Brimfield Biscotti

We are incredibly excited for the May 2011 Brimfield Antique Market! We have a huge selection to bring of the most amazing stuff that we have been collecting and hoarding for the show - some of the items are just really, really special. Our booth is located at Quakers Acres, Spot #126, right in the heart of the show and will be set up and styled by some of the Antique Warriors! We will be in a huge 20' X 40' tent by the edge of the woods in the same space that we occupied at the September 2010 show surrounded by the most excellent neighbors! The field we are in is open for business beginning Tuesday, May 10 at dawn and the last day of the show is Sunday, May 15. Please come and see us!!!! We are always easy to find - just look for some of our wax pilgrims posted outside of our tent.

Me, Dougie and sometimes Molli are newly vegan and are more limited to the treats that we can get at the show (although One Love Cafe was there last year and they have vegan options). So I will be bringing more food than usual along, including some of this delicious vegan biscotti. I promise to share some with you if you come to see me!xoxo Here is the recipe if you want to try making it at home. It is a basic recipe and can easily be modified by adding different spices, dried fruit or other additions of your choice. This recipe makes a big batch!!!

Brimfield Biscotti

5 cups flour (I like King Arthur unbleached white although you could use whole wheat flour or a combination of flours)
2 cups organic granulated sugar
1/2 cup organic packed dark brown sugar
2/3 cup finely ground almonds
2 t. baking powder
pinch salt
1 t. cinnamon
12.3 oz. pkg. Silken soft tofu, drained
1/4 cup canola oil
4 T. finely ground flax seeds
1/4 - 1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I like coconut milk, but sometimes use soy as well)
2 t. lemon juice
1 t. vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugars, ground almonds, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

3. In a blender, puree the tofu until creamy and slightly fluffy. Add the ground flax seeds, 1/4 cup of soymilk, lemon juice and vanilla to the mixture and puree until well combined.

4. Add the tofu mixture to the dry ingredients, mixing until forming a sticky dough (add the rest of milk, if needed). Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface, and form the dough into four logs with rounded ends.

5. Bake the logs on prepared sheets for 35 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove the logs from the pan and let rest on a cooling rack for 15 minutes. Turn down the oven temperature to 300 degrees.

6. Slice the logs diagonally in pieces 1/2" - 1" thick and lay biscotti on their sides on the prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes, flipping the biscotti with a metal spatula halfway through to ensure even baking. Biscotti should be lightly golden but now browned; they will be super hard if overbaked. Biscotti will keep up to two weeks in an airtight container.

xo

Vegan Boneless Buffalo Wings!

This is for my good friend, Richard Murphy. I recently was excitedly telling him about my last post - Vegan Ribs to which he replied, "Why not just eat real ribs?"
I whipped these up this morning before work - an adapted recipe from The Vegan Dad. How hot is that - a dad that makes up vegan recipes and cooks for his family. They came out quite good. I hope that I have some time when I get home to make some nice sauces to go with tonight, just for Dougie. Enjoy! Oh, and these are rather spicy, so tone down the hot sauce if you're a wimp.

You know they look good, Richard!

VEGAN BONELESS BUFFALO WINGS!

Wings
- 16 bamboo skewers
- 1 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten
- 1/3 cup chicken broth powder
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 1/2 tsp paprika
- freshly ground white pepper
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1/2 cup cooked white beans, all mashed up
- 1 to 1 1/4 cup water


Breading
- 1 cup plain soy milk
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 tsp dried sage
- 1 tbsp ground flax seed
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 1/3 cup panko bread crumbs


Sauce
- 1/2 cup margarine
- 1/2 cup hot sauce


Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spray with oil.

Mix flour, broth powder, and spices together. Add oil and enough water to make a dough. The dough should be somewhat stiff, but able to be kneaded. Knead for a few mins then shape into a log and slice into 12 to 16 pieces. Stick a bamboo skewer into each piece of dough and shape around the stick.

Whisk together soy milk, oil, lemon juice, and flax seed in a shallow dish. In a separate shallow dish, mix together bread crumbs and spices.

Roll seitan in soy milk mixture, then in bread crumbs. When all seitan has been coated, roll again in soy milk and press into the bread crumbs to get a thick coating. Place on prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 20 - 25 mins, until crumbs are golden and seitan has plumped up. While seitan is cooking, melt margarine and hot sauce in the microwave for a minute or so. Pour sauce over wings and bake for 5-7 minutes more.

xo

Happy April Fool's Day! Pigless Spare Ribs and Barbeque Sauce For You!

