Unhulled Marzipan

lurking behing the marzipan ball is a peanut butter cannonball made using Lindyloo's Copyright Violation.

Unhulled sounds kinda dirty. And if you're used to the white fluffy stuff, you'd probably think my marzipan was maybe, kinda dirty. But. I made it. With my fists. and Straight-up unbleached unhulled Almondmeal. And you can too.

Using 'Chef Jeenas' guildlines I give you dirty roo-poo looking marzipan to use as cake filling, cake topping, or to straight up cover in chocolate and enjoy.

2cups almondmeal
1/3 cup castor sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon cold water
1 teaspoon almond essence (which you can omit if you like)

Mix almondmeal and sugar, and add the liquid ingredients into the dry using the much-sought-after well method.
Mix thoroughly, if you've not used almond essence maybe put in a bit of extra lemon juice to keep the ratio right. Be careful not to get it too wet. Kneed until its all combined to your taste and it should feel kidn of like a shortcrust pastry dough. Wrap in plastic and set in the fridge for at least an hour until you feel sufficiently pleased with yourself and almost put your smug face on.

Not quite as fluffy as marzipan made with eggwhites, or as white as the overprocessed kind, but delicious and cheaper than running up to the store every time you want a hit of this almond crack.




EDIT: focussed shot of the peanutbutter cannonball, which has now been renamed a Miracle Pill, a la Miracle Max from the Princess Bride. The chocolate helps it go down easier, y'know.

have fun storming the castle, boys!

Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Marzipan

Home made marzipan (my million dollar eurotrash addiction that I've begun to budget down on by making my own) rolled in an organic dark chocolate ganash, set in the fridge and then jarred and kept to the bedside for easy comatose access! My up-coming debut into diabetes and possibly a premature death will be filled with almondmeal and blisss. Excuse me, I'll have another, alone. ta.


I tried to get a good shot of what the inside looks like, to show off my brown unhulled marzipan and how much it makes these little babies look like roo-poo but I kept eating them and got too excited to get a good focussed shot after this one.

Martha-Choke

What you see here is a veganization of a Martha Stewart Recipe - Roasted Chicken and Jerusalem Artichokes that was the most interesting and appetizing recipe I could find when looking for ideas of what to do with the "sunchokes" as I've never had them before.
I pretty much prepared the recipe verbatim, replacing the chicken with my beloved smofu lightly pan-fried before roasting and some soya chicken slices in a marinade of tamari, umeshu, and lemon zest.

It's a really big dish and I was probably a bit too ambitious with the servings I made for just Alex and myself. I'd like to try this again for more people or with some other veggies as Al made a comment of it being extremely tastey but a bit heavy on the soy products. Otherwise, I found this recipe to be quite encouraging of my veganizing skills and am looking forward to more adventures with Martha and other meat-relying uberchefs.

I wish I'd taken a photo of this one coming out of the oven, it looked fucking fantastic. You can see a version of a vegan Martha-Choke on What the Hell does a Vegan eat anyway? where they appear to enjoy this dish quite regularly and I coincidentally happened upon whilst writing up.

I served mine with leftover brown rice, roasted potatoes & gravy, and a garnish of some of our dwindling watercress.

x

TWENTY ONE

At about 4pm on the 2nd of May I realised something had to be done.
I finally had an Ice-Cream cake in the fridge (that I have been covetting for for about a year, with thanks for the Kosher grocery stores in Bondi and my generous Partner for gifting it to me).
My birthday was to be on the following Wednesday, but I was moving to the Blue Mountains the next day and was going to be in Brisbane on the-day of my birth. CAKE PARTY was announced. 9pm, at Mgtvle (my now-former residence) because we had to do a trip up an down the mountain and wouldnt be back until then.
Alex and I hadn't had dinner yet so we ordered from Mad Pizza and by the time we'd finished eating and taken out the cakes, more friends (who had already had dinner) finally showed up in a timely manner, to taste the Vegan Baileys (as close as you can get without getting your eyes wet)

Kosher Parve Ice Cream cake made out of TOFU MILK. yay.

Pandan coconut cake made by Katrina of Rise up & Bake (who makes the gluten free cakes at Funky Pies).

