Sunday, June 08, 2008

Leda makes good vegan biscuitsMr T and I are regular buyers of Leda chocolate biscuits that taste like mintslice and tim tams and so i wasn't sure if they could pull off a non-choc biscuit, but these are pretty good and crunchy. I think they would make a good base for a cheesecake or a slice. I found them at Brunswick Coles (healthfood section).

Pic taken from their website.
Cannonballs meet Buckeyes

I wasn't sure whether to pair chocolate with peanut butter and make cannonballs or to make buckeyes. So I decided to cross the two together. I used Yeah, that "vegan" shit's recipe.

I actually thought that sticking a toothpick in it and coating it with chocolate leaving the top or 'the eye' exposed would be easier. But I was wrong. They also look ugly.


So I decided to toss the buckeye idea and the toothpicks aside and just coated them in chocolate. I was also wrong about cannonballs being an easy thing to make with all of the waiting, and the tedious task of coating each one in chocolate it took forever. Part of the appeal of making them was the simplicity, I think making ccokies, cupcakes and even cake is easier than making these tiny things. Despite the freezing some of them also feel apart when I tried to coat them and it was messy. I doubled the recipe and it used up three almost four small bags of chocolate chips to get them all coated.



So how did they taste?

Great, but not worth the effort. They didn't taste that different to chocolate spiders (which I make with crispy soy noodles), I think I will stick to them in the future.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

It's never been a better time to be an Aussie Vegan

It's so great to be discussing vegan recipes from other Aussies- like Mark Senn at Veginity and the soup for all seasons cookbook (see below) rather than discussing the American ones that I usually talk about.

It's also really awesome to discover more and more Aussie food bloggers. Just in the last couple of days I have discovered Solusta with amazing food pics, fellow cupcake lover Cupcake Kitteh check out the tater tacos and Shimmy Shimmy Coconut who discusses cookie dough centred cupcakes. There is also Vegology who discusses her inspiring competitive running. My list of Aussies vegetarian and vegan bloggers on the right is getting huge. Also, i'm hoping that a few more vegans I know will start blogging, you know who you are. I discovered all of the new ones I mentioned from PPK forum which has a huge Aussie Thread where the amazing brunch idea started.

There's also going to be a new Aussie vegan dessert cookbook coming out soon thanks to Aduki.

Then of course East Brunswick Club which is just a regular meat serving pub has more and more vegan dishes and desserts. I can not wait to try the chocolate and peanut butter 'cheesecake'!

I kind of feel sorry for the non-vegans who miss out on all the fun and the yummy food :-)
More from Las Vegan

I finally got to go to Las Vegan Bakery a couple of weeks ago. Mr T and I shared two TVP dishes, both his recommendations since he's the Las Vegan expert.

First the TVP calzone with the gourmet salad

and then the TVP burger

Both were supper yummy. I'm sad that I don't get to go there more often because it's only open for lunch Tue to Fri which is when I'm at work.

While I was there I went out the back to wash my hands and I got chatting with one of the owners and told her that I have been enjoying their Soup for All Seasons cookbook and have made two recipes the Spicy Morroccan Pumpkin and Chickpea Soup and the sweet potato and lentil (more on that in a sec) and she said to me 'did you blog about it?'. To which I replied 'yes', I was so shocked that I almost fell over. I'm so glad it was a good review, it would have been quite awkward if it wasn't.

Anyway, on to the next trial from the cookbook. The sweet potato and lentil soup is probably one of the easiest in the cookbook which I love. So much so that I have made it twice, once without soy sausages and once with. I was a little concerned that with such a simple recipe that it would lack flavour, but it doesn't. It also doesn't hurt that sweet potatoes are one of my fav vegetables and it makes up a large part of the flavour. The first version without the sausages was good, but the addition of the sausages makes it great. It's definitely on my list of recipe to make again and again. This is the first version without the soy sausages which you can see doesn't look as pretty as the books pic.


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Again sorry about the camera phone pics.
I just finished my final piece of coursework for my masters, yay!

Now, all that is left is my thesis.