Vegan Cookies and Cake

I enjoy the blog "The Life". Although I'm not vegan (actually, I can't call myself lacto-ovo vegetarian anymore either), the baking recipes are great because I use oil more often in my overall cooking. After a terrible end of the week, which was slightly alleviated by the consumption of a whole packet of marshmallows (284 g) in three sittings (2 am, 11 am, and 7 pm), I figured I might as well bake some things and binge on them all. I made vegan chocolate cookies which kind of remind me of Oreos (without the cream) or chocolate graham crackers and lemon cake which I didn't mix well enough. These recipes came from "The Life" and are simply amazing.

Notes/alterations to the chocolate chip cookies:

1. No chocolate chips

2. Substituted the white flour with whole wheat flour and a packet of lotus seed flour that I had lying around

3. Less sugar

4. 1/4 cup water + 1/4 balsamic vinegar, and 1 tsp baking soda instead of baking powder

5. It doesn't matter which rack I use in an unpreheated oven for 15 minutes. They turn out perfect, even according to SP

6. Added red pepper flakes!

Notes/alterations to the lemon cake:

1. Didn't have enough lemon juice, so added some vinegar

2. Baked for 35 minutes + left it in oven for 10 minutes

3. 1.5 cup of white flour + 1 cup of whole wheat flour... + unknown extra bits of flour...not sure how much I ended up using

4. Added red pepper flakes

A great thing that happened two nights ago (after I went to get marshmallows for my binge) was that I happened upon a baking tray, a cake tin, and a dish drying rack next to the dumpster in the courtyard. The baking tray fits perfectly in the small oven that I have for the summer (I actually had brought my own baking tray, but it was too long!). I'm hoping to find a mini-fridge with shelves next (last month I found a fridge without shelves and a microwave without the turntable, unfortunately). Although some people will think that this is disgusting or weird, I believe that it's helping the environment and my finances.

Surprisingly, I have only bought baking powder once in my life. 55 g in 5 sachets. Most of the time, I use baking soda in my baking. If a recipe calls for baking powder, I just substitute some of the liquid with vinegar and use baking soda instead of the powder. It always works. I've been reading Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter, and he (along with other chefs, I suppose) claims that bakers are more precise and antsy about measuring than cooks, who like creativity and splashing in ingredients here and there.

I have to disagree with him. I splash in tablespoons of vinegar, I throw in pepper flakes, and I even didn't measure the flour for the lemon cake today (so, I might have 2 cups of flour in that lemon cake, but it could also be 3). I'm not extremely precise with measurements, and things mostly turn out fine. The book also lists a stand mixer and a whisk as essential for bakers, but I have neither and I consider myself decent at baking. The book is geared solely towards stereotypical computer scientists who don't cook (the stereotypical humour, writing style, everything!), and I guess I was a bit distracted by this (in addition to the "BUY THIS BOOK!" message studded in every chapter. The worst part, however, is that there are barely any citation of sources. Sure, I don't think he's lying when he says that there's gluten in wheat flour, but there are no scientific papers cited! Interviews, pictures, and blogs are listed (but not by MLA or NEJM standards), but it's not enough. Monell isn't even mentioned! Also, I guess I'm disappointed that the existence of non-tasters for quinine aren't mentioned either.

However, it was an overall good read because there were some useful tips, and there were explanations of a lot of things that I've never questioned. For instance, why do we bake at 350 degrees F for some things [e.g. cake], and 375 F for others [e.g. cookies]? Well, one reason is that sugar caramelises above 350 degrees F, and you don't want your cakes to caramelise, but cookies that look brown and caramelised appear more appetizing. I have two pages of notes for things that I'd want to explore further, particularly adding maltodextrin to peanut butter and cooking with a slow cooker.

Bubble Tea Cookies!

I know that this sounds really cheesy, but I had a dream in which I was making bubble tea cake. I remember considering the logistics of the cake - how would it stand? Where do the bubbles go? How much does it have to look like a container of bubble tea? Straw? Do the bubbles stay at the bottom or are they distributed evenly throughout the (tea) cake? I remember applying bright orange icing to a cake shaped like a bubble tea container in the dream; in fact, it looked like this, except it was standing vertically and lacked the bottom and top. The rest of the dream seemed to be slightly morose, but I don't remember. 

Note: Throughout this post, I will refer to these tapioca pearls/bubble tea bubbles as "tapioca pearls" for consistency.

