vegan blueberry grunts

As I threatened, I made the blueberry grunt featured in a recent post on VeganYumYum. I followed Lolo's recipe basically to a T, so I am not going to reproduce it here except for changes, suggestions, etc.



I made the one-big-grunt-steamed-in-a-pan version. Not as cute as the individual grunts, but I think less work. They came out pretty well - well enough that gina marie, roommate emily and I all cleaned our plates. I think that next time i will make smaller "pieces" of grunt though, not cook the blueberries down so much, and maybe have a higher berry to dough ratio.

the wet stuff... I had two plastic boxes of blueberries, and gina marie had a handful of leftover raspberries and strawberries and I popped those in too.


berries simmered for about 20 minutes - probably a little too long. I guess I thought they needed to be really thick to hold up the biscuit. Not actually true!


My attempt to "cut" in the earth balance. I mushed it as best I could with a fork and then put it in the fridge.


added the soymilk - I only had unsweetened vanilla, so that's what I used. I should have taken my rings off first.


really should have taken off the rings. I maybe shouldn't have used my hands because hands are warm, but I wasn't sure how else to manage it without overmixing.


this was tricky, I had no idea what I was doing - I should have followed instructions and made *bite-sized* biscuit pieces, but they were so sticky!








it was weird looking, but pretty.


lid on! no peeking - except I have a clear lid!


and done


done


done!

august blog number two - veganyumyum and lolo

I was at a fantastic birthday party for Ms. Chloe the other night, and I met a famous vegan foodblogger. Lolo's blog, VeganYumYum, is pretty right on. She has lots of beautiful pictures of vegan baked goods and other animal-free food including special cupcakes for knitting night (she was totes on Martha Stewart) and something called blueberry grunts - which I am dying to make, both because they look awesome, and because I am committed to making all kinds of cobbler-family desserts in a vegan way.... (see my blueberry buckle of 2007...)

Since VeganYumYum doesn't have a logo, I am including the latest post's gorgeous picture... Lolo says that she wants to do something with red currants and peppercorns! I am waiting excitedly to see what she comes up with next....

blueberry muffins. so not vegan.

On Sunday morning I woke up and made blueberry muffins. blueberries were on sale at wholefoods, but still ridiculously expensive. nonetheless, I powered through - I combined two recipes from the internet and then modified them - because I'm awesome like that.

I hadn't made muffins in ages, so I was a little worried, and I ran into several snafus, but then gina marie told me they were the best muffins she's every had, and then I felt good about it. they are really freaking good.

so first I went to whole foods in my pajamas and slippers because I had forgotten to buy muffin cups. I am now the proud owner of 60 organic unbleached muffin cups.

then I sprayed the muffin pan with Pam and spread it around in there with a paper towel. Then I put a muffin cup in each little round. I had 4 foil cups yet so I used those to see if there was any measurable difference - there wasn't.

then I began the long and arduous process of making the muffins, which was a pain in the butt because I have no mixer (it turned out I had my hand blender, but I couldn't find it at the time.)

because of the lack of mixer, I but a stick of butter (1/2 cup) in the microwave for 20 seconds so that it would be somewhat beatable, then I added 1 1/4 cups sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and went to town with a wooden spoon for about twenty minutes. (read some new york times and checked my email while I was doing it). When I felt like I couldn't stand to make it any "fluffier" I gave up and mixed 1 3/4 cups white flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder in a separate bowl. I decided against buttermilk because, really, who needs buttermilk? so I measured out 1/2 cup of organic 2% milk and I alternated mixing in spoonfuls of the flour mixture and pours of milk until it was all well blended with my eternally useful wooden spoon.

I was feeling saucy so I also added a little more than 1/2 a teaspoon of lemon flavoring to the batter, just to see what would happen.

I had 4 of those little-bitty plastic containers of blueberries. I mashed one of the containers in a bowl with the back of a spoon, and stirred it into the batter. I took the other 3 and tossed them with a 1/4 cup of flour in a larger bowl. then I took the flour-dusted blueberries out of the bowl and mixed into the batter what was left of the flour I used to coat the blueberries. Finally, I gently folded in the flour-dusted blueberries.

Then I used my wooden spoon and my blueberry crushing spoon and dumped a sizeable amount of batter into each muffin cup (there were 12) and tried to keep it even until I had used all the batter (they get very full! - it's ok!)

Finally, I sprinkled the tops with sugar.



Then I put them in the preheated 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes - really I just waited till the tops were light brown because my oven timer didn't work (I'm kind of incompetent with that.

The results... mmm...


yay! aren't you proud of me?

Vegan Blueberry Buckle

On Saturday I had a vegan potluck on my list of things to do, and I had promised to make a dessert. This was maybe not the best idea since I am no vegan baking expert, but I turned to the internet, which is always my friend in times of baking crisis. On the Post-Punk Kitchen website (created by the same vegan chef extraordinaire referred to in sarah emily's last post) I found a user-submitted recipe for blueberry buckle.

I have never made a buckle before, and certainly not a blueberry one, but it seemed like a good adventure. My roommate was using the cake pan to make Jello (she offered it up to me, but I decided I would just be crazy) so I decided to make it in a casserole pan. Why not?!

Here's what I did (lightly adapted from this recipe:http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=278):

I used my hands to rub earth balance around the inside of my casserole pan.

In a big silver mixing bowl I mixed:
1/4 cup corn oil
1/2 cup sugar (so maybe some vegans won't eat that. so sue me. I'm not about to waste by buying sucanat when I have white sugar sitting in my kitchen!)
1/4 cup soy yogurt (plain plain plain unsweetened)
1 pinch of salt

I mixed these with my very incompetent whisk-that-is-missing-a-handle. It worked ok though, this was not hard to mix. It smelled good too. Like yogurt.

Then I added 1 cup of whole wheat flour and beat that in with the special whisk.
then I beat in 1 teaspoon of baking soda and an additional 1/3 cup of soy yogurt (who knew soy yogurt was useful for anything??)

I spread my dough in the greased casserole with a spoon
then I dumped a little more than 2 cups of frozen blueberries on top and tried to even them out with my hands and not have frozen blueberries all over my floor for stepping on.

Finally I had to make the topping. the vegan topping presents some challenge - vegan fake-butter melts so easily that it is hard to make it crumble. I tried, and failed, but it came out ok anyways:

I scooped 1/4 cup of Earth Balance out of its tub with a measuring spoon and put it in my measuring cup since that was already dirty anyways.
Then I dumped in 1/3 cup of whole wheat flour, and a 1/2 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ground coriander, and ground ginger. This smelled really good.
Then I mushed it around with my (clean) fingers and tried to make it crumbly, but then I realized that the more I worked it, the more my fingers warmed it up, so I gave up and just sort of tried to crumble it evenly over the top of the buckle.

Then I put the casserole in the preheated 350 degree oven and left it there for just under an hour (but for a bit more than the 50-minute recommended baking time because I was worried that since my pan was deeper but not as big that it might not cook ok in the middle.)

Finally I took it out, put a lid on it, and put it in a bag and took it on the T to porter square, where it was eventually consumed :).

Here are some pictures (thanks Hilary!):














me eating the buckle because I wanted to try it before I had to go:

with vegan condoms:



also, fyi, a buckle seems to be something with a cake-y bottom, a pie/cobbler middle/ and a crisp/crumble top. Make sense? In theory this was supposed to be cut into bars, but since I made it in a round casserole, that was not happening. Plus then it would cool too fast. but the point is, the bottom is solid and thick and full of soy yogurt-fortified cake, so you could cut it into bars.

Get ready for more posts soon. this was a hard-cookin' weekend.