VeganMoFo 2019 #6: D is for Dreena Burton

I thought it would be fun during MoFo to highlight a few vegan cookbook authors and show a recipe I have made from each of their books, or at least each of the books that I have. Starting off with Dreena Burton, a well known vegan cookbook author who has published a number of cookbooks. I came to know her through her earlier cookbooks, and I have her first four, and I also follow her blog (which has a lot of recipes). I'll post the recipes in order of book publication. For two of these books (her first two), this will be their first appearance on my blog!

Orange Ginger Miso Vinaigrette from The Everyday Vegan (which seems to be out of print in a lot of places): This is a simple recipe that came together quickly. The recipe calls for dry ginger, but I used a big chunk of grated fresh ginger because fresh ginger is amazing! I did find it a bit sweet, and had to add a bit of extra tamari. The recipe calls for agave (or any sweetener of your choice), but I think it only needed the slightest smidge. At least if you are using fresh ginger. I used this to mix through pasta, veggies, and tofu puffs and it was great. Works well on a warm dish as well as chilled!
Rating: :)



Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vive le Vegan: You can't go wrong with cookies, and Dreena loves making cookies. While a lot of her cookie recipes tend towards wholegrain flours or natural sweeteners, this recipe is 100% classic cookie (well, she does call for raw sugar, but whatever you feel like using). It has the smallest touch of blackstrap molasses, which gives a really lovely flavour to it. All up a quick and easy recipe that will have you cookies in no time.
Rating: :)



Acai Antioxidant Smoothie from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan: When life gives you those little frozen packets of acai, you make a smoothie. This book is my favourite Dreena book, and I have posted extensively about other recipes that you can see here. This smoothie was a lovely start to my morning, though I made a few changes. I decreased the amount of oatmilk to 1 cup, because I like my smoothies thick. This smoothie has frozen berries, bananas, and acai in it so it is nice and cold. The frozen packet of acai was in a rectangle that would fit in my blender, so I left it out for 20 minutes to defrost so I could break it up. But it half melted in that time, so remember it really only needs a few minutes to soften! This smoothie also has some cocoa powder, which gives it a nice undertone.
Rating: :)



Creamy Barley Risotto with Thyme and Star Anise from Let Them Eat Vegan: I have made many things from this book, including the famous Berry Patch Brownies, and you can see those round ups here. As for this recipe, I love star anise and this sounded like a perfect dinner for a cold evening. I love barley, and I feel it often gets forgotten with all the fancy grains available now. But barley is easy, tasty, and filling. I always soak mine for a few hours before hand to make sure it cooks in the allotted time. This was a lovely dinner, and I served it with some roasted broccoli for greens.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Sahara in her favourite basket bed again, as you can see she is sleeping a bit more comfortably this time! She really was the most perfect cinnamon scroll.

Recipe Round-Up: Let Them Eat Vegan

Turns out that it has been quite a while since I have done a dedicated recipe round-up from Let Them Eat Vegan by Dreena Burton. It has a special place in my heart as the source of the amazing Berry Patch Brownies that I have made more times than I can count for bake sales! But it is also full of other very lovely recipes. You can see my previous round-ups (and bake sale contributions) here.

Goji Strawberry Smoothie: This sweet pink treat adds banana, cinnamon, and flaxseeds to the mix. It calls for 2 cups of liquid, but I only one and a half cups of oatmilk, with all frozen fruit, and that made one pink, thick, smoothie. The recipe is for 2 smoothies, but you know I had it all for myself!
Rating: :)



Creamy Carrot Miso Dip: This beautiful dip is a bit reminiscent of eating a very thick carrot soup. It is creamy from cashews, and delightfully spiced. I made it in my Froothie Optimum blender, and it was so smooth. Excellent on crackers, or for dipping vegetables or dolloping anywhere.
Rating: :)



"Vegveeta" Dip: I have never had the Velveeta dip that this was inspired by, but this was very good. It is described as a cheesy dip, though in this recipe the nutritional yeast is optional. Nutritional yeast is never optional in my book! Even with that added I found that although it was tasty, it was not very cheesy. This recipe is made on a stove and I was a little bit worried that it wasn't going to get thick enough, but it thickened up quickly once it was off the heat.
Rating: :)