It turns out that no one has yet BAKED a tapioca pearl cake (or at least, I REALLY hope no one has ever done it). So, it's a race against time: I need to bake tapioca pearls into some sort of attractive cake thing, and post it on here. It will be an original product. When some famous celebrity chef finally does it in the future, people will search for recipes. MINE WILL SHOW UP and I WILL BE KNOWN AS THE ONE WHO DID IT BEFORE IT WAS COOL.

But first, what happens when you bake tapioca pearls?  Do they shrivel up? Or, do they get hot and steamy? Swell up and go hard? Explode? Pop like cherries? (Okay, I'll stop the jokes...)

So, here's a pilot test!

First, I made some cookie dough. I made half a batch of this vegan recipe, but I substituted the baking powder and water with baking soda and balsamic vinegar. There are also no chocolate chips or marshmallows. I added the balsamic vinegar right before adding the tapioca pearls, because the vinegar reacts with the baking soda.

Rehydrating "5-minute" tapioca pearls! A few months ago, they were $1.68, but now they are $1.98 at the underground Chinese grocery store in Chinatown :(. Throughout the semester, I would do this by boiling water using the electric kettle, pouring this water into my loose tea leaves in a tea strainer, sugar, and pearls, and cover my mug with a lid. After stirring about every 3 minutes for 10 minutes or so, the pearls would be chewy and edible.

However, I think that the pearls taste much better and are plumper when heated in boiling sweet tea on the stove.

For heating these instant tapioca pearls, I used about 1/4 of a saucepan of water, a handful of tapioca pearls and a tablespoon of brown sugar. There wasn't any tea in this rehydration, but I did use the leftover sugar mixture for tea.

After the pearls were cooked, I fished them out with a tea strainer and plonked them into the cookie dough. Leaving them in hot water for too long renders the whole pearl to taste uniform and starchy (well, it happened once, and I do not want to risk it happening again). After a quick mix, I scooped out the dough and baked the cookies according to that recipe. The mixture was really crumbly (think sand-like), so what I did was scoop up a tablespoon, squeeze my hand against the spoon, and keep squeezing until a ball was formed. The dough was kind of spongy.

AND THEY WORKED! They harden as they cool, so I ended up with crispy (but delicious) cookies that were devoured by my friends and SP. SP ate 5/12ths of the batch (of 12 cookies). The cookie recipe produced cookies that remind me of the almond cookies, like these, I used to get for 2 HKD  in HK near my piano exam place.
The tapioca pearls were chewy, not dry, and delicious! So, I will make a cake next time!

On the 18th day of the 6th month of the 2012th year of our wholesome flying spaghetti monster, I, PIE-314, OFFICIALLY MADE THE FIRST TAPIOCA PEARL COOKIES. EVER.

Battle of the Brownies!

^Vegetable Brownie

In an effort to get my sister to eat more types of vegetables, I told her that she'd have to eat one slice of eggplant from the casserole I made today before she could eat her brownie. She initially agreed, and we made brownies. My mum thwarted my plan, though, by giving in to my sister's crying/whining and telling her that she could just eat cabbage instead. I didn't take any pictures of the casserole because it wasn't particularly pretty. However, I did get pretty riled by the fact that my sister just plain refuses to try new foods.

In order to show her that vegetables CAN actually be delicious, I made two types of brownies today (with her help. I think that introducing people to cooking from scratch is great education). The first one was the generic, perfect, cliche chocolate brownie. The second one was a whole wheat flour, zucchini and cabbage brownie. You're probably retching at the thought, right? On the contrary, though, the zucchini and cabbage brownie didn't taste like vegetables at all! You couldn't even SEE the shredded zucchini (you could see some of the shredded cabbage because I got lazy with the grater).

The generic brownie was perfectly moist, dense, and chewy. It's the ubiquitous brownie you can get from a box, from the freezer, from scratch, or from a bake sale. It's not cakey, and it was kind of sweet because my sister added more sugar (since she wanted really sweet brownies). It was pretty fudgy. This is the kind of thing I would make for other people who aren't accustomed to my weird cooking style.

The recipe for the GENERIC BROWNIES is adapted from here, and I made only half the batch since my sister is the one who's going to be eating this one.

INGREDIENTS for a 200 cm^2 pan of thin brownies.

50 g oil

100 g caster sugar

1 egg

vanilla

25 g cocoa powder

50 g all-purpose white flour

0.25 tsp baking powder

METHOD

1. Mix oil, sugar, egg and vanilla.

2. Add in cocoa powder, flour, and baking powder, folding in a figure 8. The batter looks like this.

3. Bake at 177 degrees C/ 350 degrees F for 18-20 minutes on the bottom rack of an un-preheated oven. If you use the top rack, bake for 23 minutes.

