Mr T's bike cake, or my most depressing baking day

I think maybe the universe is trying to tell me that I should stick to cupcakes, because I had issues with the scrabble cake, but the attempts for Mr T's birthday cake were almost heart breaking.

Mr T's had drinks to celebrate his birthday on sat night. A groups of our awesome friends had all financially contributed so that two friends could build him his very own bike. So I decided to bake him a bike cake to match his bike.

There doesn't appear to be many instructions online for bike cakes, so I just made it up. I decided to make the bike out of white icing and it was an absolute bitch to make. I had to redo the writing, wheels and several parts and when I tried to move it it kept falling apart even when it had hardened. But I eventually got it done, even if it looked a bit like a 10 year old did it.

1st cake attempt: I made an oreo cake using the vctotw recipe x 3. I baked two square cakes, put icing in the middle and all over the sides and had it looking pretty good and then tried to move the cake into a container and it all broke and fell to a thousand pieces, I wanted to cry because I had spent two evening and one whole day to get to this point and was running out of time. Around this time, all of my family members came over one by one, each seeing what had happened and tried the crumbly mess and told me how delicious it was. Which was great but at this stage I had started to make a different cake.

Failed cake #1 looked something like this:


For the second attempt I made a vanilla cake because it didn't require going to shops to get more oreos. I used kittee's vanilla cake recipe because I know she is a cake goddess. When it was in the oven, I thought something might be wrong because there was quite a strange smell. I had already made the icing though and thought maybe it was just me. So I iced it by cutting it half and put jam in the middle and then chocolate icing all over. The chocolate icing was awesome and surprisingly doesn't need any soy/rice milk. Anyway I then noticed that there was a tiny bit of cake that I could try, so I had it and realised that it tasted sour, I then realised that I must have put apple cider vinegar in it in place of the oil. So I had spent all day and then all evening making two failed cakes. I just wanted to crawl up in a ball and cry but had to go home to Mr T. I considered staying up to midnight to bake a third but just realised it was crazy. So I decided to take the iced cake to show him and everyone and explain that it wasn't really edible.


But somehow, with 24 hours and a hell of a lot of icing and jam it was edible. It still smelt weird but all the sweetness of the jam and icing seemed to compensate for the weird cake.

Here is the cake:




and here is the bike:

I think I need a rest from cake baking for a while :-)

Tandoori Times

We went to Tandoori Times recently with my family and found it to be quite vegan friendly. I explained to the waiter that we are vegetarian and don't eat dairy and eggs and he explained that they don't use egg at all and then explained which dishes contained dairy and which ones could be made vegan. They really did pay attention, telling us if a condiment that was put on the table contained dairy and explaining that the kitchen accidentally put butter on our bread so he asked them to make us a new bread. The interior was quite nice too and the food was very tasty and affordable.


We had, onions bhaji, which was crisp and not too oily:

Tandoori mushrooms which are normally made with butter but were made dairy free for us. I'm not a big mushroom fan but Mr T loved these.

Punjabi daal which had just the right amount of ginger and coriander was and pumkin lakhanawi which was a bit spicy but had a nice tamarind flavour.

Tandoori Times
45 anderson st
Yarraville
9689 0666
www

Soup for the soul

Again, a dish that I made in my early vegan days. I love this soup, it has lots of veggies in it and is the type of thing that requires lengthy cooking time but that's when you get to go blog or whatever. We had this for dinner and then had it as leftovers the following day as a pasta sauce.

This recipe makes a lot so be prepared for leftovers, it freezes well too:

2 cups green lentils
1 head garlic, peeled and finely minced or pressed
2 medium onions finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 bunch celery chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
4-5 carrots sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
4 medium potatoes cut into 1 inch cubes
8 to 10 cups water or vegetable stock
2 bay leafs (remove before serving)
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon oregano
salt and pepper to taste


1. Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil over medium heat for about five minutes or until soft.