KD Dip: This fun dip was apparently inspired by squeezing ketchup onto Kraft dinners. Unlike the above recipe, this has a big whack of nutritional yeast to make it cheesy. It is made creamy with some tahini, and I found the taste of the tahini to be quite strong. I like tahini, but you may want to back off a little (or use cashew butter) if you are wanting a milder taste. The recipe calls for organic ketchup, but you know I just used trusty Heinz. As you can see, I went for some chopped hotdogs, steamed broccoli, and chunks of vegan cheese (because, why not) as my dippers.
Rating: :)



Peanut Thai Vegetable Stew: I love peanut butter stews! This calls for 400mL of coconut milk, and the first time I made it I hadn't quite identified my coconut issues so it was too rich. But now I know that 400mL of coconut milk means a 270mL tin plus 130mL of water for me. As well as tofu, there are vegetables including zucchini, sweet potato, spinach, and onion. I left out the capscium for more of each of those.
Rating: :)



Carribean Fusion Stew: One of the recipes I made when I chanced upon some plantains, this uses the barely ripe fruit. It also has lentils, kidney beans, zucchini, broccoli, and onion. I just left out the capsicum. Served over rice, this was a warm and filling dinner.
Rating: )



Thai Chickpea Almond Curry: I used extra vegetables in this, and also made an extra half quantity of sauce to cover them. The sauce is based on coconut milk (diluted with some water for me) and almond butter. Almond butter is super pricey here, so it is a rare occasion that I make a recipe using it. The sauce nicely coats chickpeas and zucchinis, but I added some carrots and cauliflower as well.
Rating: :)



Winter Veg Chickpea Potpie: This is a messy photo, I am no good at getting potpie serves out without getting it all jumbled up. This was very nice on a cold night, full of sweet potato, potato, celery, leek, fennel, green beans, and chickpeas. I used some frozen ready made vegan puff pasty for topping. Excellent with some ketchup.
Rating: :)



Jerk Chickpeas: Simple and fast. The ingredient list looks long, but it is mostly just spices that mix together easily. The recipe called for red capsicum, I used some red onion instead. Served over brown rice and kale, with some avocado on the side as well.
Rating: :)



Corn Chowder Quinoa Casserole: This was absolutely delicious, and perfect on a cold night. Cannellini beans and quinoa are baked with a corn chowder inspired mixture, to create an amazing dinner. I loved this one.
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



With the colder weather, Dim Sim has been sleeping... well, as much as usual, really. But she looks extra snuggly as her winter coat comes in.

ALQ Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale at The Green Edge

I organised a bake sale that was held yesterday, as part of the WWVBS initiative. The bake sale was to raise funds for Animal Liberation Queensland, and was held at The Green Edge. It was amazing! As well as some ALQ members helping me with the baking, The Green Edge also asked for donations of baked goods. At one point during the set up it seemed like the food would never stop coming! It was such a huge and successful day! We sold out of almost everything, and we raised over $1400 to help ALQ with their important campaigns!

So, onto the food. First up, things that I baked. I had planned on only baking a little, but then panic set in and I baked a lot. Next time I know I can relax a bit, because so many donations! Oh well, let's see what I made! Strap in, this is a long ride!

Peach Cobbler Cupcakes from Bake and Destroy by Natalie Slater: Natalie has such fun recipes, and I'd had my eye on this one for a while. Peaches were recently in season, so it seemed like the perfect chance! The recipe says to coarsely chop the peaches, but next time I'd cut them a bit smaller because the cupcakes baked a bit lumpy and uneven. It doesn't matter too much though, because they taste great and you cover them in frosting anyway. The book gives too options - wither whipped coconut cream (no thank you), or maple buttercream frosting. I obviously chose the latter, which I had made before for her banana bread french toast cupcakes, and it was a great combination.
Rating: :)



Swirly Berry Brownies from Sinfully Vegan by Lois Dieterly: I am currently trying to make recipes from some of my older cookbooks, rather than just being new ones all the time, and this was one of those. I haven't used this book much, she has a reliance on so much maple syrup that most recipes would just be too expensive to make! This one is sweetened with sugar and applesauce. It is a cakey brownie, though nice and chocolately, and the raspberry jam swirled into the top makes a nice flavour contrast.
Rating: :)



