Vegan Naan

My friend Terra shared this really great sounding recipe with me recently. I haven't made it yet but plan to over the next couple days. While her blog isn't all vegan, she has some great vegan recipe's up and more to come. Here's a direct link to the recipe she told me I could share here: Vegan Naan

Naan

 This bread is quite easy to make at home and is the perfect addition to an exotic Indian meal.
Adapted from a recipe by chattanoogavegan on VegWeb.

Servings: 16
Total time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 (1/4 oz) package active dry yeast
1 c warm water
1/4 c sugar
3 T unsweetened soy milk
1 egg or egg replacer, beaten (1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 2 T warm water is a good substitute)
2 tsp salt
3 c bread flour

1 1/2 c white whole wheat flour
1 garlic clove, minced
Cooking spray, as needed

 
Directions:
In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water. Let sit for about 10 minutes. Stir in the sugar, milk, egg, and salt.

Add the flour 1/2 c at a time until doughy (you may need slightly more or less than 4 1/2 c). Knead thoroughly, roll into a ball, then let rise for 1 hour.

Flatten out the ball and sprinkle half of the garlic on top. Knead in the garlic completely then repeat with the rest of the garlic, making sure it is spread evenly throughout.

Preheat a skillet or griddle over medium to medium-high heat. Divide the dough into 16 balls, about 2" in diameter. Use a rolling pin to flatten each of the dough balls into thin ovals, between 1/8" and 1/4" thick.

Spray the bottom side of the naan with cooking spray before placing in the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until it is golden brown and bubbly on top. Spray the top with cooking spray and flip over to cook for another 2 minutes.

 

 

 

 

Vegan French Toast!Serves Six People (two slices each)

Growing up my family had a french toast tradition waking up after that one eve a year that the scary man shoots down the chimney and drops strange objects in the house. We'd all eagerly sit around the table waiting for my father to finish cooking up the in house favorite: eggnog french toast. The eggnog is what made it a killer seasonal delicacy. The strange thing is, I can't stand eggnog! It's never been a favorite, but makes for a tasty secret ingredient in french toast. Now days it's possible to purchase Vegan eggnog (which I swear tastes better than the real thing), but it's also only out seasonally.

This particular recipe trades eggs for a few bananas, giving it an even sweeter taste, and spices up some almond milk to give it an "eggnoggish" taste. If you've ever attempted to skillet up a vegan french toast recipe you've probably found that it tends to stick more to the pan. The secret fix is being sure keep a slick pan by applying some vegan margarine (I prefer Earth Balance) between each grilling to keep the bread from sticking. Also keeping the pan at a even low-medium heat does wonders.

Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas
• 3/4 cup vanilla almond milk (Or add your own vanilla)
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of real maple syrup
  
• 1 loaf of vegan Cinnamon Raisin bread (12 pieces)
  

The Bread:

The bread can make or break any french toast recipe. You want a loaf that's cut into thick slices. While cinnamon raisin bread isn't necessary to making these delicious, it certainly helps! No matter what bread you choose, you want it to have some density to it so that it doesn't overly soggy too quickly.

The Prep:

• Grab the blender and add in all your ingredients. What could be easier?

• Pour a little bit of the mixture into a small bowl. You'll want just enough to cover one side of whatever bread you've chosen but not enough to drowned each piece. Coat one side of the bread and then flip it over to coat the other side. I use a fork to scrape off any excess batter. The idea is to allow the bread to soak up the flavor and leave each surface relatively batter free.

• Heat-up your pan on medium heat with a bit of Vegan margarine and make sure it's covered evenly.

• Fry each piece of bread until it reaches a golden brown color and then flip and repeat. You want to cook it long enough so that it is toasty to the core but not burnt.

• Once you've fried up your complete batch, serve. You may think these are going to need more maple syrup... but trust me, they're good enough by themselves!

• Finally NOM!

When the right season comes around, try using Vegan eggnog instead of almond/soy/rice milk. The difference is delicious. Please write me and let me know if you've given this recipe a try!

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It's Pi day! Geeks all around the world celebrate Pi day enthusiastically.

If you're unfamiliar with this spiffy celebration, it's traditional to hang out at 1:59 PM and eat pie. Yes Pie. In honor of Pi day, I've decided to tackle a rather interesting conundrum.

It's a pie inside a cake.

Or is it a pie pretending to be a cake?

Either way, the pie-cake has candy that's pretending to be fruit that tops an apple pie inside a chocolate cake spelling out a confused new years message.

All around it's a very confused pie & the perfect food to bring to a pi-day vegan potluck!

So just how do you make a pie INSIDE a cake?

The secret lies in baking two halves of a basic vegan chocolate cake, taking the bottom of a pit tin and gently indenting the two halfs of the cake, carefully insert a cooked apply pie, assemble the top half of the cake onto the pie and bottom half, frost the pieces together and serve!

Happy Pi Day Everyone!

p.s. Geeks - please note the time of this post ;)