canola oil, almond milk, ground flax seeds, vanilla, orange zest, all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, baking soda, salt, and of course vegan chocolate chips!

Liv helped shape the dough into cookies with me, but spent a great deal of time eating the dough.  It's a good thing that the dough is vegan, there isn't anything in there that can make her sick.

We both thought the cookies turned out wonderfully!  When she got home later I was informed that she wanted to skip dinner and have cookies instead. 

I am so glad that I get to have cookie Baking Sundays with my favorite  3-year-old.  We have SO much fun together!

Caribbean Curried Black-Eyed Peas with Plantains and Jerk Asparagus

In another attempt at healthful and tasteful eating, last week, I made Caribbean Curried Black-Eyed Peas with Plantains and Jerk Asparagus.

I love the recipes out of this cookbook! They are quick, simple and contain few ingredients.  The curry had shallots, red bell pepper, garlic, ginger, bay leaves, star anise, curry powder, cinnamon, fresh thyme, salt, light coconut milk, water, black-eyed peas, light agave nectar, lime, and plantains.

The only ingredient I had never heard of, was the star anise.  I found some of these little guys in the bulk spice section at Whole Foods Market.  They have that wonderful black licorice scent that anise has, and are quite adorable in my opinion...

I sautéed the asparagus in my cast iron skillet with ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme, salt, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

I know I've said it before, but this was the best meal I have ever eaten! At least I felt that way once I began eating it.  The curry was perfectly seasoned and was delicious served over jasmine rice.  The sweet steamed plantains combined with the spicy curry gave it a nice balance of sweet and salty and pairing it along side of the jerk asparagus created a taste-bud explosion! It was the perfect side to have next to the curry.  I loved these dishes so much that I ate them for 4 days in a row without getting sick of them. In fact, I was actually disappointed once they were polished off.