Molasses Ginger Cookies

I've been a bit of a jet setting vegan these past few weeks. I was in Montreal last weekend for Expozine, and after that I drove all over creation for work during the week. And then, on Thursday night I left on the not-quite-midnight train to Toronto so I could visit my friends Nicole and Alex and their excellent baby, Jacob. Who, by the way, looks like this:



Well. If that doesn't kick you in the babymaker, I don't know what will.

Where were we? Cookies! Right. Backing up! On my trip to Montreal I brought along some cookies and some date balls for the friends who were hosting me. The weekend before that one I'd traded a batch of these cookies for a big bin of compost for my garden plots, so I knew they would bake up nicely.

This is an old recipe from my university days when I wasn't afraid of Crisco. Now I am unnerved by vegetable shortening, but I forged ahead with the recipe anyway. If someone wants to try these with Earth Balance and get back to me, I'd be curious to hear how they work out. For now, I stuck with the original recipe. And they were fantastic.



Molasses Ginger Cookies

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp fresh grated ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup sugar (plus 1/4 cup more for tops of cookies)
1 cup vegetable shortening
2/3 cup blackstrap molasses

Preheat oven to 370 degrees.

Mix all dry ingredients.

Cut in the shortening with a pastry cutter or two knives until mixture is crumbly.

Mix in molasses and knead dough until ingredients are well mixed and dough is smooth.

Roll dough into a long cylinder and cut into thin, cookie-sized slices.

Spread 1/4 cup of sugar on a small plate and gently press each cookie's top into the sugar.

Place cookies on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes.

Makes approximately two dozen cookies.

Some Notes:

-These cookies are not, in the slightest, good for you. But, oh, how delicious they are. So we can overlook the shortening issue in the name of Everything In Moderation. Don't eat these cookies every day. Don't eat ten of them while you veg on the couch in front of Battlestar Galactica episodes. Just sayin'.

-This brand of molasses used to bear the slogan "A Good Source of Iron". The problem was, they placed the slogan right below the product name and therefore the box seemed to be proclaiming, "GRANDMA: A Good Source of Iron". This delighted me every time I reached for the box. Now they have done away with the slogan, perhaps because they didn't like the inference that consuming one's Nana was an excellent way to prevent anemia.

-When I gave these to my friend Jesse in Montreal he blurted out, "How do we know these won't suck? You don't eat sugar!" Well, jokes on you, Jesse. I know you loved the cookies and the SUGAR FREE date balls that came with them. Never doubt me again.

J.

National Bundt Cake Day!

Time to celebrate! Today, apparently, is National Bundt Cake Day! For real. If I'd known it was coming I'd have baked a cake. Well, that's a lie, because I did know it was coming, but I'm in Montreal this weekend selling zines and books at Expozine, and hence have no time for cake baking. So please, enjoy these two bundt cake re-runs from the past. Celebratory baked goods are always a good idea.

Blueberry Bundt Cake



Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake



Enjoy!

J.

Recent Kitchen Acquisitions

The radio silence around here lately has been due to a couple things. One, I now finally have my own camera back, after I broke it and then sent it to Canon to fix and then they broke it and I sent it back to them and they fixed it and sent it back to me. I love my camera so much, but I certainly do not love the crappy customer service I've gotten from Canon both times I've needed it to be fixed. Anyway, I'm getting back into the swing of using my own camera again, but holy, have I ever forgotten how to do just about everything camera related.

And also, I haven't exactly been a daredevil in the kitchen lately. Or in any other realm for that matter. If the non-musical Man of Science notices that I've listening to the same songs over and over again, then I must really be listening to the same songs over and over again. The same goes for food, but luckily the MoS has no problem with repeated servings of chickpea cutlets and mushroom gravy. Delicious! But not blog worthy.

So, to get back in the swing of things, I thought I'd use this post to showcase some of the exciting, non-edible things that have come into my kitchen recently, namely a rather early Christmas gift from the Man of Science. Why early you may ask? Because I happened to be home sick from work when the delivery man knocked on the door and said, "Can you sign for this delivery of knives from Japan?" And I did. And thus the surprise was ruined.



These knives are something else. They are so delightfully well made and so very sharp they have changed the way I conduct myself in the kitchen. For instance, they slice onions so efficiently that my sensitive-eye weeping spells seem to be a thing of the past. That alone, is worth ordering knives from Japan.

The Man of Science was a good sport about his Christmas surprise being ruined. Even when a second package arrived and he shrugged and said, "You might as well open it. It goes with the knives."



Ah! Eee! Woot! It's a "Please Pack Your Knives And Go" apron! I am in love with it. And yes, it was the perfect companion piece to the Japanese knives. Lucky me! But poor Man of Science with his excellent surprise all wrecked.

The third new item was a Value Village score. Value Village has been my second home lately, as I gather fabric for Christmas sewing projects, and the other day I was doing my usual quick scan of the kitchen items and there was a big, heavy, glass lasagna pan. Exactly what I've been on the lookout for these past few months. Excellent!



So I made a lasagna. And I took a lot of pictures of it, thinking that I could post the recipe on here and get back into my recipe routine. But the lasagna was terminally mediocre and I wouldn't want to inflict that on all of you. Apparently it is going to take me a little bit longer to get back to this blogging business. Thanks for bearing with me.


