VeganMofo 2010: Sweet Potato Broccoli Bread

I had one of those lightbulb moments last week, where I was thinking about things to make for 'MoFo, and my mind wandered to grilled cheese and then to all that broccoli I received from my CSA...and DING DING DING!  Broccoli bread turned into a yummy grilled cheese!  I don't really have a "go-to" bread that I make, because I don't usually make my own bread (I know! I'm impatient with waiting for things to rise and usually think about making bread when it's too late in the game.)  Sooo, I started flipping through my cookbooks, looking for some sort of savory bread. Let's just say that there are lots of cornbread recipes out there...

Celine and Joni never let me down though.  There is a recipe for Potato Bread in 500 Vegan Recipes that fit the bill perfectly.  I used the sweet potato option in the recipe, because I thought it would go good with the broccoli I was going to add.  The only thing I changed in the recipe, was to add in 1/2 cup chopped broccoli instead of the seeds, and to throw in about a 1/4 cup of nooch to make it cheesier. Holy yum! The bread was super-delicious on it's own, with a little Earth Balance spread on it, and it was absolutely perfect in the grilled cheese form.  Nik gave it a double-thumbs up.  Hurrah!

VeganMoFo Day 6-Apple-Pear Bread

This is a childhood favorite bread, that my Mom used to make every summer, with the bounty from our white peach tree in the yard. I needed to use up the ridiculous amount of apples and pears that I have already started accumulating (seriously! Need to make a pie soon!), so I decided to substitute the peaches and make this lovely sweet bread.



Apple-Pear Bread (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients:
5 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 TBS baking powder
2 tsp salt
6 TBS vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups soy milk
2 egg replacer (I used ener-g)
2 cups chopped apples and pears
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix dry ingredients together in a (very)large bowl. Add remaining wet ingredients and mix gently. Bake in two greased loaf pans at 350 F for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. This is a really, really moist bread, so I usually refrigerate it so it lasts longer!

Melty pizzzzzzza!

I tried to go to a craft fair this past saturday, and got there around 5ish to find that it ended at 4pm. D'oh! It kinda took awhile to get there too (as it is impossible to go north-south in brooklyn very easily.) Good thing I had a backup! I've been wanting to try Pizza Plus, in Park Slope, for awhile now, but again, I never find myself in that area too often. Anyways! They serve up a whole vegan pie (with teese I think!) with toppings of your choice! I took foreverrrrr to decide, but went with mushrooms and sundried tomatoes in the end. Look! They even made it all melty! I love my slices from Vinnie's, but they do NOT know how to melt the teese. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome. We even got to eat outside in the backyard. Afterwards, Nik and I got some bubble tea to go (he got coconut and I got peach) and headed off to Prospect park to walk around. I'm not too keen on the tapioca balls, and thought I just ordered the plain tea, but the balls still came in it. I couldn't even swallow them, but made myself keep trying. Not too bad once you get used to them. Peach tea rocked though! The park was beautiful. It was supposed to rain that evening, but had cleared up, so I think a lot of people had stayed inside. It was nice strolling around with not that many people out. Oh, and we had some cute duck sightings!



I've been craving all things lemon lately, so I made the golden vanilla cupcake recipe, from VCTOTW, with added lemon zest in my bundt pan (I did have intentions of doubling the recipe, but completely forgot until everything was all mixed together.) For the top, I just mixed the juice from one lemon with confectionary sugar until it was a bit pasty and drizzled over. Mmmmm.


On sunday, I spent a couple hours in the kitchen making the bundt cake, some homemade Rosemary-thyme foccacia (from VCON, with 2 cups whole wheat, 1 cup white), and some seitan. I always bake my seitan, because it's always too chewy-gross when I boil it and too mushy when I steam it. Hooray for sammiches! And hooray for sunny sundays, in which I am free to spend my time in the kitchen!