Best scrambled tofu!

I've blogged about bomb cafe before, it's this tiny cute cafe that sells two vegan breakfast options. This time we both had scrambled tofu because it rocks. It has caramelised onion in it and is slightly sweet, peppery and cheap too at either $7.50 or $9.50. Mr T had mushrooms and fried potatoes on the side of his. The sour dough bread is chewy, hard to cut and delicious.

Mr T and I both agree that is the best scrambled tofu we have ever had. Don't get me wrong, I love the scrambled tofu at soul food too, but this is slightly tastier and cheaper too.

I don't know how this place doesn't get blogged about more.

Bomb Cafe
229 Johnston St
Abbotsford
9486 0699


Oh and I haven't been putting the aussie mofo symbol in all my posts so here is it again :-)

Ezard

For Mr T's birthday I took him to Ezard for dinner, we had the pre theatre tasting menu. It was AMAZING and well worth it's super high prize. My fav dining experience ever, although apart from press club, I haven't had many fine dining experiences.

We went with my brother and his girlfriend who are omni's and had separate menus but also really enjoyed it.

It was a little hard to take pictures, because we didn't want to use the flash and didn't want to be obvious about it, so some are quite bad. Also my descriptions are not the greatest because I didn't bring a notepad and the descriptions were all quite lengthy with descriptions like: "oyster mushrooms with mirin/soy/plum wine sauce infused with x y and z and topped with x y and z". But hopefully you get the point.

We had bread with olive oil, ground szechuan peppers, a mixture of sugar/lime and chilli, and a non vegan seaweed/fish one. It made me decide that I have to get my hands on some szechuan peppers.


We then had rhubarb, beetroot, grapefruit with salsa verde. I normally hate grapefruit but this was not sour at all.


We then had silken tofu in a red miso broth with some sort of melt in your mouth seaweed and sesame seeds. I've had lots of miso before, but this was hands down the best miso ever.


Then we had a warm artichoke salad with fennel. Why is it that I only like fresh fennel in fancy restaurants?


Then followed by oyster mushrooms in a plum wine/mirin/soy sauce that was sweet and savoury and so addictive which I mopped up like a crazy person with my bread.



Dessert was the only thing I was slightly disappointed with because I thought sorbet was just too easy, but it was delicious. We had mandarin/orange sorbet and raspberry sorbet with fancy dried fruit on top.



About half way through I started to worry that I might actually be hungry afterwards, but the meals got progressively bigger and by the end I was full, Mr T on the other hand wanted a stop at casa del gelato on the way home, but he's got a massive appetite. I really can't name a favourite dish, but Mr T said the oyster mushrooms in plum wine sauce was his favourite.

I really could get used to this type of fine dining, it's a pity my budget won't allow it.

Slow cooker

My family gave Mr T a slow cooker for his birthday and mother drove to Frankston from the west to get what appears to be the only copy of the simple little vegan slow cooker book in Melbourne.

We didn't waste anytime putting it to work and made the tofu in pumpkin seed sauce from the book. Which we put in mountain bread with nacho cheezly, sour cream, with avocado and lettuce. The sauce itself was a bit bland, although i'm not sure if it that is because I used regular pumpkin instead of pumpkin puree, does pumpin puree in the US have something added to it? I also didn't put a small can of chillis in it, I put a capscium and chilli powder in it instead.





The slow cooker itself though was so nice to use, I loved not having to stir or check on it and the warmer function which kept it warm while we waited for friends to arrive for dinner.

Does anyone have the cookbook or know of any awesome slow cooker recipes?

We recently rode to ceres for breakfast. Ceres is positioned right next to the gorgeous merri creek bike track.
Ceres stands for center for education and research on environmental strategies. It is pronounced "series". There is a cafe there, small nursery, market on sat, community garden and much more. It really does feel a lot like a hippy place, but I love it.

Anyway this is for Aussie/NZ vegan mofo (month of food) so I better get to the food. We shared an almond muffin:


Pumpkin, tofu and miso rolland vegan breakfast which contained toast, mushrooms, spinach, smoked tofu, baked beans, and beetroot and chili relish. The smoked tofu was definitely my fav part, but I really enjoyed the beetroot relish too.


It was all delicious, and I especially enjoyed the vegan breakfast but at $17 it's pretty expensive for breakfast and really not that big for it's price.

Ceres cafe
Corner roberts and stewarts st
East brunswick
9387 2609
www

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 :-)