The Conscious Kitchen

The Vegan Pâte à Choux Chronicles

2008-08-31T23:40:00.000-05:00

It's that Daring Bakers time again and I'm posting in at the eleventh hour, though I've been working on this challenge for quite a while. Lest you get too excited for the great unveiling though, let me warn you right off that this post is more an exercise in chronicling out-right failures and near-misses than it is in making with the pretty pastries. In fact, this will probably be the least

Delicate Flame: Urfa Biber Chili Cupcake for Iron Cupcake Earth

2008-08-29T07:51:00.006-05:00

When I read on Cupcakes Take the Cake about an Iron Chef-style cupcake competition taking place, my gears immediately started turning. As in Iron Chef, a special ingredient is the uniting theme among competitor's entries and for this first round of Iron Cupcake: Earth hosted by Sandy, the Milwaukee Cupcake Queen, the ingredient was chili pepper, which, you know, I can get down with. My

Sugarbaby: A Watermelon to Remember

2008-08-19T15:45:00.007-05:00

It was a slow drift, something I didn't even really notice until there I was in front of a catered fruit platter at a work lunch looking at the watermelon from a great distance. Where once I would have reached out on instinct for a wedge, I could only gaze on it with sorrow. I knew it would be tasteless, soggy, pale, pathetic, a poor excuse for the summer fruit of my youth, slurped from a

Give Yourself a Challenge

2008-08-07T11:57:00.015-05:00

Sure, like making healthy meals without animal ingredients, pesticides or huge carbon footprints isn't challenge enough. Life is hard as it is. ...But sometimes don't you like to make it just a little bit harder? On your own terms with an eye toward creativity and deliciousness, setting a challenge or theme for your cooking is a seriously fun undertaking. The sun is shining through the rain,

Gâteau Filbert with Praline Buttercream: Daring Bakers Challenge Take Two

2008-07-30T12:25:00.007-05:00

This month's Daring Bakers challenge involved intense scrutiny of the forecast and supreme schedule jostling to find time on those glorious days when a dessert to share was called for and the temperature (not to mention the humidity level) was in territory that welcomed non-essential baking, chocolate and sugar work. A tall order from Chris at Mele Cotta, this month's Daring Bakers host (and

Eating Closer to Home

2008-07-23T08:38:00.012-05:00

This post is long overdue, but perhaps a little more dramatic for its delay. It's been a great summer season so far of super fresh, local produce from Parker Farms and I've been making good use of it. We've been with Steve who runs the Parker Farms Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for almost as long as we've lived in the Boston area and it's been a positive experience every year,

Daring Baker's Challenge: Danish Braid

2008-06-29T19:46:00.005-05:00

What was I thinking not being a member of Daring Bakers? This group of intrepid dessert makers all come together around a different challenge recipe every month in which they test their skills, explore new ground and bake up all manner of treats. Obvious that I would want in. While the recipes that are selected are usually not free of animal products, there are veg bakers who get a little

Herbal Vegan Ice Creams

2008-06-19T09:58:00.015-05:00

One of my favorite things about summer is having boxes and boxes of herbs growing on the porches, ready to snip and pluck and enliven dinner with their presence. This year my container herb garden expanded with the addition of some herbs I planted specifically with dessert making in mind: lemon verbena, English lavender, orange mint and lemon balm, but there are many other herbs that while

Riffing on Local: Oleana and Ana Sortun, Vegan Style

2008-06-05T13:54:00.007-05:00

I'd been hoping to tempt you all today with local green and leafies today from my first CSA drop-off of the season, but it was not to be. Drop-offs will, however, begin next week. In the meantime, I thought I'd play on the concept of eating local by drawing attention to the Eastern Mediterranean delights that are held in Ana Sortun's cookbook, Spice, (click through to explore the table of

Citrus, Sweet and Savory

2008-05-28T12:55:00.009-05:00

I'm back to blogging! A recent postcard from my mom conveyed her hope that at least "something has gone right for me lately," a sentiment which offers a little insight into life as of late. While it may be the Milagros chocolate I just ate talking or the seventh straight day of doing restorative yoga that's got me feeling good, I'm hopeful that there's little calmer stretch of life heading my

Sayonara Citrus, part one

2008-05-02T19:17:00.001-05:00

There are some fruits so ubiquitous in the American supermarket that they seem seasonless to many of us. Many members of the citrus family certainly fit this bill--an orangeless produce section, for example, would be almost unthinkable. But indeed, citrus has a season and we are coming to its end. left background: cara cara, right foreground: moro Grapefruit (unfortunately my least favorite