My sweet-heart friend Kathy made a beautiful Tofu Salad and her aunty made some Sticky Rice Leaves with banana and red bean.

unfortunately I've been really bad at getting batteries for my camera so these photos are from my ex housemate Stella and so there isn't any of the wonderful food I ate in my trip to Brisbane which included: Hell Pizza, 2 kinds of Birthday cake my mum made, Kuan Yin, Magic Wok, Many different kinds of Mochi (INCLUDING A VEGAN CHOCOLATE COVERED PEANUTBUTTER FILLED ONE), and The Forest.

Banana Bread

(or, "YOU'VE NEVER EATEN WHAT???")

Before a chance taste of it in my bedroom a few months ago, my friend Damian had never eaten banana bread before. Before she came to Australia at the end of last year, she also had never eaten dumplings, risotto, ice cream sodas, mi goreng, or even a pumpkin before.
There is probably a few other things we fed her that she said "what the fuck is this" to that I can't think of. She was also quite fascinated in learning about all the different things I can't eat because of being a coeliac.

For all fairness, before I met Damian I had never had partaken of, nor heard of a sandwich cake before (if you ever befriend a Swede and they offer to make this for you, PARTAKE OF IT!!! Damian's friends Stina and Karin came and made some vegan versions for our house and one especially for me with gluten free bread a month ago, I get cravings for it once a week now).
Damian was so amazingly stoked on any cake she had a piece of that I had made whilst she stayed at our place, especially of banana bread, that I couldn't resist but make a loaf for her especially for her bon-voyage. Damian left this afternoon to return to Gothenburg.

I have a few recipes that I use/mix up between when making banana bread, but decided to go with a variation that Alex and I have agreed on based on this one from theppk.com.
This recipe is very easy but we found the original to be a bit too sweet and "cakey" for our taste and have settled on this adaptation for less-fuss bananabread. It has had a history in our trials of being able to withstand many different combinations of gluten free flours, which is probably the ultimate test of my trust in a baking recipe. I also like this one ebcause it can get quite "bready" sometimes and is delicious toasted, and has an incredibley good crust.

I myself didn't get to partake of this batch as I had to work when everyone was being Damian's company for her last hours in Sydney, but I heard incredibley encouraging reports of its worthiness for the blogosphere (also it photographed well).

• 1 cup raw sugar
• 1/3 cup margarine
• 4 overripe ladys finger bananas, mashed
• 1 cup plain flour (gluten free generic mix)
  
• 1/4 cup self raising flour (this is a gluten free thing that I do, the original recipe shouldnt need the extra boost that gf flours often do)
• 3/4 cup chickpea flour
• 1/2 t bicarb soda
• 1/4 cup rice milk mixed with 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Cream the sugar and margarine, fold in the bananas and milk/vinegar mix and then the vanilla essense. Sift in the flours baking soda, salt and spices. Pour batter into a greased loaf tin and sprinkle extra sugar and cinnamon on top (this helps the crust to get all sweat and caramelised and rustic. it helps if you do this step before you put it into the oven but I forgot this time until the bread only had 15 minutes left) hour, and let cool and rest for at least half an hour before eating the fuck out of it.

Look at the crust! So crusty! So crusty it has an I ♥ D-BEAT tattoo!**








**sorry for the personal joke, another friend of ours who has an I HEART DBEAT tattoo left for Sweden today as well, on the same flight as Damian, and there was much discussion of his tattoo last night.

SMOFU UPDATE

*smofu: smoked tofu.
IMO blue lotus brand smoked tofu is more delicious than the earnest bean smoked tofu. better texture (smoother) and flavour (more subtle).
thank you, carry on, etc.

note: my opinion on brands of smofu is based on my own requirements and tolerances of a smoked product. the earnest bean has its merits but the blue lotus brand is the origin of my smofu love and therefore, my preferred.

