So I know it’s supposed to be MUFFIN THURSDAY but I’ve been slacking on the muffin front, so instead its emotionally-charged chocolate eating Thursday…which doesn’t really have the same ring to it. But alas. I’m taking this really awful Research Methods course, and one example that the professor used in class recently was a study about chocolate affecting mood. I checked the citation, and it turns out that yes, it is a real study, and yes, chocolate makes you happier. SHOCK AND AWE. Anyway, over the last few weeks I’ve had a couple instances where chocolate was the only answer.

Vegan Rag Pie

I don’t think I need to go into the origins of the name, but just know that it is lovely alongside 40’s of malt liquor in your living room with your friends. It combines the two best friends of most premenstrual women: chocolate and peanut butter. It is also super easy and quick to make when you decide to have your friends over for malt liquor at the last minute.

You will need:
4 one-ounce baking chocolate squares, melted (if you are lucky enough to have vegan chocolate chips around, use about ½ cup and melt them)
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 container silken tofu
2 TBS soy milk
1 premade crust (I used a shortbread-style, you can use whatever your lazy heart desires)

Blend the first 4 ingredients in a food processor. Keep the soy milk on hand, as I had to add slightly more to get the filling to a good “filling” consistency, but you may not. Pour into the premade pie crust and chuck that baby in the fridge for at least an hour.

Cut…

EAT EAT EAT

Sorry these pictures are on the terrible side, somebody (Rob) was too busy (malt liquor/Mario Kart) to take them for me.

And that’s not all…

For those of you who don’t know Rob or me in real life, we had a minor medical scare last week that involved Rob having to go to the emergency room. The diagnosis was good, but as anyone who has spent an evening in the ER knows, it’s stressful and depressing and all-around sucks. We came home and moped around for awhile, unable to sleep, when I decided that clearly what we needed was brownies. These were awesome. I found the recipe online and veganized it, and I have to say, I’d been thoroughly underwhelmed with vegan brownies before this version. They are thick and gooey and get stuck in your throat (a quality of a good brownie.) They also maintained their quality pretty well throughout the week. The recipe makes so many that I was forced to pawn some off on my cousin Celeste, who promptly asked, “Are these gonna be on The Food Sex??” Hope you liked em, C.

Post-Emergency Room Brownies

You will need:
2 cups flour
2 cups white sugar (I used slightly less than 2 cups because geez, that’s a lot of sugar)
¾ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup soy milk
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
2-3 squares baking chocolate, chopped into little bits

Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt) in a big bowl and mix the wet (soy milk, vegetable oil and applesauce) in another. Add the wet to the dry and mix.

Pour roughly half the batter into a prepared 13×9 pan. Sprinkle half the chopped chocolate over. Is this necessary? No. Is it gluttonous? Yes. Does it make the brownies better? Definitely. Pour the rest of the batter over and top with the rest of the chocolate.

Bake at 350 for really only about 15 minutes for a gooey brownie. Remove from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes before cutting.

Here’s the pan:

and here are the brownies:

Unnngggh….

Well, that being said, Robbo and I are on vacation all next week on a road trip, where I will likely NOT be posting from the backwoods of Virginia. Have a good week!!

This week’s installment of MUFFIN THURSDAYS comes to you from my spare bedroom, because I actually took a vacation day today. I’m in my underwear right now. Things you didn’t need to know. Anyway, this installment is also brought to you by the number 3, the letter B, and the May 2008 issue of Vegetarian Times, where this recipe is taken directly from. Actually, it was a reader-submitted recipe, so thanks, Haley Fredrickson!

Lemonberry Muffins

You will need:
1 cup whole grain spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp lemon extract (I actually added a bit more)
3/4 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the soymilk, rice syrup, oil and lemon extract.
2. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix well.
3. Gently fold in raspberries. Fill the cups of a 12-cup muffin tin 2/3rds full
4. Bake 20-25 minutes.

The whole point of these muffins is that they have no added sugar. Except, I found them to be slightly not-sweet-enough for me, and I don’t have that much of a sweet tooth, so I think most people would want them to be a bit sweeter. So thus, I took those no-sugar-added muffins, and topped them with sugar.

