Red Wine Truffles, Valentine’s Day Musings, and THE RECIPE
Valentine’s Day was just another normal day for me, but with some truffles that boast the classic combination of chocolate and red wine. After a day of essay writing and poetry about how I’m going to live alone with 17 pets for the rest of my life (it was a homework assignment, I swear!), I left the house just once to represent the take out bag toting population of February 14th. Rest assured, I returned to the comfort of my couch to indulge in some Pad Thai, watch Veronica Mars season 2, and listen to my upstairs neighbor sing badly. So badly. Hold the red wine though. I was a little disillusioned because the previous night I learned that I’m ace at cleaning Cabernet out of carpet. It was really just all the magic of Googling “how to clean red wine out of carpet” (also does wonders for coffee). I’m avoiding wine for a while though because the glass in the photo below decided to slip out of my hand and shatter in the kitchen sink as I was cleaning up after this shoot. Sticking to neutral colored beverages seems to be a better plan from now on.
Because red wine truffles are the breakfast of champions, I brought some to my 8am class today to share and a whole host of ball jokes ensued. I finished rolling the rest tonight and set them up on a cute little cherry plate with some pink and red hearts I cut out of paper and a glass of wine I will later accidentally shatter in the sink. Ta-da!
The chocolate flavor is balanced by just the right amount of wine flavor and creaminess from the margarine.
I’m leaving you guys with the recipe because this is what you need to make when you want some Merlot chocolatey balls ASAP. It gets a little messy, but rolling truffles in cocoa is WAY easier than making the chocolate dipped-variety. Cocoa is a very smooth complement to the filling and cuts the sweetness of the chocolate a bit, for when chocolate on chocolate sounds like a bit too much. The recipe directions are quite long, but they’re just thorough! The most time consuming part of the truffle making process is rolling them into balls.
Red Wine Chocolate Truffles
Makes 15-20, depending on size
2 cups chocolate chips
½ cup wine
2 tablespoons soy milk
¼ cup margarine
2 bowls: one for the ingredients and one for a water and ice bath
Cocoa powder for rolling
Melt the chocolate, wine, and soy milk together, then pour into the first bowl. Stir until completely smooth then set aside to cool off. It doesn’t need to be cool, as it needs to be whipped up when still liquid-y, but too warm will melt the ice and make the process take longer than necessary, with unnecessary breaks and refilling the ice bath.
Fill the other bowl up with ice and water. 7-8 cubes will do. As for the water, you don’t want so much that it spills over the side when you place the other bowl in the water, but too little will not cover the entire surface of the bowl where the chocolate is and it will whip unevenly. Try putting the other bowl in the bath and adjust the water level as necessary.
Place the bowl filled with the melted chocolate into the ice bath. Using electric beaters on high speed (but not the highest. slightly less than the most powerful setting is perfect), start whipping up the chocolate evenly around the bowl. Add the margarine and continue whipping. You will see bubbles forming everywhere and the chocolate mixture will start to thicken up to the consistency of heavy cream after a few minutes. Continue whipping until the consistency becomes very thick. Now STOP. Over whipping could cause the filling to become soft and collapse, or become grainy.
Place the bowl in the refrigerator and let chill and thicken. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment or a silicon mat and pour some cocoa powder into a shallow bowl. Remove the mixture from the refrigerator and begin rolling. Using a small cookie scoop, make balls that are about an inch in diameter, then roll in the cocoa powder and place on the baking sheet. If the truffles are coming out a wonky shape or you don’t have a cookie scoop and you must use your palms, make sure they are a little wet so that your hands won’t be covered in chocolate-y goo when the balls make contact with the heat of your palms. Place the tray of rolled truffles in the refrigerator for at least one hour, then eat! Keep stored in refrigerator in an airtight container. They will last at least a few weeks before they start to taste funky.
Hazelnuts
Hazelnuts. AKA filberts, the base of (vegan) Nutella, and a very delicious flavor to add in coffee. I’d known them as filberts for a long while because I grew up cracking the nuts out of their shell, along with almonds and walnuts, and eating them plain. Then I went vegan and really became passionate about baking and found out, filberts and hazelnuts: totally the same thing! I brought home some hazelnuts and got my hands on a bottle of fancy hazelnut coffee syrup, then got to work in the kitchen and baked up a few distinctly different treats.
