Yellow cupcakes( vegan) with choc.frosting( not vegan).....

By now you know I'm not a Vegan and I probably will never be one( I really love dairy too much). I probably could become a vegetarian though. I havent eaten red meat in over 20 years and lately the thought of chicken or pork gives me bad shivers. I honestly don't like cleaning or touching raw chicken!!

You're probably asking "then why did she buy a vegan cookbook?" I bought Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World last year sometime because I thought so many of the cupcakes I'd see on other foodbloggers sites looked really good. I also thought " I'd still like to bake if I don't have any dairy or eggs in the house". That should be reason enough right?

Anyway, as I prepared our non-vegan dinner last night of Turkey burgers and oven baked fries, I decided I'd like a little treat for dessert. Aside from those chocolate brownie muffins, I havent baked anything in about 2 weeks.

I whipped out the book and decided on this basic yellow cupcake. The recipe came together in about 5 minutes. You clabber some soymilk( I used vanilla) with of cider vinegar in order to mimic buttermilk. You add your sugar to that along with some flavoring and 1/3c of oil. I used Fiori Di Sicilia, a citrus floraly vanilla flavoring from KA flour. You add the wet ingredients to the dry( flour, cornstarch, soda and powder) and thats it. I didnt even pull out the mixer!!

They smelled heavenly while they were baking, but I was still a bit skeptical. Since it was freezing outside( 12f), I popped them on the deck to cool for about 5 minutes. I frosted them with some simple chocolate frosting( NOT VEGAN) that I had leftover from a party I catered. If I was a vegan, obviously I would have whipped up a vegan frosting using margarine, but I dont even have any margarine in my house!!

I gave Robin a cupcake while explaining to her that these are vegan. Like the muffins, she was a bit skeptical!! How can you make a cupcake with no eggs?

The verdict? We liked them. They were light and not too sweet with a nice flavor. Next time, I'll try the chocolate kind. After all, I still have almost a full container of soymilk to use up......

Apple-Maple glazed chicken breasts(CI)....

I don't really know what to say about this recipe. Usually, I love all things from Cook's Illustrated but I'm sort of on the fence about this one. The chicken was tender and perfectly cooked. I think the sauce is what bugged me. It was somewhat sweet and I dont really like sweet sauces. Another thing I dont like is that corn syrup is one of the ingredients in the sauce. Its supposed to help the glaze to cling better. I just dont feel good about injesting corn syrup. The recipe comes from the latest issue of Cook's Illustrated. The main recipe was for an orange/honey glaze and this version was one of the options. I did add some fresh chopped sage as well even though the recipe didnt call for that. I felt it needed some "green".

I also made another loaf of bread from the KA whole grain baking book. I didnt take a picture because it basically looks the same as the other loaf. I just placed an order for the new Peter Reinhart whole grain baking book. I should have it in 2 weeks. I can't wait to bake from that book.

In other news, I got a big catering job for Sept 22nd. Its appetizers and sweets for a wedding for 250ppl. Sounds good right? We're also invited guests to the wedding so I need to work out the logisitics. The good thing is that I asked my friend Tom from Ohio if he wanted to help me( because I was going to hire someone) and he said YES. He's going to bake all the breads for the canapes which will be a huge help. Since the mother of the bride is a friend of the family, I told her I was just going to double my food costs but Robin and I were discussing whether or not to give my labor to the Bride as her wedding gift. I still need to pay Tom though for gas and ingredients since he so generously said I didnt have to pay him an hourly rate. Did I mention we're having a huge 24 x24 room added to our house and we're having the kitchen totally redone? The addition will be in full-swing when Tom is here, but I'll have to hold off on any kitchen work until after the wedding. I'm sure that wont be a problem as the cabinets are coming from Quebec.

Oh and we're also going to San Fran on Sept 11th( yeah, it was cheaper to fly that day)- 18th so at least I can pick up ingredients in MI before we drive back to Ontario.