J.

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

Hello friends! Perhaps you've wondered where I've been all week? Perhaps you haven't. At any rate, I have been pretty much bedridden, trying desperately to get over The Cold That Would Not Leave. It's not swine flu, just a cold, but it has been the most ridiculously drawn-out cold I've had in years. It was like a slow motion cold. So when I was still feeling weak and hacky on Tuesday my boss told me to take the rest of the week off to rest and get better. And that's what I've done. Now finally today I am feeling like myself again. I imagine by the weekend I'll have energy to do regular stuff again. Which is good because I have an appointment to pick up a bunch of compost from a Facebook friend on Saturday. But that's a whole other story.

These mushrooms were made last week when The Cold That Would Not Leave was in its infancy. And they were awesome. Once again, I apologize for the wintery dark photos. I'll get the hang of seasonal photography soon, I promise.

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

6 medium sized portobello mushrooms
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
2 cups chopped greens (I used kale and spinach)
1 rib of celery, chopped small
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Wash and de-stem mushrooms. Place tops of mushrooms, undersides up, in a wide shallow baking dish.

Combine balsamic vinegar and soy sauce. Drizzle over mushroom tops.

Chop mushroom stems into tiny pieces.

Heat olive oil over medium heat and add garlic. Saute for two minutes, then add greens, mushroom stems, and celery. Stir until greens have wilted and darkened, approximately five minutes.

Add lemon juice, bread crumbs, nutritional yeast, and salt and pepper. Stir until well combined.

Spoon mixture onto mushrooms evenly until none is left. Bake for fifteen minutes, or until breadcrumb mixture begins to brown.

Makes six mushrooms. The two of us ate them all in one sitting, so if you're serving more than two hungry people you may want to make more.



Some Notes:

-It's All Wilco All The Time around here these days. While I was sick I watched I Am Trying To Break Your Heart and fell in love with the band all over again. So glad I paid a million dollars to get tickets to see them play here in March.

-The Man of Science ordered some wicked awesome Japanese knives for me to use in the kitchen. I will post photos of them soon because they have changed my life. They were supposed to be a Christmas present, but because I was home sick I was here to get the package when the postman dropped them off and hence the surprise was ruined. Which was annoying for the Man of Science but fine for superstitious me who knows that giving a gift of knives is supposed to "sever your relationship". This way I can just pretend that the knives were bought randomly and leave it at that.

-Because of my illness I didn't get groceries this week so I've been making "stone soup" dinners all week just using whatever I can scrounge from the fridge. Tonight, that led to a surprisingly tasty chickpea and carrot pilaf flavoured with vermouth. Yum. It will almost be boring to have a fully stocked fridge again. Almost.

J.


p.s. Happy Halloween! I was sick, but I managed to get dressed up and go party in a moderate manner.

Skillet Bread (a.k.a. Nice Buns)

My appetite is slowly returning after a week of having this annoying cold. The first thing I saw that made me hungry was this blog post from the Pioneer Woman about making delicious buns in a skillet and covering them with butter and rosemary. Such an excellent idea. And the perfect thing to go along with my tofu "chicken" noodle soup. I didn't want to use store bought rolls, though, so I made my own dough and hoped for the best.

I was actually surprised by how wonderfully these worked. They taste restauranty. Like the kind of bread that would be on the table at the chain restaurants where my confusing suburban teenage boyfriends took me on dates. That kind of bread certainly has its place. And right now, its place is in my mouth.

Skillet Bread

2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar or maple syrup
2 cups warm water
3 cups white all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp melted vegan margarine
1 tbsp dried rosemary
sprinkling of kosher salt (approximately 2 tsp)

Combine the sugar, yeast, and warm water in a bowl and wait five minutes for the yeast to grow.

Mix flours and tbsp of salt together and add to the yeast mixture, one cup at a time, until a doughy blob has formed.

Turn doughy blob onto a lightly floured counter top and knead (adding in more flour if needed) until it is smooth and not sticky.

Place dough in an oiled bowl and cover bowl with a tea towel. Set in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, separate dough into seven equal blobs and place in a lightly oiled skillet. Let rise for 1/2 hour to 1 hour more. The longer you wait, the puffier your rolls will be.

Melt vegan margarine and brush tops of buns with it. Sprinkle with rosemary. Brush again with margarine. Sprinkle with kosher salt.

Place in a cold oven and set temperature to 400 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes, or until buns have browned.

Makes seven fist-sized buns.




Some Notes:

-The "nice buns" comment came courtesy of the Man of Science. I'm pleased that he is still interested in speaking suggestively to me even after I've been lethargic and ailing all week.

-Anyone watch the vegetarian challenge on Top Chef this week? Seems like a lot of the dishes were vegan, too. Though why are professional chefs unable to understand the ins and outs of non-animal protein? I know they got on Mike's case for his kind of doofusy suggestion that a roasted leek stand in for protein in his dish, but a bunch of the other dishes were protein-less too! Including the one made by Bearded-But-Cute Kevin, who I like very much.

-And so ends Vegan Mofo for me! Whew. I enjoyed the challenge and the increased traffic, but I'm super happy to go back to posting a couple recipes a week again.

J.