Valenutella's Day Molten Explosion (in-your-oven) Cake

Part One: Valenutella's Day

Nutella is a product barely short of an obsession for my loved one. I have found him standing in the kitchen, swirling his finger inside the awkwardly-shaped jar, trying to get as much of the chocolately spread as possible in one swivel. Which is why I felt like a deadbeat girlfriend when not only was I the one to break the news that there even is such a thing as National Nutella Day, but I didn't do a damn thing about it! And it was a Saturday! When all I had to do was plod around in my fleece socks and pretend like I had more important things going on than gorging on chocolate!

Well, I spied this recipe yesterday morning, and decided that since I watched National Nutella Day fly by on February 5th without so much as a lick of the stuff, I was going to get down to business 5 days later. But of course I can't make a decision without analyzing it from 348 different angles, so I thought about Valentine'a Day being a mere 5 days away, and began questioning the timeline for this (not-extravagant-at-all) baking extravaganza.

Ahem, LIGHTBULB: Make the flippin' Nutella cake smack dab in between it's own holiday and Valentine's Day, and we'll be celebrating Valenutella Day. Hard to argue with logical efficiency.



Part 2: Molten Cake

So here I go, 10 hours of cake planning under my belt. I had gone to the gym after work, putting me home at around 8, tired and sweaty. Good conditions for undertaking such a task. But, I had completed my first tempo workout for my half marathon training and logged in about 7 miles for the night, so I was jiving for some butter and sugar.

I'll post the recipe at the end, but this thing was so EASY to put together. You have your dry ingredients, throw in your wets, cover endlessly with sugar and chocolate and then pour on some water.

This cake is definitely a lava-esque type: gooey in the middle, with brownie quality all along the outer edges. I am a failure, and didn't pick up ice cream on the way home from work, but this cake belongs on top of some Haagen Daz. I mean, it has built-in warm chocolate sauce for crying out loud. Amazing the products that come out of a little chemistry/oven teamwork.

Part 3: Explosion-In-Your-Oven

(I want to put a picture here, but my camera won't take a quality one of the inside of my oven. Think: black. Charcoal black.)

I'm here to be real with you guys. Playing around in the kitchen mostly leads to phenomenal dishes (duh), and sometimes leads to messy situations.

First off, I'm an idiot. Second off, this is an easy fix and I really wasn't upset (especially since that cake still held up as bomb.com).

The recipe calls for an 8 inch baking dish. Well, I had everything BUT. So I used a pie dish. Bad idea.

My first clue should have been in the last step, when I poured 1 cup of hot water over the cake - the dish was almost full.

Looking back, why did I continue adding in the last 1/2 cup of hot water? Was it because baking is science and anything that strays from a cake recipe is destined to turn out tasting like chalk? Was it because I was too busy daydreaming of my next 3 meals to think about my next disaster? Was it because I secretly knew I wanted to scrub out my oven on a Friday night?

I don't know, but I do know that about 25 minutes into the baking time the smoke alarm went off, sending me into the kitchen where a cloud of smoke was waiting for me. Opened the oven door, and there is cake molton spewing everywhere - all over the sides of the pie plates, down through both racks, onto the oven floor...pretty explosively awesome.

When this happens, there's only 2 things to do:

1. Remove cake from oven.

2. Eat said cake in bed while you settle down for a nice Thursday night rendezvous with NBC.

Oh, and turn off the oven. Now go eat your cake.


Valenutella's Day Molten Explosion (in-your-oven) Cake
Barely adapted from Alice

*After making this, I realized my substitutions created this vegan, without even meaning to. Make whatever substitutions you want, but I can vouch for this one and say it's almost gone 24 hours later. In a house of 2 people. Excuse me while I go complete my Core Fusion.

3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder (2 if your not using Pamela's GF flour)
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cocoa powder, divided
1 cup sugar, divided
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup Nutella
6 tablespoons melted Earth Balance (or butter)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
1-1/2 cup hot water

How To's

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, 3 tablespoons of the cocoa powder and 1/2 cup sugar together.

