Strawberry Bunnycakes

Reclaiming childhood treats

2010-04-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

I am really making a concentrated effort to update this more frequently, sure this only my second entry this year, but considering before that I took a year's hiatus, this really ain't too bad.

So one of my favorite people in the entire world was coming up to visit for a weekend, and I had mentioned my desire to attempt vegan twinkies after learning about Woody Harrelson's special vegan twinkies in Zombieland, and really missing twinkies. She said she wanted Vegan twinkies, and so I decided to make it happen, and it was awesome.
I modified a recipe I came across at Shmooed Food, however, I am a mildly impoverished college student, which meant not being able to get a hold of some ingredients, and definitely not a Twinkie pan. So substitutions, modifications, and turning them into cupcakes instead of regular twinkie-shaped twinkies.

Recipe

Vegan Twinkie Cupcakes

Ingredients
Cupcakes
* 1 tbs Apple Cider Vinegar
* 1 1/2 cups soy milk (I use vanilla)
* 2 1/8 cups flour
* 2 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp kosher salt
* 1 1/8 cups sugar
* 1 3/4 tsp vanilla
Filling/frosting
* 1/4 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
* 1/4 cup non-hydrogenated vegan margarine (like Earth Balance)
* 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 cup powdered sugar

Directions

Cupcakes
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a small bowl or cup mix vinegar and soy milk together, then set it aside to let the vinegar curdle the soy milk. This sounds a lot more disgusting than it really is, and it actually makes the cakes really light and fluffy.

3. Combine your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking, soda, salt, and sugar). Add in the vanilla and the vinegar/soy milk and stir until it's completely combined and without lumps.

4. Line muffin tins with paper cups, spraying paper liners with non-stick spray will make the cupcakes pop out easily, but you don't need to. Fill the cups up with about 1/4 cup batter.

5. bake for about 15 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool completely, over night if you can, because otherwise the filling/frosting will just melt into the cupcakes.

Filling/Frosting
6. In a mixing bowl beat together margarine and shortening, if you have an electric mixer, use it, it will make this stuff amazing.

7. Add in the powdered sugar and beat until light and fluffy, this will be about 5 minutes. Add the vanilla in and beat for another 2 minutes.

8. Using a pastry bag, or, if you bought the twinkie kit, use the frosting injector. Put in about 1tbs filling if you can.
Me, I had to improvise, so I ended up with a ziploc bag with a small hole cut in one corner. According to the Shmooed Food recipe, each cake takes about 1tbs filling. I didn't have quite the luck filling them that I might of with real equipment.
Since I couldn't really "inject" the frosting, I ended up pushing a chop stick into each of the cupcakes and hollowing out a small hole and then filling up the cupcake as best as I could with my ghetto bag system

9. Either frost the top as a normal cupcake, or do as I did and pipe a kind of strudel effect on the top.

Happy Baking

♥Bunny

Vegan Banana Bread

2010-03-11T01:47:00.000-08:00

My Goodness, it's really been over a year since my last post here? That's so sad! I feel like there are so many things I made that didn't get chronicled. I could makes excuses for how busy I've been and what have you, but when you get right down to it, I think the bottom line here is that I am a fundamentally lazy person, which is something I am striving to be less of this year

So basically, I was without my laptop for a number of days, which meant I was going stir crazy, so I decided that baking was in order. I had a fever, and the only cure was more baking. Also my roommate had bought a bunch of bananas and not eaten them before they browned. So I modified a recipe found in Vegetarian Planet to accommodate what we already had in the apartment and my roommate's picky taste buds.

Recipe

Vegan Banana Bread

Ingredients
* 1/3 cup rum
(I used Malibu, tropical flavored, because that's what my roommate had in our fridge)
* 1 cup all purpose white flour
* 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
* 2 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 tsp nutmeg
* 4 ripe (spotty or mostly brown) bananas
* 1/3 cup canola oil or vegetable oil
* 3/4 cup brown sugar

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and grease a loaf pan. I have a silicon spring form pan, and it is AMAZING, but I have made most of my breads before in non-stick or glass loaf pans, so work with what you have.

2. Combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg into a mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl mash up your bananas with a fork until they're basically a sort of creamy or pudding consistency, don't worry about some lumps of banana being left, I actually like these in my bread.

3. Add the oil, brown sugar, and vanilla to the mashed bananas. Beat for about a minute.

4. Empty the banana mixture into the mixing bowl with your dry ingredients, and stir until well combined. Then stir in the rum.

