Thank You

It's been real, you tipsy ol' mona lisas.

Actually though, I can't believe the year is over! I'm writing this from the train back to Virginia, and I can honestly say that I don't feel quite ready for the year to end. Yes, I'm glad I don't have any more stressful examinations or essays to write but (SAP ALERT) I already miss the view of the mountains from Paradise Pond, going to classes, and most of all my friends. 

I went to my Mom's house in Connecticut during study period so I could spend some time with her before heading back to Virginia. She jokes that the only reason I visit is to use her kitchen, and I honestly felt a bit bad when that joke became a reality as I spent the entire weekend cooking.

On Monday morning, I spent six hours baking. It's the only way I know how to thank people properly, and I felt that a few of my professors and my friends deserved a thank you for giving me the best year of my life. 

Adapted from "Sticky Fingers' Sweets: 100 Super-Secret Vegan Recipes" by Doron Petersan (Avery, 2012).

FOR THE CAKE

• 2 3/4 cups (13 ounces) flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 2/3 cups (11 ounces) sugar
• 1/2 cup non-hydrogenated vegan margarine, preferably Earth Balance
• 2 teaspoons flax egg (one tablespoon ground flax seed, three tablespoons water mixed together and left in refrigerator for 15 minutes to congeal)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup almond milk
• 3/4 cup champagne or sparkling white wine
• 32 fresh raspberries (from 1 pint)

FOR THE FROSTING

• 1/2 cups non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening, preferably Earth Balance
• 1 1/3 cup non-hydrogenated vegan margarine, preferably Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder, sifted
• 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

Directions

For the cake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Combine the sugar and margarine in the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat at medium-high speed for about 5 minutes, until softened and combined, stopping to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Combine the flax egg, vanilla and almond milk in a small bowl, and stir to dissolve the flax egg. Add the champagne and mix until combined.

Reduce the mixer speed to low, and slowly add the dry ingredients and almond milk mixture, alternating between the two, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

My friends and I feel like we live in
a commune. 

Place liners in 16 cupcake wells and fill a generous three-quarters full with the batter. (If you have extra batter, make more cupcakes.) Insert 1 raspberry in the center of each cupcake, making sure the batter covers the top of the berry. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Place the cupcake tins on a cooling rack to cool completely, then invert the tins to remove the cupcakes.

For the frosting: Combine the shortening and margarine in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat on medium-high speed for about 2 minutes, until completely combined, stopping once or twice to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl.

Add the cocoa powder and confectioners sugar, sifted together. Reduce the speed to medium and mix until incorporated. Stop to scrape down the bowl, then reduce the speed to low and repeat. When the confectioners' sugar is incorporated, scrape down the bowl, increase the speed to medium-high and mix for about 2 minutes, until the frosting is uniform and fluffy.

When ready to frost, transfer up to half of the frosting to a pastry bag fitted with a large round tip, or to a resealable plastic food storage bag with one corner snipped off. Pipe a generous layer of frosting onto each cooled cupcake, adding more frosting to the bag as needed. Top each cupcake with an upside down raspberry. 

Vegan Challah Bread with Fig Jam

Adapted from thesweetlifeonline.com and Smitten Kitchen cookbook.

2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp + 1/4 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup chickpea flour + 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
3-4 cups all-purpose flour
poppy seeds for sprinkling

Fig jam

1 cup dried and stemmed figs

1/8 teaspoon orange zest

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup orange juice

salt and pepper to taste

In a stand up mixer or medium bowl stir together yeast, 2 tsp sugar, and 1 cup lukewarm. Set aside for 5 minutes to allow yeast and sugar to dissolve. Meanwhile in a food processor or blender, mix chick pea flour and 1/2 cup water until thick and foamy. Set aside.

Slowly whisk oil into yeast mixture, followed by chickpea mix, whisking while adding. Add remaining 1/4 cup of sugar and salt. Whisk together. Gradually add flour until dough begins to come together, but is still soft. Turn dough out on a floured surface and knead until smooth (about 10 minutes). Alternatively, if you are using a stand alone mixer, with your dough hook gradually add flour until a dough forms. Turn speed on medium-high for 5 minutes until dough begins clearing the sides and forms a smooth ball. You want the dough to feel soft, but not sticky. In order to get the right texture you may find that you are adding extra water or flour during this process.