3. Stir in milk, Nutella, butter and vanilla extract. Since we are nearing the end of our Nutella jar when the spread gets a little thicker, I had to mircrowave it with the butter for about 30 seconds, stirring every 10 seconds.

4. Spread the mixture into your 8 inch backing dish. This is important folks. I think you understand.

5. In a separate mixing bowl, stir together 1/2 cup white sugar, 3 tablespoons cocoa powder and brown sugar; sprinkle evenly over the brownie mixture in dish.

6. Pour the hot water over the whole thing (no stirring) and put in oven for 40-45 minutes. Or until your fire detectors go off and you get to eat it a little more soupy than normal. Hallelujah for egg-free recipes!

Caramelizing Onions

Are you cooking for one?

Yes? Good.

Oh, no? You're feeding your better half, toddler, grandma and your momma tambien?

Well then you had better hope they want sweet, juicy onions on everything they eat the next few days, because that is exactly what YOU will be doing.

Last week, carmelized onions fit into my personal "gourmet food" category, the type of food I would spy on a menu and immediately order because a. I dream of onions, b. there's no way I could ever caramelize my own onions and c. I don't like fresh breath.

Then I stole the most recent Taste of Home magazine from my mom and saw an article on how to (yea, you guessed it) caramelize onions.

With 2 ingredients, I'll let my pinky toe do all the work - it's that simple.

You can use any white or sweet onion for these, but the Taste of Home article reccommended just regular yellow onions, which I went with. But guarenteed, I will be testing out the others soon!

I used them to put on pizza, and then I used the little leftovers I had to put in a salad - totally jazzed the greens up to full flavor.

 

Caramelized Onions

I would use one onion for every person eating, although leftovers can come in handy for some extra flavor to...well, anything.

Yellow Onion

olive oil

1. Lob the top and bottom of your onion off; cut in half; peel.

2. Slive the 2 onion halves in narrow, crescent slivers.

3. Throw the onions in a frying pan with a little olive oil over medium heat; as it all heats, stir the onions around so they're all evenly coated with oil.

4. Keep on medium-low heat for the next 20 or so minutes, until they're all brown and gloriously coated in their own juices; at this point you could also season with salt or some sugar to accentuate their natural sweetmess.

Saucy Vegan Spring Rolls

My stomach is rebelling. I don't think my body is into the whole gorge-on-as-much-dairy-as-your-grubby-fingers-can-get plan as much as my eyes are. It's a sort of civil war, but this one has an easy solution that can be fixed up if you have a little time. And your running shoes, there's a lot of that pot-chasing that I mentioned these require none of.

A few words about these buggers:

You will need rice wrappers, which I found in the Asian section of Fred Meyer. Have I confessed to you my love for Freddies? I don't think so, and I definitely don't have enough time for that now.

Go WILD, toss in whatever veggies you want, just remember to plan accordingly and know that harder veggies like potatoes will take longer than the cabbage to cook.

They taste GOOD. Like, I inhaled mine. And then the boy's. And then I had to get my tucas up and make more because hungry boyfriends < full boyfriends.


Vegan Spring Rolls
Makes 8-10 rolls

1 cup broccoli florets (mine came straight from the freezer)
2 tablespoons garlic
1/2 package diced tofu
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups thinly sliced cabbage
1/2 cup garbanzo beans
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
10 sticks asparagus
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons Hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon lime juice
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 package of rice wrappers
cilantro if you wish (I wished)

Here we go:

1. I like my tofu on the crispy side, so I begin by heating the tofu, garlic and broccoli up over medium heat with the vegetable oil; saute for about 5 minutes until the tofu is a little brown and before the garlic burns.


2. Add the sliced cabbage, garbanzo beans and white wine; bring to a boil for a minute, then turn the heat back down to a simmer and cover; stir about every 5 minutes.