So sue me! A little sugar won’t hurt you. Unless you’re diabetic, I guess, in which case I’d say you should probably skip the dipping-in-sugar step.

And that concludes this edition of Muffin Thursdays…I’m going back to watching daytime TV. Fabulous.

So what, so it’s Friday? I was planning to post this last night, but Rob and I ended up going to a show that further reinforced how old I am getting, because all the kids were wearing t-shirts of bands I’d never even heard of. I was like, “Rob, what does To Write Love on Her Arms mean?” and he was like “DUH IT’S A BAND” and I was like, “…oh.” Then I came home and examined my arm-wobble in the mirror. Do you hear that? Arm-wobble. It’s the beginning of the end. Oh well, onto muffins!

Vegan Banana Chocolate Muffins

This is adapted from a recipe on the internet, who adapted it from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

You will need:
2 cups flour (I used whole wheat spelt flour, but you could probably use anything you wanted)
1 and 1/2 tsps baking soda
1 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil
4 mashed bananas: the riper, the better
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (Here’s the thing. I used to buy the grocery store brand of semi-sweet chocolate chips because they were vegan. This time, I picked up the package and checked, and they had BUTTERFAT in them. Ack! They un-veganized them! The store’s meager supply contains no other vegan chocolate chips, so lately I’ve been using this Baker’s chocolate, which is vegan, and just cutting it into chunks. Ghetto.)

Okay, so set your oven to 350 and put paper things in your muffin tin. You could grease each individual cup, but why would you do that when you can just use papers? See? Genius.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking soda.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and the oil together until evenly mixed. Add the mashed banana (I mashed mine with a potato masher but left some chunks of banana-y goodness and chocolate chips/chunks. Stir in the water and vanilla. Add the dry mixture a little at a time and stir until just mixed.

Fill your muffin cups evenly and bake for about 30 minutes. This recipe made about 15 muffins.

Muffins in the morning sun. I only wish that I was eating it with my feet up and a cup of coffee instead of on the way to the bus stop to go to work.

Unnggggh. So good. These muffins were literally gone in 15 minutes at my office. Of course, as anyone who works in an office knows, these people will eat anything!

So, this will most likely be one of my last baking entries. Why? Because I suck at it. Why else? Because my good friend Laura, she of the gorgeous monkey cupcakes, has applied to do a regular contributing post of her baked goods. Since she is awesome and I am terrible, and she is kind and I am a jerk, and she is beautiful and I am a toad, I agreed. So thus, I leave you with this: my Christmas cookie medley.

My grandmother had commissioned me to bake a few kinds of cookies for Christmas. I ended up not having to make the labor-intensive gingerbread men, and instead baked all of these at midnight on December 23rd. Because I am a procrastinator who SUCKS AT BAKING.

Anyway, there are three kinds of cookies on this plate. If you look very closely at the plate, under the rum balls, you may be able to see that my cookies were, in fact, displayed on a Last Supper plate, probably to remove the sin of my having touched them. Catholics.

Anyway, the white cookies along the outside are butter balls, that Nana requested; the dark brown cookies are rum balls (oh rum balls, how I love thee) and the lumpy jobs up front are oatmeal-dried cherry-white chocolate cookies. The first two recipes are courtesy of my grandmother, and the third is an adaptation from Cooking Light. (Rob’s dad likes these also. At least SOMEONE likes my baking. Or maybe he’s just being nice.)

Here is the recipe for each:

Butter Balls
2 sticks of butter, softened (seriously, I know. These things clogged some major arteries)
2 tsp vanilla
4 TBS white sugar
2 cups flour
½ cup chopped walnuts

Mix all ingredients together. Roll into balls the size of a walnut. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. DO NOT spray or grease your nonstick cookie sheet beforehand, as this will cause the cookies to spread.

Remove from oven and allow to cool. Roll in powdered sugar.

Rum Balls
2 cups crushed vanilla wafers (I use Nilla brand)
1 cup walnut meal (or ground walnuts)
2 TBS light corn syrup
2 TBS cocoa powder
1/3 cup dark rum…plus another splash or two, oh and a glass for the baker

Mix all ingredients together. Roll into SuperBouncyBall-sized balls (you know exactluy what I mean, don’t act like you didn’t spend your quarters on these things in the grocery store machines) and then roll in a mixture of equal parts cocoa powder and powdered sugar. So, the rum doesn’t cook out of these, which means they are actually alcoholic. I mean, if you ate the whole batch, that’s the equivalent of like two shots of rum, so um…eat responsibly. Yeah.

