My favorite recipe: Banana Pancakes

I have been making these pancakes for a couple years now. I got the recipe from Post Punk Kitchen and have adapted it a little to make it easier and more to my liking. Basically, the only modifications are how I mix in the bananas and that I don't use All Spice because I never have it. And I don't really understand what All Spice is. All the spices? That is a lot of spices. I also add chocolate chips. Yum.

So, first I blend the soymilk and bananas together.


Then I mix it with the dry ingredients.


Then I put them on the stove on a griddle-like pan, flip them, and I am done. These are the easiest vegan pancakes you will ever make. Seriously easy and seriously delicious.

CUPCAKES!

Inspired by this post on my friends' blog Gastrofabulous, I decided to make a vegan version of the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes. The recipe my friend used was not vegan so I had some research to do. I looked for a recipe for vegan yellow cake but all the pictures I found made the cake look kind of green and soggy. Then I found a picture where the baker had used the recipe from the cookbook Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by the authors of my favorite website Post Punk Kitchen. I didn't have the book so I stopped at the bookstore before picking up the ingredients and copied the recipe down (unfortunately, I threw out the little piece of paper by accident). For the icing, I used the regular recipe, substituting vegan butter for regular.

The cupcakes were supposed to look like this:


But I don't have an icing tube so the icing did not look as appealing. But it was an easy recipe and I thought they were pretty good. And they are all gone so they must have been OK.

The yellow cake recipe was so easy. I put all the ingredients in a bowl and stirred. Piece of cake. Or, rather, piece of cupcake.


The icing was a little complex but not bad at all. Just two steps. I first made the vegan chocolate chip cookie dough, which is basically regular without eggs. Then I made a white icing with confectioner's sugar. Then I just put them together.


Add some chocolate chips and you are in business.


Tried to get a good closeup shot but the foil wrappers made it blurry.


My sister like them.


So did I.

I think this is a really great, yummy recipe. You should try it. The recipe is linked on Gastrofabulous.

On TV while I ate: Party of Five. I have been watching from season one. I don't know why I didn't watch this as a kid. It is so my kind of show :)

Soups on! Vegan Chikin and Dumpling Soup x2

Today I recreated a soup that I made back on December 3rd with my friend and co-worker Jay. It reminded me that I never blogged about that crazy cooking experience! We attempted this recipe that Jay had made with his mom over Thanksgiving. In my small kitchen, it was quite an adventure!

Fist we had to make the dumplings. We mixed vegan butter with flour, and baking powder. We mixed this until it crumbled. We had to clear off the table in our living room to have enough space to roll out the dough for the dumplings. I am sorry to say the table is back to all clutter.


Then we added soymilk and it became a dough.


Kneading the dough was a little messy.


Then Jay rolled it out.


Meanwhile, I began to chop the vegetables. I was really excited to use my new chopper. We were going to use more carrots, onion, and celery, than the recipe called for, so it was going to be a big job.


But the chopper proved more difficult than I had expected. I had to use a lot of muscle.


The onion we used was CRAZY! It was so strong. It was a spanish onion. I was crying my eyes out.


Even my sister, in another room, not helping, was affected by the onion.


After all was chopped, Jay put the onions, celery and some vegan butter in a saucepan and sauteed it until soft. He added flour to make a paste. He then put the mixture in boiling vegetable stock. I didn't get a picture of this step because I was busy chopping carrots. After stirring the mixture, we added the carrots and some fake chicken or "chikin." We used traditionally flavored Seitan, the blue box.


Then Jay stirred the pot.


I took over stirring while Jay cut up the dumplings and started bringing them over to go into the soup.


I was amazed that my sister helped with this part! I think she just wanted us to be done so she could eat it!


(I couldn't get this picture to rotate, but I think this way it emphasizes the craziness of the occurrence. Bizarre!)

My kitchen was a little small for this project and being that I wasn't familiar with the recipe, I didn't plan right. As a result we had a little accident with the cutting board and the stove.


It just melted a little. I always like to clean up right away. So I started on the dishes while the soup simmered.


We didn't know how we were going to get the flour off the table without getting it all over the floor and carpet. So I came up with a very effective method. I used the spatula to push the flour onto tin foil and then wrapped up the tin foil and threw it away. Very clean and easy.


The soup was so thick!!


It was a big project. But I had help. So it wasn't one bowl wonder.


It wasn't even two bowl wonder.


It was THREE bowl wonder!!! My sister, Jay and I all enjoyed the soup. It was hearty and delicious.


And very filling.


What a fun night cooking with friends!


I recreated the soup this snowy day because I was in the mood for something hearty. This time I wanted to make it a little easier. So I got pre-chopped onions, celery, and carrots. A little more expensive but totally worth the time and energy. I also used a baking sheet to roll the dumpling dough so I didn't have to clean off the table. I also put a little more broth in this one so it was not SO thick.



I was able to avoid melting any kitchen equipment this time, too. It is really a very yummy soup.