Seriously, you could really fool someone with this incredible dish. I have no idea how, but this recipe is just amazing! And this recipe makes a lot! They are awesome in a sandwich and I froze some too, cause we just had too much. I suppose that you could make the ribs with jarred barbeque sauce, but the sauce recipe is well worth the effort.

Here is the recipe, adapted from Veg News magazine:

Pigless Spare Ribs & Barbeque Sauce

Serves 8

1 1/2 cups onions, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons non-hydrogenated margarine
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup tahini
2 tablespoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups seitan, roughly chopped and divided
2 cups barbeque sauce (see recipe below)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and lightly oil baking sheet. In a medium pan, saute onions in margarine until soft. In a medium bowl, combine nutritional yeast, tahini, paprika and salt. Add onions and margarine and combine well.

2. In a food processor, combine half of the seasoning mixture and two cups of seitan and blend together, adding seitan gradually. Set aside and repeat with the other half of the seasoning mixture and seitan.

3. Form mixture into one strips to resemble ribs and place in rows, touching, on the prepared baking sheet. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes. Pour two cups of barbeque sauce over ribs, and increase heat to 375 degrees. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until well done and almost burned (or burned a little and crunchy). Serve with extra barbeque sauce on the side.


Barbeque Sauce Recipe

Makes about 3 cups

2 teaspoons corn oil
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
2 1/2 cups tomato sauce
1/2 cup water, divided
1 cup agave
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 cup mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons dried parsley
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon liquid smoke

1. In a medium pan over high heat, add oil. Saute onion and garlic until onions are translucent. Add tomato sauce, 1/4 cup of water, agave, molasses, mustard, salt, allspice, and pepper flakes, and parsley. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer for about an hour.

2. Add second 1/4 cup water, soy sauce, lemon juice, and liquid smoke. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes longer. Allow to cool slightly and serve generously over pigless ribs.

Sparkled Vegan Ginger Cookies

This is my new most requested recipe. We first tried these when some of the family decided to go vegan for a month in January for political and health reasons. Actually, the first time I made these was for Skip Shea and his crew for his short film reading. I completely overbaked (but didn't burn) them - they looked great, but were hard as rocks. Everyone lied and said that they were great (thanks for that!) I've adapted this recipe from the dazzling Vegan with a Vengeance by the fabulous Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Make sure that you make lots to share!

Sparkled Ginger Cookies

makes 2 dozen cookies

4 Tablespoons turbinado or demerrara sugar (regular sugar will work, but they won't be as sparkly or good

1 Cup all-purpose flour

1 Cup whole wheat flour

1 Teaspoon baking soda

2 1/2 Teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 Teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 Teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 Cup canola oil

1/2 Cup applesauce

1/4 Cup molasses

1/4 Cup soy milk

1 Cup sugar

1 Teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease two cookie sheets. Place the turbinado sugar in a small bowl.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and spices. In a separate large mixing bowl, mix together the oil, molasses, soy milk, sugar, applesauce and vanilla. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and combine well. Roll into 1-inch flat balls, flatten into a 1 1/2 inch diameter disc, press the cookie tops into the turbinado sugar and place one inch apart sugar side up on a prepared cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, let cool on cookie sheets for 3 to 5 minutes, transfer to cooling rack.

Enjoy!!!!

More Fake Food and Yogurt Bread

I really love to bake bread - mostly because I love to eat it! This recipe makes a LOT of bread (approximately six loaves) and is wonderful for gifting. Speaking of gifting, check out the fabric pears that my my just made. They are wonderful - I really love them. My parents also brought over some homemade strawberry rhubarb jelly (which prompted me to make this bread) and a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I hope to get her recipe for the jelly and try to make it one day. Here is the recipe for the lowfat yogurt bread. It is from a cute little book called "homemade" by Judith Choate. Oh - the book was a recent gift from my mom, too!

Lowfat Yogurt Bread

Rising Time: 1 1/2 hours

Preheat Oven to 375 degrees

12 cups white bread flour (regular white flour will also do)

2 cups white wheat flour (or regular wheat flour)

1 cup coarsely ground yellow cornmeal

3 packages of yeast (or 7 1/2 tsp.)

3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon sea salt (I totally left this out and the bread came out delicious)

2 1/2 cups nonfat milk

2 cups nonfat plain yogurt

Combine the flours, cornmeal, yeast, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl.