Vegan challah bread for my professors!

Remove dough and grease the bowl. Place dough back inside, cover, and let rise in a warm place for one hour (until doubled in size).

Make the fig jam. Roughly chop figs and simmer with rest of jam ingredients for about ten minutes, until figs are tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from stove, and let sit out at room temperature until warm (no longer hot). Place mixture in food processor and process until a paste has formed. Set aside. 

Punch dough down, re-cover, and let rise an additional 30 minutes.

Place dough on a floured surface and cut into three equal pieces. Roll each piece into roughly the shape of a rectangle (about three feet long and half a foot wide). Spread paste all over each rectangle, stopping just short of the edges. Roll each rectangle into a long strand, pulling gently to elongate if necessary. Braid Challah. 

Brush with soy milk or creamer and set aside to rise for about 45 more minutes, until dough slowly pushes back when an indentation is created with your finger.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Brush loaf with soy milk on final time, sprinkle with poppy seeds and bake 30-35 minutes, until top is golden brown and a firm crust has formed.

Let cool completely before slicing.

Craving Carrot Cake

With the daffodils finally in full bloom, the grass turning green, and the days slowly starting to become warmer, I believe it’s safe to say that spring is finally here. It also reminds me that I haven’t baked anything in what feels like forever. I’m itching to go home and take over our kitchen. There are so many new recipes that I want to try and old ones I want to return to. Having to analyze a cookbook is only adding to my list of dishes to explore. The 1950 Charleston Receipts compiled by the Junior League was a happy misunderstanding between my mother and me. It turns out that we own two Junior League cookbooks. I was thinking of the one that had my favorite recipes for carrot cake and lemon squares in it, but I ended up with the other. Not that it’s a bad thing – I’m just left craving carrot cake. It’s such a wonderful, fresh spring cake that certainly lives up to the “Yum!” and “Good as they say!” penciled-in comments.

It is by far my favorite recipe and cake. We modified it slightly from the original, though I can't be too sure on just what we changed. I believe there used to be ½ - 1 cup pecans in the icing and we cut down on the oil and sugar. I will definitely look it up when I go home, which means that I will also have to bake it for no other reason than to have my cake and eat it too. While I love trying new recipes, there are some that are tried and true and will always feature in my cooking and my family. This is one of them and I encourage you to the point of just being short of pushing the ingredients on you to go ahead and give this cake a whirl. I promise that you won't be disappointed - just watch out for flying bits of grated carrots and add the icing sugar gradually.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1 ¼ cups oil

4 eggs, beaten

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

3 cups grated carrots

Instructions:

1. Mix sugar, oil, and eggs together.
2. In a separate bowl, sift flour, salt, soda, and cinnamon together.
3. Add to egg mixture in three parts. Stir vigorously.
4. Mix carrots with a little flour and fold into batter.
5. Bake in a slightly oiled pan at 350° for 55-60 minutes. 
6. Cool and ice. Keep in refrigerator. 
7. Can be made as cupcakes - adjust baking time to 25-30 minutes.

Ingredients (icing):

4 ounces butter

8 ounces cream cheese

1 box (1lb) icing sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

1. Have butter and cream cheese at room temperature. Cream together using electric beater.
2. Add sugar and vanilla and beat until creamy.
3. Spread on cake.

Share

After taking this class, I read a lot of food blogs. Among those blogs, Not Without Salt by blogger Ashley Rodriguez has always been one of my favorites. There are many things I like about the blog. I like the simple but elegant web design, the stunning pictures of food, the warm stories about food Ashley wrote and most importantly, the easy yet creative recipes. Here I want to share a recipe of Hot Chocolate Pudding Cake that I read on the blog. It looks so good and I would like to try it out right after the finals.

HOT FUDGE PUDDING CAKE

adapted from Grandma and Cook’s Country

This recipe comes from my grandma’s archives. I love passing along recipes from her to my own family. With each dump of an ingredient and stir of the batter I’m reminded that grandma raised six wonderful children and lived to tell about it so surely I’ll survive raising three. Perhaps she, like me, used this cake on those desperate days to help pull through.

