Christmas Bake Sales for Farm Animal Rescue

For those of you who don't know, large parts of Australia are on fire. And what isn't is in drought. This drought is hitting properties very hard, including Farm Animal Rescue. A refuge for rescued farm animals, their dams are dry and they are having to truck water into the property to keep the animals alive. They have a lot of costs at the moment, on top of the regular costs for caring for their residents. As part of their fundraising efforts, they had a run of three bake sales spread over eight days, all supported by wonderful local businesses. The bake sales were all very successful. and they have been getting some good donations on top of that, but obviously everything is still a struggle at the moment. This is what I baked for them over those eight days. If you have any sway with the weather, please send rain.

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Cozy Inside by Joni Marie Newman: A combination of the classic cookie flavours, it is hard to go wrong with this mix. The recipe just says to mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. I beat the peanut butter, sugar, and liquids together first and then stirred through the dry stuff. The dough is very goopy, and does benefit from firming up in the fridge a bit before scooping. I made a full recipe, but used and Australian TBS (20mL) as my scoop, so I got 28 cookies rather than 3 dozen. As they were bigger, I needed to bake them for about five minutes extra. These were great straight out of the oven, but froze very well also.
Rating: :)



Gooey Peanut Butter Creem Cheeze and Chocolate Chip Brownies from Cozy Inside by Joni Marie Newman: These are some very fudgy brownies. It has the option to use 2/3 - 1 cup of flour depending on how fudgy or cakey you want them, I used a heaped 2/3 cup. The batter melted peanut butter and chocolate in it, as well as additional chocolate chips. It is topped with a peanut butter and cream cheese swirl. I found the topping to be a bit thick, making it hard to spread and marble. Next time I would add a smidge more soy milk to loosen it up a bit, and perhaps a touch of maple syrup for a little bit of sweetness.
Rating: :)



Candy Cake Fudge Cookies from The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz: Chocolate and mint, for the most part, is not my choice. But it is a very popular Christmas combination. I made a half recipe of these cookies, and using an ice cream scoop to portion out the dough got 11 nice big cookies. Because they were bigger, I baked them for 20 minutes. I was worried at first, because the chocolate in the cookie dough melted a bit and puddled around some of the cookies in the oven, but it all worked out. I used a block of Alter Eco Super Dark Mint Chocolate in the dough, and I only needed one candy cane crushed for the tops. Isa loves coconut oil, so I used Nuttelex instead of that in the recipe. The mint was not that over powering for me in the end, the chocolate was so rich, that I didn't mind these at all.
Rating: :)



Gingered Cheesecake Bar Cookies from Veganissimo by Leigh Drew: These are SO GOOD! The cheesecake is based on cashews, no tofutti or bananas in sight. They cashews are blended in non-dairy milk that has been simmered with some fresh ginger and then left to steep, there in ginger in the base, and there is also chopped candied ginger scattered over the base before pouring on the topping. It is very gingery, which I loved. The base is a blend of gluten free flours and olive oil. I needed to bake these for about an extra 15 minutes in my oven before they were ready. These were so good, I cannot recommend them enough!
Rating: :D



(For The Love Of) Fruit Cake Bars from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero: I made a half batch of this cake bar, in an 8x8 inch pan. Instead of separate golden raisins and candied/glacee fruit, I used some ready made Christmas fruit mix. I also substituted the rum in the cake and icing in this recipe with rum extract and water. The cake itself was a little dry, and the icing was nice but didn't fully over it. But the flavour was good. I did almost screw up a little by adding too much baking soda, but I scooped most of that out gently.
Rating: :)



Harvest Cookies from Quick-Fix Vegan by Robin Robertson: The night before the final bake sale, I had an aesthetic baking fail (see later on in this post), and needed to make something quickly to replace it as my contribution. This recipe came through for me. Plus it had cranberries and ginger in it, so that is kind of Christmas-like, right? They have oats, cranberries, nuts, and sultanas in it, along with a delightful spice blend. I used an ice cream scoop to get nice bake sale sized cookies, and it made 14 cookies that I baked for 25 minutes. These were delicious, so I am glad I made them!
Rating: :D



Mincemeat Pinwheels from Cook Share Eat Vegan by Aine Carlin: I mentioned a recipe that was an aesthetic fail, and this was it. The recipe seemed simple enough, a jar of vegan fruit mincemeat, a sheet of puff pastry. Roll, slice, bake. But I think that my sheet of puff pastry and her sheet of puff pastry were different. I know they are, because hers seems to be a rectangle according to the instructions to roll from the short side, and mine were squares. Anyway, it was meant to be cut into 18 x 1cm pieces, I did 12. But it was so thin, and the pastry was so smooshy. My mum suggested in future to pop the roll in the freezer for a bit before cutting, and I would also suggest cutting them thicker. So while they tasted lovely, and didn't look totally horrendous, they were not for putting out a bake sale table.
Rating: :) (for taste)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Clinic boy Jed, sitting on his rocker/scratcher and having a good time.