3. In the meantime, place your asparagus spears in a steamer basket (I had to tear mine in half to fit) and place over a pot that is half full of water; bring the pot to a boil and steam the asparagus.


5. While your asparagus and cabbage are going (this is when you begin to sweat a little and realize you should up your jogging mileage. At least, that was my situation), mix together the soy sauce, Hoisin sauce, ground ginger, brown sugar and lime juice until combined.

6. When your cabbage mix is all nice and soft, turn off the burner; plop the peanut butter on and pour in the Hoisin sauce mixture; stir the whole pan up so it's all lovingly incorporated.

7. Turn your faucet on to a small drizzle of cold water, and run one rice wrapper underneath the water flow, turning it around so the water hits the entire wrapper evenly. You'll want the wrapper to be soft and pliable, but not disintegrating in your hands - mine took about 15 seconds.


8. Lay the wrapper on a flat surface and fill with rice, an asparagus spear, the saucy cabbage mixture and cilantro; roll the wrapper around its insides, making sure to tuck the ends in as you go.

9. I double-wrapped the majority of these because I'm a terrible wrapper roller and guts were falling out everywhere. Do what needs to be done!

Vegan Spicy Pear Bread

HAPPY NATIONAL NUTELLA DAY!

The recipe I'm posting right now has absolutely zero Nutella in it!

(Dumb. Bad planning.)

BUT, it is completely possible to spread some chocolately-hazelnutty schmear on this bread, especially when it's still warm from the oven.

Those pear chunks? Bountiful. And beautiful. Both on the eyes and on the taste buds.

Make this bread one morning, and good things will happen. Your windshield will scrape itself, your bills will be paid by your neighbor, and your hair won't have any static electricity.

(If any of that stuff does not occur, don't blame the bread. Blame the playa.)


Vegan Spicy Pear Bread
 Makes one 9x5 loaf


*Wild: If you decide to go vegan with me on this, I used the baking powder/oil/water substitute, which is 2 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon oil and 2 teaspoons baking powder. If not, use an egg!


1 Egg substitute
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 (about 1 large) peeled and chopped pear
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cup gluten-free flour blend (I used Pamela's, of course)
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease baking dish.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg substitute, vegetable oil, applesauce and sugar.

3. Fold in the pear and vanilla.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and spice.

5. Gradually add in the dry flour mixture to the wet mixture; fold all together just barely to incorporate all the ingredients.

6. Using a spatula, scoop the mixture into your baking dish and slide into the oven.

7. This takes about 55 minutes to cook, but I noticed it was starting to brown at 40 minutes so I covered it with tinfoil the last 15.

8. (optional) (not optional) Schmear some of the Nutella on a slice and go MMMMMMM.

9. Repeat step 8.

and some chips for kicks

If there's one vegetable that never had enough appeal for me to try, it was kale. It reminded me of seaweed's naggy stepmother, and who wants to deal with that?

But then I discovered I actually liked seaweed, which, according to philosophy 102, therefore meant that I should like kale. But then I looked up both seaweed and kale, and WHAT?! They're not even related. Off the hook. Chain. Whatever.

Then I told myself to take my thumb out of mouth and just freaking try kale. So I did, and maybe I had some help.

A Full Circle Farmer plucked that kale for me, gently put it my bi-weekly order, and sent it off my way. "Kale swing my waaay, surrre look gooood to meee." I'm so thankful I can suppress my food frights until someone else force feeds them to me. It's as if they know I'm not a food waster, and would rather kiss Jack Nicholson square on the lips (gag) before I throw away veggies.

After making these, I'm excited to try them raw in salad form. Kale is slightly sweet with a rougher texture that I could imagine would nicely accompany other types of greens.

So I made those. The green things, named Kale Chips. And I have zero regrets, namely because:

1. They are light and crisp and you feel like your eating salty air, but they are packed full of nutrients and not air so you don't have to worry about how much Gas-X you have left.