Dulce Sin Leche Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero: I had made these once before, a long time ago, but neglected to take a photo. So I tried them again! This time I decided to make them GF, by using the Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF flour blend and some xantham gum. I ended up with enough batter for 13 cases, but even then they rose a lot and were kind of messy! They are swirled and topped with Dulce Sin Leche glaze, which is based on the Brown Rice Glaze (also from the book) but with extra brown sugar added. When baking, the caramel swirled into them bubbled up a lot, also making them a bit messy. I had to cook for an extra 10 minutes as well. They are topped with more glaze, and toasted coconut. The flavour was nice, a good caramel. The texture was OK for GF, but was obviously better when I first made them with gluten. The glaze is very sticky, which was a big attraction for people.
Rating: :)



Perfect Berry Muffins from Eat Like You Give A Damn by Michelle Schwegmann and Josh Hooten: These are simple muffins to make, and are sweet and pleasant. You can use either raspberries, blueberries, or a mix, I went for straight raspberries. They were fairly soft, and the raspberries made them a little smooshy. But I liked the slight tartness of the raspberries with the sweetness of the batter.
Rating: :)



Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies from Eat Like You Give A Damn by Michelle Schwegmann and Josh Hooten: These actually have Cappuccino in the title, but coffee doesn't agree with me so I left it out. Even if you like coffee, pretty sure leaving it out is the best option anyway. These were AMAZING! The orange flavour comes from zest, but it packed such a great orange punch. With the chocolate chips, it was like eating a chocolate orange... but in an oat cookie. So fabulous!
Rating: :D



Chocolate Goji Macadamia Cripsy Squares from Let Them Eat Vegan by Dreena Burton: Another one of my gluten free offerings. These are so fast to make - melt chocolate, mix in goji, macadamia, rice cripsies, orange zest, let set! I took the option of using more rice cripsies and less goji berries,and I also subbed the coconut oil used when melting the chocolate for canola oil. The recipe calls for 1/4 cup (or 7-8 oz) of chocolate, though when I measured out the volume I only had about 6 oz. You can see they are fairly thin slices, but they pack lots of flavour and crunch. The subtle orange is a particularly nice touch. The recipe makes 12-16 squares for normal snacks, but for the bake sale I cut it into 8 big bars.
Rating: :)



Gingerbread from Easy Vegan Cooking by Leah Leneman: Another dip into an older cookbook, I had made this recipe before and loved it. But I hadn't photographed it, so it seemed like a good one to make. I still loved it, all these years later. It is dense, syrupy goodness, and the batter itself is so yummy! The recipe calls for molasses, black treacle, golden syrup, or a mixture. I used treacle, because I have some and hardly anything calls for it. This gave it a perfect sweetness.
Rating: :D



Blondies from The New Vegan by Janet Hudson: Another older cookbook, not to be confused by Aine Carlin's cookbook of the same name. I made a half batch of these to fit into an 8x8 pan, and got 8 bars. They have macadamias and butterscotch chips in them, and are sweet and pleasant, and very moist. They liquid used in them is water, and I wonder if using a non-dairy milk would have a better flavoury, they just needed a bit more something for me. But other people really liked them!
Rating: :)



White Chocolate Lime Cookies from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: I had some white chocolate baking buttons to use up from a mystery box, so a bake sale seemed like a good place for them. I don't like white chocolate myself. These were more like a vanilla cookie to me, the lime flavour was very subtle. The recipe makes 20 cookies regularly, but I used my ice cream scoop and got 11 big bake sale cookies, which I baked for 25 minutes.
Rating: :| (for me, other people liked them a lot with the white chocolate)



Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: I made these to use up some canned pumpkin I had kicking around, but oh my gosh they are amazing! The cupcakes themselves are like eating a little slice of pumpkin heaven, they are packed full of amazing spices. I could eat the batter, or the cupcakes, forever. The cream cheese frosting was very nice tasting, but was really more of a glaze. It was way to runny to do anything else with. So I ended up with a bunch left over, which is in my freezer. But I wouldn't mind making these again to help use it up. ;)
Rating: :D



I also made a batch of my regulars, the gluten free soulhaus cookies from Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats. This time they had chocolate chips and crushed peanuts in them. And now, for the food that was donated!