1 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ cup cocoa

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup milk

4 Tablespoons butter, melted

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon instant espresso powder

1 cup hot water

½ cup chocolate chips

Pre-heat your oven to 350*

In a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, ¼ cup cocoa, salt and ½ cup sugar. Whisk to combine. Stir in the milk, vanilla extract, egg yolk and melted butter. Spread into a buttered 9” square cake pan.

In a small bowl combine the remaining ½ cup brown sugar and ¼ cup cocoa. Whisk to break up clumps. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the cake batter then sprinkle the cocoa powder and sugar mixture on top of that.

Combine the espresso powder with the hot water and pour all over the top but do not stir. Bake 35-40 minutes or until the edges of the cake feel baked but the middle still has a gentle jiggle as the sauce poured on top has now settled to the bottom to create a rich pudding. Brilliant, really.

Let cool in the pan for about 15-20 minutes before serving. Serve alongside whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Also, during this semester, I have posted lots of blogs about Chinese food. For those of you who are interested in Chinese food, I highly recommend you to watch the documentary A Bite of China directed by Xiaoqing Chen. It introduces history and stories behind various kind of traditional Chinese food. By watching it, you could learn a lot about Chinese food as well as Chinese culture. Here's the trailer with English subtitles. 

Last but not least, I want to say that I enjoyed reading all your blog posts and it was a real pleasure to share my thoughts about food here at Tipsy Old Mona Lisa. Gook luck with all your finals and have a fantastic summer!

Perfect Pancakes

(Yesterday) I went out to a birthday brunch at Esselon with my friends (...all my troubles seemed so far away!!!) and it was phenomenal. 

I ordered the pancakes, the normal ones on the breakfast menu with berries, a banana (of course, typical me), and local yogurt with a mint leaf. I had been to Esselon once before, ordered these pancakes, and they were life changing. The maple syrup on the table was local too, and the pancakes were perfectly paired with my frothy chai. 

So let me tell you about these pancakes...

(I dug in too quickly to take a picture, so you should just head over to Esselon and get them for yourself. Let me know if you need a buddy!)

They exceeded my expectations. While they are not perfectly round nor uniform in flavor, their texture is insanity and anomalous in the pancake world with a defined exterior crispiness immediately contrasted with a creamy, fluffy interior. My gosh the goodness did not end there: every once in awhile, I was hit with a nugget of caramel and that flavor was subtle in its undertones throughout pancakes. These pancakes were not overly sweet, and the yogurt with the maple syrup provided adequate tart/maple contrast. I savored each bite, and despite the inevitable fullness, forged on for the sake of experiencing the dish in its entirety and the plate was clear by the end. No regrets. Also, they put a banana up on those pancakes. Clearly they were vying after my heart. They got it. 

As I biked back to school along Route 9 (which was a little more difficult due to the wind in my face and the fullness of my pancake-filled tummy), I contemplated those pancakes. I understand that in both contexts, I was eating with people I love and friendships I cherish. As this year closes, and my people disperse, those pancakes are a dish that will always be delicious beyond my comprehension and serve as a unifier of friends around a table. Food is a memory marker, and ending this year with these pancakes will probably sugar coat this year a little bit. 

I anticipate many more pancake-worthy moments to come. For now, I will welcome the summertime! I will be doing that research thing at Smith for 10 weeks, so if you're in the area and want to go get some good food or bake/cook, drop a line! Would love some food-loving company for some adventures.

Obscure Greens

(Double blog post this week because you didn't hear anything from me last week, and also these were both topics worth posting about)

Last Thursday, I received my first graduation gift-- Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," from my bosses at the art museum. They told me it was the best and most practical thing they could think of for someone about to graduate, and now that I've looked through it, I really think that's true. This book clocks in somewhere around 1000 pages, with the first 50 or so dedicated to telling you, in detail, what sorts of things you should purchase in order to have a basic stock of food and the instruments to cook basic dishes, as well as offering a variety of other tips. Then, there are extensive sections (salads, soups, entrees, etc.), and these also come with extensive guides to preparation and information about ingredients. The section on the different types of salad greens takes up several pages (and Bittman labels some of them "obscure greens," hence the blog post title). Though there are no pictures, there are a lot of illustrations, some more decorative, some instructive (for instance, there's a drawn guide on how to chiffonade herbs, and apparently I haven't been doing it right). I haven't had the chance to read through the whole thing (as previously mentioned, 1000 pages), but so far, most of the recipes are completely doable for someone without much experience, especially with Bittman's extensive guidance. One of the other nice features I've noticed is that many of the recipes include variations- my personal favorite so far is the Walnut, Gorgonzola, and Pear Salad, which is followed by 12 other suggestions of fruits, nuts, and cheeses that pair well together.