5. Pour mixture into your loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes. It only took about 52 minutes in my oven, but bare in mind that all ovens are different, so check on it, it will be done when you can insert a knife into it and have it come out cleanly.

Let the bread cool for AT LEAST 10 minutes. It can supposedly last for 5 days uncovered (and longer refrigerated), but I can guarantee it won't still be around in that amount of time

Happy Baking!
♥ Bunny

two of the best comfort foods in one package

2009-01-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but between finals, travel, and computer problems, up to and including my laptop's power source literally shooting sparks at me, I've had few opportunities.
This is an amazing cold weather comfort food! I made it for my roomie since potatoes and cheese are her two favorite foods.

Recipe

Potato Cheese Pie

Ingredients

* 1 pre-made frozen pie crust (thawed)
(you can make your own, but in a pinch these are so convenient!)
* about 3 lbs potatoes
* 1/2 cup margarine or butter (softened)
* 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
* 2 eggs
* bread crumbs
* salt and pepper to taste
* about half of a medium sized block of cheddar cheese
(I used medium cheddar, but you could use mild if you like)

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Peel the potatoes and set them in a pot of boiling water until they are tender (remember, the softer they are, the easier they are to mash, so don't rush them!). Once potatoes are soft enough mash them. Also grate your cheese at this point.

2. Beat together eggs, milk, butter, and salt and pepper. Add to mashed potatoes along with the Parmesan cheese and about 3/4 of the cheddar cheese you have grated.

3. Scrape the mixture into the pie crust. Top with remaining cheddar cheese and a layer of bread crumbs. Bake until the top is a light golden brown and the cheese is nice and melted. In my oven it took about 10-15 minutes, but everyone's oven is different, so keep an eye on it.

Happy Baking!
♥ Bunny

Happy Halloween!!!!

2008-10-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of the season I've made a graveyard cake for my party tonight! I've made other goodies as well, but I'll post them later as this one is the most Halloween, strictly speaking.

Recipe

Spooky Graveyard Cake

Ingredients
(cake)
* 4 1/2 cups flour
* 3 cups sugar
* 1 cup unsweetened baking cocoa
* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 3 cups water
* 3 teaspoons baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 3 tablespoons vanilla extract
(frosting)
* 1/2 cup butter or margarine softened
* 2 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar
* 1/2 cup and 2 tbs baking cocoa
* 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
* 1/4 cup milk
(decorations)
* 1/3 a package of Oreos
* decorating icing in red and green
* flower sprinkles
* rectangular cookies
(I used Keddeem Kosher Vanilla tea biscuits)

Directions

For cake
1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and then grease a large-ish sheet cake pan.

2 In a large bowl combine dry ingredients together. Then gradually stir in oil, water and Vanilla and mix completely.

3 pour into pan and bake for about an hour, or until top is springy, but not sticky. This cake is really quite moist, so the inserting a toothpick thing won't work.

4 Let cool completely before you frost.

Frosting
1 It really helps to have an electric mixer for this! First cream the butter, then add in sugar, cocoa, almond extract, and milk.

2Mix with electric mixer on lowest setting until it becomes smooth.

3 Spread thickly over entirety of cake.

Decorations
1 For Gravestones you will want to cut the cookies so that tops are slightly rounded. It helps to use almost more of a shaving motion then a chopping one, otherwise you will just smash the cookie and not actually shape it at all. After you have shaped them, go back with the red decorating icing and write "R.I.P" on the cookies. Of course, if you really want to get into it, you could write your friend's names on them. Once done decorating push the tombstones into the cake, so they are actually embedded in it.

2 Put your oreos into a ziplock bag and crumble or smash them. I sealed the bag and pounded them with the butt of a knife. Once they have a good crumble going, sprinkle them over the top of the cake between your tombstones.

3 Finally, pipe the green decorator icing into a small pile at the base of each tombstone. Then press the sprinkles onto the top of it to give the appearance of graves with flowers.

Happy Baking and Trick or Treating!

♥ Bunny

Caaaaaturday

2008-10-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

Time for you (mostly) weekly dose of my young man, Usagi

Life's better with cupcakes

2008-10-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

With mid terms over I had a lot of pent up energy which translated into baking.
So I modified a recipe in Vegan Cupcakes take over the world for basic vegan vanilla cupcakes
and came up with these:

Recipe

Vegan Lemoney Vanilla cupcakes

Ingredients
(cupcakes)
* 1 cup soy milk
* 1 teaspoon vinegar
* 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/3 cup canola oil
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon extract
(icing)
* 1/3 cup canola oil
* about 3 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar
* 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/4 cup soy milk

Directions

1 Heat your oven to 350 degrees and line your muffin tin with liners.

2 Whisk together the vinegar and soy milk. Stir dry ingredients and canola oil, add extracts and whisk until mostly smooth. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, you'll want them about 2/3 full. I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to dish out the batter and it worked like a charm and was much less messy then using just a spoon or spatula. Let cupcakes bake for about 20 - 22 minutes, or until they are a light gold and springy to the touch. Let them cool completely.

