ALQ December Bake Sale at The Green Edge

Over the weekend I organised another bake sale for Animal Liberation QLD. Once again it was held at the wonderful The Green Edge. Buckle in, because there are a lot of photos! First up, the new things that I made for the bake sale.

Cranberry and Almond Cookies: This is actually the Soulhaus cookies I make all the time from Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats by Allyson Kramer, but as my chocolate chip stash was low I swapped them out for cranberries and almonds for yummy variation.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Cherry Slice from Vegan Indulgence by Leigh Drew. One of my favourite recipes ever, I love the chocolate cherry combination. Plus they are topped with a cream cheese based icing, so they are basically chocolate cherry cheesecake bars. I have made this recipe before, but not for a while and not for a bake sale.
Rating: :D



Chocolate Orange Gluten Freedom Cupcake are a variation I made from the chocolate GF cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I added one and a half teaspoons of orange essence to the batter, which results in a very chocolate orange kind of taste. I glazed the top with some chocolate glaze (see below) and some leftover orange buttercream that I had hanging around in the freezer.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Brownie Slice topped with Oh-So-Rich Chocolate Glaze from Naturally Lean by Allyson Kramer. The cake is an oil free cake, with banana and applesauce in the batter. I could taste the banana in the cake, but most other people couldn't. I liked the flavour, but I did find the cake a touch dry. But the glaze... oh, the glaze. It is so quick, so simple, firms up so nicely, and is perfectly rich and chocolatey without being too sweet. I will be using this a lot, like when I made another batch to put on the cupcakes above.
Rating: Cake :), Glaze :D



Carrot Applesauce Muffins from Naturally Lean by Allyson Kramer. These were OK, but a little bland. They were crying out for some sultanas and nuts to make it a bit more like a carrot cake. My muffin cases were quite large, so I got nine rather that 12, and baked them for 30 minutes rather than 25.
Rating: :|



Nut and Fruit Granola Bars from Oatrageous Oatmeals by Kathy Hester. I really liked these. They are held together by tinned pumpkin and flaxseeds and are oil free, with oats and nuts and fruit mixed through. They are also sugar free, but I added a bit of maple syrup. I used a mix of cranberries, sultanas, almonds, walnuts and pepitas for my mix. They are a bit gummy right after baking, but the texture improves with a day or two in the fridge. There were some of these left over, and they have made great snacks to have on hand.
Rating: :)



Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. These re very sweet and delicate cupcakes. I love rosewater, so I used the full amount. The recipe calls for chopped pistachios, and talks about chopped nuts in the cupcakes in the description, but the instructions don't seem to mention adding the nuts, so I just stirred them through at the end before putting into the liners. These cupcakes rose quite nicely. The glaze ended up being more like an icing, quite thick. I tinted it pink as well for fun. The recipe calls for pink decorating sugar crystals, which I could never find, but I did get some pink sprinkles. But I didn't end up using them as I made the glaze quite pink.
Rating: :)



Elvis Cupcakes from The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. These are banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, coconut bacon and a caramelised banana slice. I will do a full write up of these when I get to doing my Superfun Times recipe round up. I changed the icing around so that I could leave out the coconut oil, so stay tuned for that.



And of course I made some Berry Patch Brownies.



And now, on to the other things that were there!

Gluten Free Lamingtons.



Vanilla Oreo Cakes.



Chocolate Caramel Tarts.



Cookie Dough Doughnuts.



GF Gingerbread Cookies.



GF Lemon, Macadamia and Apricot Fudge Slice.



Blueberry Pecan Breakfast Cookies.



Jam Drops.



Shortbread and Peanut Butter Fudge.



Lemon Curd Cupcakes. The lemon curd is based on sweet potato. I bought one of these and it was delicious!



Peanut Butter Stuffed Cupcakes.



Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes.



Walnut Brownies.



GF Fluffernutters. Peanut Butter Cookies with Marshmallow filling.



Chocolate Covered Meringes.



Mini Scones with Jam and Cream.



Mini Pavlovas.



Table shot.



Gluten Free Table Shot.



It ended up being a pretty slow day, not quite as successful as our previous bake sales. Perhaps the heat of the day or the fact that it is December meant there weren't as many people who could come along. Still, we made over $700 for ALQ, which isn't too shabby. I am so thankful to everyone who baked, helped on the stalls, came along, and of course to The Green Edge

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This little girl is called Shari Rose, and she is looking for her forever home! She is one of the adoption kitties at our Clayfield clinic. She is very cheeky and very cute, so if you are in the area and thinking about adopting a special friend, why not check her out?