Speed entry: Smoked Tofu

EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT HOLY SHIT WHY DIDN'T ANYONE EVER TELL ME THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD.
I've eaten things with liquid smoke before and been, quite honest, a bit turned off from it being so overwhelming and kind of weird so I guess that's why I never thought about giving smoked tofu a try.
In Sydney I work two days a week for an organic home delivery service, packing organic fruit and veg and groceries into boxes for delivery. Which, in itself is an amazing thing to be able to work with but not only that I get to snack on 100% certified organic food all the time and discover 'new' brands or products (new to me, not necessarily new to the planet. although we had this Mexican chocolate about a month ago...) and we can eat things/take things home from work when they are out of date or close to it.
SO. I get to have lots of caramelised onion hummus (!!!!) and beautiful fresh jams on my corn things (bleh) as well as beautiful fruit and veg, and I get to slice off a couple of pieces of smoked tofu for myself today and BANG BANG BANG omnomnom my mind exploded.

in shorter: eat the fuck out of this shiz'nit for the picture of it is making me salivate and maybe even have lustful tastey thoughts.

Making time for Best Friends, Punk Rock, and Connectivity.

my 36-hour secret surprise trip to melbourne entailed the following:

napping in my favourite ever bed in the world - thanks caitlin honey!

fresh produce lunch - asparagus, bok choy, oyster mushroom, bean sprouts, deep fried tofu, red cabbage, red chilli, soya dressing and fresh coriander.
caitlin!!! caitlin told me about how during the heatwave all the coriander in victoria melted, and in queensland's floods, all the coriander drowned and so it was particularly hard to come across fresh australian coriander during this time of hardship. which is a good thing if you're one of those people who think coriander/cilantro is a foot-smelling disgusting herb. fascists.


house show/closing party for a sharehouse where a group of my best friends have inhabitted for around 2 or so years. singing along to a rites of spring cover with Ex Spectator, surprising my besties and people that I love and miss entirely and without exception.

breakfasting at a minor place - henry's white beans, soy flat white (made perfect), dogs and big hugs.

attending a bushfire benefit hXc show and eating ferrer rocher truffles, sushi, rice paper rolls and a delicious banana chocolate smoothie all for the sake of raising much needed moneys for the homes and families of buishfire victims. also, all my circuits!!! what a wonderful, fun band!


coming home to my big happy warehouse and getting lots of hugs from my darlings
x

Red Emma's Sausage Fest.

There's a couple of habits A and I have when it comes to cooking together.
Alex is really good at making use of all the spare/going bad veggies in the fridge (there's a lot of prolific dumpster divers living in MGTVLE, plus there's 7 of us and only one fridge) before they're totally uselessly expired. This sometimes frustrates me (because I really don't think we have to put EVERYTHING in one dish just cos it's there and the chances are that noone will use xyz thing before it's too late) but sometimes it works well, and it works especially well when we have a couple of "stock" meals that we like to make quite regularly that have very basic guidelines and lots of room to move with, so the meal can be as simple or as heavy as you like/require, based on the likelyhood of chucking out some old veggies.

Red Emma is a pasta dish that has incredibley loose rules. Which should be so, considering the dish's namesake, couldn't be more appropriate!
The "rules" for Red Emma are: at least one chargrilled red capsicum in the sauce. Hopefully the chargrilled capsicum is a stand-out feature of the sauce for the pasta, otherwise it's good to put in other red things (chillies and paprika and tomato paste are smiled upon!).

This version made use of a very intriguing vegetarian "roast sausage" I found in a asian grocery store on Marrickville Rd that seems to be made completely out of soy. I've found the sausages to be almost overwhelmingly pork-like (the only meat that really repels me unless it is in the form of salami) but it found it's place well used in this pasta sauce. I don't often get the chance to cook with sausage (most vege sausages are wheat laden) so felt a bit at a loss with these guys and took a chance for Monday night's dinner..

Fried the sausages (2 small sized sausages cut into circles) with lots of garlic and mushrooms, balsamic and tamari. added chillies, tomato paste and one large charred capsicum, skin peeled off. to make it more 'saucey' I added a thickening mix of cornflour and water, let the sauce come together and added a bit more tomato paste before throwing in a roughly chopped bunch of basil.

This turned out pretty well. Alex was impressed with my soy-heavy sausages' flavour and said in this sauce they smelled/tasted like Csabai sausage!! Which is disgusting if you think about it too long but is really impressive, suitabley european for miss Emma G.

Answer your cravings, They'll love you for it.

