Cinnamon Rolls

Good Morning.




If you want to get in on this warm, sticky action, allot a couple hours and follow the mighty "Better-than-Cinnabon" recipe.

blog of interest.

We have a friend named Alison who's an inner city Atlanta school teacher. She just left yesterday for a nine month trip to Ghana, Africa to do some teachin' there. Alison started a blog to record her experience that you can check out here. Being vegan, Alison's main comfort food (or condiment...) is Vegenaise. I was happy to read that the big 32 oz jar she smuggled in with her luggage made it to Ghana safely!

Awesome photo of Alison taken by Matt Miller.

something I need to remember while I bite my nails and fret.

nataliedee.com

this has nothing to do with veganism or food.

So, I happen to like zombies. A lot. If you do too, check out Natalie from Bake and Destroy's new blog Send More Cops. I'm one of the contributors too, so there's that.

for once the house smelled like something other than cat.

Our house doesn't really smell like cats. Not most of the time, anyway. Unless I'm just immune to it now or something. But yesterday the house most definitely smelled like baking bread, which is a wonderful smell. I'm surprised there's not a Yankee candle called "baking bread", it's so good.

This is from Celine's recipe for Fool-Proof Yeast Bread. Man, this is so easy and delicious. I wish I had more time at home to wait for things like rising dough balls and cooling bread loaves, because I would make this every day if I did. I didn't do anything fancy to this loaf. It's a mostly white flour loaf (sue me), with just a hint of whole wheat pastry flour. I sprinkled a heaping helping of Parma on top of the loaf before baking.

Dough ball in my one beloved jadeite bowl:



Cut loaf of loveliness:



Rather than eating the whole loaf still warm with margarine and jam, I contained myself. But I did make soup for dinner in order to have something warm and nice to dip the bread into.

This is the Baked Potato & Greens Soup with Potato Wedge Croutons from Veganomicon. Mmmm, potatoes.



It's still too hot in Georgia to be considered soup weather, but anything I can do to get summer the hell out of here quicker.

So , all in all a very productive day off! I even managed to squeeze in a grocery store trip, as well as a visit to the thrift store for some old curtains to practice sewing on. maybe next week I'll have some time to sew.

Miles the Brat

Miles the Brat
Is quite a cat



He claws & bites
At this and that



He'll leave you scratched and tattered
Bloodied & brusied



Then snuggle up on your lap
Leaving you confused



Oh, Miles...Why!
Why do you abuse me so



It's a good thing you're cute,
You little psycho

celebrity alert! ha.

It only took a year, but finally someone more famous than Ruben Studdard came into the store today. Stic.man from Dead Prez! His cute vegan kid was reading the label on a cinnamon roll, and his gorgeous wife talked to me about a vegan cookbook she's coming out with in November.

So, you know who else is vegan and lives in ATL? Andre 3000. Come on, Dre. Come to Cosmo's and get some vegan chocolate. Or perhaps a pair of vegan shoes? Please?

what's next? A pro trans fat campaign?

Oy. I was made aware of these today on Reno's blog. Commercials for.... high fructose corn syrup.





Well excuse me for giving a shit about what I put into my mouth! I love how they try to make the concerned person look like an ass for even considering not eating something that might not be good for them. The only good thing about this campaign, is that it proves how much of a hurtin' that can be put on an industry when enough people are made aware of something.

more about that birthday cheesecake

Ken had to go out of town this week, so I'm going to miss his actual birthday tomorrow. To that, I say Boo. Let's all celebrate with some vegan cheesecake, eh?



As I mentioned in the last post, the original cheesecake recipe I used can be found in the book Sinfully Vegan by Lois Dieterly. In all honesty, I've had pretty poor results with many recipes in this book. The exception to this is the cheesecake chapter, which is stellar. Ken's birthday cheesecake recipe was adapted from the NY Style Cheesecake recipe. Here you go:

Crust:
1 bag of vegan chocolate cookies. I used these.
1/4 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 350F. Crush up the chocolate cookies into a fine crumb. I used a mini food processor, which worked great. You can also put the cookies in a bag, then proceed to hit them with a mallet or some sort of heavy implement. Food processor=easy or mallet=releasing pent up aggression. It's your choice!
Once you've got some good crumbs, mix in the canola oil. Proceed to press the oily crumbs into the bottom of a 9" springform pan. Place the pan into preheated oven and bake for about 10 minutes. Take out and set aside to cool. Keep your oven on for the cake!

Filling:
4 8oz. containers of vegan cream cheese, softened at room temp. I use the non-hydrogenated Tofutti.
1 box (12oz.) firm silken tofu
1 1/4 cup granulated vegan sugar, such as Florida Crystals
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips. I like the Tropical Source brand.
1 Tsp canola oil

A food processor would be perfect here, but I only have a little one. Therefore my immersion blender had to do the job. So use whatever you have that has a blade and can handle this much stuff at one time!
In a food processor (or whatever...) combine all four cream cheeses along with the silken tofu. Blend until smooth, scraping the sides as you go. Add your sugar, flour and extracts, and blend until very creamy.
Take out approx. 1 cup of this mixture and set aside. Pour about half of the remaining mixture into the springform pan, covering the crust. Set the remaining mixture and the crust aside.

In a double boiler, melt the chocolate chips with the canola oil over medium-low heat. Once melted, remove from heat. Immediately mix the melted chocolate with the small, one cup of reserved cream cheese mixture until thoroughly combined.
Take this chocolate mixture and spread evenly over the already-poured cheese mixture that's in the springform pan. Follow this by spreading the remaining cream cheese mixture over the chocolate layer.

Now for the swirl: With a butter knife, carefully create swirling patterns in the mixture by mixing the chocolate and vanilla layers together. Don't go overboard, or you'll end up with a full-on chocolate cheesecake. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but this is a swirl cheesecake.

Place in the oven (top rack). On the bottom rack, place an oven-safe bowl filled with water. Bake the cake for 60 minutes.
After one hour, turn off the oven and leave the cake in the oven with the door closed for an additional hour. Remove from the oven and cool completely at room temp. At this point, you can add a variety of toppings, such as strawberry slices and chocolate ganache. Place cake in the fridge and let cool overnight, for at least eight hours.

baking, finally.

Ken's birthday is this week! Woo! I asked him what kind of cake he wanted this year, and he was very specific. "Chocolate swirl cheesecake with strawberries on top". Sure thing, my love:



It's still in the springform pan because we have to transport it to my in-laws house today. I'll try to get a good money shot once it's out, but things get kinda hectic over there sometimes, so it may or may not happen. I'll post the recipe later on too. I think I adapted it differently enough from Sinfully Vegan that it will be okay to share on the internets.

Oh, and I made a quick batch of cuppies as well. They are vanilla-orange cake with basic chocolate frosting (from VCTOTW). I found those orange gummie slices at Publix, all vegan!



Happy (early) birthday, love!