Perks

The best thing about vegan baking?

Guilt free batter stealing.

Xo

This Happened

This is what happens when your husband begs for brownies all week, then you decide you’ll show him and stumble on this recipe for black bean brownies.

http://peasandthankyou.com/recipage/?recipe_id=6025913

Then with a smirk you put the brownies into the fridge to chill.  Then sneak a bite in the morning, nab a piece for work, after work…the next morning…and suddenly, I have half a pan of brownies missing…that my husband hadn’t tried yet…

Oops. 

So yeah.  Make the brownies. 

Xo

A “How To” Post

How to make some love you for always in just a few simple steps (see also, how to  reverse your workout in just as many steps).

 

 

 

 

 

Boom.

recipe and some help

The first

As threatened, promised, here is one of those apple recipes I was promising to make.

Although its my ultimate goal to be able to develop my own recipes at some point, which I’m starting to teach myself to do – I find myself relying quite a lot on recipes I’ve found online or in cookbooks, especially my favorite food bloggers.  There’s a lot of inspiration to be found out there and even though it feels like cheating sometimes, when you stumble across a recipe that just…works , suddenly where the recipe came from ceases to matter.

That was the case for this lovely piece of work.

 

I have Angela, over at Oh She Glows to thank for this.   This recipe was the perfect way for me to use up some leftover chopped apples AND satisfy my newfound need for baked goods being ever present in the apartment.  I was originally looking for a healthy oatmeal bar to take into work with me, but it quickly became apparent that these are an Apple Pie in Oat Square format.    I made a few tweaks, like replacing the earth balance with apple sauce in the oat base and used a combination of golden delicious and Mutsu apples.  I’m pretty happy with the result.

 

I managed to freeze most of the pan out of self defense, but some of these babies are stickin’ around at room temp….Good thing I’m back on track with that workout schedule!

Speaking of workout schedules – I’ve been getting a little bored lately with my usual music go -to’s.  I have my Ipod and my pandora, but sometimes Pandora just isn’t playing the music I want – I’m thinking of trying out Spotify, but hate linking things to my facebook account.  Has anyone else ever used Spotify?  And even more important who’s got running songs they want to share???

Yoga tonight!

xo

Baking Bonanza!

 

So, do you remember that teaser picture of dates I showed you last weekend?  Those were dates.  And those dates, got turned into these lovelies.  Date bars.  I got the recipe from my Joy of Vegan Baking cookbook, which really has yet to do me wrong, but this is the first time I’ve ventured outside the realm of scones and chocolate chip cookies.  We had dates in the apartment for another recipe I wanted to try, so I opted to use their natural sweetness for one of my desserts this weekend.   I think I would’ve added a bit more filling, but these guys were a huge fit.

Of course, I can’t ever be satisfied with just one thing.  The whole reason I baked a dessert on Thursday, was so I could have a free and fun Friday night.  Well, we ended up relaxing at home with some easy canned soup (Love Amy’s Organic) and toast, nursing the hubs back to health.  So I had a little more time on my hands, a craving for apricot Kolache and more than a few ripe bananas.  So by the end of the night, we ended up with a loaf of banana bread and pb banana bread with chocolate chips (super yummy).  And I tried my hand at veganizing a recipe I had here at home for Kolache.

If you’ve ever had these cookies before, they’re buttery and not too sweet and it turns out the dough is a cream cheese based dough.  Luckily I had some tofutti cream cheese on hand and enough earth balance to spare to whip some up.    And I am rarely without some apricot jam.  The recipe typically calls for some apricot pie filling, I think because it doesn’t burn as much – but for round 1 – the apricot jam worked pretty well.   I’m in the process of figuring out the best way to bake with whole wheat flour.  It can make baked goods a bit gritty, dry and dense, but I’m not a big fan of white flour.  I love white whole wheat flour, but have been trying to branch out with things like oat and spelt flour.

 

 

I think next time I’d make my squares a little smaller and the apricot “dollops” a little less.  I ended up with some pretty big cookies.

drooooool

 

But its cool.   Triple desserts?  Check.  Vegan?  Check.  Tasty?  triple check.

 

Good thing I worked out this morning…

xo