Vegan Lime Poppy Seed Birthday Cake

Northern Spy celebrated a birthday this week: Bethani is finally 21! In addition to the traditional birthday festivities—drinking—I thought I’d be a nice guy and whipped up a birthday cake for the little lady. However, as I was pressed for time for a variety of reasons, most of them personal and banal, I opted for a quick, but totez delish, recipe I’ve used before, with a few slight changes.

I present to you now Bethani’s Vegan Lime Poppy Seed Birthday Cake:

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup poppy seeds
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• grated peels of 3 lemons
• ¾ cup apple juice
• ¾ cup (canola) oil
• ¾ cup (pure) maple syrup
• 3 cups whole wheat pastry flour (I'm sure white flour is fine)
• 1½ tsp baking soda
• ¾ tsp sea salt (or regular salt)
  
  Directions:
• Mix dry ingredients.
• Mix wet ingredients.
• Fold gently together, adding wet to dry.
• Pour into greased and floured 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan.
• Bake in preheated 350° F oven for 1/2 hour or until toothpick comes clean

Notes and Adjustments:

• ¾ of a cup of poppy seeds is a lot, I mean a lot, of poppy seeds. To make this I cut it down to half a cup, but you could probably get away with 1/3 if you wanted to.
• To make this a lime cake instead of lemon I used the peel of four limes, and it took about 2 of them to get enough juice.
• If you use maple syrup for this recipe get the lightest you can find, otherwise your cake will taste like pancakes (not necessarily bad, but the maple can be overpowering). For this and most other vegan baking applications I prefer to use honey! It’s a cleaner, more neutral taste, it’s attracts water so your baked goods will stay moister longer, and it’s a natural preservative so your food will keep longer!
• You could use an equal amount of Kosher salt in lieu of the sea salt if you don’t have it, or a ½ tsp of regular salt.
• I also added a ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract since I think most baked goods benefit from this.
• I used pastry flour for this and the cake was very light and tasty, the first time I made it all we had was all purpose and the cake was still excellent, just more dense. It’s up to you and your cake preferences, but if you choose a.p. flour mix this sparingly or enjoy your gluten block!
• I baked this in a loaf pan which took about 45 minutes, checking every five or so after the first thirty. This would also be great in a Bundt pan and would probably cook in 25-30.
• While this cake is perfectly delicious on its own I chose to top it with a glaze made from confectioner’s sugar, lemonade, and a bit of vanilla extract.
  
  

Baking playlist courtesy of my totez rad post-hardcore on-the-go iPod playlist:

1. The Means – Heart
2. The Future of the Left – The Lord Hates a Coward
3. McLusky – 1956 and All That
4. Refused – New Noise
5. McLusky – Whiteliberalonwhiteliberalaction
6. The Means – (t.p.) Massacre
7. The Future of the Left – Wrigley Scott
8. The Birthday Party – The Friend Catcher
9. The Future of the Left – Real Men Hunt In Packs
10. The Bronx – Strobe Life
11. Gallows – In the Belly of a Shark
12. Shellac – Dog and Pony Show
13. Hot Snakes – Rock’n’Roll Will Never Die
14. The Means – R. Loxley
15. McLusky – You are my Sun
16. The Means – Rob Wheeler
17. Gallows – Six Years
18. Detachment Kit – Hurricane Designed for People
19. Shellac – Il Porno Star
20. Refused – Worms of the Senses/Faculties of the Skull
21. The Bronx – False Alarm
22. Harvey Milk – Maelstrom of Bad Decisions
23. The Birthday Party – Hamlet (Pow, Pow, Pow)

And Now a Word from Ms. Jones

Today WWEIL is debuting it's first contributing author. She's a cook, baker, and all around rockin' lady, she's Ms. Jones. Bon Appétit!

Eating in New York City is usually determined by time. Lack thereof leads to convenience and a lot of it leads to cooking at home or dining out. From my teensy kitchen in Brooklyn...a small preface.

Many consider NYC one of the culinary capitals of the world. I'd definitely agree, although the variety presented to you here and the fast paced lifestyle that you're forced to live makes eating insanely challenging. Eating healthy is an even more daunting task. Not many of us in the city have the luxury of 4-star restaurants every night. Sometimes, the only thing open when you get home is the seedy bodega on the corner of your street. (I know, I live right next to one.)

