Dang.

My favorite fitness instructor, Cathe Friedrich, has just made it necessary for me to stop supporting her business.

I am on her company's mailing list, so I got this e-mail this morning:

"Cathe will be in New York City on Thursday, June 25th for a media blitz to announce her partnership with Eggland’s Best(EB), America’s No. 1 branded egg, and we would like you to be there too. Cathe and Eggland’s Best will be teaming up to help Americans harness the powerful pairing of healthy fitness and eating right - just in time for summer!"

Curses!! Eggland's Best is pretty bad. They got the Humane Society to sign off on their supposedly kinder, gentler animal cruelty in 2007. The ultimate outcome of all this exposes not only why you cannot trust people who view living beings as products, but also why the idea of "happy meat" is so insane. And also, totally untrue. Oh, and also evil.

Ugh. I am SO BUMMED. I LOVE her workouts! But I HATE animal exploitation! This is harder then avoiding secret milk additives. Of course, the point of having an ethical position isn't to throw it out the window at the first hint of personal inconvenience. If you're vegan, you've gotta skip the latest Cathe DVD release unless she bails out on this partnership...which of course, I don't think she'll do.

Again: dang.

This Raspberry Coffee Cake...is so good.

For some reason, I started thinking about Entenmann's Raspberry Coffee Cake the other day...and I couldn't get it out of my mind! I haven't tasted a single bite of the stuff since about 1994, but suddenly, I just really developed a serious yen. Entenmann's has a light, flaky cake layer with two channels of raspberry filling, a smattering of delicate, buttery cinnamon crumb, and finally, a drizzle of white icing. Honestly, it's not a delicacy or anything, but there's something...haunting about it. So, here is my first stab at a vegan version.

For the raspberry filling:

Easy method: just use jam or a can of pie filling.

Difficult method:

Combine 1.5 cups frozen or fresh raspberries and 1/2 cup brown sugar in a sauce pan and bring to a slow simmer. The raspberries will begin to break down a little bit, which is totally fine.

Stir frequently. Once the mixture in the pan begins to look like raspberry soup, start adding cornstarch. Keep stirring as you bring the mixture to a boil, stirring all the time. Keep adding cornstarch and stirring until the stuff thickens to jam consistency. Once it reaches a nice thick consistency, take it off the heat and set it aside. You might want to give it a little taste and see how you like it - adjust sweetness as desired.

I made WAYYYYY too much. So now I have to eat it with vanilla Rice Dream. Torture. Delicious torture.


For the cake part:

2 1/2 Cups Flour
1 Cup Granulated Sugar
1 tsp Baking Powder
3/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
2/3 Cup Earth Balance Margarine, softened
2/3 Cup Soymilk + 2 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
2 Tbs Cornstarch mixed with 1/2 Cup Water
2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Combine all the dry ingredients of the cake and mix well. Add all of the liquid ingredients and fold the batter until just combined. The batter should be thick and nearly dough-like, as this will prevent the filling from sinking to the bottom of the pan.

Spread 1/2 of the batter in the bottom of a greased baking dish - you could do an 8x8 or 9x9 square, or a 9-inch round, or whatever.

Spoon on plenty of raspberry filling (or be stingy! I like lots of fruit on my cake, but to each their own), then top off with dollops of batter, so you can still see bits of raspberry on top. Slide the whole thing into the oven and set the timer for 45 minutes (longer if you have created a "deeper" cake by using a smaller pan - up to 60 minutes).

Once the cake is in the oven, you have some decisions to make. I'm sure the cake would be just fine as-is. But why stop at "just fine"?

Delicious almond streusel topping:

3 tablespoons Earth Balance, melted.

2/3 cup almond meal

1/2 cup vegan granulated sugar

1/4 cup slivered almonds

Combine all of the above and mix with a fork until it is streusel-like. I always have to adjust streusel a little, adding a little flour, or a little butter, or something. Just adjust carefully and slowly and when the cake has about 35 minutes left on the timer, quickly slide it out, liberally apply streusel, and then get it back in the oven double quick.

Now, it's on its way to being a superior coffee cake. But why stop at superior?

Icing:

1 tablespoon vanilla soy creamer

1/4 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup confectioner's sugar (vegan)

Whisk briskly until smooth. Once your cake is done baking, let it cool for 30 minutes or so, then drizzle this icing all over it. Can you double that icing recipe for extra deliciousness? Heck yes!

That is one truly radical bit of vegan baking. It was time consuming and my kitchen is a mess of raspberries, streusel bits, and powdered sugar, but MY GOODNESS this cake is a show-stopper. Bring it to that charity brunch or to the biweekly staff meeting and impress the pants off of everyone!

