Orange You Going to Make this Bread?

If you don't have a big sweet tooth, I'm going to apologize in advance because things are about to get pretty sugary here for the next couple of weeks ahead of the holidays. First up: Cranberry Orange Bread with Whisky Glaze.

I associate the holidays with sugar cookies, gingerbread animals, fluffy scones, traditional Polish cakes, etc. This is partly because I adore desserts and would eat them non-stop if that weren't frowned upon by polite company and medical professionals, but it's also due to the fact that baking, especially around the holidays, feels so communal. This bread is a perfect example! The scents of cranberries and orange will make your kitchen smell warm and cozy, and the recipe is super simple so it's easy to make together with a friend or while chatting with family.

Obviously the eating part of the process is also very much a group activity. You can whip this easy bread up for a holiday brunch, or take it to your office party, or serve with tea after an evening with friends. Don't skimp on the whisky glaze!

Cranberry Orange Bread with Whisky Glaze
Adapted from Doron Petersan's Sticky Fingers' Sweets

Makes 1 loaf

1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Earth Balance
1/2 cup almond milk
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup and 1 teaspooon coconut oil
2 tablespoons water
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup fresh cranberries

2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon whisky

Preheat your oven to 350 F and line a bread pan with aluminum foil. In a medium bowl, use a mixer to cream the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and Earth Balance. Then, in a separate small bowl, whisk together the almond milk, orange juice, vanilla, and 1/3 cup coconut oil. Pour this delicious-smelling mixture into the butter-sugar bowl and mix again until it's more or less combined. It's going to look a little gross, but don't worry!

Told you so. 

In a cup or yet another small bowl, combine the remaining 1 teaspoon coconut oil with 2 teaspoons baking powder and the water. Whisk it up really well - this is your egg substitute! Pour it into your batter and give it another whirl with the mixer.

In a large bowl, mix up the remaining 1 teaspoon baking powder with the cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, salt, and 2 cups of the flour. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and mix only until everything is blended together. Leave some lumps! Don't overmix!

Nice and lumpy. 

Chop up those cranberries - make sure they bounce first! Dump these suckers into a small bowl with the remaining 1/4 cup flour and stir to coat. I have no idea why and for once in my life the Google didn't yield any useful answers. Anyone know what the point of this is? Anyway.

Flour berries!

Once the berries are nice and floury, fold them into your batter then pour the whole mess into your bread pan. Bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when you poke it into the loaf. Wait until your creation is totally cool, then make your whisky glaze - just whisk the powdered sugar, orange juice, and whisky together until smooth - and drizzle it generously over your bread. Slice, serve, and enjoy!

The Frosting on the Cake

My ladyfriend HATES carrots. Hates 'em. When I asked how she felt about taste-tasting some carrot cake this weekend, she begrudgingly agreed, on the condition that the carrots were smothered in a thick layer of frosting. Challenge accepted, courtesy of this week's Vegan Carrot Cake and Macadamia Frosting!

I have to admit, I was skeptical than a vegan substitute was going to live up to the delicious cream cheese frosting you normally find on carrot cake, and had resigned myself to the horrible fate of eating an entire cake all by myself if K didn't like it.

Luckily, we were both happily surprised by how this little experiment turned out. The cake was perfect - dense, moist, and not too sweet - and the frosting was impressively creamy. The macadamia nuts and cashews give it a subtle nutty taste, and the frosting is so rich that it's hard to believe that there's no butter or cream cheese hiding in there. I plan on using this liberally on other sweet treats in the future as well - red velvet cupcakes are next on my list.

Jeanine over at Love & Lemons knocks it out of the park with this one, so I'm going to send you her way for the recipe! Plus she has two adorable Shiba Inu pups so her Instagram account is basically dogs and delicious food...I don't know what more you could really ask for.

My only note - when the recipe calls for a "high-speed blender" for the frosting, apparently this is some NASA-level shit because the speedy little Ninja I normally use took forever and a day to get the texture super creamy. Don't fret! It'll take a little longer but you will get there eventually. Enjoy the photos, then try this recipe out for yourself!

Welcome. Have Some Scones.

At this point, most of you have patiently sat through my wild ramblings about starting a vegan food blog, so you'll be pleased to know that I've finally gotten off my ass and done it! The purpose of this little project is to show that vegan food doesn't have to be expensive, difficult to make, or worst of all, gross. Yes, following a plant-based diet can occasionally be a giant pain in the ass, but for the most part it's an awesome opportunity to experiment with a whole new category of delicious recipes. I'm excited to share some of these tasty dishes with you here, and I hope you enjoy making and eating them as much as I have.

Without further ado, onto the food!

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to post as my first recipe. I considered everything from holiday cookies to spicy curries to hearty soups, but in the end my mind kept circling back to one of my favorite baked goods: scones.

To me, a warm scone with a cup of coffee is the ultimate rainy afternoon treat. They’re crispy on the outside, flaky on the inside, and loaded with goodies like dried fruit, nuts, or chocolate. They’re also so damn simple to make that they seem like a trick. The recipe below only has 11 ingredients and takes 30 minutes max to prepare, bake, and devour.

I made lemon poppy seed scones this time around, but one of the magical things about these little nuggets is that you can throw pretty much anything you want into them – my previous experiments have included maple walnut, apple cinnamon, oatmeal chocolate chip, blueberry, and probably others that I inhaled too quickly to remember.

Make these. Eat these. You deserve them.

Lemon Poppy Seed Scones
(adapted from Doron Peterson’s Sticky Fingers’ Sweets)

Makes 8 scones

½ cup Earth Balance
½ cup sugar
juice from 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
zest from 1 lemon (about 1 teaspoon)
1 ½ teaspoons light liqueur, such as Grand Marnier (you can also use vanilla like a normal person)
⅓ cup soy milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 ⅓ cup whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. In a medium bowl, combine the Earth Balance, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and liqueur. Mix the ingredients on low speed just until everything is more or less blended together. Add the soy milk and mix again for about 15 seconds. Your concoction will look suspiciously soggy at this point and you’ll wonder if you’ve done something wrong, but don’t fret.

It's supposed to look like this, I swear. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, and poppy seeds. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to stir everything up until it forms a slightly sticky dough. Again, don’t overmix!

My favorite kitchen utensil in my favorite color.

Dump the dough out onto a clean countertop. The dough will be pretty firm, so no need to use extra flour or anything like that. Shape the dough into a 1 ½ inch thick rectangle (about the width of 2 fingers, because who keeps a ruler in their kitchen?). Cut that rectangle into 4 smaller rectangles, and then cut each little rectangle diagonally as shown below. You should end up with 8 triangles.

Geometry!

Place the scones on your baking sheet, leaving an inch or two between them. Bake for 16-18 minutes, or until you can see that the bottoms are beginning to brown. Transfer the scones to a wire rack to cool, or burn your fingers and tongue by stuffing them directly into your mouth.