Ghetto Home Fabulous: Vegan Baking Edition

Have you guys tried making macarons? Everyone says they're the dessert of the decade, but I feel like they would have fit in better in the eighties - puffy and brightly colored, you know?

Anywho, I'm supposed to be moved out of my old apartment by Friday at noon, which is really funny because I still have heaps and heaps of my junk over there. Unfortunately, one of my favorite things to do when I have important deadlines is to ignore them and instead go bake snobby, labor-intensive cookie-things. I joined forces with vegan Grag for this one, forming Team Ve-Greezy. Providing moral support were Matt, Moko, and Luigi the Cat.

The usual macaron recipe calls for almond flour, white and powdered sugar, egg whites, and flavoring, and involves a million tiny steps. Team Ve-Greezy had some trouble with this, being cheap, lazy, and vegan - no one has a good vegan macaron recipe! NO ONE! Come on, internet! So we improvised the ghetto-home-fabulous way and made our own recipe, based on this one.

5 T ground flax seed
1/3 c water
2 bananas
3/4 c (ground) almonds
1 c powdered sugar
1/2 c cocoa powder
3-4 T oil

Mix flax seed with water. Whisk vigorously for...a while. I don't know. Ten minutes? Grag did this part. Add mashed bananas. NOTE: If you want to, skip flax and bananas and add any egg replacer equal to four eggs. Combine cocoa and oil and add to mixture. Finely grind almonds. This will take a long time and the noise of the food processor will drive everyone in the house crazy. Add almonds and sifted powdered sugar to mixture. Let sit for 30 minutes (who knows if this makes a difference). Pipe/spoon circles of batter onto parchment paper. Bake for 12 minutes at 325 F. For filling, we mixed a stick of earth balance with 1 t vanilla, 1.5 c powdered sugar, and food coloring.

photo by Grag

Obviously, these look nothing like macarons. I'm guessing that they also taste nothing like macarons (I've never had one before). The venture was not an entire failure, though, as they were still pretty delicious. Plus, look at these whoopie pies down here. See the resemblance? Who needs those fancy macarons, anyway?

More Buns, of the Sugary Variety

Yesterday was the day of birth of my beautiful Starkey. To celebrate, I created what I like to call the "Dirty Bunny" cakes, modeled after a picture my mom found in the newspaper.

I just took a round chocolate cake, layered on [cold] hot fudge sauce, oreo ice cream and another chocolate cake. After a quick freeze, I cut it in half crosswise and added the frosting and decorations(frosting ice cream is really hard! - that's where the "dirty" part of "dirty bunny cake" came from). The eyes and nose are m&ms, the eyebrows are tiny chocolate chips, and I cut the ears from envelopes, since that was the only paper I could find lying around(ghetto home fabulous). I forgot to add the whiskers, but you probably could use something like uncooked spaghetti, pretzel sticks, licorice, sour ropes, etc - work your sweet, jazzy improv magic.

I am going to go hit the hay now, seeing how I stayed up too late last night (unhealthy activities - french fries at the playground - turkey horror stories - plugging abandoned TVs into outdoor outlets downtown - photographing ourselves while sitting on random tandem bicycles), and tomorrow I am getting up bright and early to get on an AIRPLANE to go see WIKI in MISSOULA, MAN-TANA! Ahhh! Prepare yourselves for, like, fifty million pictures of mountains and sunsets and cool poets in the coming posts.

Black and White and Black and White

Tildar does not approve of these cupcakes.

But I do. You should make some then eat a few and go jogging, after which you will squat down to catch your breath and rip a hole in the crotch of your leggings. It happened to someone I know.