Heat the milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When just hot, remove from the heat and whisk in the yogurt (make sure that this mixture is not hot, just super warm).

Stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, pour the warm milk mixture over the dry ingredients and begin blending. When the dough gets too heavy to mix with the spoon, scrape it onto a lightly floured surface and begin kneading. Knead for about 12 minutes, or until the dough is well blended but still a bit tacky. This will not be a smooth, shiny bread dough. Scrape the dough into a large buttered bowl, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and set aside in a warm spot to rise about 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size.

Uncover the dough and again place it on a lightly floured surface. Punch it down to release all of the air and knead for about 4 minutes.

Divide the dough into at least 6 equal pieces. Form each piece into a loaf shape and place into loaf pans, or, alternatively, form into a free form round shape and place onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and place on wire racks to cool before serving or storing.

ENJOY!!!!

If you think that this recipe is too much trouble, stay tuned for my post soon featuring no-knead dough.

Story of a Doll

This is the story of an angel doll. About a year ago, I bought a pattern from Annie at Chickadee Primitives called Sweet Seraphim Angel. I put the pattern away and forgot about it. A few days before Mothers Day, a little angel voice was calling me from the attic - somehow I found the pattern in all of my craft supplies and unearthed my sewing machine.

Now, I don't think that I have sewed for 10 years, but ever since I moved to my new home, I have been thinking about it a lot. I decided to sew the Sweet Seraphim Angel for my mommy for Mother's Day. I rooted around until I finally found some muslin, a bit of stuffing, some dress fabric and the proper paints.

Ok, I didn't have too much time - I had to do my legal work... By some miracle, my machine worked perfectly and was actually threaded (I have a fear of threading my machine. It usually takes me about an hour because I have no idea what I was doing).

I could not find any fabric scissors to cut out the dolly pieces. I tried to hack out the pieces with some dull paper scissors, but it just wasn't working. I then remembered that my daughter, Molli, had some little sharp hair cutting scissors in her bathroom. They did the trick, thank goodness.

By some miracle, I remembered how to sew! Annie's pattern was so well written and easy to follow. I might add that I cannot stand patterns or directions of any kind and usually make up my own. I had a bit of a hard time turning the limbs of the angel, only because I sewed them a little too far in, but I finally managed. They ripped a little on both of the hands. Oh, well. When I sewed the little legs on, I had a hard time sewing through all of the layers - one of the legs just got pinned on (it's ok - the dress covers it!)

I loved painting the angel dolly and following Annie's special instructions - I especially liked the part where I rolled her around in spices and sanded her.

I got to the part where the dolly takes a nap in the oven to dry and had to go back to my day job. After work, my son was wondering what was in the oven - there was a small brown person laying in there. She looked pitiful, but smelled really good.

Here is my favorite part of Annie's instructions - "Give her a kiss on the forehead and fetch her wings." Isn't that sweet?

It was now time to sew the wings. That was going fine until my machine ran out of thread!!! It was getting late, so I left out part of the rows of stitching on the wings. I think it looks ok.

Now the dress. I skipped the petticoat (it would have made the angel's dress look nicer, though). Ok, so now my machine is out of thread - I handstitched the dress which worked out well, but then I had to put a drawstring in the waistband. Annie says to use a doll jointing needle (what is that?) I then frantically searched for a safety pin - I know how to put in a drawstring with that. After I wasted about 20 minutes looking, I decided to tie a nail onto a piece of string and pull it through. It was difficult and idiotic, but it somehow worked.

I have to say, the angel dolly came out pretty good, in a very primitive and rustic kind of way. I can't wait to sew some more (preferably not before and after work and I hope to be more organized next time). I can't say enough about the pattern I used. It was the most thorough and well-written pattern I have ever seen. I hope that Annie keeps making more patterns. I will be buying more. Thanks, Annie!

Oh, and I gave the angel dolly to my mom for Mother's Day. I think she liked it. Can someone please come over and help me thread my sewing machine?

SomeBunny Loves Me!

Last night, my dad came bearing some early Easter cheer! I just love the wooden bunny - it goes so nicely in our kitchen. Also, can you believe this basket of beautiful handmade folk art Easter eggs my mom just made us? I can't even imagine how one makes something like that. They are all hand stitched in beautiful warm golds and browns - they are so perfect for our kitchen, also, but will not be stashed away after Easter! Thanks, Mom and Dad! We love you so much!