*******

The vegetable brownie was not too sweet since I cut the sugar in half, not as oily, and definitely more cakey. I was actually pretty disappointed that I ended up with a cake rather than a brownie... it was more crumbly, but still pretty succulent. The cake is really dense and there is a slight grainy whole wheat flour texture to it, which I enjoy. Although I think it may be confirmation bias, there was a clean, vegetabl-y aftertaste which kind of reminds me of cucumber. The interesting thing about this vegetable cake/brownie is that the batter was the consistency of cookie dough, or super thick porridge. It also didn't rise much in the dish (Guess what?! I found a glass 20 cm square baking dish! Whoooo!!! My mum kept all the glassware in the top cabinet, above the stove...and now I'm putting it to good use!).

The recipe for the VEGETABLE CAKE is adapted from here. Incidentally, these are vegan. I aspire to make these brownie-like in the near future. Modifications for brownies include using less flour and using more oil...

INGREDIENTS for a 400 cm^2 pan of thick cake

50 g oil

110 g caster sugar (more if you'd like)

200 g grated vegetables (particularly zucchini, but I used a combination of zucchini and about 75 g of cabbage. Oh, right. Zucchini = Courgette)

pinch of salt

50 g cocoa powder

140 g whole wheat flour

30 g all-purpose white flour (I should've cut this out)

2 tsp baking soda

METHOD

1. Mix oil, sugar, and vegetables.

2. Add cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, and flour(s). Mix thoroughly. The batter will be extremely thick and sticky, sort of like moist cookie batter or thick corn grits. Or thick rice pudding.

3. Scoop batter into baking dish and spread it evenly.

4. Bake at 177 degree C/350 degrees F for 23 minutes on the bottom rack of an un-preheated oven. The shredded zucchini will miraculously disappear.

5. Somehow, half of the cake will disappear within a few well-chosen minutes.

Taste of Penn Part II: Dr. McDougall's Right Foods

This is part of the series about the Taste of Penn.

Initially, I was gonna make a pretty nice and shallow entry for Dr. McDougall's Right Foods, but then I did some research and I've started to reconsider.

At the Taste of Penn, I checked out this table only because my brother and dad adore instant noodles, and I figured I should get a box for them. They sell instant cup noodles, but made with organic and "healthy" stuff instead. The representative did emphasise that the products do not have MSG and are vegan. I find this simply amazing because it seems to be a rule that instant noodles include animal juice. The fact that there can be vegan teriyaki seems pretty sweet (literally...). I've lost interest in instant noodles since 2006/2005. Because Dr. McDougall's seems pretty interested in the environment, I talked to representative about perhaps making compressible cups (accordion style packaging), so that more cups of noodles can be shipped per box = less transportation gas! I've emailed them about it too, so maybe one day we'll see accordion packaging hit the shelves.

When I had a few more dining dollars left, I ended up buying some more of these noodles because they went from $1.89/cup to $1.89/2 cups to 50c/cup.

50c for an ostensibly "healthy" meal seems pretty chill, right?

I tried the teriyaki flavour... the noodles were thin and dense, and the seasoning smelled good. I added water to the line on the [paper] carton and microwaved it.

The noodles were thin and pretty tasteless. They were definitely not instant noodles. They were egg noodles, but in a pretty bland way.

The soup was... salty. Sweet. Um. Not really teriyaki.

So now, to talk about the actual company. Why is it called Dr. McDougall?

The addition of "Dr." makes people feel like they're eating something healthy.

Dr. McDougall, according to the website, is a vegan who has a health programme for people and he sells books.

"As the founder and medical director of the nationally renowned McDougall Program, Dr. McDougall has helped thousands improve their health and their quality of life by teaching people about the benefits of a plant based, heart healthy diet rich in good starches like whole grains, fruits, vegetables, rice, pasta and legumes."

Dude. These instant noodles are plant-based, sure, but they aren't heart healthy. In the most simplistic way of looking at this, if you eat 10 of these in a day (200 Calories each, 2000 typical RDI of Calories), you'd have 200% of your sodium intake for a day. There is 480 mg sodium

Yes, 200%.

Contrast that to the plant-based diet that I eat. Cereal. Banana. Apple. Sandwich, peanut butter, jam. More cereal. Cookies. Tofu, rice, raw spinach. Boiled broccoli. Soymilk. LOTS OF Chocolate. LOW SODIUM, GUYS.

Let's continue.