Gingery stir fry( cook's) and Cobbler( KA whole grain baking)

We had a great time in Niagara. Chels really enjoyed herself and so did we. I think Robin might have enjoyed herself a bit too much. On Thursday she started having really bad neck pain. By Friday night, she was in so much pain, she was in tears(poor thing). We ended up in the ER where they diagnosed her with Tortocollis. Litterally, a twisted neck. She might have jerked it or done something funky going down all those water slides. Anyway, they gave her an injection and when that didnt work, they gave her a few different pills. We left the ER at 2:30am and when we came home, she still couldnt get to sleep. She couldnt even lay down. I gave her my memory foam travel pillow so at least she could try to get some sleep. Yesterday was no better. It's Canada Day today and all our plans went out the door!! So, what did I do all day yesterday? I stayed home with her and cooked off course. Its been ages since I've been able to do that. In addition to making breakfast, lunch and dinner, I also made 2 different batches of strawberry jam. One with pectin, one without.( posts about that later). For dinner I made a stir fry from Cook's Illustrated. I used the ginger sauce recipe and modified it using firm tofu and shrimp. For dessert, I got a great deal on blueberries(1.77 a pint). I made a peach blueberry cobbler from the KA flour whole grain baking book. The recipe called for rolling out the biscuits, but I just dropped them on because by this point, I was exhausted. I'm not used to doing all the dishes when I cook!! I've come to the conclusion, that If I had to do dishes on a dialy basis, I wouldnt cook!!

Brown Rice Pudding( KA flour whole grain baking)....

I can tell I'm in a definate comfort food mood these last few days, I went looking for something to bake and the only thing that sounded good to me was rice pudding. I love rice pudding and I'll usually always order it from a Jewish Deli when we're in Florida. But, I feel guilty eating it because its white, so this brown version really struck my fancy. This was really simple to make. The recipe calls for 1.5cups of cooked brown rice which I didnt have leftover so I had to make some. Then you mix 2 cups of milk with 2 eggs, a small amount of brown sugar and maple syrup, some spices and dried fruit. Thats it. You bake it in a buttered casserole dish for 30 min and voila. I tasted it when it came out of the oven and I didnt like it as much as I did when it chilled.

Nutty for Oats Cookies( KA flour whole grain baking)...

I gave Robin the KA flour whole grain baking cookbook and asked her to pick something out. Big surprise that she picked out something with peanutbutter. She did also pick out a pear hazelnut cobbler, but my pears were not ripe. So, yesterday I made these cookies. There is actually no flour in these cookies. They do have whole oats and oats that you grind up into flour. They also contain peanutbutter and choc. chips. The recipe calls for 2 cups of chips, but next time I'd knock that back to one cup. Robin and I both felt there were too many chips. Nevertheless, these cookies are good, they have a really earthy texture and they arent too sweet. I used Hershey's special dark choc. chips that are from Canada.

My mojo is back......

Last week I was telling a friend that I felt like I lost my cooking mojo. I was just NOT in the mood to cook. I also had two failures( that I didnt blog about) and was feeling kinda down( I'm sure this horrible weather didnt help either). Friday brought more horrible weather and so much freaking snow that the boys could barely walk down the front steps. But as I always say, the weather here changes on a dime and by the afternoon, it was bright and sunny. I made a batch of Cook's Illustrated Multigrain bread and brought a loaf over to my neighbor who plows our driveway everytime it snows. He does it for free so I make sure to keep him and his family supplied with goodies.

The really bright and sunny continued yesterday and I was in a fabulous mood. ( A little sunshine will do that to me). I also had my hair highlighted and cut and was feeling very sexy so I decided to cook for my really sexy wife. She's been working her sexy ass off and I've been really slacking in the cooking department. The night I made the bread, I scrambled her some eggs and threw some Canadian Bacon( the stuff we Americans call Canadian bacon) on her plate.

As I was reading my favorite foodblogs, I came across this shrimp and gruyere pasta dish on Joe's blog. I had all the ingredients handy so I whipped that up. I added some chicken instead of using all the shrimp, I also threw in some frozen artichokes I had from Trader Joe's. Instead of using orichette pasta, I used Dreamfields Low Carb Penne since Robin is STILL DOING SOUTH BEACH. This dish was creamy and very yummy.



I wanted to bake something too, since its been ages since I've baked something at home. I pulled out the KA flour Whole Grain Baking Book and found some Cranberry Apricot Chocolate chews. I went with the variation at the bottom of the page using white chocolate, dried apricots and cherries and pistachios. The recipe using traditional whole wheat flour instead of AP flour. I was shocked to find I was out of WW flour so I used KA white whole wheat flour and it worked out really well. I used a combination of lindt and ghiradelli white chocolate for these. Robin cringed when I told her I was making a whole wheat cookie, but she seemed to enjoy them and really in the end, thats all that matters!!

