The Great Gingerbread People Experiment of 2011!

As I finished my two day effort to make Gingerbread people cookies, my sister likened my cooking to science experiments. This one, I admitted, was a failed experiment but one that definitely taught me a lot.

I wanted to make Gingerbread people (I use people because my mom was really worried about me using only Gingerbread men and having gone to an all women's college, I agree), but my first obstacle was finding a Gingerbread person cookie cutter. I settled for a snow-person instead.

So, I set out to make Gingerbread Snow People based on this recipe on my favorite vegan website theppk.com.

Mistake #1: I substituted Brown Rice Syrup for Molasses. Molasses scares me. It is SOOOO thick. And it was kind of expensive. So I hypothesized that Brown Rice Syrup would have a similar effect as Molasses. Conclusion: While the end effect of the cookies was not favorable, it is uncertain that the sole cause of this outcome was due to this substitution. But it sure did not help!

I was very proud of myself for chilling the dough overnight. I am usually impatient and try to roll dough right away, ending up with a sticky mess. The next day, the dough was surprisingly easy to work with.

Things were going well. I even hand cut one Gingerbread person amongst the snowmen. Then, I put them in the oven...

Major spreading!!! I was left with really overweight Snow People. I suspect they ate too many cookies :) I tried to make them look the part by using the cookie cutter to make the imprint of the original Snow Person shape. 

I think one Snow Person saw their fate and decided it was too much to handle. He made an attempt on his life. 

The knife and the spatula jumped down to try to stop him but it was too late. The Snow Person had taken his own life. 

OR, perhaps he just fell because I stupidly tried to balance the tray on our dish drying rack...not even on the rack, on the dishes in the rack. MISTAKE #2. I had to pause for a while and clean that up. 

By this time, I felt defeated. My cookies were coming out hard and crunch instead of the desired soft and chewy and they were also HUGE. 

I switched to circles hypothesizing that they would stay together more and come out better. I used a cup (the cup I was using as a rolling pin) to cut them out. They were easier to deal with but still came out HUGE! 

I adjusted. I made smaller circles using a smaller cup...

Somehow I did manage to get this outlier...a somewhat normal looking Snow Person. Every experiment has its anomaly. 

While the smaller circle cookies were in the oven, I attempted vegan icing. I had gotten all natural food coloring so I was excited to try to make colors. I put some powdered sugar and almond milk in 2 different mugs (one for each color). I also added some extra vanilla because it seemed like it needed more flavor. Then I realized the almond milk had vanilla in it. Mistake #3?? Not sure. 

It took a while to get the consistency and color I wanted. This was not it...

Finally the color looked like an actual color. The consistency was not quite right. It was hard to get out of my icing tube squirter thingy. So it ended up very goopy and hard to shape. But I took my model Snow Person and tried to do him/her up right. 

I made the small circles into sandwiches with the icing. That was easier. The problem was they were still very crunchy cookies, not ideal for cookie sandwiches. 

My sister claimed she still enjoyed them and would eat a whole plate. But she will eat anything with sugar. 

 I saved these deformed ones for her.

THE RESULT: A LOT of gingerbread cookies that are too crunchy for my taste but somewhat edible. I learned a lot about icing in the process and in the end probably should have used the molasses as scary as it is. I will still serve the cookies at our holiday party at work because I have a ton of them and they are edible just not ideal. But they are certainly not my best work although they were an interesting experiment. 

I am back! And...Loaf cakes!

After being asked many times to revive my blog, the peer pressure finally got to me and I am back! I have many pictures stored up and plan to update you on my cooking adventures of the last year as well as share current cooking creations. This was a busy year and it was hard to find time to cook let alone post. But I am going to attempt to catch up and to cook more!

Update on my vegan-ness. I am TOTALLY vegan now. Before I would always cook vegan but sometimes eat things like cookies that had eggs and milk cooked no. No more! 100% vegan... but I do eat honey. So maybe more like 99.9%.

I have recently been really into these loaf cake recipes fro

m my favorite vegan recipe site theppk.com.

Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf

and

Marbled Banana Bread

I made them both in one night which took some maneuvering around my small kitchen. But they came out really well.

Then this weekend for Thanksgiving I made the Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf into a Bunt Cake and made a Maple Syrup Glaze for the top. It was good but I needed to adjust the cooking time for the bunt shape...I will know for next time. I also did not have the proper amount of powder sugar so the glaze was a little grainy. But still tasty and a good vegan dessert among all the non-vegan pies the rest of my family ate.

I also made another Banana Marble Loaf this weekend but it came out too banana-y because I used a very interesting mutant banana! In the peel, it looked large. Then when I opened it, it was a conjoined twin banana! REGRET: I did not take a picture. I don't know what I was thinking. It was cool. But the largeness of this mutant banana made the cake very banana-y. I should have measured the pureed banana but fell victim to laziness.

All in all, the loaf cakes have been great to add to my repertoire and I have a feeling they will become standard dessert fare for me .

It's good to be back. More soon... I promise.

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 :)