Currently viewing the tag: "strawberry"
Since I was a little girl, vanilla has been one of my favorite flavors. I used to huff vanilla extract on the sly, enjoyed only vanilla ice cream, eating around other flavored add-ins, and, as my birthday neared, requested only vanilla cake. Fragrant and delicate, it is still my first choice in desserts. Chocolate is an easy please. Vanilla, on the other hand, requires more effort. And now that I’ve tasted vanilla beans in their natural state, now that I’ve stripped pods of their tar-like innards, I am in a pure state of vanilla love.
The Electrician and I were hosting Electrician Dad and Mom for an Easter dinner. And I was in charge of dessert. With the start of the berry season upon us, I decided on a vanilla layer cake blinged out with a heavy hand of strawberries. My vision of the cake was tall, slathered in both coconut cream and vanilla buttercream and guarded by towering strawberries quartered lengthwise. Here is the play-by-play.
Because this was a special occasion cake, I used many cups of confectionary sugar in total. Proportionately, I put the most in the coconut whip and halved the buttercream sugar. I didn’t want a cloyingly sweet dessert, especially given the sweet, red berries. I also added some smashed strawberry into the whipped coconut cream, both for flavor and desired hue. Coconut whip can look a bit grey, especially when paired with a stark white buttercream. However, needing most of my berries for the tops of my layer cakes, a subtle hue would have to do.
After baking my vanilla cake layers, I opened up the springform pan, removed the bottom part of the pan, and let cool. Afterwards, the bottom layer was set on the cake server and the springform side refastened. This would help the coconut whip and berry center to set securely in the fridge.
Same went for the top layer. I placed this layer on a cutting board to allow for easy moving.
It was a berry convention on top!
Flash forward, the layers were stacked and the sides were frosted with the buttercream. I attempted piping but the refrigerated buttercream resisted… and I was concerned about over doing it, since the berries were pretty dramatic on their own.
The cake was a big success! And I was happy to have expanded the perception of vegan baked treats.
I will be eating this for the rest of the week, thankfully.
2013 is officially here! To start the year off on the right foot, I needed a good meal and a sweet treat. First, the savory. Lasagna. Enormous noodles started the layered deliciousness. Then a creamy tofu ricotta with huge parsley kick. Then grilled eggplant. Repeat.
Next, while the lasagna bakes, something to smear on bread. I made a Northern bean horseradish artichoke hummus and doused it with Udo’s oil. Absolutely delicious!
Dinner is served! With more bread.
And now I have lunch for the rest of the work week. Ugh, back to work.
And now, these cookies that I have been meaning to make for quite some time. I was having a hard time finding vegan nonpareils. In fact, I am not sure that they exist. Even India Tree‘s has confectioners glaze. But I found these vegan rainbow sprinkles… so now I had no excuse!
The cookie dough was so good. I ate a lot of it.
It’s an involved recipe, requiring lots of kitchen goodies and wait time.
But then, adorable cookies–and lots of them. I actually froze half the dough and still had plenty of cookies to pair up.
My strawberry cream filling was over-whipped and seized up a little. No big deal.
Pretty butterfly cookies that I now get to eat.
Happy 2013!
Follow Your Heart, a natural foods market and brand of dairy substitutes, has a cafe offering traditional vegetarian fare in Canoga Park. The natural food store has been around since the 70′s. The shelves are thoroughly stocked with a ton of great products but is welcoming and accessible. The cafe opens bright and early for breakfast so we started our first day in Los Angeles with a hearty one before hitting the beach in record heat.
The Tofu Benedict is much like the Tempeh Reuben, I can’t really resist ordering it if it is on the menu. Their version was a poached tofu and tomato on a homemade English muffin smothered with a Hollandaise sauce and served with a side of potatoes. Though the dish was very substancial, the flavor was a bit lacking.
Behold the entire stock of Follow Your Heart products!
After reading Sage Organic Vegan Bistro‘s menu a while back, I knew it would easily be a prominent highlight of a trip to Los Angeles. It was time. We strolled in during the busy lunch rush to experience their drool-inspiring for reals.
