vegansaurus!

Babycakes NYC has a new app; Sally Draper makes gluten-free waffles!  »

Babycakes NYC has a new app out and it looks like a lot of fun. I love her recipe book; I actually use it to make the gluten-free snowballs at Source (Jenny-fied of course), so I’m really excited about this app.

[Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansarus.com!]

It features all my favorite things: gluten-free, vegan baking, cute uniforms, hipster music, lipstick AND CELEBRITIES talking about vegan, gluten-free baked goods! The feature everyone seems to be the most jazzed about (including myself) is Mad Men’s own Kiernan Shipka making gluten-free waffles with Ms. Babycakes herself, Erin McKenna! Sally Draper has most definitely become my favorite character on that show, and remember — I haven’t yet seen Season 5 so no spoilers or I will find you, and I will gouge your eyes out. Just kidding! That wouldn’t be very vegan of me, now would it? (I’m not kidding.)

Recipe: Broccoli baked with Nacheez!  »

Did you have broccoli with cheddar cheese sauce growing up? I did, and I miss it. So, I had the brilliant idea to bake broccoli with Nacheez! I used the spicy Nacheez sauce, but if I were making this for a crowd, I’d probably use mild. I made this dish twice in one week, I liked it so much!

This dish is super easy to make, and would make a great side, or meal (eaten over the sink at your parent’s house while watching cable, for example). First, I blanched my broccoli, which was about two small crowns. I used a small amount of broccoli, because I wanted each piece covered in as much Nacheez as possible. Oh yeah, and you can cut up your broccoli before or after you blanch it. Personally, I cut mine before. Next, you want to drain your broccoli! Really well, because extra water will make the cheese sauce thin and runny after you bake it. Put your broccoli and a jar of Nacheez in a baking pan, and bake for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees! I added some pepper and garlic salt to mine. The second time I baked this, I also added some bacon bits and that really took this dish over the egde!

Vegan Hacker on Tuesday night! Bake some vegan Twinkies!   »

Is anyone signed up for this event? It looks like fun, but I cannot go, as I am the self proclaimed Twinkie Queen of San Francisco—it simply would not be fair to the other hackers!

If you’ve never heard of Vegan Hacker, let me give you the lowdown: You reconfigure non-vegan recipes to make them vegan. Got it? And Tuesday night is all about vegan twinkies! This is the recipe you’ll be using, and the ingredients will be provided. However, you can bring whatever you want to spruce it up. Creativity is encouraged. LEMON twinkies with raspberry filling? Chocolate twinkies with mint filling? Pina Colada! Raspberry Mocha! Banana chocolate! The possibilities are endless.

If you need any help or baking tips, let me know in the comments! I do this five days a week at Source. Vegan twinkies are my livelihood!

Vegan Hacker: Twinkie Times is on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 6 p.m. at Noisebridge (2169 Mission St.). It’s FREE! Email to RSVP or ask questions.

Earth Balance Organic Coconut Spread: Put it on or in EVERYTHING  »

Earth Balance Organic Coconut Spread. Oh, hell yes. Use it as sexual lube (commonly known as, “lube”), massage oil, in cupcakes, on toast, on a spoon, for high-temperature frying, or for high-temperature sexual relations. This shit does it all! There’s a reason this won product of the year at Vegnews, and your holiday baking just got a whole bunch more delicious. Plus, it’s all organic, so it doesn’t have any of that bad, shady palm oil in it (warning: shitty PDF). Seriously, if you love orangutans (and who doesn’t! They’re basically the muppet version of Jay Z and Bruce Vilanch’s love child), then only buy the organic Earth Balance DO IT. And since the organic regular Earth Balance is hella whipped, it’s not as good for baking, but now that shit doesn’t matter because this coconut spread is perfect for all your baking needs! Also, use it to get gum out of hair and to shine your silver! DO IT.

To further convince you of its glorious truth: Here’s a PDF from Earth Balance with tons of recipes, and coupons! Whole Foods also has a coupon — I wonder if you can combine to actually make money on this deal?? Learn the art of the pon, people. 

Melbourne, Australia has the best-looking bread in the world!  »

How ridiculously good does that sourdough look? And it’s not even from San Francisco, it’s from Iain Banfield of Fruition Bakery in freaking MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. Hot damn, I’m moving! If you’re anywhere near Melbourne, you’d be a fool (a damn fool!) to not eat all of it.

Here’s a little about Fruition Bakery:

Organic flour, salt, water, and natural sourdough leaven; to many of us that is the definition of “bread,” but there are so few bakeries today that have the skill to make bread with just these base ingredients.

Iain uses a beautiful little two-arm mixer to craft his dough and massage in olives and selected fruits to produce a variety of breads, including focaccia and fruit bread. An Alan Scott wood-fired oven completes the baking process.

Also, read this excellent write-up on them and OMG PLEASE BUY ME A PLANE TICKET. Or, if not, can I at least stay with you once I’m on the run for killing someone to assume their identity/have a ticket to Melbourne? Thanks!

Recipe: Oatmeal “honey” bread!  »

I’m really sorry you’re not me right now, because I’m eating this amazing bread AS I TYPE and you just get to look at a photo of it. And then make your own.

I’ve been on a bread-baking kick lately because I’m both cheap and domestic. It makes the house smell so good! And everyone is so impressed with you! Your friends and family will love you more and maybe not kick you out.

For today’s bread, I adapted a super-non-vegan recipe and you know what, fuck those guys, the vegan version rocks. It’s chewy, a little sweet, has a great texture, and in the hour since it’s cooled I’ve eaten half a loaf.

I am blessed with a KitchenAid mixer that I let do all the hard work for me, but you could make this without one, you’d just have to feel a bit more like a kitchen wench.