 2. THEY ARE REALLY GOOD!

3. They taste great dipped in that Caesar dressing or by themselves.

Kale Chips
(double the recipe if you want some leftovers, because one bunch was gone between 2 people in our house.)

-1 large bunch of kale
-3 tablespoons olive oil
-as much salt as you would like


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees; line a baking sheet with tinfoil if you're neat like that.

2. Wash and blot your kale dry; tear off the leaves from the hard stalk in the middle; discard the stalks and tear the leaves into bite-sized pieces, placing them in a large bowl.

3. Pour the olive oil over the kale leaves in the bowl, and massage the oil in with your hands; make sure you coat all the leaves so they'll crisp up.

4. Dash on the salt.

5. Scatter the leaves onto the baking sheet in a single sheet; if they're are piled on they will steam and get soft and that's not what we're going for.

6. These guys takes about 10 minutes to cook, but keep on eye on them. I flipped mine over at 5 minutes, which may not be necessary.

HARD CORE

FACT: My intake of mozzarella cheese and creamy coffee the past 2 days should be illegal.




FACT: Justifying glutenous cheese feedings by reminding yourself it had been a month since you've tasted the stuff, is actually OK. For 2 days.



FACT: I can feel my abs getting softer.



FACT: After this arrives, I will be in a melty, my-muscles-are-mush, puddle on the floor. I'm both thanking and blaming Rachel for my sudden motivation to obtain such a meltdown.



FACT: I need to go eat a carrot stick. Which will be rounded out with an orange M&M.

FACT: Sometimes a girl just needs a margarita the size of her head, and all clarity will be restored.

Vegan Caesar Salad with Roasted Golden Beets

"Ooo we ooo, killer tofuuu!" 

(Get it? Get it. Dig way back to 1991.)

The dinner plate family is back! Let me tell you, this girl is stoked to share this with you. There is something incredibly satisfying about creating something in the kitchen that zings off the taste buds. One of those dishes that makes you want to keep eating far beyond when you probably should, for stomach's sake. Whether you used a recipe stemming from your own ingenuity, or someone else's brilliant thoughts, it really makes no difference - the food is bomb.

This caesar (the word and I have fought since day 1. Ceasar? seezer? Capitalize? All hail the romaine) salad dressing comes largely from The Post Punk Kitchen, a network ran by a spunky vegan. Her cookbook has been a staple in my kitchen not only during Vegan-O-Con, but year round. Her recipes are cohesive and don't require expensive and out-there ingredients. 

Another hot point for the dressing: it came out on the thicker side (think bleu cheese) which I wasn't expecting, but then I doubled it as a veggie dip and then tripled it for another surprise I'll be posting. Needless to say, the lazy girl in me is thrilled with all this efficiency!

*The two ingredients I bypassed were the capers and caper juice, out of my displeasure of running out to the store at the ungodly hour of 7:30pm.

Vegan Caesar Salad with Roasted Golden Beets

Makes 2 entree salads and about 4 side salads

Caesar Dressing

1/3 cup slivered or sliced almonds
3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
3/4 cup silken tofu
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 heaping tablespoon capers

4tablespoons caper brine

1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder (I used spicy brown, to try and make up for the lack of caper-kick)
Salt

1. Blend garlic, tofu and oil in food processor until creamy.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until all is blended.

3. Put in the container you want to serve the dressing in; add almonds and shake/whisk it all together.

4. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before serving.

Roasted Beets

This is a toughy, so pay close attention:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Peel beets.

3. Wraps beets in tinfoil.

4. Place beets in oven for about 30 minutes, or until tender - they will be hawwwt coming out of the oven, so be careful unwrapping the tinfoil and make sure to let them cool a few before you try and slice em.

5. Slice the beets up, and either place them upon your salad greens or next to, then ladle on that dressing.