For a hazelnutty brunch, I have Hazelnut Black Tea Pear Muffins which, I promise, are far less weird than they sound. Adding the black tea was on a total whim. I was so focused on making pear hazelnut muffins that I completely forgot…drink theme! It would be quite a stretch to say chopped pears and toasted hazelnuts were a part of any drink, so I had to think quick. Hazelnut pear already had this hearty tea shop vibe going on, so the answer was clear. Black tea ended up adding a certain something to the mix! These muffins are great for breakfast, and a little bit more substantial than a cupcake. The pear flavor complements the nuttiness of the hazelnuts and the black tea gives it a complex earthiness. A thin drizzle of dark and white chocolate completes the muffin tops. I’ve been really into adding tea to baked goods by grinding the contents of a tea bag (or loose tea) and adding a small spoonful. This works best with black tea, as in chai cookies.
When I first made these, they were kind of dense. Then on a completely separate wavelength of thoughts, I realized I never put any oil in them, or even took the bottle of canola oil out of the pantry. Shortly after, I put two and two together and facepalmed a little. See, unless I meticulously measure out all my ingredients, these mistakes just happen sometimes all the time. But even so, they turned out yummy!
These are Hazelnut Latte Cupcakes, a recipe by Carla Kelly of Quick and Easy Vegan Bake Sale. I was talking with Carla about my upcoming project and she sent this recipe my way! The cake is infused with coffee, hazelnut syrup, and toasted hazelnut meal (homemade with a food processor), then topped with a fluffy buttercream. I added some of the syrup to the frosting for a touch of flavor.
Hazelnut Salted Caramel Cake. This is basically just my salted caramel cupcakes made in cake pans, with a few generous glugs of hazelnut syrup in both the batter and frosting. Friends and family love the salted caramel cupcakes, so the cake version is one of my go-to cake recipes for birthdays. The hazelnuts are a great addition to the sweet and salty combination. This cake was for my mom’s birthday last month!
There you have it! Three ways to use hazelnuts. Getting the most out of one ingredient is a great strategy to force yourself to be creative in the kitchen and is also quite cost effective. You end up with a few new recipes out of the deal too! What are your favorite ingredients to bake up several different ways? I’m pondering my next move!
Holiday baking!
December was quite a busy month and I didn’t get to bake as much as I would have liked, but I did make some satisfying seasonal treats!
Winter 2011 brought so many different options of nog from Earth Balance, So Delicious, Silk, Rice Dream, and Vitasoy, so it was no surprise that nog taste challenges were all over vegan blogs. Everyone named their favorites, tested which variety tastes best served with rum, and professed excitement that there was nog made with milk other than soy, like rice and coconut.
With all these nogs circulating vegan blogs and drink-themed desserts in mind, I wanted to try it out in some baked goods. Cupcakes were the obvious choice, so I wanted to try out something a little adventurous (even though I did end up making cupcakes too)…truffles! Some googling revealed the truffle idea has been done a few times, but I wanted to find the best formula and make it vegan. I ended up with a white chocolate truffle full of rum flavor and freshly grated nutmeg, dipped in semisweet chocolate.
And I had to make some cupcakes too, so these are chocolate nog cupcakes with rumnog buttercream, sparkly edible glitter, and a mini candy cane.
Peppermint bark. Super easy to make! A layer of semisweet chocolate with a bit of peppermint extract topped with a layer of white chocolate and crushed candy canes.
I also made peppermint candy cane chocolate chip cookies, which ends up happening pretty much every year.
The nog truffles and cupcakes, as well as some peppermint chocolate cream bars, went to December Milwaukee Vegan Bake Sale!