Lamingtons were made after Mandee wrote about her lamington cupcakes. I did the same thin as her except for I doubled the recipe and baked into a square tin. I'd been craving this treat for about 5 months and I was oh-so satisfied. Also feeding this uh, "national" cake to the two people I live with who come from Europe was pretty nice too, such a simple treat to be so impressive!

Phở.

props to my favourite domestic photographer and ex-housemate, caitlin molloy for snapping this pic in melbourne's footscray.
May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman

After lots of tom-foolery and suddenly deciding that we were hungry RIGHT NOW, it was concluded that Alex and I should partake in a meal that we've both only previously had part of a couple of times and had never made before. I had bookmarked this recipe from Cathy's Gastronomy blog before I moved to Sydney (and was living within shouting's distance of Footscary, sigh!) let it completely slip my mind until last night.

Totally forgetting having been told by my other ex-housemate Riva that this was a hard dish to attain authenticity of (and maybe she would find this attempt of Phở to perhaps be an insult), we went ahead. I made a couple of changes based on what we had around us/didn't have/it was too late to go to the asian grocer to attend to/woolworth's had run out of stuff, but damn if I didn't fool myself into wanting to dive into this beautifully subtle broth.

I onlh took a coupla quick outta-focus snaps before the batteries ran out and my tummy started calling child protection services for neglect.

So an editted version of the original recipe looks like this: (for extra laziness I have literally copy+pasted the recipe from it's original source, cutting out and adding what we did and didn't do!)

For broth

• 1 leek (leaves only)
• 1 brown onion
• 1 chunk of fresh ginger
• 5 star anise
• 2 Massel Chicken-style stock cubes.
  
• Water
• Soy sauce (Tamari for no Belly-drama!) to taste
  
• Sugar also to taste.

Heat water (about 10-12 cups, depending on how many your serving) with chicken stock cube in a medium-sized soup pot, leaving enough room for the ginger, onion and leek leaves.

Remove the outer layer of the onion and add it whole to the broth. Leaving the skin of the ginger intact, chop off the nubs and bruise using a mortar and pestle. Add to broth. Separate the leek leaves from the stems and add them to the broth along with five star anise “fruits.” Let the soup boil on high heat for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the onion and ginger have softened.

Once the onion and ginger have softened, discard the leek leaves. Add seasonings of soy sauce and sugar to taste. Continue to cook on medium heat for an additional 15 minutes.

For “meat”

• Vegetable oil
• 1 leek (stem only)
• 1 zucchini, sliced into circles
• 1 green capsicum, chopped into strips
  
• 8 oz. sliced mushrooms (any variety)
• Soy sauce (Tamari!)
• Black pepper
• Dried chilli flakes
  

While the soup is boiling, thinly slice the leek stems and chop the mushrooms and zucchini.

Saute the leeks with vegetable oil in a medium-sized pan until golden. Add the mushrooms and zucchini to the leek and oil mixture. Season to taste with soy sauce, chilli and black pepper.

Get your lover/partner/best friend/housemate/some guy you see to pull a puss face pose and enjoy.

Grab a bowl and fill it with noodles (banh phở - fresh flat rice noodles preferable) and the “meat” mixture. Pour some hot broth on top. To garnish, add fresh or steamed bean sprouts, onions, cilantro, lime juice, herbs (basil, saw tooth herb, etc.), hoisin sauce and chili sauce.

Taro Taro Taro

I'm not going to make excuses for not blogging.

Alex and Damian celebrated their birthdays at Coogee beach and I made a couple of offerings, one being a baked tofu cheesecake, and the other a HIGHLY experimental Taro Banana Coconut cake with Raw frosting (the cake was sugar fest. an absolute sugar fest).
Other food-gifts were vegan Honeycomb made by Kathy, a tofu and asparagus Toss by Louise and Alex made a soba noodle salad. Delcious.

Louise once said she was going to have an "extreme pot luck" where guests would be invited to cometo dinner and bring a dish that used either unconventional ingredients or methods or otherwise seemed kind of pointless. (Her example was a savory 'jellybean pie').
This cake may not be unconventional (it is based off of a Hawaiian recipe list I found whilst trying to figure out what to do with the taro) it was unexpected.
Flour free, lots of waiting for our frozen taro to get to mashing state, not sure whether or not we were cooking it right, also mentioning the idea of the cake to a few people tweaked some "huh?? wtf?" reactions to the concept.