First, something from the fryer. Sage’s mozzarella sticks made from heart of palm with ranch and marinara dipping sauce. Hearts. Of. Palm. Deep-fried. These “mozzarella sticks” are not made with packaged, processed vegan cheese, no. They are tubes of fibrous hearts of palm, batter-dipped and fried to perfection. Let’s look closer.
These were fantastic. Mind-blowing even. Place four of these wonders on a bed or arugula, even better!
The vegan ranch dipping sauce was a great addition. I want to eat more of these.
Sage had already blown my mind before we were even seated, the perfect appetizer sealed the deal. But the main course was yet to come: The Bistro Po’Boy… breaded seitan, organic tomatoes, deep fried cabbage, homemade dill pickles and lettuce on grilled olive rosemary bread with caramelized onion barbecue sauce. Eating this ridiculously delicious sandwich was a sloppy ordeal. And though it was knocking my socks off, perhaps with one too many flavorful additions, I needed to leave room… drumroll…
The beautiful banana split from KindKreme was spectacular. KindKreme, a gourmet/vegan/raw/organic ice creamery has multiple locations in the Los Angeles area, one being inside Sage Vegan Bistro. I love me a fancied up banana split, although I am strictly vanilla when it comes to my ice cream choice. I like vanilla. After hearing my wishes for a traditional split with the standard vanilla, the charming Sage employee allowed me to sample several flavors, helping to construct what would be an amazing ice cream treat.
Banana and ice cream are great together. My scoops–almond butter, Mexican chocolate, and strawberry–were so flavorful. They were topped with salted caramel sauce and chopped almonds. Heaven.
My sister requested parfaits for her birthday and I was happy to oblige. I started with sliced strawberry and baby plum, looking fresh and gorgeous. These would be the cooked fruit layer, along with fresh layers of blueberry.
I also needed a cake layer and a ton of coconut whipped cream. This time around I had planned to flavor and tint the cream with pomegranate juice, like this recipe, but the stark white prevailed. The coconut milk solids creamed perfectly, thick and delicious, on this third attempt. So my tip is to use a full fat coconut milk that is not Goya. Another tip is to make a neutral cake. This one added a bit too much sweetness. A biscuit or a shortcake would be best.
Another beauty, dressed to impressed.
Independence Day is all about strawberry/blueberry sweet concoctions! I made my patriotic parfaits mostly from scratch, save for the berries, and delivered them to my family as a sweet summer treat. After all, I can’t very well eat all of them! A cold parfait is not only refreshing, it’s a great way to utilize a whole bunch of yummy things before they go bad. Using up the remainder of my farmers market blueberries, I layered away with halved blueberry cupcakes made earlier in the week, an easy organic strawberry compote (sliced strawberries, cane sugar, and lemon in the saucepan), and fresh-made coconut whip (chilled full-fat coconut milk and a couple of tablespoons of powdered sugar whipped till creamy)… and WOW! Delicious… and very photogenic. 
After setting in the fridge, these beauties were ready for delivery. The basket was the perfect touch.
The coconut whip was absolutely scrumptious. For a million pictures of it, check this post from Healthy Happy Life.
Liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. I couldn’t think of any puns…
The grill is the second vital piece of Independence Day. I thought that the tempeh-nectarine skewers from VegNews looked quite tasty. Another awesome grilled feast from Grillmaster Electrician.
To die for was the spicy peanut sauce. I look forward to using it again, maybe for some summer rolls. It was kind of a mismatch for these skewers however. A wet marinade to moisten up the tempeh would serve the dish better.
A mid-week July 4th, that’s a wrap!
Goodbye, dear summer. You moved so swiftly through your weeks. But first, a few more bites…
Goodbye, peak season for juicy and tender summer fruits. Soon it’ll be time for apples, pumpkins and figs.
Goodbye, peaches and characteristically-summer stone fruit, best warm-skinned and taunt on the beach. Goodbye, grilled peaches, a different entity altogether, may the sparking lumpwood charcoal let you sweat your sugar.