3 In a separate bowl beat together icing ingredients. It will seem a little runny at first (if it's really runny folding in some more confectioner's sugar should help), set it in the refrigerator to set up for about half an hour.

4 Frost your cupcakes with either a pastry bag, or spread with a small spatula like I did. And don't forget sprinkles!!

makes 12 cupcakes

Happy Baking!

♥ Bunny

Even veggie haters won't be hating

2008-10-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

I made this for dinner last night, and my vegetable hating roommate adored it! Even though when I was cooking it she said "I am not eating that", she thought it was amazing!

Recipe
Tri-color Rotelli Parmesan with Broccoli

Ingredients
* 12 oz package tri-color rotelli
* 8 oz frozen broccoli (thawed)
* 1 1/2 tbs olive oil
* 1/2 cup Parmesan
* 1 tsp garlic salt

Directions

1 In a large-ish pot bring some lightly salted water to a boil. Add the rotelli and cook for 8-10 minutes, unless otherwise specified on the pacakage.

2 While the pasta is cooking heat 1 tbs olive oil in a skillet, and stir fry your broccoli until they are well cooked (you will be able to tell because parts will look dark brown ... but not black! Don't burn it!)

3 When pasta is done cooking drain well, and then pour the broccoli and oil from the skillet over the pasta. While it's still hot add in the parmesan, garlic salt, and the remaining 1/2 tbs of olive oil and mix it well

Serves about two starving college girls

serve and enjoy!

♥ Bunny

Chai makes everything better

2008-10-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine has been going through some pretty rough times lately, and since I am not sure how to comfort people I bake them stuff and we watch watch cartoons. She loves chai, so I made her these. They were originally supposed to be cupcakes, but I think they turned out more like muffins.

Recipe
Vegan Chai Muffins

Ingredients
* 1 cup soy milk (I use vanilla, but that's just me)
* 4 chai tea bags
* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 1 banana (mashed, if it's not mushy this is going to be hard)
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
* 1/4 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp salt
* about 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
* a dash nutmeg (use your judgment kid)
* confectioner's (powdered) sugar for garnish

Directions

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners. Heat soy milk in a small sauce pan until it starts bubbling. Turn off the heat, and steep the four tea bags in the soy milk for about 10 minutes.

2 Combine all other ingredients in a mixing bowl, and then pour heated soy milk mixture in and mix throughly. You might have some banana lumps in the mixture, but that's okay! It tastes good, in my opinion to have little pockets of banana!

3 Distribute your batter evenly into the muffin tin. Bake them for about 18 minutes (some ovens might require up to 20, mine actually only took about 15) or until a toothpick (or in my case a chop stick) comes out cleanly.

4 Dust lightly with powdered sugar and serve warm... because who doesn't love warm muffins?

Makes 12 muffins, but you can easily double, triple, quadruple this if you want to.

Happy Baking!

♥Bunny

Come with us now on a journey through time and space...

2008-09-29T17:57:00.001-07:00

This weekend my friends had a Mighty Boosh themed party. So in honor of this wacky, mildly psychedelic show, I made rainbow cookies! They were a big hit, and even though they were a little bit of a pain to make, I would definitely do them again.

Recipe
Rainbow Cookies

Ingredients
* 3/4 cups butter (softened), or margarine
* 3 ounces cream cheese
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
* 2 3/4 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* assorted food coloring

Directions:

1Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl cream butter, cream cheese, and sugar until it's fluffy. Then add in the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth

2 Add in flour, baking powder, and salt and stir until it forms a soft dough.
Divide the dough into fourths.

3 Put each forth into a bowl, and add tint with the food dye, mix each thoroughly with a normal dinner spoon
For my cookies I did pink, orange, blue, and teal and just used the liquid food dye , like you for easter eggs.
if you like the colors I used, here are the mixing ratios for the food dye:
Orange: 10 drops yellow + 3 drops red
Pink: 6 drops red + 2 drops blue
Teal: 6 drops blue + 4 drops green
Blue: 6 drops blue

4 The best way I have found to make these cookies it with a large-ish eating spoon (the kind that is so good for cereal!) and a small spatula. Use the spoon and scoop about 3/4 inch of each color of dough onto the spoon, so it will look like you have a big spoonful of tie-dye. Use the spatula to scrape the rainbow blob of dough onto a lightly greased baking sheet, make sure to leave about 2 inches between your dough blobs because they will puff up when they bake.