Conceptual cake. Woah. Think about it. Cake concepts. Cake, as a concept. Fuck. Heavy.

Taro-Banana Coconut Cake

• 2 cups. hot peeled and cooked mashed taro
  (we used two pieces of frozen fresh taro that alex got from a asian supermarket. these took a while to cook until mashing state - its ready when kind of purpley)
• 2 bananas, mashed
• 1/4 cup melted nondairy margarine
• 1/4 tsp. each ground nutmeg and cinnamon
• 1 cup dessicated/shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 cup nondairy milk
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Grease a shallow cake pan (we used a loaf tin, but this would make a lovely round cake. it may help to put this off until you've completed making the batter so you know what sort of volume you're dealing with. this cake doesnt rise, so if it's shallow it'll cook more thoroughly. i feel that the loaf tine depth was why we had a very moist cake, which we enjoyed a lot).
Preheat the oven to 180c (350f i think!).
Combine the hot taro with the melted margarine, mashing again as you work the two into each other.
Add the coconut, bananas and sugar, mix in well.
Then the cinnamon, nutmeg, milk and vanilla, beat all together for about a minute. We may have done a better job if we used an electric mixer but we don't have one Also it was 1am.
Pour into cake pan and bake for 45 minutes to an hour (or until firm).

I made a Raw "whipped cream" icing (my first time using a piping bag. didn't win) using the cream section of this recipe.
I have a lot of opinions about the whole 'raw-food' thing, so I got scoffed at by Louise and Al when making this recipe because I've had a history of scoffing at raw food (well. not the food, but diet. I am scared of cults) but as I used maple syrup not honey (for true-to-vegan purity) it became a cooked food because maple syrup is not raw!! Yay, I win, etc.
Fucking delicious, by the way. Made for good ice cream when kept in the freezer, or like a yoghurt with cereal the next day. Whee.

The post-digestion swim in Coogee was amazing and we did some great explorations into the rockpools, hanging out with hermit crabs, bigger crabs, molluscs and tiny fish.

POST SCRIPT: Pip keeps getting me to mention if the recipe is any good, because apparently the inclusion into my blag doesn't actually promise that it is a good recipe and you should try it.
THIS IS. Also, you'll note that my blagging is very sporadic and this is generally because I can't be bothered writing a recipe out for something I only kind-of enjoyed eating.
I enjoyed this cake, Alex enjoyed this cake, everyone at the potfuck enjoyed this cake (albiet, not as intensely was the enjoyment as my tofu cheesecake, but still, people did surprise faces and happy faces for this cake).
ALSO: I have no plan on sticking the "air-humping" tag onto just any ol' recipe, willy-nilly.
NILLY.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Festivus Bird.

Or: FUCK YOU MOTHER FUCKAZ I GOT 2xTOFURKEY WITHIN 3 DAYS OF EACHOTHER AND Y'ALL IS JUST JEALOUSES.
Or: I shouldn't write food-blog posts whilst thinking about listening to Wu-Tang Clan because the echo-effect of being hip hop isn't actually as reflective of bringing the mother-fucking ruckus (ain't nuttin to fuck with, etcetera).

Tofurkey of the Festive Season #1:
Prepared quite hastily (well, considering that it is a recipe that requires resting over night, i did it pretty chaotically) for Fjorn's birthday pot luck (other contributions to the luck included: olive loaf and coffee scrolls - from Ruth, a curry yum from Sam, salad by Tim and Fjorn herself provided some delicious chickpea stuffed mushrooms from the grill!) - to the stuffing I added cranberries for festive charm or some shit. Mostly because I had intened to probide a cranberry sauce but napping happened instead.
Fjorn's birthday is the 24th of December which makes her Jesus' totally cooler and more-legit twin. The pot luck was on the traditionally (like, according precisely to the episode of Seinfeld that it comes from - information I collected from WIKIPEDIA, TELLER OF TRUTHS) celebrated date of Festivus. For the rest of us.