200 Calories for a meal is kinda little; it's so unrealistic when people eat 100 Calorie packs as "snacks". If I follow the 2000 Calorie RDI (Okay, I don't, and I know it's very variable depending on your exercise level; there are many BMR/Calorie intake calculators online so you can calculate your own), each meal should be around 400 Calories, if you include snacks and drinks. As a complete generalisation, BMR is at least 1000 Calories for adults - this is the energy needed to run your body per day if you're just sitting there like a vegetable.

0.5 g fat. That's cool I guess.

7 g protein

14% vitamin A

2% vitamin C

2% calcium

6% iron

200 Calories.

Compare that to eating an orange (100% vitamin C, 40 Calories, maybe)

+ a serving of carrots (100% vitamin A, 30 Calories)

+ a glass of soymilk (30% calcium&iron, 7g protein, 140 Calories)

+ a lot of spinach (?? iron, ?? Calories)

210 Calories. More fibre, less sodium.

So, I don't see what Dr. McDougall is trying to define as vegan and healthy, or whatever.

On the other hand, why am I criticising a dude who is trying to get people to eat healthier fast food as opposed to Cup Noodle? Why am I pointing out his flaws when he's actually making people more aware of what they're eating? At least he's using organicish ingredients, right, and at least he's including some fibre and having 20x less fat that other instant noodles right?

So, it's your call.

Though, my nutrition professor (Dr. Compher) did influence me; I figure she'd say something that goes along the lines of, well, this guy is trying to sell his books and his diet and get money.

I guess, if he sincerely wanted to help "thousands of people", maybe he should be an actual physician, right? Or a professor. Or, you know, high school volunteer work, which is what I do for CHiP although the program didn't work that well this semester.

Penn "Chocolate" Festival

"Next semester, I will be more involved in social groups at school."

That's what I said last semester when I realised that I was pretty much in two clubs.

Then I realised that if I joined another two, I'd have no time to do my homework, study, go to the lab, run, and eat food.

This is in addition to the fact that I'm already managing my time better than I was last semester.

So, I didn't join any extra clubs, but I do get emails from the Penn Gastronomy Club (which I should officially join, actually). Recently, I got an email about the Penn Chocolate Festival, and there were going to be "some of the city's best chocolatiers" and free samples present!

At the Hall of Flags in Houston Hall, the Penn Chocolate Festival took flight. Breezy. Short. Among the tumbleweed. It was too timid to be anything like other food events (e.g. Campus "Free" For All), which was good because it meant that each member of the audience had extremely personalised attention from the vendors, which included just two chocolatiers (Really).

Despite obtaining a lot of information from the vendors, I didn't get many samples, which was a bit of a let-down considering the blatant advertising in the email. Then again, the email claimed that there were going to be many chocolate vendors, which wasn't the case.

The sweet, thick and creamy tea (which didn't taste much like tea) with mini tapioca balls in the above image came from Boba Brothers. I loved the fact that the tapioca balls are tiny! (~2mm in diameter; it makes them drinkable via a standard straw, and it is quite a twist). Actually, I wonder how bubble tea would be like with various sized tapioca balls in the tea...

Although the liquid was super sweet, clean/not artificially-flavoured-ish, there was no "chocolate" in it at all.

My second stop was John&Kira's chocolate. The fact that they use local ingredients and have beautiful packaging and are a home business (I talked to Kira) means that their prices are jacked up, of course. For $6.50, I can get Chipotle, instead of a bar of chocolate. However, John&Kira's also have everything that Chipotle, and Godiva, and Lindt don't have; they own the company, they can allow me to make my own flavour, and they use ingredients from around here. The mint in the mint chocolate came from University City's Urban Garden! I have no idea where that is, but it's within a 3 mile radius, probably. According to the brochure, the honey comes from Millerton PA, while the berries come from Meadow Gap PA. I'm not sure why they're advertising that the coffee whiskey comes from Mexico or that the bergamot comes from Sri-Lanka, because those aren't "local", but perhaps the overall message is that these ingredients come from known sources, and we're supposed associate that with fair labour or something.

My first impression was that the ladybugs and the bees were super shiny. They were as shiny as marbles, although more pearlescent. Apparently, there is a really high cocoa butter content in them, since the're some sort of caramel (bees) or ganache (ladybug).

Kira gave me a pretty big sample of dark mint chocolate to taste. The mint was definitely true mint; it isn't the sweet stuff that I'm accustomed to in commercial mint ice cream or mint chocolate; it was legitimate mint-right-off-the-plant. Although I do like the peppermint/conventional mint better, this one was light and delicious too. The chocolate part was... normal, I would say.