This is my first really comprehensive cookbook, and thus far, I would recommend it to anyone else looking for a vegetarian cookbook to start their post-grad life with. In general, I would also generally recommend getting yourself a comprehensive cookbook of some kind when you're about to graduate-- even if everything else in the future looks unclear and scary, at least you'll feel good about what you're going to be eating.

Asparagus, Beet, and Goat Cheese Salad

Yesterday evening I attended to a barbecue hosted by a wonderful Smith professor. Along with the typical hotdogs, beef burgers, and veggie burgers, our hosts provided a spinach salad with mandarin slices, strawberries, pines nuts and a light honey dressing and a pasta salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and mozzarella. There were at least five different desserts (six including s’mores). My friend and I brought guacamole, which was mostly eaten with chips, but also put on top of burgers and even a cheese hotdog. Let’s just say we had quite the smorgasbord. One of the dishes that I really enjoyed was the spring asparagus, beet, and goat cheese salad by friend Katie prepared. I was unfortunately too wrapped up in the moment to take a picture of the food.

Below is a recipe I found online that seems fairly similar Katie’s recipe (there were no candied pecans in the Katie’s dish). With the addition of the nuts, I would say that this dish could even be the main entree.

http://www.milkglasskitchen.com/asparagus-beet-and-goat-cheese-salad/

Salad

4 large beets (or 6 medium or 8 small)

1 lb asparagus

½ small onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp minced flat leaf parsley

1 ½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

•  Peel beets and chop into 1-inch cubes, steam beets for 12-15 minutes or until tender. Set aside to cool.
• Cut asparagus into 1-inch pieces. Steam asparagus for 6-8 minutes or until tender. Set aside to cool.
•  Place cooled beets and asparagus, onion, and parsley together in a large boil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss to combine.

Candied Nuts

2/3 cup chopped pecans (or any nut you’d like)

¼ cup maple syrup

•  Set a skillet over medium-low heat for 3-5 minutes. Turn heat down to low and add chopped nuts. Toasts nuts for about 4-5 minutes or until you notice the nuts turning golden brown and just begin to smell a nutty aroma.
•  Remove nuts from heat immediately and add maple syrup in a slow, steady stream. Syrup will bubble and boil briefly, so be prepared.  Stir nuts for several minutes allowing the heat to reduce the syrup. Turn syrup-coated nuts out onto a sheet of parchment paper or buttered aluminum foil and set aside to cool.   

To Dress Salad

3 tbs cream of balsamic (the website recommends using berry fusion flavored balsamic dressing)

¼ cup olive oil

Squeeze of lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

4 oz. goat cheese (chilled)

• Drizzle vegetables with cream of balsamic, olive oil, and lemon juice. Toss to coat. Salt and pepper to taste. Using the tines of a small fork, scrape the surface of the log of goat cheese over the plated salad to create crumbles. Finish your dish with a few candied nuts.

Food and Stress

As we all hit finals head on, stress levels campus-wide double (or perhaps even triple). 
In my two years here, I've found that sometimes it can be extremely difficult to get food in the dining hall that doesn't make me feel worse than I already do. 
Also stress eating is a real thing!

Here are some foods and drinks that you can stress eat and are ~supposedly~ helpful when tensions are high: 

1. Bananas and avocado - for their potassium
2. Tea - very calming 
3. Swiss chard and spinach - for magnesium
4. Fish (such as salmon and tuna) - for omega-3 fats
5. Carrots - better to munch on than chips (which admittedly I devour when I'm stressed out)
6. Milk - there are so many vitamins even in a small glass of milk
7. Nuts - once again, better than junk food having vitamins and protein
8. Dark chocolate - a mild stimulant

I know I'll be trying some of these out, and hopefully the dining halls do too! 

As the last post of the semester, I have to say this was a great semester and I loved being in a class with all of you. I was very nervous about taking this class (first English class at Smith) but it was definitely worth it and I have you all to thank. 

Hope you're all not too stressed this week and as for finals, may the odds be ever in your favor.