5 Let them bake for about 8 minutes. When they are done the bottom edges will be lightly browned, but they will still seem slightly soft and sticky, that's good though! Let them bake to long and they will tough and icky brown instead of pretty rainbow! It's also easiest to take them off of the baking sheet when they're still warm so they haven't gotten a change to adhere to the sheet.

Enjoy kids!!!

Happy baking!

♥Bunny

It's Caturday, folks

2008-09-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

As such, here are some pictures of my infamous kitty-pants who rules my household with an iron fist ... errrr... paw

I have a bunch of new baked goodies that I will putting up in the next few days as soon as I get the pictures from my roommate, since my digital camera is out of batteries.

Pa-Pa-PASTA!

2008-09-24T00:50:00.000-07:00

This was dinner on Monday night, and it went over really well! It's occasionally a little complicated to come up with something that everyone will want since my roommate is a little bit of a picky eater (i.e. hates to eat vegetables) but this was a hit!
Especially since we were all in need of a bit of comfort food!

Recipe:
Yummy comfort food pasta

Ingredients
* 16 ounces (about one package) pasta.
I used macaroni, because I like little pasta, it would probably work just as well with spaghetti, but my preference is to the smaller types like shells, or even penne)
* 2 tbs olive oil
* 1 1/2 tbs garlic salt
* 1 tbs basil
* 1 tbs oregano
* 2 cups tomato sauce
(the canned kind, and NOT pre-made and flavoured pasta sauce, the kind that is basically just tomatoes)
* 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, plus extra for topping.

Directions

1 In a decent to large sized pot bring lightly salted water to a boil. Add your pasta of choice and cook for about 6-8 minutes, unless instructed otherwise on the back of the package.

2 While your pasta is cooking put tomato sauce, olive oil, garlic salt, basil, and oregano into a sauce pan, and cook over a low heat.

3 Drain your pasta, but when you empty it back into the pot don't turn the burner off you can turn it down a bit, but you want it to stay nice and hot.

4 Pour the contents of your sauce pan into the pot of pasta. Add the mozzarella cheese, and stir. The reason you need the heat to still be on is because then the cheese melts really nicely into the pasta and the sauce.

5 Turn off the heat, put it on a plate, and sprinkle a little more mozzarella over the top. And viola! Spectacular comfort food!

This makes about four to five generous portions, depending on hunger factor. It will go even further if you start off with a salad, or even just have some sourdough toast on the side mmmmmmmm....

Hope you enjoy this one! And hopefully I'll have new pretties for you all soon!

♥ Bunny

Princess Pancakes

2008-09-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

I made these for dinner tonight. We were having a girl night, and my roommate and friend Elisa were both feeling a little ick, so I decided to make them something to make them feel a little more cheerful.

So I made these yummy pink pancakes, they turned out amazing! I will definitely make them again!

Recipe:
Princess Pancakes

Ingredients:
* 1 cup all purpose flour
* 2 tablespoons white sugar
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 egg
* 1 cup vanilla soy milk
* 1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* dash nutmeg
* 1 1/2 - 2 cups strawberries chopped
(frozen is fine)
* 1 cup frozen blueberries
* powdered sugar (for topping pancakes with)

Directions

1. In a large bowl mix all dry ingredients. Add egg, soy milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Mix well. Then fold in the fruit.
(If you want them to be extra spiffy you can add sprinkles for "funfetti" pancakes, it'll be a subtle effect, but still fun!)
2. In a non-stick skillet (or a lightly oiled regular pan) cook the pancakes over med-high heat. Scoop the batter with a 1/4 cup scoop. Flip when the pancake starts to bubble.
3. Sprinkle (or in my case coat) with Powdered sugar and enjoy!

makes about 18 pancakes, or enough to feed three college girls, so you may need to double or triple depending on the number of mouthes to feed

Have a Good night darlings!

♥ Bunny

Hey ya....

2008-09-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

So this blog is basically just food. I have other blogs about me:

my public: http://barbie-rabbit.livejournal.com/
and
my private: http://totemo-kawaii.livejournal.com/

But this one is just about my adventures with cooking, with pictures, recipes, and the occasional photos of my cat.

Oh my God you guys! Let the merriment commence!