I then went to the table promoting Sazon restaurant. The guy who was at the table was a real businessman; he talked non-stop about how his chocolate was real, untempered, pure, made straight from crushed beans from Venezuela (the "original/pure/clean/unadulterated" location of cacao, apparently). He explaining his experimentation with making truffles in his kitchen, and he talked about testing all his truffles on his friends. At one point, he gave someone in the audience a whole truffle. He didn't give any truffles to me though, even though I talked to him for a good 10 minutes about his truffles and cocoa. He walked me through the truffles; coconut ones, jalapeno ones, rum infused ones, berry-filled - "I don't care about rule of 3 flavours - you know, of chocolate, and two others. I just dump them all in together and you can taste them all!", he proclaimed. He pointed out that the ones in the middle compartment were vegan, and the coconut covered ones on the right were raw and made with a ton of coconut butter. "Nothing goes above 105 degrees. I just use a blender and a thermometer; my raw vegan friend is really anal about this," he boasts. Then, he listed the ingredients in these vegan truffles, and I kinda blanked out until him mentioned the word honey.

Honey. From bees.

I'm not vegan, but vegans do not eat honey.

Naturally, I responded, "Hey wait! Vegans don't eat honey!"

The guy (I'm sorry I do not know his name but on the website, he's the Chocolate Alchemist) looked at me in this really exasperated way (and perhaps with a hint of scorn - he's not a vegetarian or vegan), and said "Well, it's just some honey; we don't know if agave is a good idea because it might have corn syrup or other things added, and honey is pure. And, our honey is local. Besides, you know that there are different definitions of vegan and a lot of vegans eat honey."

He didn't say those exact words, but that was his position on the issue. Call me biased, amnesiatic, or downright silly, but if there is honey in those truffles, those truffles are NOT vegan. His (sorta pompous) attitude, coupled with the fact that he selectively gave out truffles for sampling, meant that I didn't have a good impression of his business. I know he's allowed to boast about his truffles and his super-awesome hot chocolate since they do taste delicious (the hot chocolates did, at least), but I felt like he was stepping the line by sticking honey in a "vegan" treat.

So, the hot chocolates were amazing. I tried the Clasico and the Cuaimia. The Clasico was thick hot chocolate that had no watery taste at all; it was literally like drinking flavourful, textured, melted chocolate. The Cuaimia had a hint of chili (although not too much; I think I would prefer more) and was less chocolatey. Neither had sugar, yet they were so flavourful that sugar wasn't needed to counteract the bitter taste of the ground cocoa (not that it tasted that bitter, in comparison to cocoa powder).

Another local vendor was the Kitchen at Penn. They gave out banana pudding, brownie, and and a plastic cup. No spoon. The food tasted ordinary, but I suppose that's the point, because the Kitchen at Penn is supposed to emulate homemade food for college students missing home.

Although the next few pictures depict vacuous, gilded and bland cupcakes, I'm still posting them because they are indeed prettily decorated. Buttercream Cupcakes (a cupcake truck, not to be confused with Call Me Cupcake, another cupcake truck) offers sundry cupcakes, including the best-seller, red velvet.

I tried 1/4 of a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing and purple sugar. The peanut butter icing tasted legitimately like peanut butter smothered in cream and sugar. The cake was kinda dry actually.

So wait a minute, two legit chocolatiers out of 5, at a "chocolate" festival?

Vegan Whoopie Pie!

So at one of those late night events there was a Vegetarian society meeting thingy and there were these cakes and stuff and a "make-your-own" whoopie pie table. I have never had a legitimate whoopie pie before. Honestly... is the stuff inside supposed to be marshmallow fluff? Cream? Whipped cream? PHOs? Meringue?...

These cupcakes were amazing though... especially as they were vegan.

This is a vat of peanut butter whoopie pie filling. It was actually tasty. Notice the marker nearby... just for size comparison. It was a HUGE vat of... sugary fat.

The pillow-sized vats of plain whoopie pie filling and cookies and cream [and I didn't think that more cream was possible] whoopie pie filling. Huge vat of gooey creamy white stuff... ring a bell? Get this in a bank? [Okay, that was a terrible joke. Or, reference. So, I'm not going to underline it.]

Since I am a neophyte at making whoopie pies, I put way too much creamy stuff on the chocolate cookie-cake thingy [which was really dry and bland. And baking-soda-y. I didn't like it.] It was way too oily. The cupcake below, on the other hand, was ridiculously moist and delicious. I didn't consume any of the other stuff [pumpkin, and vanilla, I believe.] since I, for once, didn't feel hungry.