Page 136: Arnold Palmer

As it turns out, I did manage to acquire some tea and knock out the Arnold Palmer Recipe with the same batch of lemonade. I'm just posting it two months after the fact. Yes, I am that bad at blogging. Oh well.

But anyway... back to the point. Agave Lemonade + Yerba Mate Tea = The BabyCakes NYC Arnold Palmer.

It was pretty yummy. I mean we started with that yummy lemonade and added the unique flavor of yerba mate - so I can't say I'm surprised. I would definitely make this again. Well, that is if I ever have a dozen extra lemons sitting around my house that I need to use. Hey... it could happen.

Page 133: Agave Lemonade

I love lemonade!  Especially when it's more tart than sweet, and this agave-sweetened lemonade recipe is my idea of perfect beverage! Some might find it a bit sour, but you could always add more agave.  I thought it was delicious and so refreshing on this warm and sunny July afternoon!

You start with lots of lemons!

Squeeze them...

Add water and agave...

And enjoy over ice!

I'm sipping on it as I write and it's so lovely.  There's also a BabyCakes Arnold Palmer recipe I could so easily knock out right now, if only I had not just run out of yerba mate tea.  Hopefully I can squirrel some lemonade away until tomorrow so I can pick up some tea and check off yet another BabyCakes recipe.  I'll keep you posted!

Page 73: Sugarplum Cookies

I'm on a roll... back already with a new BabyCakes recipe!  Actually two, but I'll get to that later.

These Sugarplum Cookies (apparently also known as Mexican Wedding Cookies) were my last cookie recipe in the book and I've been putting them off for a long time because, quite frankly, they just didn't inspire me.  I've never had sugarplum cookies before and have to admit this is a recipe that I never would have made if I hadn't committed to working my way through the whole book (I mean, there are donuts waiting in book two, friends - DONUTS).  But... since I have committed... here they are.

The underlying cookie is a pretty simple but pretty sweet spice cookie with cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg.  After baking, they're coated in powdered sugar and filled with plum jam.

I was pleasantly surprised by these cookies.  First by the dough, which I ate plenty of in the baking process. Then by the finished product, because the plum jam is subtle and goes oh so well with the spice of the cookie and the super sweet powdered sugar coating.

Not sure these will make it on the staples list at my house but they were a nice treat.  And they are so cute!  Tasty AND cute.  What more could a girl ask for?

While I was in the kitchen I decided to knock out a BabyCakes drink recipe.  My post on BabyCakes Agave Lemonade coming soon!

Page 100: Meyer Lemon and Bing Cherry Cupcakes

It's cherry season!

I always know this because Whole Foods has their annual one-day cherry sale.  I now consider this day one of my favorite holidays of the year.  Last year I purchased five pounds and tried the BabyCakes cherry cobbler.  This year, I own a dehydrator... so I bought ten pounds!

How did I use ten pounds of cherries you may ask?  Well first, after I pulled out a bowl for us to munch on over the weekend, I spent the better part of Friday night standing over my sink pitting the remaining cherries.  And despite the purchase of a cherry pitter since last year's sale, my fingers remain slightly stained. 

First off, I removed 24 cherries to make the much anticipated BabyCakes Meyer Lemon and Bing Cherry cupcakes.  That didn't make much of a dent.  Next, I loaded my dehydrator - all five trays - with halved cherries and set it to dry.  We're set on dried cherries for awhile!

But I still had a couple pounds of pitted cherries looking for a delicious home.  So I began googling... and ended up making my first ever batch of jam.  Cherry jam!  Using this easy-peasy recipe.

It's so yummy ... and I love having jam in my fridge that I made myself.

But back to the highlight: the cupcakes.  I've been wanting to make these for quite awhile and finally got to check them off my list.

The cupcakes are lemon - made with both lemon extract and lemon infused agave nectar.  They are supposed to be Meyer Lemons but I couldn't find them on the island, so I just used regular lemons.