A Couple Smart Cookies GF cookies review
I’m not gluten-free, nor have I delved deeply into gluten-free baking. All those different flours and combinations of grains to deliver the best texture, and xanthan gum…what does it do and why does it cost $14?! Also, some people also have the misconception that veganism is synonymous with gluten-free. There’s plenty of foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that are easily made gluten-free and many candies are naturally free of gluten, but cakes, pastries, cookies, bread, and pies are a little more difficult. I’m not one to reject the unfamiliar, and always willing to learn more about different foods, especially when it’s related to baking. I haven’t been too impressed with the packaged gluten-free cookies I’ve tried before, so I want to taste test as much as possible!
So a little while ago, A Couple Smart Cookies sent me samples of their product to try. Little gluten-free cookie bites in three flavors: Fudge Squared, Peanut Butter <3's Chocolate Chip, and Pumpkin Dates Cherry. Hello, cute names!
I noticed that Vegansaurus reviewed these cookies last year as well and upon trying them, I had a lot of the same feelings. First up, the Pumpkin Dates Cherry cookies. The sweet ginger pumpkin flavor combined nicely with the tart cherries studded throughout. The texture really secured these as my favorite because they were soft and fluffy and I wasn’t thinking about how they were gluten-free. Second, the Fudge Squared cookies. Since these cookies are more like fudge bites than full cookies, they’re very rich in chocolatey flavor. Sometimes fudge bites like this can be overwhelmingly rich, but I think these cookies struck a balance with the amount of flavor and richness. The only letdown was a hint of a grittiness from the rice flour. Finally, the peanut butter cookies were so chewy and sweet, kind of in-between cookie and peanut butter caramel candy, and didn’t really do it for me.
You can buy A Couple Smart Cookies at their online shop. Take my word and try out the Pumpkin Dates Cherry, or check out a sample pack and try them for yourself or a gluten-free friend. You can also check them out on Facebook and Twitter!
Apple cider donuts, upcoming events, and activism
Apple cider donuts, quite possibly the most important part of pumpkin and apple picking in the fall. Deep fried, sugary, apple-y goodness in a pastry. Well, I haven’t gone apple or pumpkin picking in years and haven’t had an apple cider donut in at least 8 years (pre-gan), so I’ve been completely missing out. But I’ve made donuts before, so I decided to take on the challenge of making vegan apple cider donuts! After some research, I completely revamped this very poorly written Food Network recipe. See, I have a bad habit of not reading recipe instructions. I just look at the ingredient list and throw the ingredients in a bowl using my best judgment. I definitely should’ve read this recipe more carefully because it does things like combining the cinnamon for the dough and cinnamon sugar coating into one amount, so I put all 2 1/2 teaspoons in the dough right away, which wasn’t supposed to happen. I removed as much cinnamon as I could, but it still was more than the recipe called for. But guess what? I really like cinnamon, and the extra cinnamon in this dough was AWESOME. Joke’s on you, recipe!
This is a variation on the original recipe: apple cider cranberry donut holes, made them as a dessert for Thanksgiving! I blogged the entire feast over on Seitan Beats Your Meat.
Upcoming Events
This Saturday, December 3rd is the 4th bi-annual Milwaukee Vegan Bake Sale and there is still time to sign up to bake! And you can RSVP on Facebook! Give us your money, baked goods, and/or attendance! The proceeds will benefit the Urban Ecology Center and Milwaukee Animal Rescue Center.
Please spread the word! Tweet, Facebook, Google+, and blog about it! Please and thank you!
Not surprisingly, bake sales are my favorite form of activism, hands down. They are a great way to bring a community together, show off your baking skills, make deep-fried sprinkled-coated delicacies in the name of veganism, and raise money for a cause in a positive way. While I truly respect those out protesting and leafletting on the streets, I prefer to take a behind the scenes, non-confrontational approach to activism. Winning over curious omnivores with cupcakes, cookies, donuts, and candy is one of my favorite things to do, so I participate in bake sales whenever possible.
If you’d like to start a bake sale of your own or get involved in food activism, these are a few of my go-to resources: The Vegan Girl’s Guide to Bake Sales by my friend Melisser Elliott, Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale tips, and Let the Donut Do the Talking (pdf), a talk by Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan.