Goodbye, real vanilla beans; coconut milk ice cream. You’ll pair up with some sweet goodies later, and I’ll see you then.
Goodbye, summer-ish marinade: Cindy’s Kitchen‘s amazing mango coconut marinade. Your sweet zing is perfect when infiltrating tempeh’s densely-packed atoms.
Goodbye, elaborate ice cream concoctions with aforementioned summer fruits, hot fudge and Smucker’s marshmallow topping. You’ll hardly seem appropriate after today. Warm, baked cakes and cookies soon will lessen the sting… till then…
Goodbye, Summer!
The East Village’s Cowgirl’s Bakery makes deep-fried Kool Aid balls. A sucker for kitsch, nostalgia and an all-vegan bakery, I had to partake… once. I chose orange, the preferred artificial flavor of my youth. They also had the flavor of “red” and the flavor of “purple.”
Though I’d prefer deep-fried Tang, my orange zeppole, my little mainline of sugar, was a fun few bites.
Now to some natural sweetness… The Soft Serve Fruit Co., now in the Union Square hood thankfully, is a very welcome addition to the vegan frozen treat scene. Their soft serve is creamy, packed with natural flavor and, like, 99% fruit. ”Fruit, filtered water and the littlest bit of cane sugar,” the nice counter guy explains. Samples and great service are given with a smile. And that’s the beginning…
My banana and mango swirl topped with pineapple and strawberry was delicious–so clean! I need to go back to try another combination.
Wait. What?
Do you see that? The billboard right outside of our cheap motel in Foxboro, Massachusetts. “Go Vegan!” Well, what do you know. This billboard, part of Peta‘s “Be Healthy. Be Happy. Be Vegan.” campaign was a nice siting. Nicer than the true but kinda offensive Save the Whales campaign that takes aim at overweight ladies.
We had one more day in Boston… and it was a Monday. Mondays are bad days for the traveling hungry; it seems like every restaurant takes a break on Monday. We treked through the convoluted weaving of Boston proper hoping for lunch at Pulse Cafe, an all-vegan eatery in the food-heavy area of Somerville, just North of Cambridge, only to be disappointed. Turns out I had jotted down the wrong hours in my travel log and we’d have to go without their cashew cheese-ed dishes I was looking forward to. We then hit Fiore’s Bakery in the Jamaica Plain area. I had gotten a taste of their goodies when I attended the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival in November of ’08 (see here). They were open but their vegan selection consisted of big, burnt-looking chocolate chip cookies and brown muffins of some sort–all very 90′s vegan-looking (i.e. not too tasty). I opted not to buy and headed to lunch at Red Lentil Vegetarian Restaurant… back in Somerville.
It’s exhausting driving around Boston. The lay of the city streets makes no sense to me. I needed a quick sweet fix before a good lunch. Do you know about China Cola? It’s made by Reed’s, most known for their ginger beer (and their morning-sickness ginger tonic), and it’s kind of great. It’s made with Chinese tonics and elixrs like Szechwan Peony Root and Cassia Bark, Malaysian vanilla, the oils of lemon, lime & orange, as well as nutmeg, cloves, cardamom and licorice. Unlike the Reed’s ginger brews, which are sweetened with fructose, it’s sweetened with raw cane sugar. I like it!
Traveling with someone who isn’t real interested in food, I was forced to cover the entire table with my dishes. For an appetizer I had the sesame-encrusted seitan strips with the side of mind-blowing sweet miso-horse radish dressing. What a kick that horseradish gives! The seitan chunks were very, very good though a bit dry. After being soaked in horseradish, they softened up a bit. Can I say horseradish again? Horseradish. This dipping sauce will not soon leave my memory. I want to coat the world with it!
Here’s a close-up.
Oh boy, were these amazing. The Sweet Potato Quesadilla: roasted sweet potatoes, grilled asparagus, roasted plum tomatoes, spinach and vegan Daiya jack cheese. Like the name states, the sweet potato is the true star here. I was relieved the vegan jack wasn’t too much, just barely there. These quesadilla were the perfect combination of flavors and textures… no sogginess and easy to handel. Dare I say… perfect? I could eat these everyday.