I'm a cook in Manhattan. Pastry is my forte, but in my time in kitchens here, I've been surrounded by cuisine prepared by some of the most respected chefs in the game. The reality is, though, as any other cook will tell you, staff meals...at least decent ones...are hard to come by. Family style chicken drumsticks, day old arugula salads, and egg and pepper dishes are not exactly haute cuisine. Plus, when the person responsible for it also has their station mis-en-place to take care of, chances are, they're not going to pour as much effort into it. Its not like your mom is cooking homestyle for everyone.

Personally, being a pesca-tarian pastry cook, getting sustenance for the day is like a scavenger hunt. Despite what you may have heard, genoise cake, whipped cream, candied fruit, chocolate, and pastry cream are not the 5 food groups. Realistically, there is no time for a proper meal break in the midst of service prep, too. So, when you finish a 12-14 hour shift, you'll pretty much eat anything you can get your hands on. Plus, by the time you make it home, (Brooklyn in my case) it's 1 a.m...which do you think will win out in the snack battle: a well balanced meal, or a few handfuls of animal crackers? Most of the cooks I know don't even have the workings of a full meal in their cabinets or fridges. You become MacGyver, fashioning things out of saltines, baby carrots, and mystery condiments.

I supposed it's my goal, as part of this blog, to bring you both serious and laughable food from a cooks point of view. Trying to eat cheaply and healthily in the city, while working just about 7 days a week. I'll even say that most of my posting on here will be savory. I am surrounded by sweets all day, therefore, most of the time, I kind of want a salt lick to carry around in order to balance my system out.

Thinking back to Tuesday, when I had the day off, I spent most of it refreshing my soul by biking around the Prospect Park area. I left at 10:30 a.m. and returned home around 6 p.m. After swinging by Bliss vegetarian cafe on Bedford Ave for an organic black bean burrito, then cleaning up and running errands and doing laundry, I finally returned home at 11pm and needed to consume something before turning in for the night. When I was out, I swung by Whole Foods and got a couple of scones from their bakery department. I am constantly trying sweets around the city looking for an interesting flavor or texture. Whole Foods does vegan and wheat-free cookies and baked goods, but this time around, I opted for a Strawberry Pecan Scone.

Scones are more than Scrooge McDuck's favorite food...Its a quickbread with Scottish origin, but is standard in British, Irish, and Canadian fare as an accompaniment for coffee or tea. In the U.S., scones are larger and drier than their European counterparts. For those of you who have never made scones before, there is a precise mixing process that takes place in order to achieve the perfect flaky texture of a scone. Cubes of butter are cut into the dry ingredients until they are the size of little pebbles. The mixture ends up looking like slightly damp sand before one would incorporate the rest of the wet ingredients. Its the little bits of butter than melt and create buttery pockets in the baked dough.

So, I am exhausted and just looking for something small to put in my system before hitting the hay. The outside of the scone is beautiful and I figure it'll be great with my NY local Macintosh apple. The outside is nicely browned and I can see chunks of strawberries in it. I'm psyched. I break it open only to see this:

About 1/8 of an inch of the scone all the way around is nicely baked, however the inside, while solidified, is not baked at all. Knowing ovens and baked goods, I can tell you that the lovely cooks at the Whole Foods kitchens probably had their ovens WAY too high up, blasted the scones for a a little while to make sure the bottoms were cooked, and never tested the insides of any of them. In the world of mass production, and even in small scale baking, every ingredient and cooking time is calculated with precision for a reason. If you're not going to take the time to do it right, then don't do it at all. As a cook, I was disappointed. As a consumer, I felt wronged. As a hungry and exhausted individual, I felt....hungry.

I ate it and my apple...and came to the conclusion that it was like eating an under baked cookie. It also probably could have used more pecan flavor, but then again some of that may have come out during a longer baking process. Belly full, I crashed for the night, knowing I could have done it better.