These beautiful cupcakes were donated by local bakery Baked by K. They also donated some super cute little sugar cookies with Friends Not Food icing, that I didn't get a chance to take a photo of.



Someone donated these gorgeous vanilla cupcakes - look at the details on those roses!



My friend Mandy donated some gorgeous Mandarin Cupcakes, as well as some delicious Mini Baked New York Cheesecakes. Mandy also makes full sized cheesecakes, which you can get by the slice at The Green Edge!





Mandy's friends also donated some Lemon Cupcakes, Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes, and Chocolate Jam Drop Freckle Cookies.







Fellow ALQ volunteer Cameron made some Ginger Pear Muffins, and some Pizza Muffins.





Speaking of savouries, check out these amazing Mini Creamy Potato Pies that someone donated!



Bec, ALQ member and graduate of vegan culinary school, brought some of her famous Cinnamon Rolls.



Katie, who used to run Cloverly Cupcakes, donated some amazing looking muffins - Blueberry, and Orange Poppyseed!





I didn't even get a chance to take photos of everything! Also donated were:

• Chocolate Chip Cupcakes that were so beautiful and I am sorry I didn't get the name of their baker!
• Anzac Cookies donated by Samantha, The Green Edge's event organiser and general amazing employee
• Salmon Bechamel Filo Pastries, Spankopita, and Cherry Tomato Pesto Tarts donated by Lisa and Paul, ALQ members, amazing cooks, and vegan advocates extraordinaire
• Raw Peanut Butter Cups and Raw Walnut Brownies donated by Bliss & Co., whose peanut butter cups don't make me sick from coconut oil and are the best raw treats ever!
• Savoury Gluten Free Chickpea Muffins, from the lovely baker of the potato pies, and I am sorry I didn't get her name either!
• Snickerdoodle cookies donated by ALQ volunteer Michelle
• Some super cute doughnuts for doggies, which were enjoyed by the many glorious puppers who visited throughout the day

As you can see, the sheer amount of food donated was staggering! And we sold almost all of it in 4 hours!!! Huge thanks as always to The Green Edge, and to everyone who donated, and came and bought food, to support ALQ!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I was exhausted after I got home yesterday, and was very glad to go to sleep nice and early with this sleepy little girl.

Animal Lib QLD Bake Sale at The Green Edge

A few weeks ago I organised a bake sale for Animal Lib Queensland. I've organised many many bake sales before, through my vegan bake sale group Eating For Animals. I have been trying to become more involved with ALQ in a way that suits my strengths, and when it comes down to it my strengths are baking and doing bake sales. This was by far the biggest and most successful bake sale I have organised to date though, the ALQ supporters were amazing in their turn out. The baking was mostly done by me and by Bec, who is the Campaign Director for ALQ, and by a few other members of ALQ as well. The sale was held at The Green Edge, Brisbane's vegan grocery store. They are wonderful at making space available for groups to hold bake sales for fundraising.

Here's a look at what I made!

Berry Patch Brownies from Let Them Eat Vegan by Dreena Burton: I have just realised that I have never posted about these on this blog... which is outrageous as this is the recipe I have made most from any of my cookbooks ever! These are in serious demand at bake sales (or for any other reason you can think), and always sell out fast. A dense and chocolately brownie base with a topping of raspberry jam, blueberries and chocolate chips. They are SO GOOD! I like to cut them into big triangles for bake sales, because you want your brownie to be super special!
Rating: :D :D :D (seriously... make them...)



Beetroot and Lemon Cupcakes from The New Vegan by Aine Carlin: These are beautiful, with a gently beet flavoured cupcake and a zesty lemon icing. I made a double batch of cupcakes, but just a single batch of icing, and the ratio was perfect for me. The batter was beautifully pink, but baked up dainty and pale. This is very different from the dark red cupcakes in the photo in the book, but Aine said that her vary in colour a lot between batches depending on the beetroot.
Rating: :)