You add a cherry filling by inserting a layer of chopped cherries (bathed in the infused agave), between scoops of cupcake batter.

The frosting was the traditional BabyCakes vanilla frosting with some of the chopped cherry mixture folded into the frosting. Thanks to Jen, who recently left me a comment about the frosting - I used less milk this time which definitely seemed to help. I was short on coconut oil though so I need to give it another try and see if it sets up better with half the milk.

These were really good - definitely my favorite BabyCakes cupcake recipe so far - and likely the only one I would make again. They were still dense - but unlike other BabyCakes cupcakes they stayed really moist and were very tasty!  They also got rave reviews from the office-mates.  Hooray for a BabyCakes success story!

Page 79: Agave-Sweetened Brownie Gems

Today was another rainy day in paradise and I found myself with some extra time at home and an urge to bake.  My first inclination was to make the BabyCakes chocolate chip cookies, but as I continue my quest to bake every recipe in the BabyCakes book I thought I should try something new.  So I decided to try the second brownie recipe: Agave-Sweetened Brownie Gems.

Gems.  Sounds super cute and yummy right?  Wrong.  Bottom line: I think this is my least favorite BabyCakes recipe yet.  Pretty much everything I've made so far is not only better, but waaaaay better.  Let's disect...

From all accounts, these are apparently purposefully less sweet than the Brownie Bites I've successfully made before.  But the chocolate sauce is supposed to make up for this lack of sweetness.  It does not.  Maybe I did something wrong with the sauce, because as you'll see in the comparison below, mine looks very different from that shown in the picture.  Mine was not as dark and rich looking (or tasting), despite adding extra agave in attempt to get the "deep, rich chocolate" version of the sauce as described in the book.

The chocolate frosting "sauce" was pretty good - although I think the vanilla version is still better.  But even it could not bring these bites back to the level of yumminess I've come to expect from BabyCakes.  I'm taking them to work tomorrow where I plan to anonymously place them in the break room and remotely monitor how fast they disappear (this is what I do with baked goods not bad enough to throw out but not good enough to claim).

Oh well.  The upside: I'm one recipe closer to moving on to book two (and DONUTS!).  And... I have a bowl of leftover chocolate frosting in my refrigerator!  Surely I can think of a good way to put that to use.

Easter Brunch

Oh how I love brunch! It is my favorite meal - and what's not to love? It generally takes place on a weekend, holiday, or some other type of day off.  It's essentially breakfast fare but occurs later so as not to interfere with sleeping in on said day off.  And the menu is a perfect combination of savory and sweet that doesn't make it's way into our everyday breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.

On Sunday we hosted Easter Brunch for a dozen of our closest island-dwelling friends. Since adopting a plant based diet, going out to brunch has lost some of it's appeal for me because in most cases it means making exceptions to my normally egg and dairy free diet. Thus, I was beyond excited to host brunch where I could make the delicious favorites I enjoyed in my pre-veg days, but do so using plant-healthy ingredients! I also seized upon the opportunity to try out not one, but two new BabyCakes recipes. Read on for details on my menu.

BabyCakes Blueberry Crumb Cake (Page 113)

Although slightly overdone (I really need to approach baking times with more skepticism), this was still pretty good. It contains three ingredients - blueberries, cinnamon, and lemon extract - that I never would have thought to combine in one recipe, but it was a genius combination that really worked.  The crumb topping is derived from the BabyCakes Vanilla Cupcakes, so I started the process by making a small batch of those.  I also had vanilla frosting, which had really turned out as a sauce, left over from the Gingerbread and it worked out perfectly for the icing.

Whole Foods Portobello and Asparagus Strata

While I enjoyed the vegan version below, I'm told this was delicious! Hubby helped me out with this one - apparently he is more experienced than I at adequately whisking eggs.

