Spiced Apple Pancakes

When the Supertoddler and Ninjahusband were craving pancakes one morning recently, I thought it was a perfect time to try Spiced Apple Pancakes {p. 515} on for size.

Apples and cinnamon are a classic, delicious combination. The pancakes themselves were easy to put together, but lacked a bit in flavor. However, the topping made up for some of the sweetness, and the combination of the two provided a very pleasant pancake experience indeed.

I'm not dying to make these again anytime soon, but this is a good, solid pancake recipe, made a little more special by the apple topping.

-- Your Friendly Neighborhood Batgirl

Ginger-Molasses Bread with Blueberries

Much as I adore it in all of its incarnations, I’ve never made gingerbread before. So since I had all of the ingredients on hand, and since anything with molasses piques my interest (I’m pretty sure I didn’t know what that was until hopping the pond), I decided to bake up the Ginger-Molasses Bread with Blueberries (page 404).

I substituted white whole wheat flour for the all-purpose and a mix of light brown sugar and dark brown (the stuff is amazing, it’s moist and wonderfully fragrant, calling to mind molasses; I love it so much, I sometimes sneak pinches just like that.)

The aroma emanating from the oven? Dreamy. The bread? Delicious. The half cup of cornmeal really does wonders for the consistency. Tender, moist, and flavorful, there’s nothing more I could wish for in a sweetbread. I’ll be keeping this in mind for next winter and a big audience. (Frozen blueberries = definitely the way to go.)

- - Ulpia, bakes 'em up - -

Vegetable Lo Mein and Hot and Sour Soup

Warning: super long post ahead!

I know, I've been making a crazy amount of stuff from this book lately. Not really sure why, it just sort of worked out that way. Anyway, it was Chinese New Year (a.k.a. Lunar New Year) last weekend and I didn't make or go out to eat Chinese food at all. I wanted to but just didn't get a chance to so I decided to at least make a couple of Chinese dishes from the book a few days ago. Even though these are not traditional new year's dishes, or even dishes I grew up with, I settled on Vegetable Lo Mein With Tofu (page 234) and Hot and Sour Soup (page 152).

For the lo mein, I ended up using linguine. I normally don't substitute semolina pasta for Chinese wheat noodles but the texture and width worked really well. The recipe follows a standard format for stirfried noodles: prepped vegetables, precooked noodles and premixed sauce. I made the recipe as is at first (tweaked it afterwards, keep reading) and I found it really lacking in seasoning and flavour. Not a huge deal for me. I'd rather have a dish that is underseasoned so I can adjust accordingly, than one that is overseasoned.

Now this is just my personal take on it but here are my suggested tweaks. The recipe initially calls for only 3 tbsp soy sauce. It does say to adjust the seasonings when you're done, but in my opinion, 3 tbsp as a starting point is way too little for 12 oz of noodles. It should be closer to 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup. That may sound like a lot but if you compare recipes, the Pad Thai recipe uses 1/3 cup of soy sauce for 12 oz of noodles. The amount of sherry is about right since the flavour is fairly strong. The sugar however should also probably be upped to 1 tbsp or more to balance out the other flavours. The last thing that this dish would have benefitted from was a few spoonfuls of vegetarian "oyster" sauce. You know when you make some Cantonese dishes at home and it never tastes quite right with just soy sauce? That missing flavour is usually from the vegetarian "oyster" sauce. Other ingredients too, but the "oyster" sauce makes a huge difference. I also ended up adding some chili oil with roasted peanuts (the peanuts are in the oil) and sriracha on the side

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "bad" recipe by any means. The basic blueprint is there, but keep in mind that you will want to up the seasonings by quite a bit.

On to the soup!



Hot and sour soup is one of those things that is never really the same from restaurant to restaurant. Pre-vegan, I consumed so much hot and sour soup and have had so many different variations with the most interesting one being a really sweet tomato-based one. It was kind of odd, but good at the same time. But I digress...

Yes, I know the soup looks a bit oily in the pic. It's most likely from the sesame seed oil at the end (and maybe because I used roux...). Anyway, this recipe is a good starting point for hot and sour soup. Balanced flavours that really come together after simmering. I did have a few small tweaks though.

I was completely out of cornstarch so I ended up making a light roux first (that's why my soup isn't clear) and then adding in the water and bouillon powder. The recipe calls for a light broth since the flavour and sodium comes mostly from the other ingredients, so I cut the amount of bouillon powder in half. I also didn't have any bamboo shoots on hand and I really don't like water chestnuts so I skipped that. I did add in both shiitake and white mushrooms along with some sliced cloud ear fungus for texture and some chopped bok choy.

On to the seasonings! For the chili paste, I used (double) chili garlic sauce. I ended up adding in a little bit more soy sauce, a pinch of sugar and also a splash of balsamic. What? Yeah, I said balsamic. I wanted to add in a splash of Chinese black vinegar, but I didn't have any on hand. Balsamic is an okay substitute in small doses as long as it's not the primary flavour. It adds a similar depth in taste as Chinese black vinegar and worked well here too. The sesame seed oil at the end helped to round everything out nicely. The soup was even better the next day.