2. Add onions and garlic to stock pot with water or stock.

3. Add remaining ingredients and simmer, stirring occasionally for at least 1 hour. Like most soups of this type, this one will taste even better the second day when the flavors have had a chance to develop.



This has got to be one of the least appealing food pics, but it's better to have crappy images, than none right?

Vegweb can be pretty darn good

Lately I've been making dishes that I made when I first went vegan 5-6 years ago and didn't really know how to cook. I used to make this noodle dish regularly and was kind of relieved to see that I still enjoyed it today. It's easy, ohh how I love easy savoury dishes. To make it slightly more interesting I also made tofu bacon. I can't find the recipe on vegweb anymore but basically you fry the hell out of tofu pieces, and then sprinkle some nooch on it, and add a tiny bit of liquid smoke and a fair bit of soy sauce so that it so that it nicely coated.

I also can't find this dish which was titled 'asian broccoli noodles' dish on vegweb. What's up with vegweb lately? Anyway I did find it on another blog:

Ingredients:
2 cups Broccoli, Raw
3/4 cups Onions, Green
2 servings Fresh Garlic
2 tablespoons Fresh Ginger Root
2 tablespoons Omega Natural Peanut Butter
1/4 cups Soy Sauce
1 tablespoons Natural Cane Sugar
3 tablespoons Water
2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
1/2 teaspoons Salt (table)
4 servings Noodles, Japanese, Soba, Dry

Instructions:
Combine garlic, ginger, PB, soy sauce, and sugar. Blend well and add water, lemon juice, and salt.

Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain, rinse, and set aside.

Heat oil in wok or skillet. Stir-fry broccoli for about 3 minutes. Add noodles and stir until heated.

Add PB mixture to pan and stir until sauce is evenly distributed.

Bourban balls, or super classy jim bean balls

Apparently I am crazy, because I decided that I will participate in Australian Mofo in a crazy busy month for me. But I'm hoping that it will get me out of my food rut that I have been in lately and get me back to making and blogging about interesting yummy food.

It's Amy at Iron Chef Vegan fabulous idea to have it one month early for Australians, which is great because while September is going to be crazy, October is going to be even busier for me. So the goal is to post every day about vegan food, but since we are lazy Aussie's we will aim for 4-5 a week. There are quite a few vegan Aussie blogs participating including unwakeable, vegan sixteen, tropical vegan, Annabananabomb, ink and venom, twilight and shadow (from NZ), and for esme.

Anyway on to the food.

It was my dad's birthday recently and I wanted to make him something, but he is pretty picky when it comes to desserts. However, I know that he loves Jim Bean so I decided to make something with it. The first thing I thought of was rum balls, I found this great recipe from vegalicious which was easy and which my dad loved:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups vanilla wafer crumbs or digestive biscuits
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 cup pecans or walnuts, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup rum or bourbon
  
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/3 cup corn syrup
• 1/2 cup of shredded coconut
  

Directions:

1. Using a kitchen machine, or blender or food processor or a rolling pin (depending on what you have available), turn the cookies into fine crumbs.
2. Combine biscuit/wafer crumbs and chopped nuts.
3. Add remaining dry ingredients in bowl and mix thoroughly.
4. Mix the corn syrup and rum together and then add to the crumb mixture, using a big spoon or fork, mix all together well. It will be a sticky mass.You can put it in the refrigerator for a short time to harden a bit before making the balls, sometimes this makes it easier, or less sticky.
5. Roll into balls 1 inch in diameter then roll balls in either confectioners’ sugar or finely chopped nuts. I obviously used coconut.

Makes 40-48 balls. Store in a cookie tin or container tightly sealed.

I only used a quarter cup of bourbon which is an exactly one mintaure bottle of jim bean because I thought they would be too strong but all of the bourbon drinkers said that they could use more. I am going to make some more this weekend for fathers day for my stepdad and include his favourite drink Johnnie Walker.