On a similar note, I recently published an article on One Green Planet called Social Media as Positive Activism. Two things inspired me to write this article: I’m sick of seeing pictures of dead, mutilated animals posted on Facebook by vegans and I’m even more sick of charities and fundraisers struggling to meet their goal. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other social media sites can be powerful tools for activists if used properly, so this article is all about using these networks in a positive manner and reviewing all the ways you can contribute to a cause when opening your wallet isn’t an option!
And I also made this picture of Gnocchi pretending to type as the featured image, so I automatically win at life. Or Gnocchi does. Yeah, probably Gnocchi. But anyway, go read my article. Thanks!
Finally, another Milwaukee event. Photographer Jessica Kaminski will be hosting an art sale on Sunday, December 11th and I’ll be baking for it! Check out the Facebook event here. Come buy some prints and other gifts, and sample baked goods!
Halloween Birthday Cake
A couple weeks ago on Twitter I asked what 17 year old boys like because I was going to make a birthday cake for my brother. Within minutes, the general consensus was BOOBS. While this clearly was the way to go, I wasn’t ready to make a boob cake.
The search went on for a couple days and I finally decided on a cake. His birthday is the day after Halloween and he loves the movies, so a Michael Myers cake it was!
I made the film noir cupcakes and this cake within a few days of each other, so his cake is also pumpkin chocolate chip with sweet cinnamon buttercream.
I was out of red food coloring, so I ended up mixing a rose color with black. Maybe it’s not the same as a true red color, but the pink definitely adds to the gruesome nature of the cake.
Now I’m totally obsessed with painting fondant and cakes, so I ordered a set of food coloring, plus some other colors I wanted to try out, edible glitter, and more fondant. I excitedly found the box waiting for me outside my door over the weekend and can’t wait to make more cakes!
Film Noir Cupcakes
Although Vegan MoFo is over and it was quite a lot of work, I really miss devoting so much time every day to recipe creation, brainstorming blog posts, doing interviews, and actually blogging! Plus reading about what everyone else was doing in their kitchen. MoFo also forced me to use Google Reader, if only to keep up with the hundreds of posts published everyday throughout the month. I quickly realized how intuitive Reader is, and how many blogs I could follow without having to visit them all separately, and now I’m using it full-time.
Looking beyond the grief-stricken lament of Vegan MoFo’s completion, I achieved my goals! The final interviews on Seitan Beats Your Meat were posted days before the deadline and the last post on here made it to a published status while the clock was teetering between 11:59pm and 12am on the first of November. That last post was a sneak peek into today’s post, Film Noir cakes and food coloring paintings!
This semester, I am taking a Film Noir-inspired photography class and one of the major events of the semester was an on-location photoshoot organized by the class. 1940s props and clothing, femme fatales, and dramatic lighting consumed the carefully crafted set. Off-set required just as much planning and organization with the inventory of vintage clothing, props, hair and makeup, model seeking, and food. The necessity of catering obviously made my ears perk up more than usual because I love any opportunity to create thematic baked goods. A thing that I can do! Film Noir? Lustre dust, glitter, food coloring as dark as my soul, fake blood!
I decided to take a more classic approach and paint mini portraits of film noir characters with black food coloring on fondant disks, as well as film negatives and stripes to allude to Venetian blinds. It’s Double Indemnity in cupcake form.
There was totally gold lustre dust to make the mini starlets glitter. The cupcakes were pumpkin chocolate chip (the Vegan Cupcakes recipe) with cinnamon buttercream. I could say the alluring shiny buttercream and sweet pumpkin cake were the façade of a deeper chocolate-studded spicy flavor, much like a manipulative femme fatale seduction of deliciousness, but I’m not gonna lie. I just really like pumpkin cupcakes.
Now I want to paint everything with food coloring onto fondant. I might need to start making up holidays to justify my rampant extraneous cake baking.