All in all, everything turned out pretty tasty, but only after some major additions for the noodles. Keep that in mind if you're making them.

Lastly, a belated gung hay fat choy to everyone!

— Ms. Veganorama

Baked Pasta Shells and Broccoli (but with macaroni)

I'm always up for trying new pasta and "cheese" recipes so I decided to make Baked Pasta Shells and Broccoli (page 224) but with macaroni. The recipe uses the Mornay-Style Cheeze Sauce (page 552) that Gymmie also made previously.

The Mornay sauce came together easily and is also low fat as it uses cornstarch to thicken instead of a roux. I think though that this would have been better with more fat since it is baked (more on that below). What I liked about the Mornay sauce is that it used vegetable stock instead of plain water. It added a fuller flavour to the sauce, but of course it depends on how good your stock is. I like to use Bryanna's broth powder or the Seitenbacher brand powder.

The entire dish was nice and super creamy before it went into the oven but after it came out, not so much. The pasta absorbed almost all the sauce as you can probably tell from the pic. Now, I do make mac & "cheese" a lot and I know that there is some absorption after baking or in the fridge but this was a huge amount of absorption. The only difference really between my usual sauce and this one is the fat. I make a full fat roux (margarine and oil) for my own. Maybe someone can enlighten me on whether fat content in a sauce would affect absorption?

Regardless, the dish was still tasty, just a little drier than I would like. If making this, I would suggest coating the cooked macaroni with a bit of oil or margarine before adding the sauce, or using some fat in the sauce, or baking for less time, uncovered (to crisp up the breadcrumbs), or skip the baking entirely, or make an extra batch of sauce to serve on top, which is what I did today with the leftovers.

— Ms. Veganorama

Apple "Waldorf" Loaf - Guest Post by Mindy

For my second guest spot, I once again chose something in a loaf form. Having just posted that I inevitably fail at loaves, this seems like a bad choice at first, BUT I received my brand new range on Monday, with my first ever convection oven setting! What better way to check out the supposed greatness of convection than to put my loaf ability to the test.

The Apple "Waldorf" Loaf (page 405) is easy to put together with standard pantry ingredients. It comes together quickly and bakes in about an hour. I subbed pecans for the walnuts and used golden raisins. I also had to use brown sugar as I was out of white. This is a tasty, moist, wonderful loaf, and yes, it even baked well for me! It was very exciting to cut in half to check and see if I had the standard dense area at the bottom, how my loaves usually turn out. There was a little bit, but nothing like I am used to. I call this a great success and will enjoy being a new loaf convert.

- Mindy, Guest Blogger

Austrian Noodles and Cabbage

Sometimes you just want something simple and comforting and nothing says comfort like Austrian Noodles and Cabbage (page 213).

This dish is easy to throw together and oh so tasty. I used wheat noodles instead of pasta because I felt like having a softer noodle, green cabbage instead of savoy and I added in extra margarine. A lot of extra margarine because well, that's how I like it. :p

There's not much else to say about this except that this is excellent comfort food. Simple ingredients with a tasty result. It doesn't look like much, but it's delicious.

— Ms. Veganorama

Falafel Sandwiches and Classic Tabbouleh

Most vegans I know love falafel sandwiches. What's not to like? Fried seasoned chickpea patties with fresh ingredients in a soft pita. It's been a long time since I had a really good falafel and the last one I bought recently sucked (Maoz — it was dry and flavourless) so I put Falafel Sandwiches (page 117) on my recipe list along with Classic Tabbouleh (page 87).

Both dishes were easy to make, but I'll start with the tabbouleh. I used fine bulgur since that's all I had on hand and omitted the cucumber since I forgot to put that on this week's grocery list. The tabbouleh calls for 1/4 cup of oil but you can always reduce that if you are limiting the amount of oil in your food. I did ramp up the lemon juice though after tasting but the recipe is a good starting point, so adjust the lemon to your tastes. I do wish I had cucumbers though because it would have added some extra brightness to the salad since my tomatoes weren't great.

For the falafel sandwiches, I used canned chickpeas. My food processor is terrible so in the process of getting the onions to get chopped down along with the parsley, I ended up almost pureeing the entire mixture instead of just processing to combine. After refrigerating, I did have to add some flour to thicken everything up. Even though it was still pretty soft and sticky, they still fried up nicely. Crispy on the outside and soft and flavourful on the inside.

I served up the falafel sandwiches with hummus and tabbouleh inside the pita and a dash of hot sauce on mine. We had no tahini in the house so I had to skip that. Normally I would also throw in sliced dill pickles, but we were also out of those. The sandwiches were great and filling and SO much better (and cheaper) than my last takeout falafel.

— Ms. Veganorama

P.S. As you can probably tell, all my dinners this week are from the book with more to come. I'm a slacker and have a hard time following recipes but I wanted to make an effort to make a whole bunch of stuff from the book. Go me!