Obama Dog

Cartoon at Washington Post website: check it out here. The IC and I were talking about this as soon as it happened! Oh, well. The only way to avoid it would have been to adopt a mutty, mutty mutt from a shelter! Wouldn't it be great if everyone wanted to do that? Sigh.

This is Why The Racing Industry is Evil

Ugh.

This is just the most obvious form of cruelty associated with this exploitative "sport".

Ideas for Vegan Wedding?

I'm trying to work with my future wedding caterer to come up with a vegan wedding menu. It's really hard!

There are some ideas at VegNews, and while these all sound great, I still feel a little...uninspired. So...anyone have any favorite vegan foods? In particular, anything wedding-feast-worthy? I generally like stuff that's just "naturally" vegan, as opposed to meat substitutes or faux-cheese knockoffs (not that some of these aren't great, too).

I can't even decide on a theme - vegan soul food? Asian? Indian? Fusion? ARG! Any ideas at all would be very welcome. I must communicate with the caterer soon!

Edited to Add:It's June '09, and I am still open to ideas! I've heard from friends directly, but there's still plenty of time if anyone has thoughts. Oh, heck, I'll re-post along the way. What does it take to get people to comment?

Pancakes updated, Plus: Blondies

I recently made a few small revisions to the vegan pancake recipe. This recipe is still awesome -- I just made'em again this morning. I've been hooked on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" lately. He had some good tips on pancakes.

I also did vegan Blondies.



Ingredients

6 oz container vanilla soy yogurt, OR 3/4 cup soy milk with 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar*
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons canola oil
1 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 tablespoons molasses
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup vegan chocolate chips
optional: 1/2 cup walnut or pecan pieces
optional: 1/4 cup flaked coconut

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 and line an 8x9 brownie pan with parchment paper and set aside (or spray w/ non stick cooking spray, or do whatever you usually do for non-sticky baking). Prepare the soy milk, if using that option.*

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.

In a large bowl combine yogurt (or curdled soy milk), oil, vanilla and molasses Add the sugar and whisk until well combined (about 30 seconds).

In batches, fold the dry ingredients into the wet, slowly, whisking as you go. Fold in chocolate chips, nuts, and/or coconut.

Pour batter into the prepared pan, and smooth with a spatula. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until top is firm and brown.

Let cool completely before serving.

*IF you do not have the soy yogurt, you can use this substitution: pour 3/4 cup of soy milk into a small dish.

Add one tsp of apple cider vinegar and mix gently.

Allow to sit for at least one minute. The mixture will curdle and thicken: this is what you want.

Using this substitution results in slightly more cake-like blondies. I think that adding 1 or 2 teaspoons of ground flax seeds might help to make them denser and chewier, but I haven't field tested that yet. If you try it, let me know how it goes!

Coconut-Key Lime Bundt Cake...OMG!

Last night I decided to try the Coconut-Lemon Bundt Cake from the Veganomicon. I made a few modifications, because the lemons I had were no good, and it turned out I was out of flaked coconut. Oops!

So it became a Coconut-Key Lime Cake. But it came out beautifully. Seriously: super-duper delicious cake! It's fine by itself, or with powdered sugar and strawberries. I bet it would be awesome with coconut frosting. Or a citrusy glaze of some kind.

All the cake recipes I've tried from these authors have turned out not just good, but REMARKABLY good, as in "professional bakery good".

With the coconut flakes left out, all I could taste was the key lime. Yum. So, here's my very slightly tweaked version:

You'll Need This Stuff:

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup canola oil or applesauce

14 ounces coconut milk

1/4 cup key lime juice

1/4 cup rice or soy milk

3 tablespoons finely grated lime zest

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, 1 tsp butter flavor extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

(The recipe called for 1 1/2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut, which I left out because I didn't have it. But if you have it and you dig coconut, by all means, add it).

a few tablespoons confectioners sugar for topping

Make the Cake:

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and oil a 8 or 10 inch bundt pan.

2. Mix in a large bowl the sugar, oil, coconut milk, soy milk or rice milk, lime zest and lime juice together.

3. Mix in another bowl the flower, baking powder soda and salt

4. Mix the ingredients of both bowls together. When it is well mixed you add the shredded coconut, if you happen to have any!

5. Put the mixture into the prepared pan, and bake for 45-60 minutes at 350.

6. Take the cake out the oven and let it cool for 15-30 minutes.

When the cake is completely cool, you can flip it out of the pan and sprinkle it with sugar and messily devour it, because it is wonderful.