Oatmeal “honey” bread
makes 2ish loaves

Ingredients
5 to 6 1/2 cups flour (I used bread flour, but all-purpose would be fine)
1 cup quick-cooking oats
2 tsp. salt
2 (1/4 oz.) packages active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup honey substitute (I used Bee Free Honee made from apples, review of that product coming eventually but let me say it worked great in this bread)
1/2 cup Earth Balance
replacement for 2 eggs (I used 1 Tbsp. Ener-G egg replacer mixed with 4 Tbsp. warm water; flax seeds and water would probably work great too)
1 Tbsp. soymilk
oat meal

Instructions
Mix 5 cups flour, oats, salt, and yeast in a bowl. In a small saucepan, combine water, honey-alternative, and Earth Balance. Heat to 120°F to 130°F (right when it starts getting steamy). Slowly add warm liquids to flour mixture, mixing for about 1 minute on speed 2 of your mixer, or until blended if you’re a sucker mixing by hand. Add egg substitute; mix an additional 1 minute.

Add more flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until dough clings to hook (spoon) and cleans sides of bowl, about 3 minutes. I only needed a little more flour for this. Knead for 7 to 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic. 


Place dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover; let rise in warm place, until doubled, about 1 hour.

Punch dough down. Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a loaf by rolling it out flat on a cutting board with a rolling pin, then rolling it up into a cylinder like a jelly roll. Place each loaf into a greased bread pan (8.5” x 4.5” x 2.5”, or whatever you have really). Cover; let rise in warm place till doubled, about an hour.


Preheat oven to 375°F. Brush tops of loaves with soymilk. Sprinkle with oat meal. Bake 40 minutes, until browned and hollow-sounding when you rap on them.

Remove from pans and cool on wire racks. THEN EAT UNTIL YOU PUKE, OM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

Calling all vegan bakers! Let’s flood Pie or Die!  »

OK bakers, let’s do this! Pie or Die!…Part Deux is coming to San Francisco, courtesy of SF Food Wars. It’s being held at the Ferry Building and they are looking for competitors! Pull out your aprons, your oven mitts, your rolling pins and get to work! Be creative, be classic, I don’t care, just make the best vegan pie of your life! (or, pies? You must make enough to sample out to at least 70 peeps.) Enter to compete here.

The competition takes place Saturday, June 12 and is free to enter, but space is limited to 20 competitors, so sign up RIGHT NOW!! Don’t even worry about finishing this post. Seriously. Sign up. Now. Pie must be sweet (as opposed to savory) and feature at least one ingredient from the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market. You can do this! Vegansaurus believes in you! [Ed.: And VEGANS HAVE WON BEFORE! So get up on this!]

Proceeds benefit the SF Food Bank and the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture.

Thursday: A good day for marble bundt cake (and its recipe)!  »

Knowing how to bake vegan is awesome. Sure, in larger cities, we’re pretty spoiled, and we can find vegan baked goods in cafes and grocery stores and sometimes even in vegan bakeries. However, even in the larger cities, there are still a lot more non-vegan baked goods than vegan ones, and there’s nothing worse than spying a lovely vision of a pastry or cake and then realizing it’s not vegan and that there’s no vegan version to be found… which brings me back to my original point: knowing how to bake vegan is awesome. Why? Because next time you see a sweet little non-vegan thing at the store or on a blog or in the newspaper or in a cookbook, you can smile to yourself and whip yourself up a superior vegan version at home.
This is a recipe that I doctored up when I had an insatiable, need-it-now craving for bundt cake this weekend (what, like you don’t get bundt cravings?). I came across this recipe for a marble bundt cake during an epic internet session this weekend, and I tell you, it spoke to me! The blogged recipe is for a chocolate-and-lemon marbled bundt, but since this Vegansaur thinks chocolate and lemon is a nasty-ass combo, I veganized it AND made it into a stately, elegant vanilla/chocolate combo.

The result, if I do say so myself, was pretty bangin’. Here’s the veganized recipe, and remember, bundts travel well, so this is a great cake for bringing to work (either to share or to hide in your desk and eat solo), on picnics, to the beach—whatever. This recipe makes a cake good enough to eat unadorned, but you can also top it with jam, vegan whip (whatever kind floats your boat), chocolate sauce, or fruit compote. The possibilities are endless!

Ingredients
2 cups sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 cup Earth Balance(or your butter analog of choice)
egg replacer for four eggs (I used a combo of 2 Ener-G eggs and 1/3 cup plain soy yogurt)
3 1/2 cups cake flour (you can use regular if it’s all you’ve got, but I like the cake flour—it’s so fancy!)
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups nondairy milk (I use almond)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 to 3 Tbsp booze, such as Kahlua, rum, Frangelico (optional)

Directions
1. Prep your bundt pan (grease it and then lightly flour it) and preheat your oven to 350.

2. Cream together your “butter” and sugar. Make sure to mix it until it gets slightly fluffy and the color lightens slightly. Add in your egg replacer slowly and continue to beat the mixture until all the ingredients are incorporated, and it’s silky-looking.

3. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Then add half the dry mixture to the wet mixture and stir to combine. Add half the nondairy milk and the vanilla to the mixture and combine. Repeat addition of dry and then wet until the batter is smooth. Warning: do NOT overmix, unless you’re into dry, tough cakes.

4. Pour half the batter into prepared bundt pan; keep the other half in the mixing bowl. Add the cocoa (and booze if you are using it) to the reserved batter and mix to combine. Then pour the chocolate batter into the bundt pan. Use a butter knife to swirl around the batters and incorporate them into each other. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Let the thing cool for a while before you try to take it out of the pan—attempting to remove it while it’s still warm will only result in tears!

Enjoy for breakfast, lunch, or dinner!