Peanut Butter Butterscotch Cookies from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur by Kelly Peloza: I have a serious stash of butterscotch chips from the US that I need to use up, and these cookies were perfect. They go nice and crunchy, and the combination of peanut butter and sweet butterscotch was great. I didn't have butterscotch extract, so I used maple instead (not the same I know, but kind of close), and I mixed in chopped peanuts and butterscotch chips as my add ins.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Ginger Gluten-Freedom Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero: This chocolate gluten freedom cupcake from this book is my standard go to gf cupcake base. For this time I followed the instructions for the Chocolate Ginger variation of the regular chocolate cupakes in the book, adding in ground ginger and chopped crystallised ginger. I topped with chocolate ganache and added a piece of ginger on top.
Rating: :)



Hidden Treasure Muffins from Whole Grain Vegan Baking by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes: These are lemony muffins filled with jam (I chose strawberry) and topped with a strusel. I made a couple of subs, using brown sugar instead of sucanat and soy milk instead of refrigerated coconut milk. This has a lot of lemon in the batter - juice, zest and 20mL of lemon extract. I ran out of lemon extract at 15mL, and only had a little bit of zest, but they were still very lemony. These had a very thick batter.
Rating: :)



'Chloestess' Creme-Filled Cupcakes from Chloe's Kitchen by Chloe Coscarelli: I won't lie, I was pretty excited to finally make these, and pretty happy with the final result. They look kind of pretty, even though I need to work on my piping. This recipe makes 14 cupcakes, however the creme frosting recipe makes about twice as much as I was able to use with filling and decorating the cupcakes. It seems to be her basic frosting recipe, however, so I have frozen the leftovers to use for another batch of different cupcakes for a later time. The ganache also makes a bit too much, but I was able to use leftovers for the chocolate ginger cupcakes above. I didn't have a Bismark tip for filling the cupcakes, but I used a teeny holed tip, and they filled very easily. I am pretty happy with these all round. :)
Rating: :)



Orange Double Chocolate Cookies from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: I had managed to acquire two tins of vegan condensed milk, which I am not a fan of, so I wanted to use it all up for this bake sale. I used one tin to make a half batch of these, which made 15 cookies using an Australian TBS as the scoop. The dough is very soft, so I chilled it a little bit before making it into cookies and baking. My orange ended up being mouldy, so I didn't have any orange zest to add, and the orange extract didn't really come through very strong. These were a soft and sweet cookie.
Rating: :)



Gluten-Free Spicy Brownie Cake from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: This is a very soft brownie cake based on rice flour that has a nice, subtle spiciness to it thanks to a host of different spices, including white pepper. I had to bake this an extra 15 minutes to get it to fully set all the way through.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Cranberry Almond Oops Cookies: Remember I said I made a half batch of those double chocolate cookies? That was all fine, until I accidentally added the full amount of flour and sugar to the rest of the half batch dry ingredients and had to start again. So the accidental mix I turned into these cookies with the suggestion of a friend as to potential ratios. I added too much oil, and had to blot the batter a lot, but they actually turned out OK. I added cranberries and almonds to them.



Coconut Ice: To use up my last tin of soy condensed milk, I used this recipe. I also added some strawberry extract to the pink layer, to make it a strawberry coconut ice. I am not a big coconut ice fan, but apparently it was well recieved!



I also made a batch of Soulhaus Cookies from Great Gluten-Free Vegan Eats by Allyson Kramer, another thing I always bring to bake sales, which I have blogged about here, as well as some sausage rolls.

It was so busy, I didn't have a chance to take photos of everything else that people brought. But here is a photo of Bec's famous Cinnamon Snails, as well as the table itself.





Afterwards we stayed for lunch at The Green Edge. Bec had the Satay Burger and I had the Avocado, Tomato, Ham and Cheese Toasty, and we both had the gravy chips.





As I mentioned, it was a huge day. The bake sale was scheduled for four hours, but we had sold out of everything within two hours. I have never seen anything like it! All up, including sales and some generous donations, we made just over $1700, which is the most of any bake sale I have ever done. This money will be used to help ALQ's anti-greyhound racing and ditch dairy campaigns, as well as their other work.

I'll be doing another bake sale at the end of April with Eating For Animals for the World Wide Vegan Bake Sale.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I was washing my sheets and had my doona folded up on the floor at the foot of the bed, and of course Sahara decided that this was the perfect spot for some serious slumber.