Recipe Round-Up: 500 Vegan Recipes

Delving back into 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman for another round-up. There are a couple of savouries here, but also several more cupcakes. As I have mentioned, this book is great for baked stuff and has been a reliable source of recipes for my bake sales. You can see my other posts about this book here.

Veggie Fried Rice: An excellent way to use up some cold cooked rice. I had a bit under the four cups called for, probably more like three cups, but I like a higher veggie to rice ratio. This has scallions (I cooked them with the veggies rather than add them at the end), peas, carrot, corn, mushrooms, and celery. There is the option of adding some chopped tofu, of course I did! But rather than plain tofu I added some Soyco Japanese Marinated tofu. I also left out the aniseed and fennel, and just used all Chinese five spice powder. It gave it a really lovely flavour!
Rating: :)



Lemon Herb Coconut Tofu with Udon: This was delicious! I did add an extra step by pan-frying the tofu first up in a bit of peanut oil, just to give it a bit more texture before it is eventually added to the broth the simmer, and I also quickly sauteed the scallions. Obviously this recipe calls for coconut milk, but I used a mix of light coconut milk and water so it wasn't too rich for me. The coconut milk is simmered with a range of herbs (I used a mix of dried and fresh), lemon juice, and curry powder, and is a delicious sauce. It went really well over the chewy udon noodles as well. Highly recommend!
Rating: :D



Secret Sauce: This yummy sauce is a mix of mayo, pickle relish, and ketchup. I used it on burgers, on sandwiches, in salads. It is a good time.
Rating: :)



Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies: This recipe started off messy. After beating butter and sugar together, you then need to add and beat in quite a bit of soy milk. It didn't go creamy, it just went lumpy. I ended up blending with a stick blender, which splattered stuff everywhere, and it still wasn't great. So perhaps add in small additions, and probably have your milk at room temperature. However, once you are through this these are some lovely cookies. Despite the sweet name, these cookies weren't that sweet! Which is fine for me. But I would have liked a bit more maple flavour, so I think adding some maple extract next time would be good.
Rating: :)



Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes: Chocolate and cherries and one of my favourite combinations, and these certainly did it justice. The cupcakes are so moist and taste great! You can put a frosting on them if you must, but I didn't bother. They are amazing just as they are, in all their nekkid glory!
Rating: :D



Smoky Chipotle Chocolate Cupcakes: These cupcakes ended up being quite dense. I decreased the amount of chipotle powder in them, but was concerned when I tasted the batter that it was still quite spicy. But after baking it mellows out a bit. I just decorated them with some dusted on icing sugar with some cocoa and cinnamon.
Rating: :)



50/50 Bar Cupcakes: I had to google a 50/50 bar, because we don't have them here, but it is kind of like a creamsicle? Which we also don't have here. But we had somewhat similar fruity creamy frozen things from memory. These cupcakes had quite a subtle orange flavour, and are topped with a cream cheese frosting with some orange extract. The frosting ended up being more like a glaze, you can see it was very thin and runny. This batter fills the cupcake liners very full before baking, so they rose quite high.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



She has another UTI... again. Sigh. But at least the antibiotics continue to work, and she can enjoy some lovely sun in the sun room.