Daring Bakers-December 09 Challenge-Gingerbread Houses!

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.



The options for this month's challenges could have gone into the crazy zone (I had visions of a cuckoo clock gingerbread house or a whole miniature village), but I decided that since this was my first gingerbread house EVER, I should probably just keep it simple to start. Good thing, because I learned a whole lot, the most important is that gravity was not my friend. I used Vegan Dad's recipe and advice, with good results. Dough was awesome and strong, and bonus, tasty! The icing ended up being my enemy, pairing with gravity. I countered this by decorating some, sticking in fridge, repeat, until things had somewhat solidified on. Toothpicks also helped to hold things together, and were later removed after chilling.

I'm not so sure there are any cuckoo clock gingerbread houses in my future, but it was a fun project (also, it was waaay fun visiting Economy Candy!)

Kitty Love

This past weekend, Nik and I drove to his parent's house for an early xmas celebration. While I was there, I got to play with the cuuuuuutest little kitty. Seriously, LOVE!





We visited a wind farm! Huuuuuuuge!


And then...we came home to this. But seriously, the drive home was a record-breaker in terms of driving back into NYC. No traffic and none of that storm stuff everyone was talking about.


I'm excited to visit my family this weekend! Nik and I are taking a train (I couldn't handle driving two weekends in a row, haha.) I'm doing some last-minute baking this year. I have some Gingerbread Biscotti and some Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles in the oven as we speak! A few more batches of cookies and some S'mlove pie and I'll be ready for xmas.

I know New Year's Resolutions are totally lame, but I'm taking them seriously this year and am working on a list of goals that I want to accomplish this year. Most center around my business and making it more "serious." This blog is a big part of this and I hope to make it a bit more focused and regular. Blahblah, I know, I know, resolutions are boring. :) But! Expect lots of new things!

Happy holidays everyone! I'm signing off until after it's all said and done with!

peace,
Michelle

Chocolates and tester recipes

Nik and I recently got to check out the new vegan chocolate cafe, and we picked up a few select chocolates. This was a few weeks ago, so I only slightly remember the names of each, but here goes nothing:

Peanut Butter (Nik tried this one and didn't like it; said it was dry)

Chocolate covered edamame (was my favorite)

Jasmine (It was okay, nothing special)

goji berry and vegan bacon (disgusting! I spit it out! I NEVER spit out chocolate!)

So, alas, although pretty, I think they need to iron out their flavors a bit more before I would go back. I did get a few more flavors, not photographed, and I don't even remember what they were. I did pick up some of their spicy hot cocoa mix and this stuff is AMAZING! Super-spicy and flavorful, you only need a little bit. Hot cocoa is the best.


Here's some tester food from Celine and Joni's last book of Vegan Subsitutions.

Spring Rolls

Butternut Lentil Burger

Bust Craftacular 2009 and Give-away winner!!

Hello! I'm fully recovered now, from a totally awesome day at Bust's Holiday Craftacular, last Sunday. Lots of fun, happy people with incredibly nice things to say, lots of sales, awesome neighbors and location, and just overall good vibes everywhere. Bust even interviewed me! Here's some pictures of my table:






Also, I picked a winner for my Give-away! With the help of Random.org, commenter #4 is the winner! #4 happens to be the super-fabulous Jeni Treehugger! You should all check out her blog, because she's awesome and funny and makes delicious food!

Thank you to everyone who entered; I think you are all pretty super-awesome and wish I could give a calendar to all of you. I will definitely have more give-aways in the future!

Thanksgiving '09 Foodz + Bust Craftacular

Hello! Hope you had a relaxing weekend with lots of yummy food and catchup sleep! I sure did, and am getting a bit sad-faced that Monday is almost here. I haven't reached the sick-of-leftovers phase yet, so I figured I should post about it now before I am!

I went with Bryanna Clark Grogan's Seitan tofurkey for the main in the roulade style (I super-spiced it up though, with fresh sage, rosemary, thyme, and garlic), roasted brussel sprouts (I shredded them up for extra-yumminess!), corn, mashed taters with mushroom and onion gravy (modified from VCON), stuffing, cranberries (with apples added! BUT, I forgot about them in the fridge, so we didn't get to eat them until the next day, with leftovers!), and Pumpkin Cheezecake Pie for dessert (and soyatoo on top!) with a homemade graham cracker crust. Everything was pretty successful and delicious! We didn't eat until 9ish at night, due to a little underestimation in the timing, but it was all good. Super-happy thanksgiving! Some pictures:







I've also been super-crafting this weekend, preparing for next weekend's Bust Craftacular. If you are in the NYC area on Sunday, December 6th, come say hi!

After-Thanksgiving Day Weekend Sale!

Yeah, I jumped on that bandwagon, why not! All originals are on sale AND I'm having a Buy TWO 8"x10" Prints and get ONE FREE sale! Sale ends at midnight Monday, November 30th. Just write the name of the FREE print that you want in the "Message to Seller" box during checkout.

shop

Daring Bakers-November 09 Challenge-Cannolis!

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

This was my second challenge, and it was a LOT easier to veganize than last's month's Macarons (but then again, most things are easier to veganize.) I decided to deep-fry half of the recipe and bake the other half, for comparison purposes. Of course, the deep-fried version was tastier, but the baked ones were good too! My cannolis were filled with a Vegan Coconut Macadamia Nut Creme, with the shell insides coated in chocolate. These were REALLY good the next day, after a night in the fridge, when the filling flavors could meld together more. I don't have an exact recipe for the filling, but it consisted of fresh tofu, macadamia nuts, shredded coconut, a bit of agave nectar, and little bit of Soy Delicious Coconut Milk.

Antler Pug and Ribbon Kitty Ornaments in this week's Etsy Voter!

Puppy kisses and Kitty purrs for you all if you vote for me here: http://www.etsy.com/voter_list.php?ref=voter&room_id=80