Tag Archives: vegan mofo 2014

As Seen on TV: The Rollie Brownie

I wanted to branch out this week and conquer a sweet treat in the Rollie. That vertical cooking technology seems like it could bake up a brownie, so I decided to try a marshmallow stuffed chocolate Rollie brownie. I decided to grab a mug brownie recipe to try even though I have never made a mug brownie. You don’t need a lot of batter for the Rollie and I thought the mug brownie batter would be a good fit. This may not have been my wisest decision of the day. The ingredients are assembled, the brownie batter mixed.

I used the wooden skewers to skew some Dandies marshmallows. They look so happy on the bag but into the Rollie they went. The brownie batter got poured nto the cooking chamber and the wait was on!

And on. And on. And on. I should have pored less batter into that cooking chamber. There was a slight rise in the batter but it just did not seem to be cooking at the top. The 10 minute timer buzzed and I reset for another 10 minutes. Another buzz, another reset. I scooped a bit of the batter out and discovered that the brownie did appear to be cooking underneath. At 30 minutes I went ahead and pulled the Rollie brownie out.

Or rather, I attempted to pull the Rollie brownie out. Much as with the biscuit of last week, the wooden skewer slid right out and left all brownie inside. Unlike the biscuit of last week, this thing was not coming out with out a fight.

I managed to get a bunch of large chunks out by running the skewer around the edge and shaking. You can see the well melted marshmallow in the bottom right. Now, this might look like a failure. And it certainly was in that I had no brownie cylinder to chow down on. But a pile of half baked gooey chocolate marshmallow pile is better than having no half baked gooey chocolate marshmallow pile at all.

Tasteless Tablescapes: Halloween

If you’ve seen Sandra Lee’s tablescapes, you’ve seen some amazing holiday creations. I wanted to come up with a spooky holiday themed tasteless tablescapes that would appeal to the children.

Doesn’t that look fun? From a distance it looks like a great jack o lantern full of candy. But look closer, Gentle Reader. Look closer.

That cheery jack o lantern is filled with boxes of raisins to hand out. The horror, the horror.

The Garlic: Fruit Cup Not Well Received At Wedding

FRUIT CUP NOT WELL RECEIVED AT WEDDING

Asheville, NC- Wedding attendee Jasmine White was not impressed with her vegan dessert option at the wedding she attended in Asheville this weekend. While other guests were served slices of the three tier red velvet cake with traditional boiled frosting Jasmine was brought a dish consisting of sliced cantaloupe, a few grapes, and a strawberry on top.

“Janelle and Ed had plenty of time to work out an option for me. I sent in my RSVP with request for a vegan dessert months in advance. I even gave them the idea to buy a brownie from Firestorm Cafe and slip it to me before the ceremony even began.”

The dreaded fruit cup has become the bane of vegans everywhere. With its heavy reliance on melons and lack of imagination or taste it is the standard vegan wedding dessert. Despite a plethora of vegan sweets cookbooks, including Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, The Joy of Vegan Baking, Vegan Chocolate, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, Sweet Vegan, Vegan Pie in the Sky, Cheers To Vegan Sweets, The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur, Stinky Fingers Sweets, Bake and Destroy, Whole Grain Vegan Baking, and Vegan Bake Sale, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of wedding caterers to venture into cupcake, cookie, or pie territory.

White was spotted at the local Earth Fare late that night stuffing a bag with their vegan chocolate chip cookies. A pint of Ginger Cookie Caramel Coconut Bliss was already in her shopping basket.

Tofu Pirate Comics: Answering the Vegan Critics for Vegan MoFo

Food That Looks Like My Cat: Cheddar Biscuits

As I made some Bisquick cheddar biscuits yesterday in the Rollie, I though perhaps if they were baked, the biscuits might qualify as a food that looks like my cat. The Rollie doesn’t really brown food, so I did some more mix and popped a small batch in the oven. The results:

I am a fan of these biscuits and have heard they are reminiscent of the Red Lobster biscuits. I have never eaten at Red Lobster but I do like garlic and I do like cheezey biscuits.