MoFo #20: Noir cupcakes sneak peek
I’m catering a photoshoot for my Film Noir class this Thursday and decided to make Noir-inspired cupcakes, so I’m posting a sneak peek of the practicing today. Even if I don’t get to draw and paint as much as I’d like to nowadays (it’s been, like, over a year!), I can pretend I’m painting with food coloring! So here is Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Double Indemnity, 1×1-inch fondant disc version. It’s so nervewrecking painting portraits so tiny with food coloring! Now I’m going to do a billion more of these and I’m assuming my painting skills will return as I go along!
I’ll post a full report later this week after they’re completed and photographed! Happy Halloween and last day of MoFo, everyone! I did it! With about 5 seconds to spare!
MoFo #19: Research and organization
The bulletin board and sticky note system is something that works immensely well for me. Organizing with color, shapes, and symbols makes so much sense, so that’s the way I’ve been organizing the physical copy of my recipe inventory. It’s really convenient because it’s in clear view in the kitchen and if I suddenly have an idea while hanging out making coffee or something, I’ll just write it down and stick it on the board. Easy!
The thumbtacks are color-coded by type of dessert: yellow is cookie, blue is cupcake, green is cake, then red and white I’m not too sure about. Donuts, waffles, pancakes, mousse, and pie are somehow split between those two colors. My brain understands it somehow.
Each section of the bulletin board represents the stage in recipe testing: idea, ready to make, needs revision, and test kitchen, which is divided into four recipe categories that are based on the tentative chapter names. I promise they have really cutesy names.
Each sticky note has a recipe on it that travels through the different stages. I also note with a circle if the recipe contains alcohol (due to the drink theme), then make sure to come up with a substitution so the recipe can be made without it as well. There’s also a note if the recipe contains margarine or oil. This is more specific to the nature of cookies. It was a topic of discussion with the cookie book because not every country has readily available vegan margarine, it can be expensive, and oil can sometimes be substituted.
When the recipe has gone through all the stages and is “complete”, the thumbtack moves from the left to the right side of the sticky note. See, I’m totally OCD and no one would understand how to read the board without instructions, but it’s really helpful to organize your thoughts using this kind of method if you’re a visual thinker and learner. I’ve tried similar things in a notebook or sketchbook, but once you’ve written something down, there’s less room for editing, and everything is all shut away in a book. This doesn’t have to be just for recipes either. Any kind of creative (or not!) to-do lists are more fun this way.
The sticky note system is something that I repeatedly go to. This was the sticky note process for the cookie book that was short-lived because I couldn’t hang it up in the kitchen when I was living with my parents and it just sort of disappeared under my bed or something. It works best if it’s hanging in a visible spot in your kitchen without a dog on top of it.
Here’s my stockpile of ingredients again. Buying perishables with the intention of using them for recipes is a little tricky in case plans change or I can’t make everything in such a short timeframe. I’ve definitely had some fruits and vegetables go bad for this reason. Stocking up on recipe ingredients that won’t go bad gives lots of options though!
I just have a normal composition book for recipes/other projects right now. I’m trying to keep the recipe writing digital nowadays because handwriting recipes in a notebook and having to type it up later takes twice as long and twice as much effort as typing it up on a laptop in the kitchen right away. But I do like writing ideas down and planning out writing pieces and recipes by hand, so I like having a physical notebook.
This was my recipe notebook for the cookie book back in the day…of 2007. After remembering the nights of typing up dozens of recipes at a time from this book, I knew I could avoid such a data entry-esque fate by typing up ingredient lists as I go! But looking at this cover makes me smile.
I have one more MoFo post planned for tonight cause I’m a total slacker! Happy Halloween!
MoFo #18: A few words on food photography
I struggle with photography a lot. Isn’t this the truth? Not a day goes by that I’m not in photography classes, shooting, editing, printing, and talking or thinking about photos. A light stand with a flash affixed to it is a permanent fixture in the corner of my room because I’d be collapsing and setting it up everyday. Being around photography 24/7 really makes me question what the hell I’m doing all the time, especially in an art school setting that focuses deeply on the ideas and concepts of photo and turns its nose up at commercial work (feel free to slap me across the face if I ever think like that!). I already overanalyze everything that happens and everything I think about every waking minute of the day. I’m also a perfectionist and stubborn as fuck and there’s a few thousand photos and several series of work that have never seen the light of the internet. Analyzing every little detail about photos, content, and meaning gets me burned out really easily, which makes even shooting food a lengthy frustrating ordeal sometimes!