Tofurkey of the festive season #2:
At Mgtvle, the warehouse my partner and friends live in - in Sydney. Alex had bared witness and ploayed an integral part to the creating of the tofurkey we celebrated winter in Anglesea with in July and had prepared the 'tofu mold' for this bird before I got to Sydney to help finish it off with stuffing, basting, etcetera.
I have little doubt that we're going to make this roast a off the cuff thing tradtion very soon considering I only checked the recipe for cooking times and how to make the cornbread (which I pretty much disregarded in both cases) for stuffing.
Despite being a quite involved, messy and slow cooking recipe, it has become really easy for this to be made based purely on instinct and taste. I realise whilst writing thist post that this was roasted 1 year exactly from the day I first roasted this kind of tofurkey. December 26th, the day of boxes.
We charred it a little on the skin - this bird has a crispy beancurd 'skin' that was marinated and thrown over the top of the roasting tofu halfway through it's time in the oven- because we got a little distracted and excited about the deep frying machine that has recently surfaced at Mgtvle. I have no shame in this fact: I HAVE WANTED TO HAVE A DEEP FRYING MACHINE SINCE I WAS 15 YEARS OLD. Now, I am pretty young, so this is only 5 years ago but still. I am so excited and bouncy.
It's a bit tricky to decide how to slice and transfer the bird from dish to plate elegantly. Here served with sweet potato chips (deep fried). The alterations to the stuffing were carrots in place of celery, and the addition of flat beer with the stock.
Another difference between these two birds were the variables of herbs and stock put into the tofu mould, the kind firm tofu used in either (I can't tell you what Alex used because I wasn't there. I know he didn't have "chicken" stock and that his tofu felt different to the stuff I used on the 23rd) also that Alex left the bird in the mold in the refrigerater for at least 48 hours longer than I did (I only had mine in over one night) which I think spoke for much in terms of what kind of texture we got from the bird.

It took me forever to re-surface the link from which I first decided to make this kind of tofurkey over a year ago, but I found it originally from, and adapted it from here: at What Do I Know? by Kathy - who adapted her recipe from a popular one at VegWeb. I made the bean curd skin from inspiration taken from Bryanna Clark Grogan and what I did was basically just get a sheet of dry bean curd skin, soak it in a watered-down warm version of the marinade we gave to the rest of the bird and wrapped the top of the tofu-lump with it after it had been in the oven for a little over half it's roasting time.

I really wish I'd taken photos of the FUCKING LOVELY Apple & Strawberry custard crumble Alex made for me (with a short crust base that blows my gluten-freed mind) as well as the Veganomicon feast that Louise made for a bunch of us on Christmas Day as well.

Louise made for desert following the bird, a cake based on the Brooklyn/Boston cream pie cupcakes from VCTOW using wheat flour that I should not have partaken of. hehe.

White Goji Antidote CUPCAKED

It's been a really long time since I've invented a cupcake recipe on my own. Or since I've even wanted to. I don't make cupcakes that often anyway. The last time I created a cupcake recipe, I invented two at the same time and they travelled to New South Wales with me to feed lovers and stoners. The recipes were for a chocolate-licorice type (that was inspired by my partner as well as being stuck on reading Emma Goldman's autobiography, Living my Life) and a coconut-lime-ginger "butter"cupcake.

As I've been sick too often these days, I've actually been really slack with my eating habits or even being organised and motivated enough to cook something and eat it. The most I've been eating has often been different combination of spreads and salad on a corn thin. Seriously. It's been pretty fucked up and I get frustrated when people tell me to eat and I just-can't-do-it. The antidote to this sort of a rut is to bake something.

Even though I make sweets often and eat them often, I actually kind of feel really spiteful towards them. I can't even explain how that works, but baking or making sweet things when I'm unwell seems to get me in a mode of "I can do this cooking stuff, and then I have to eat it or it goes to waste" which is better than "I can't even think about chewing on food". It gets me to this good better-eating habit place because I THEORETICALLY dislike sweets, therefore I must be making sweets for someone else. right? like, that totally makes sense.
Except for in the house I live in now its just Riva and I and though she does love delicious things, she is a small lady, and its still just two of us.

ANYWAY
WHATEVERI made a white chocolate chip cupcake using Quinoa flour and hid Goji berries in 'em and a white chocolate ganache icing. You can do it too!

Preheat your oven to 180c. Learn the metric system if you don't know it.