Vegan Portobello and Asparagus Strata

After finding the strata recipe at Whole Foods, I was left with the question of what savory dish to serve that I would eat, as well as something that would accommodate one of my guests who cannot eat dairy or gluten.  The solution: a genius named Sarah Farsh who converted the Whole Foods recipe above to be entirely plant based, and was kind enough to leave a link to her creation in the Whole Foods comments section.  I simply subbed the bread for a gluten free almond flour bread (with egg replacer), which was so easy to make and worked out great in the recipe.

Oven Roasted Herb Potatoes

One of my favorite side dishes - for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  This is a large recipe because I was feeding a dozen, but you can adapt accordingly.

5 pounds fingerling potatoes, cut in half lengthwise

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh rosemary

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

1 teaspoon fresh or dried thyme

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl until potatoes are well coated. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.  Spread potatoes on baking sheet in single layer and roast at 350° for 60 to 90 minutes, or until potatoes are tender and begin to brown.

BabyCakes Spelt Biscuits (Page 37) with Vegan Clotted Cream and Jam

I was so excited to make these biscuits and have literally been looking forward to this part of the brunch for weeks.  I love biscuits, especially with clotted cream and jam - a taste I fell in love with while visiting London a few years ago.  After giving up dairy, I thought my days of enjoying clotted cream were over. But then I bought a recipe book called Vegan Yum Yum and discovered it was incredibly easy to make a vegan clotted cream that was just as delicious! And the author has posted it online. Enjoy!

Unfortunately we missed a picture of the final product, so I only have the pre-baked version from my iPhone.  I initially failed to add enough water to the dough so the first few were very tough to get rolled out (notice the very "cracked" looking egg above).  But I kept going back and adding water to the dough so by the end they were looking more like proper biscuits.

I have room to improve on this recipe, specifically add a lot more water next time.  I also have leftover clotted cream and jam in my fridge as we speak so I just might have to try a remake sooner than later.

There you have it!  My friends were kind enough to add fresh fruit and a few other pastries to the table - it was an absolutely delicious spread and was in every way as magical as the brunch menus I so loved in my pre-veg days.

Happy Easter!

Page 62: Gingerbread

That's right friends, three ginger BabyCakes recipes in a row. Hey, I bought ginger. Why not?

As I said before, I was actually kind of excited to make the gingerbread because it involved a layer of BabyCakes frosting. But... it's BabyCakes frosting... and therefore it's temperamental. From what I recall, the last frosting attempt was in January with the Sweet Paradise cake when it turned out beautifully thick and set up perfectly. It did not do so this weekend for the gingerbread.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The gingerbread making itself was pretty uneventful. It's another teacakes recipe that has "extra batter" which I chose to use on cupcakes. Not very exciting - I definitely preferred the final product in teacake form and think I actually (gasp!) trashed six of the eight cupcakes by Sunday night. Mostly due to the frosting drama I'll discuss further below.

The final loaf, which I do not have a picture of because the camera battery died and we were already digging in, was very moist and definitely tasted of ginger and spice (and everything nice). The recipe also has one fourth cup of molasses. This seemed like a lot to me since I usually measure that stuff out by the teaspoon, but it added to the spice quality of the final product. And it gave me an iron boost for the weekend. Yay.

In short: it was good. Similar to a spice cake but not as sweet as the ginger snaps... but not so good that I would be inclined to eat it plain. Thus enters the frosting. And the drama. I'll spare you the details (they've been written here before) but I ended up with vanilla sauce. Still so delicious - as always - but not beautifully spreadable. So to enjoy a slice we spooned the frosting "sauce" on top of the slices like so:



As I said, it was still delicious and really brought the gingerbread to life, but it was not the thick layer of frosting pictured piled atop the gingerbread in the book (and that I was really looking forward to). Sigh.

Enough with the ginger... partly because I've now made all three of the ginger centric recipes in the book. Next up: biscuits for my veggie-ful Easter brunch (unless I find something wonderful to make before then!).