Oatmeal-Dried Cherry-White Chocolate Cookies
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (about 3 1/3 ounces)
1 cup regular oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
3/4 cup dried cherries
1/3 cup white chocolate chips

Combine flour, oats, baking soda, and salt; stir with a whisk. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar until well-blended. Add vanilla and egg; beat well. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until blended. Add cherries and chips, mix carefully.

Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes. Cool, remove, eat!

So this past weekend was my good friend Liz’s 20-somethingth birthday, for which she hosted a dinner party at her house and enlisted my help. Amongst several other dishes, including spinach dip, a lasagna and a cheese platter that the kind people at Whole Foods put together so we didn’t even have to, we also made a few other things.

Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage-Cream Sauce
The pumpkin ravioli was a recipe Liz found in a Rachael Ray magazine her roommate bought.

1 cup canned pure pumpkin puree
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese, plus shaved parmesan for serving
1 large egg
Salt and pepper
32 wonton wrappers

1. In a medium bowl, mash together the pumpkin, cream cheese, parmesan, egg and 2 pinches each salt and pepper.
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Spoon a tablespoon of the pumpkin-cream cheese filling into the center of 16 wonton wrappers, brush the edges with water, top with the remaining 16 wrappers and press to seal, gently squeezing out the air. Arrange in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet.
3. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
4. Working in 3 batches, cook the ravioli in the boiling water until they float to the surface, about 3 minutes.

Surprisingly, we had very little trouble with this. Only one or two of the wontons burst, and only because the second you dropped them in the boiling water, they sank to the bottom and stuck immediately. The key seemed to be moving them around in the water constantly, especially in the first minute.

The Rachael Ray sauce was just butter and pumpkin seeds, so we decided to make a sage-cream sauce. Melt 2 tablespoons of a butter in a small saucepan until foamy. Add one chopped shallot and 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh sage, cook about 5 minutes. Add two cups of heavy cream (aw yeah) and three fresh sage sprigs, and simmer about 15 minutes or until sauce is reduced by half. Remove the sprigs of sage and serve over pasta.

The only things we decided we would change about this dish was that next time, instead of using two wontons to make a big ravioli, we would use the wrapping directions on the back of the wonton package and call em tortellini. Taste-wise, they were great, but the look of all the noodles was a bit weird. Also, people began to arrive as the sauce was still simmering, so I think I took it off the stove a little too soon and it was a bit runny. Oh well, lesson learned.

Sorry the picture is a little out of focus–Rob wasn’t there to take it.

4-Layer Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Filling and White Chocolate Ganache

The cake recipe came from Paula Deen:

2 cups sugar
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 ounces red food coloring
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter, beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition. Mix cocoa and food coloring together and then add to sugar mixture; mix well. Sift together flour and salt. Add flour mixture to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Blend in vanilla. In a small bowl, combine baking soda and vinegar and add to mixture. Pour batter into 3 (8-inch) round greased and floured pans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from heat and cool completely before frosting.

Well, that was the recipe for three 8-inch cakes. I increased it by half to make four 9-inch cakes. Why? I don’t know. I really don’t.

The cream cheese frosting between each layer is just 8oz cream cheese, softened, mixed with half a stick of butter, softened, 1 tsp of vanilla and a 16oz package of powdered sugar, added in increments. Simple enough.

The white chocolate ganache was 13 ounces of Ghirardelli white chocolate, chopped into pieces. Over this, pour 1/2 cup of heavy cream that has been brought to the boiling point but not quite boiled. Now stir like hell until the chocolate melts and you have a goopy syrup. Pour over the top of the cake.

I should probably have made more ganache, as you can see it didn’t quite make it the whole way down the cake, because the cake was like two feet tall. The red stuff on top is just the extra cream cheese frosting, thinned out with a little cream and tinted with red food coloring. It looks orange in the photo, but I promise it was red. The top is garnished with the leftover white chocolate pieces. This cake made people’s bellies hurt, so…mission accomplished!!