Recipe Round-Up: Veganissimo

Shockingly, this is my first proper recipe round-up of Veganissimo by my wonderful friend Leigh. I tested for this book several years ago, and made heaps of stuff, and then I got the beautiful finished copy of it but, like so many of my cookbooks, it languished for a while. But now I am back at it, because it is a great book! I'm going to share a mix of recipes I made during testing (that I can now rate and talk about), and also some of the newer things I've made.

A note, if you are looking for this book, search for Veganissimo by Leigh Drew, as there are a couple of other books with the same name. I guess it is popular!

Baingan Bharta with Tandoori Cauliflower Cheese: I made these two recipes during testing, and they go great together (served with some steamed basmati rice). The Baingan Bharta is an eggplant (both mashed and chooped) and tomato based stew, with lots of seasoning. I found my eggplant did take a but longer to bake than the recipe, so make allowances for eggplant size and oven temperament. I left out the chili and the cayenne with this. It went well with the tandoori cauliflower cheese, which was amazing! The original tester recipe used whole spices, but the published one uses ground to make it super easy. This makes a big amount, but you won't be sorry.
Rating: Baingan Bharta :), Tandoori Cauliflower Cheese :D



Chocolate Raspberry Muffins: This is another one I made during testing, but have made again since because they are so good! The muffin batter has crushed frozen raspberries in it (rather than finely chopping them, I found that if you put them in a freezer bag and use something to hit it with they crush up super fast). The best part about these muffins is the middle - they have a couple of chunks of dark chocolate and some raspberry jam baked into the middle. If you eat them when they are still a bit warm, you just get this amazing burst of melted chocolate goodness! But they are a bit fragile, so treat them gently until you shove them in your face hole!
Rating: :D



Overnight Breakfast Cups: I made this recipe quite recently, for a pre-work breakfast. The recipe is designed to make cute little cups - six cups based on 2 cups of rolled oats (or quinoa if you'd prefer, but I used oats). Of course, I halved the recipe to make one nice big bowl! But geez, it was filling. The oats are soaked with milk (I used oat), granny smith (meant to be grated but I seriously hate grating apple so I just finely chopped it) and some dried fruit. The dried fruit called for is cranberries and goji berries. I used some dried mulberries instead of the goji berries as I had some kicking around that I needed to use up. The recipe tops the cups with banana and peanut butter before serving. I used these on my bowl, but also added some fresh blueberries and pepitas.
Rating: :)



Mozzarella: Leigh has several cheese recipes in here, but my star is the mozzarella. This takes a bit of time, but is very easy. It uses agar agar to set, which means no yucky coconut oil (it uses canola oil instead), and it is based on soy yoghurt. It sets up beautifully, is very sliceable, and as you can see makes an amazing melted grilled cheese sandwich.
Rating: :D





Reuben Sandwiches: I do love a Reuben, and I love Leigh's take on them. This recipe does require a few components to be made ahead of time - cheese sauce, vegan bacon, and thousand-island style sauce. I took a couple of short-cuts, using a premade cheese sauce mix and making a simple thousand island by mixing mayo, ketchup, and gherkin relish. For the bacon, I used the Baked Seitan Bacon recipe. This is cool, because it involves making the seitan mix with bacon marinade, so the flavour is all the way through. After cooking and cooling, you slice and cool it. What I really loved about this was the sauerkraut, which is sauteed with caramelised onions. It was a really nice take on a reuben!
Rating: Reuben :D, Seitan Bacon :)



Waldorf and Caesar Salad Remix: This was a great, fresh salad with a bunch of lovely flavours and textures. I made a half recipe to serve one hungry me. Again, this does involve a couple of other recipes - Vegan Bacon and Avocado and White Bean Dressing. For this bacon, I made the tempeh bacon. There is a bacon marinade in the book that is unlike anything I've seen - it involves making a spiced soy sauce and then using that, and it was amazing. You can use it on tempeh, tofu, kale, or other vegetables, but of course I chose tempeh. IT WAS AMAZING. The avocado and white bean dressing is very tangy and quite thick, on its own it is great on sandwiches. For this recipe, it is then blended up with some kalamata olives. Once I had done this, it was almost too thick, so I had to thin it with some water. The salad is a mix of cos, granny smith, tempeh bacon, the olive avocado bean dressing, capers, croutons (I used rye bread instead of sourdough), and pecans (which I used instead of walnuts) candied with agave syrup and garam masala.
Rating: Salad :), Avocado and White Bean Dressing :), Tempeh Bacon :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Holly is a sweet black and white girl with a lovely blaze and a funny personality. Yes, we named all if Petal's baby girls after plants!