Pretty food photography is not allowed in art school, but I can do whatever I want on my blogs! Even after prefacing what I do day in and day out with a sprinkle of cynicism, I think an art background is very beneficial when working in the kitchen and photographing food. And I’m a cynical mofo anyway. There’s so much color, design, and creation just making food. Then, photographing can be approached in so many ways. Composition, color, still life objects, and creating a mood that really considers the subject. White plate on a clean background? That’s a standard for product photography and some food shoots that is worth knowing how to do if the need arises, but hello, boring! Google stock photography. Yawnfest!
Lots of things are going through my head when working with food. I’m going to say things that conflict with the first post I made about food photography on here and probably other food photography articles. I don’t think there’s one right way to approach food photography, so I’m skeptical about food photography guides or “tips and tricks”. Now watch me eat my words and write up a list of tips and tricks! But really, these are just my opinions, how I currently approach my work, and more focused on thinking about photographing as an art rather than listing technical tricks. I’d say this is directed toward the “I know how to use my camera, now what?” crowd:
Knowing the mechanics of a camera and what they mean is far more useful than having a “good” camera. Someone well-versed and in control of their point and shoot in any given situation is way better off than someone with an SLR in auto mode. Now use that knowledge to your advantage and create what you’re envisioning. Don’t rely on happy accidents to create interesting photos. Figure out how to create that and have control over it! Reading books and taking classes would be immensely helpful.
Step back. Consider the space you’re in and how it relates to what you’re shooting. Just like there are environmental portraits of people, the same can be done with food as the “character”. Intensely close shots with a shallow depth of field become repetitive and don’t make you think about your photos. When I started doing food photography, the 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/1.8 all the time became a crutch. Hello there. I read that using a shallow depth of field would really focus on the subject, and not so much on the “less important” background. When the background is blurred, it doesn’t matter what’s there and the subject becomes a floaty glowing muffin or something. Now, maybe the composition is nice, but what sets your muffin apart? A distinguishable background isn’t out to work against you, but set up a scene. When I think blueberry muffins, I think picnic baskets, red checkers, and bright yellows and blues. Put that pumpkin muffin in a still life of autumnal abundance.
There are so many ways to use light, and gasp, natural light is not the be all end all. I use both studio lighting and natural light, depending on the food in question. A sultry dark chocolate truffle would be more suited to an environment with dramatic lighting, lace, reds, and satin-y fabrics. A lemonade cupcake goes by the window with bright colors and a whimsical composition. I still get overwhelmed with constructing this kind of still life sometimes because it involves collecting a lot of random kitchen crap and carefully considering what to include in the photos. Doing research is incredibly helpful. That’s true for anything. Look up all kinds of photography and artwork and draw inspiration. Maybe you have a diner-style meal. Research the atmosphere and visual elements of 1950s diners and make note of the colors, patterns, fabrics, and lighting in the photos you find. It could be as simple as a checkerboard placemat, or as elaborate as setting up a metallic backdrop, including props, and neon lighting. It’s not what you do or how intricate it is, but your individual approach that makes it interesting!
Mix up your collection of plates, tablecloths, and utensils. Or don’t. Maybe a certain color, texture, or plate is a constant in all your photos. I like working with bright, vivid colors, and dramatic lighting. And a lot of yellow. Mostly because my kitchen walls are yellow, but I try to bring different things into the shoots so it’s not all YELLOW WALL in everything. Sometimes I’d like to have a completely different kitchen to play with (who wouldn’t?), but I know the way I shoot and the things I’m visually interested in will show through there too, so working in the same environment all the time isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Even if your soup looks like vomit in a bowl, you can photograph it! Just no Instagram close up shots please. Put more emphasis on the bowl, the table setting, and everything around the soup, and create an interesting composition.
So, that was a little view into some of the crap I think about all day and night. I hope it was helpful!