VeganMoFo 2011 #20: 'Vegan Indulgence'

Vegan Indulgence
Leigh Drew, Aduki Independent Press, 2008



Vegan Indulgence is a great little dessert book written by Australia's very own Leigh Drew. As well as being an amazing vegan cook and recipe creator, Leigh is also an awesome sci-fi geek, a lover of kitties and also is one of my friends - yay! I was lucky enough to be able to test for this book. I also did a teeny bit of testing for Leigh's upcoming book about pastry - it is going to be a good one! Leigh's recipe for pastry has revolutionised my life.

Back to the book at hand. There are no chapters in this book, it is a lovely collection of 20 dessert recipes. As a bonus, each recipe also has a beautiful colour photograph to go with it. My own photographs from things that I have made were taken early on in my food photo life so are quite pathetic, but the photos in the book are stunning. Here we go!

Beesting


I loved beesting cakes in my preegan days. A delicious almondy cake filled with thick custard and topped with candied almonds. So delicious. Leigh has veganised this recipe and it is outstanding. I took this cake to work and people raved about it. Some said it was the best cake they'd ever had!

Choc Cherry Squares


This is amazing. I am sure people are tired of me talking about chocolate and cherries and how wonderful they are, but it's just that that is the truth. I certainly don't get tired of eating it. I love the chocolate cream cheese frosting as well.

Chocolate Melting Moments


This photo doesn't do these morsels justice. The melting moment is an Australian classic, for those not familiar it is a rich shortbread biscuit with icing in the middle, and it comes in all sorts of flavours. Here it is chocolate on chocolate! I found had some chocolate icing left over.

Coconut and Raspberry Sandwiches


The Monte Carlo biscuit goes vegan and homemade! These are way tastier than the ones you get out of a packet (does everywhere get Monte Carlo biscuits or is it regional?). Coconut biscuits are filled with coconut icing and raspberry jam. I accidentally made the biscuits here too big - they are meant to be a bit smaller.

Orange and Fig Slice


I am not a figgy fan, so I used dried dates here in place of the figs and it worked great. It is topped with a cream cheese icing. This recipe uses quite a lot of orange zest, more than you will get from the orange to get the juice required. I zest lemons, limes and oranges everytime I have to juice one and keep the zest in the freezer, and if you do this too it will be no problem having the required amount of zest.

Passionfruit Melting Moments


You can see here that this was back when my biscuit shaping skillz were not so mad. Leigh's passionfruit melting moments are my favourite flavour. For those curious, I have also tried lemon and ginger versions of her melting moments, and passionfruit rules them all).

Raspberry Choc Mud Cake


Chocolate and raspberry is a great combination. Not quite as good as chocolate and cherry, but pretty amazing as far as combinations go. This is a delicious mudcake. Leigh recommends leaving the cake to chill overnight if possible, which allows time for the raspberries to make their own coulis.

I don't have a photo of this little number:
Frozen Banana Split - We all know about keeping frozen bananas on hand. This uses partially defrosted bananas mixed up into an ice-cream, then drizzled with a very quick and easy chocolate sauce and topped with broken nuts and biscuits. Should you wish to add cream or a cherry, go ahead!

Have eaten (these are recipes that I haven't made myself, but have eaten):
Black Forest Cake - This is amazing! Black Forest Cake is my favourite cake. Nom, nom, nom, nom. I could eat this forever!
Cherry Pie - This is so good! I do love me some cherries.
Poached Pears with Chocolate Sauce - Classic and classy

Yet to make:
Baklava
Banana Cheezcake
Creamy Fruit Sorbet
Creme Brulee (can make now that I bought a little blowtorch on Wednesday - yay!)
Fruit Skewers with Blueberry Sauce
Gluten Free Almond Citrus Syrup Bundt Cake
Peach and Coconut Tart
Spiced Sweet Potato Pie with Candied Pecans
Tiramisu

Here is a bonus picture of a chocolate mousse that I tested that didn't end up in the final book.



You can visit Leigh's blog here.

Have you ever tested for a cookbook?

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

A special treat today - three kitty photos!




I mentioned Leigh was a lover of kitties. Here she is with my Sahara, who Leigh is quite taken with. Sahara is standing on our friend Diana's back.


Here is Leigh with Gizmo, who demands love from everyone in her path.


I don't have any photos of Leigh and Dim Sim, because Dim Sim has this thing where she is suspicious and hides. But so she is not left out of this post, here is a photo of Dim Sim and myself.