Dry hump: 1.5 c quinoa flour
1 t bicarb soda
1 t baking powder
0.5 t sea salt
1 c brown sugar
5 T soy milk powder

Wet love: 1.25 c non dairy milk
(this is a rough estimate. see how much you feel is necessary after one cup)
1 T apple cider vinegar
2 t vanilla extract

And then: 0.75 c mini non dairy white chocolate chips
(i got mine from rishon's)
0.5 c dried goji berries.
-this is completely to taste. i think i probably scrimped a bit on the gogoji as their taste is pretty subtle.

These were done after about 20/25 minutes. I think if I do it again I'll look into using a different combo of flours, they tasted delicious but like, earthy. With a nice whisper of SECRET QUINOA LURKING WITHIN.

For the ganache (which there is too much of now sitting in a tub in the freezer) I did this:
double-boil 1c white chocolate chips with 3 T margarine. mixed with 0.25 c water, 3 c icing sugar, 1 t vanilla extract and the juice of half a lemon. oh and a pinch of sea salt. whip-it. freeze it. whip it. freeze it. whip it onto cupped cakes.

INFORMATION ABOUT GO-GOJI!

Preshafruit Fruit Juices

So like, the most exciting thing about my work these days (besides being on the site where this year's World Vegan Day festivities took place) is the availability of Donnyboy PRESHAFRUIT fruit juices at the Convent Bakery (famous in my office for really lacklustre coffee, a horrible manager, and the absolutely last resort of catering for meetings held here on site). This stuff is the bitches' bees knees, spread wide and open, fresh from the earth's uterus.

FUCK.

So like, when you normally make apple juice, and other juices, you have to pasteurise the fruit with heat. so the juice is just sort of rendered into this generic 'apple' taste and depending on the company, they will either leave it cloudy (for the vegans) or zap it full of what-have-yous (with fish preservatives!). cloudy apple juice is the most preferred, because it's sort of like the equivalent to an orange juice with heaps of crazy pulp action.

When Donnyboy makes PRESHAFRUIT fruit juices, they pressurise the produce, cold. This makes the shelf life(fridge life) a bit longer, and also leaves the juice with the fragrance and flavour of the specific species-type of fruit in tact. APPLE JUICE WITH INTEGRITY! So far I have only tried the Granny Smith and the Pink Lady juices and -damn-. Damn, fuck, and shit.

x x

TASMANIA IS EMPTY

this map shows our route.
yellow dots is where we slept the night and green dots are where we stopped.
if you click the map it will expand and you can identify it. we drove clockwise.

Or so you'd think, seeing as the only people in these photos are Alex and I and the golliwogs (R.I.P) I am basically going to cut+paste what I emailed to my family about our trip with more tidbits of info and probably more foodie stuff (though we didnt have much excitement after hobart) because I am lazy.

day 1 - Hobart. we arrived the night before to go see Mt Eerie play a show. My friend grant supported. it was nice. This picture show an armchair that was constructed out of golliwog dolls at the resource collectables shop on Elizabeth street... Hobart was kind of dull but there was an awesome vegetarian chinese place we had lunch pretty cheaply (this was Shu Yuan and was FUCKING AMAZING and we both had dreams about it). There is also a veg/vegan restraunt that is open for dinner but it was INCREDIBLEY pricey/bourgeois and so we gave it a miss (this was Siren's. We read the menu outside the door, Quinoa Caviar, and other fancy crap. averaging $25 a pop, no thanks!). We also found a decently stocked record store on elizabeth street.

day 2 - Upper Florentine Valley. We drove to the site of the Camp Florentine (camp flozza) on day 1, got told some information (see: myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened) about the site and had tea and soup with the protesters (tree punx) we made dinner at ted's beach at lake pedder and slept at a lookout point over the gordon dam. We thought this would be nice to wake up to in the morning but it was SOOO WINDY AND RAINY that we didnt even look outside.
We had breakfast at ted's beach again and then went back to the tree punx! yay! they showed us where we could go for a beautiful rainforest walk and we gave them an assortment of tea and bread and chillies. We really should have taken photos of the camp site and the treepunx but it didn't happen. The campsite was attacked by a group of loggers earlier this week but as far as i know, camp flozza is still going on. a logger kicked one of the punx in the head and a part of the blockade was hit with sledgehammers.. nb: Camp Flozza is still going at this point and will celebrate it's 2 years of peaceful community protest next saturday!