Not what I expected.....

I've been dreaming about a New England type lobster roll for awhile. Since this xmas dinner was just Robin, me and her mom, I decided to make something very casual for dinner and I chose the lobster roll. I ordered 2 lobster tails from work and when I got them, I was surprised, because the flesh of one of the tails was pink, while the other was white. The tails were 8oz each so I knew it would be plenty of meat. My catering boss suggested I saute the lobster meat in butter which I did. However, It curled up and just didnt look like lobster to me. I'm thinking it was a spiny lobster or rock lobster instead of Maine lobster. It was good, just not what I wanted. I searched high and low for top loading hot dog buns, but I could find any so I made some faux hot dog buns using white whole wheat flour and a recipe from King Arthur. I mixed the cooked lobster with some mayo, a bit of celery and scallion. I served these with root veggie chips and full sour pickles from Trader Joes.

Dark and Soft Restaurant dinner rolls( KA whole grain)....

I've been on a real roll( or bun as my honey calls them) kick lately. It's nice to pull one out of the freezer to make a sandwich or heat one up with a cup of soup. I've also been on a whole grain baking kick too. I love my new KA Whole Grain Baking Book.

The folks at KA say that these Dark & Soft Restaurant dinner rolls remind them of the soft, mildly sweet, deep chocolate-colored rolls served at various chain restaurants( particularly steakhouses) across the country. I'm not sure about that part as I dont frequent steakhouses at all. We enjoyed these with our Italian wedding soup a few days ago. I used the dough feature of the bread machine. The dough came together easily and baked up fabulous.

If you're interested in the recipe, just leave me a note with your email.

ps: Thanks for the nice comments regarding Stanlee. When I moved to Canada, I left Stanlee with my aunt in California because he was very attatched to her and I felt he wouldnt be able to take the winters here. Even though he wasnt with me on a daily basis, I never stopped thinking about him or loving him.

Beautiful Buns( King Arthur Flour)....

I've had this recipe in my Outlook Food File since March. I copied it from Joe's foodblog. I love the fact that it uses 100% white whole wheat flour( a lighter whole wheat, but still whole wheat) and no High Fructose corn syrup. This was actually my first time making buns. It was so easy. I threw everything in the bread machine and pressed the dough cycle. When the cycle was finished, I shaped them into 8 buns and let rise again for 40 min. I did an egg wash and sprinkled with sesame seeds( not included in the recipe). They smelled fabulous baking and Robin thought they were amazing. We had 1 each tonight with Turkey sloppy Joes( everyday food). I wrapped each one in PressNSeal freezer wrap. I'll never buy hamburger buns from the store again!!! Thanks Joe.

Cinnamon Pumpkin bars( KA whole grain baking)....

Here is another whole wheat recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole grain baking book( what a mouthful!!). The jury is still out on this. When I first tasted them, they were kinda "wheaty". Today I like them a bit better( just a bit). The recipe contains 1 1/2 stick( 3/4cup) of butter, cinnamon chips, raisins, pumpkin, and whole wheat flour in additon to the eggs and leavening agent. I don't know, I just expected a lot more. They werent a wow for me.

There is a whole wheat cinnamon roll recipe that Id like to try. The recipe notes say it comes from author Jodi Picoult who is supposed to be an accomplished baker. Hopefully, I'll like those better.

Morning Glory Muffins( KA whole grain baking)

I've had my eye on the KA Whole Grain baking book for a while now so when I got an amazon gift certificate for doing some survey's, I wasted no time in buying it. What an amazing book, every single recipe uses whole grains. There are cakes and breads and brownies and even whole grain croissants. I can't wait to start baking.

The first recipe I made were these muffins. I used 100% white whole wheat( KA's light wheat flour). The recipe stated that regular whole wheat flour was ok too. Btw, for my Canadian readers, I buy my King Arthur flour in Michigan, sadly, its not sold in Canada.

Shredded carrot, apple, coconut and nuts( I left out) are added. A small amount of orange juice and a larger amount of oil are added along with some warming spices. They smell fantastic baking. Chelsea and Robin really loved them too.