I had to get dessert. When would I be back? Not anytime soon. I had to try their house-made cake. I opted for the chocolate-strawberry cake: a triple layer cake super saturated with flavor and pieces of strawberry. The chocolate icing was very creamy and not overly sweet. I wished I would have known that the strawberry cake was drizzled heavily with raspberry sauce as I am not a fan. But overall, a nice sweet bite.
Trying to get to Boston’s True Bistro for brunch before the wedding hadn’t worked out. And unfortunately so. This all-vegan restaurant has one spectacular brunch menu. Considering there was no way I was leaving Boston without trying their delicious-reading menu of high end fare, we had to make a b-line from the ceremony to Somerville before their Sunday closing time, as Monday they were closed. To our surprise, the place was hopping when we arrived at 8:30.
A basket of bread was delivered promptly with some olive oil for dipping. Though it was not the freshest, few things beat a bite of bed saturated with a good olive oil. And this was a really good olive oil.
I opted for a small plate of pea and leek ravioli in a lemon-thyme cream though I had my mind on their Seitan Piccata since I first glanced their menu. The ravioli were so very good, tender and flavorful. It is so nice to have a cream sauce like this–lite and with no mouth coat. The quality of ingredients and chef’s skills are crystal clear given this one small plate. I must return for a full dinner.
Here is a close-up on the pea and leek ravioli cross-section. It was so difficult not to eat these in one inhalation.
For dessert, and maybe because I wasn’t able to eat one at the Shoreline Diner the day before, I had the Napoleon. Layers of paper-thin sugared pastry with a fantastic subtly sweet cream (I would guess cashew-based) and fresh, sliced strawberries. Mmmm! Dip into that sweet strawberry sauce and it’s even more delicious.
I struggled with how to attack Napoleon.
Max ordered their gluten-free dessert option, the ‘Death-by-chocolate’ cake topped with creme anglaise and crunchy shattered caramel. And he polished it off so quickly I didn’t have a chance to try it! I would have loved to try the caramel (foreshadowing alert… more on vegan caramel later).
Before it got too hot out, I got a little playful on the stovetop: chocolate swirl pancakes. Mixing two teaspoons of cocoa with a half cup of pancake batter, I marbled up my breakfast to make a slow morning of naming genres on my iTunes a bit more productive. Plus, I was heading back to Brooklyn, which meant a kitchen constantly coated in industrial film.
I had hoped for a darker contrast of colors, but the chocolate mixed up quickly. Next time I’ll pour separate bowls of batter straight on the pan. Beware: it’s difficult to see those cooking bubbles with these flapjacks.
Huge, cake-like pancakes fluffed up real high! The baking powder might have been responsible. So excited in this heat wave, it had the batter’s soymilk in huge fabric-y bubbles as soon as it was added.
Breakfast is served.
Splitting my time between the boroughs and the ‘burbs, the local availability of vegan treats fluctuates. When hit with the craving for an elaborate banana split, it was a quest… and test: How are the mainstream supermarkets keeping up with healthier food trends? I was impressed with what was available! From vegan Maraschino cherries free of artificial dyes, Carmine or corn syrups… high-end fruit preserves that sizzle up into wonderful ice cream toppings… pints of So Delicious dairy-free ice cream… and the less-natural but vegan marshmallow topping from Smucker’s. The only thing that was missing from my split was a vegan whip cream! But Freeport’s Stop N Shop was stocked with Tofutti cream cheese and sour cream, as well as Earth Balance. Not bad.
- 1 Banana, sliced in half lengthwise
- 3 scoops So Delicious Purely Decadent cookie dough ice cream
- Drizzle of Smucker’s marshmallow topping
- Bonne Maman strawberry preserves, heated on the stovetop
- Santa Cruz organic Chocolate syrup {In the fridge since last summer}
- A Maraschino cherry from Tillen Farms
- Sprinkle of chopped walnut
Vegan Reporting By Location