George was in no mood for sitting when I tried to photograph him next to the biscuits. Maybe George doesn’t like garlic. Maybe George just never sits still from the hours of nine to eleven AM. But even with this blurry photo you can see that the Bisquick cheddar garlic biscuits are a lighter color than George and thus not the best candidate for food that looks like my cat.

As Seen On TV: The Rollie Bisquick Biscuit

Not entirely satisfied with my Bisquick and Rollie collaboration last week, I decided to try another recipe this week that I have had greater success with in the past: the Bisquick biscuit with shredded cheese brushed with garlic butter.

I use Follow Your Heart cheddar as my cheese of choice. Here’s a bit of the mixture. It’s a wee bit sticky but I managed to get a skewer through it and put it down into the vertical cooking chamber of the Rollie.

These biscuits normally cook for eight to ten minutes, so I set my oven timer for ten and watched the cat pace the kitchen while meowing at top speed because he thought it was kibble time. It was not kibble time.

When the timer went off I grabbed the end of the skewer and pulled out only to have the biscuit itself remain in the Rollie’s vertical cooking chamber.

Not one to panic, I ran the skewer around the edge of the biscuit to loosen it and then tipped the whole Rollie over onto my plate. A few crumbs fell out but the Rollie Bisquick biscuit remained mostly intact.

I brushed it with some of the garlic butter and gave it a taste. The verdict: not bad. The biscuit cooked all the way through and had that signature Bisquick garlic cheddar flavor. It no faster that baking in the oven but if you didn’t have access to an oven this would be a perfectly acceptable way to get your biscuit on.

Tasteless Tablescapes: Casino Night

What’s more fun than getting a bunch of friends together for your very own casino night? Doing it up with a Sandra Lee style tasteless tablescapes and turning your card table into a real card table. Spread those decks out! It takes so long to lay out the individual cards that you didn’t have any time to make snacks, but have no fear!

Guests love a plate full of extra cards! Stick one in the tines of the fork for a little extra something something. Tell them that the first person to get a three story house of cards built from the cards on their plate gets to buy take out for the table! They’ll be coming back every week for more casino fun.

The Garlic: Soymilk Hidden In Back of Work Fridge

Every Monday for the month of MoFo I’ll be bringing you breaking news stories from the satirical vegan favorite, The Garlic.

SOYMILK HIDDEN IN BACK OF WORK FRIDGE

Cleveland, OH- Jean Powers, accountant at Crumb, Elliott & Crumb Associates in Cleveland, Ohio, has started hiding her carton of soymilk in the back of the shared work fridge. Her newly opened cartons were mysteriously running out by the end of each week, despite Jean’s frugal usage in her morning coffee.

“At least four co-workers have sneered at my aseptic cartons but it appears some of them are using it behind my back,” Powers reports.

The soymilk was mysteriously drained early for three consecutive weeks. Powers made some quiet inquiries and has been spending an extra fifteen minutes in the shared kitchenette in the mornings but no suspicious activity was observed. At that point Powers decided to take matters into her own hands.

“I put my carton on the second shelf instead of the first, and put the slimy bag of unopened baby carrots in front of it. Those carrots have been in there at least two months, so I’m hoping this solves the problem.”

Tofu Pirate Comics: Answering the Vegan Critics for Vegan MoFo

Food That Looks Like My Cat: Coffee

This is a fun new theme this year for Vegan Mofo! It’s a whole month of Thursdays that feature food that looks like my cat George. This is George.

And sometimes this is George.

Y’all know that I think brown food tastes best, and since George is brown-ish in color and often lays around like a loaf, I decided to do some side by side comparisons to see what foods most resemble George the cat.

My lovely man friend Paul likes his coffee. He likes his fancy coffee, with scales and hand grinders and thermometers and Aero Presses and in this case homemade macadamia nut milk. In the ever present mason jar, no less. I thought it looked like George, so we put it to the test.

The fancy coffee drink it a bit lighter in color than George but not a bad match. George was ultimately not interested in partaking of the fancy coffee drink and continued to sit on the cat rug contemplating deep thoughts.