…because I sure can’t.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

I hate baking. You know, I always think I can do it, and everything usually turns out poorly. It’s all that exact measuring—when I cook, I like to dump some of this in, a little of that, then taste and see what it needs. I can’t be bothered to level off flour or measure out sugar. I do not have the patience to bake.

Alas, I always try anyway. I figured it’d be easy to make cookies using the recipe on the damn bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips. Hah. Right.

Here’s what you need:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks, 1/2 pound) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated [white] sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts

Except I did 1½ cups of chocolate chips and 1½ cups of those Reese’s peanut butter chips. Mmm. Maybe that weighed down the batter too much, I don’t know. Oh well, onto the steps…

1. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl.
2. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large mixer bowl.
3. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; gradually beat in flour
mixture.
4. Stir in chocolate and peanut butter chips.
5. Realize that there is a hockey game on television that you are missing.
6. Wander into living room, taking cookie dough with you.
7. Marvel at how the Versus Network’s NHL coverage is even worse than the local station’s, a feat you never imagined possible.
8. Notice a slight stomach ache and realize you’ve eaten about 25% of the dough.
9. Curse.
10. Drop leftover dough by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.
11. Realize that even though you have eaten a good portion of the dough, this is gonna make a lot of cookies. You’re going to be up all night. Curse again.
12. Bake in preheated 375-degree oven for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown.
13. Realize that 11 minutes is probably too long when the first batch comes out sort of… black-ish. Curse. Wow, you’re on a roll!
14. Let cookies stand for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.
15. Wonder why your cookies are flat instead of puffy like the ones in pictures. Wonder if you should have added more baking soda?
16. Wonder what the hell you are doing to do with 3-4 dozen flat ass cookies.
17. Vow never to do this again.

That picture actually makes them look better than they do in person.

On the bright side, they actually tasted pretty good. As Rob put it, they aren’t much to look at, but if you close your eyes when you eat them, it’s a pretty enjoyable experience.

Here he is, proving it.

Oh Rob.

So he gave them a very generous 9 for taste, 5.5 for looks. I averaged this out to 7 hot dogs. I would have rounded up to 7.5, but I hate how my “half a hot dog” clip art is bigger than the full hot dog, and I don’t feel like fixing it. Mediocrity at its finest!!

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Normally I’m not a big fan of being dependent on recipes—I think it’s better to have a good understanding of food and flavors and how they work together, but when it comes to baking: 1) I am vaguely inept and 2) as a craft, it requires a lot of precision. So here is the Whole Foods recipe that I adapted slightly for Robbo’s birthday, even though he doesn’t really like pie. Because, you know, I like pie.

Pumpkin-Apple Pie
Serves 8

1/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons butter
3 cups Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

1 large egg
1/3 cup sugar, granulated
3/4 cup pumpkin, mashed (fresh or canned)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
1/4 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell

Combine the brown sugar, cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a 2-quart saucepan. Stir in the water and butter. Cook, over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Carefully add the apple slices and cook for another 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Combine the egg, sugar, pumpkin, 1/4 teaspoon salt, spices, and evaporated milk in a bowl. Beat until well blended using a rotary or electric mixer set on low speed. Pour the apple mixture into the unbaked pie shell and then spoon an even layer of the pumpkin mixture over the apple mixture. Bake in a preheated 425°F oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 375°F, and bake for another 40 minutes, or until the filling is set around the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

Here it is (with vanilla ice cream, because what’s the point of pie if it’s not a vehicle to carry ice cream to your mouth?):

Robbo’s review:
Like I said, he doesn’t really like pie, but Rob also claims to not like things he’s never tried. He looked at it and said, “I’m nervous!” He took a bite, swallowed and said, “Well, it’s not bad.”
So, 6.5 out of a possible 10 hot dogs.

Caveat: As a pie fan, I thought this was awesome. On Thanksgiving, I always have to pick between pumpkin and apple pie because I never have room for both—PEOPLE, this pie is both!
And Rob’s dad asked that we leave the leftovers at his house, so I call this pie a winner! Rob is full of it!