Vegan Cookies, jon's first post

Vegan Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal, Peanut Butter Cookies

I thought for my first post I’d use one of my favorite recipes. I’ve made these twice in the past week, and have knocked out a few other batches in the past for parties and birthdays. The cookies are dense and chewy, with an excellent balance of all its flavors, not overwhelmingly peanut buttery, a good hand full of chocolate chips, and just enough oatmeal for texture. The holy trinity of cookies, combined!

It’s a pretty simple recipe and is difficult to go to far wrong. If you have a stand mixer I recommend using that, otherwise you’ll want a good hand mixer as this dough gets pretty thick, especially once you add in the oatmeal.

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon crunchy peanut butter
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 cup turbinado sugar
1/3 cup soy milk (regular or vanilla flavored)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (4 ounces weight or very lightly scooped)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup rolled oats
2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips — use non-dairy such as Tropical Source
1/3 cup chopped, toasted walnuts or pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together first five ingredients.

In a small bowl, thoroughly stir together flour, soda and salt. Stir into batter. Stir in oats and chocolate chips, followed by nuts if using.

Drop batter by rounded tablespoonfuls onto Silpat or parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes or until set. Remove sheet from oven and let cool on tray for 5 minutes.

Makes 18 cookies

Notes: The recipe, as I found it online, suggests crunchy peanut butter, I don’t. Between the oatmeal and the chocolate chips these guys are dense and have a ton of texture already, crunchy p.b., and the optional nuts at the end, are going to make them overly textural. As far as brands go I can’t recommend full flavor creamy Jif nearly enough, for this and any other baking application requiring p.b. It blends well and as this is replacing the bulk of the butter you would normally use in a cookie recipe the higher fat content is appreciated for flavor and needed for body and binding.

For a moister cookie substitute half a cup of brown sugar in for half the turbinado. Incidentally, if your natural sugar has larger grains you may need to use more sugar as the larger granules have more space between them.

I prefer almond milk for this and most other sweet vegan applications, it’s richer, creamier, has less of that gaminess soy milks so often does, and the nuttiness compliments the nuttiness of the cookie, but any milk sub will do. Also, you may want to consider adding in an extra tablespoon of milk as this batter is a little on the dry side.

Using pastry flour instead of all purpose makes a lot of difference. The first few times I made these I only had all purpose flour and the cookies came out much denser. While not inedible by any means, using pastry flour yields a lighter, but no less chewy cookie. (For more information on how flour and fat choices affect the out come of your cookie check out the episode of Good Eats entitled “Three Chips for Sister Marsha” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-KVveLp3k).

When checking for doneness don't wait until the cookie is golden brown and set. Remove cookies when the edges are brown and set. Allowing them to sit on the warm cookie sheet for five minutes or so after will allow the heat stored inside to carry over and finish cooking them out of the oven, thus protecting you from dry or burnt cookies.

When sifting together the dry ingredients—always sift!—I like to add in half-to-three-quarters teaspoon of cinnamon. The cinnamon, oatmeal, and chocolate work so well it’s ridiculous, and it perks up the peanut butter, too.


Baking Playlist, courtesy of iTunes shuffle:

Misfits – Bullet
Pedro the Lion – Eye on the Finish Line
Saturday Looks Good to Me – (even if you die on the ) Ocean
Misfits – Static Age
The National – Cold Girl Fever
James Brown – My Thang
Detachment Kit – Ricochet
Del tha Funkee Homosapien – Signature Slogans
Elliott Smith – St. Ides Heaven
Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Rollin’ Wit You
The Kinks – Muswell Hillbilly
Caetano Veloso – In the Hot Sun of a Christmas Day
The Dwarves – Back Seat of My Car
Hall & Oates – It’s a Laugh
They Might Be Giants – No One Knows My Plan
They Might Be Giants – Famous Polka
Cibo Matto – Clouds
The Replacements – More Cigarettes
Caribou – She’s the One
Supergrass – Road to Rouen
LCD Soundsystem – Us V Them
Jesus and Mary Chain – Frequency
Stylex – No!
Beulah – Popular Mechanics for Lovers
The White Stripes – Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn
Klaxons – Isle of Her
Crystal Castles – Love and Caring
Rocket From The Crypt – Good Bye
Fugazi – Returning the Screw
Pavement – Fight This Generation