day 3 - After our rainforest walk, we drove (forever!) around lake st clair and through the national park and ended up in the (very incestuoous, but also helpful) Queenstown to park and sleep the night. They sold fools gold in the petrol station we stopped at which reminded me of being a kid and loving fools gold! There was nothing to do in Queenstown so we got right out of there and drove north and into cradle country.
We didnt do any of the national park walks and stuff becuase those cost money but we walked around and it was really lovely. it was the first day of sunshine we got in tassie and so we were pretty stoked. Lots about the lodge and also heaps of other stuff about tasmania reminded us of twin peaks, creepy and beautiful, lots of beautiful dutch houses and stuff.. heh.
We kept going and ended up in Wynyard, and it was just before the Tulip festival so there was tulips everywhere in the township and we went to see the tulip farm and looked out at the bass strait. we then drove to stanley to see the nut, which is basically uluru, but wet.
Stanley was a really beautiful town parked at the very base of the nut and was tiered, it made driving around the town really cool but also kind of confusing. and we saw penguins (dodgy dark photo with white marks. some of the white marks are penguins) and bunnies! there were lots of bunnies whereever we wanted there to be penguins. heehe. we slept in Wynyard.

day 4 - We drove from Wynyard to Launceston, where the museum has the science centre inside and it is free and there was a really cool exhibition on fungus and lichens and moss and stuff. cooool.
And we went to cataract gorge which was ENORMOUS and AMAZING and IN THE MIDDLE of launceston. We climbed a mysterious way along the side of the gorge (we didnt go through it because we didnt wanna pay for parking!) and found an AWESOME hydro-electric house that'd been run down. we have lots of photos of that.

Most of Tasmania's electricity comes from either wind or water. there were lots of water mills and a big wind farm that we didnt go to. yay natural resources! We then drove from Launceston to the east coast and watched the sun set over coles bay, mt freycinet and the hazards. ti was beautiful. We slept at a coastal town caleld Bicheno (we kept saying 'Bitch-no' because we're gangsta)

day 5 - in the morning it was hot so we went to 9 mile beach which is beautiful and overlooks oyster bay, such beautiful white beaches and crystal clear water!! the water was FREEEZING so we just sat there for a while.
We then drove straight down to hobart to have a geeze at the salamanca markets (boring! couldn't find them veeg pies you bloggers raved about) and went into the huon valley and looked at the APPLE MUSEUM. amazing and creepy! yay, I bought two cook books - one full of apple recipes and one full of pumpkin recipes.
I feel like the apple cookbook should have been called "WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THESE GOD DAMN APPLES", seeing as I think that almost every residence in the Valley either had an apple tree (in beautiful blossoming this time of year!) or was right next to an orchard. We were given some apples for free (this is actually the only time we ate apples during our trip) with purchase, score, they were wonderful apples.
we slept in a nice little bay past franklin. we slept for about 12 hours.. quite tuckered out, i'd say!

day 6 - we woke up and cleaned the van on the inside and then drove to a model village in the town of glen huon. the village was built by frank & betty clarke over the past 20 years and was brilliant. you could go into the big shoe (at the back in this photo)and see the little old lady who lives in it and there was all these bells in the churches and children singing and there was a crooked man in a crooked house and a sculpture of an aboriginal spearsman(not very politically correct) and a teepee and at the end we stuck our heads in the applehead thingy. Back through Hobart we stopped at the Royal Botanical Gardens which was beautiful and informative but I think I was probably too hungry to enjoy it.

we then drove to dodges ferry and sat by the beach which was lovely and then cleaned the rest of the van and flew back to melbourne and slept forever.

we used the standard campervan offered by devil campervans (pictured - ours was yellow) we had a devil of a time. bikini babes were not included.

the end.

PS: AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO ALWAYS MISREADS THE WORD 'POTLUCK' FOR 'POTFUCK'. ALSO WHENEVER I GO TO WRITE 'POTLUCK' I INSTINCTIVELY START WRITING 'POTFUCK'. CAN SOEMONE PLEASE SHOW ME WHAT A VEGAN POTFUCK IS? DOES IT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH CAKE FARTS?