Vegan Pizzelle and Cannoli

2008-04-08T16:31:00.010-05:00

If there was a defining cookie of my childhood, and of course there was, it was the pizzelle. Pizzelle, alternatively spelled "piazelle," "piazella," "pizzele," is pronounced "pit sel′" with the same "ts" sound found in the word "pizza." Pizza and pizzelle in fact share the root "pizze" which is the Italian word for round and flat, which, of course, they both are. My mother's Italian roots

Vegan Baking, Post Bootcamp

2008-03-20T06:45:00.008-05:00

I think I have always been interested in food and baking in particular. In my youth I was Mistress of the Popover--I loved making popovers from a recipe in a kid's cookbook for family lunches. At thirteen I reveled in the classic period of teen alienation and angst while flipping compulsively between videos on 120 Minutes and early Food Network shows on pickle making and cake baking . The

Vegan Malay

2008-02-22T00:25:00.001-05:00

It's always something that keeps me from posting as much as I would like, but when you feast your eyes on my latest excuse, I have to believe you will accept it readily. See, I've been in the kitchen...I know...as per usual, right? But it was not just any kitchen, nay, I've been in the kitchen at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City, where I was taking a vegan pastry intensive taught

Vegan Cupcake Overload

2008-02-03T22:31:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry guys, for oh so many things. For torturing you with a bazillion pictures of truffles and then after much too long an absence, popping back with this post (...you'll soon see what I mean...) but hopefully you will forgive me the following transgression on dietary decency when I explain that the following 59 cupcakes, stockpiled photographs I haven't had a chance to post, are intended to

Tremendous Truffles

2008-01-15T17:45:00.001-05:00

Which came first, the truffle or the truffle? That is, the fungus or the confection? In fact, the pungent and pricey spherical fungus is the namesake for the popular chocolate, which when rolled in cocoa powder, shares a passing resemblance. While chocolate is an ancient treat, it wasn't until 1828 with the invention of the cocoa press that separated the cocoa butter from the cocoa solids in

Holiday Wrap Up

2008-01-08T09:35:00.000-05:00

There's something emotionally complex about the American winter holidays for me--Christmas and New Year's. Festive, fun, but also bittersweet, a soft sorrow of something not quite achieved, something reached for and only just brushed with fingertips before it moved completely out of reach. Maybe it's the fleeting nature of friends and family all gathered together, knowing it will be over too

Drown Your Sorrows in Vegan Ice Cream

2007-12-19T23:09:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but when I'm sad I like eat ice cream and put "Everyday is Like Sunday" and "Sad Little Moon" on circular repeat. Preferably this all occurs while I am also still in my pajamas. The extraordinary number of ice cream pictures which follow and my ipod song rankings should offer some indication of how sad I've been. It's not all bad though, no, I don't mean to claim more

Dyeing, Naturally

2007-12-05T23:44:00.001-05:00

I don't often feel the urge to conjure up colors that nature generally reserves for dramatic flowers and beautiful birds when it comes to my food, but every once in a while it's fun to dye. I was inspired to break away from my standard cupcake style to come up with some vibrant, playful, colorful, and all around fun-loving confections that would partner well with a gift I was recently given

Vegan Thanksgiving

2007-11-30T16:19:00.000-05:00

I know I'm hopelessly late with my Thanksgiving post, but let's just think of it as a lovely extension of the holiday and pretend that it doesn't actually feel like Thanksgiving happened a least a month ago already. triumphant parsnip harvesters I think it's clear that most American holidays suffer from commercialization, crassification (it's likely that that is not really a word, but you know

Wheeler's Black Label Vegan Ice Cream, Brownie Sundae Edition

2007-11-12T19:42:00.000-05:00

Those reading The Conscious Kitchen this summer might know that in May I came into possession of a very fine commercial grade ice cream maker and promptly got obsessed with ice cream. As much as I love to be involved in the process of making my own food though, there may soon be a very attractive sale on a commercial grade ice cream maker since I can't imagine ever needing it again now that there

An Apple a Day in a Plethora of Ways

2007-11-08T19:00:00.000-05:00

There's little that can make me feel more in the moment of fall than apple picking. It's late in the season for it, I know, but our New England autumn has been stretching out nicely, flowing from one crisp cool sunny blue-skied beautiful day to the next and in this weather the apples have been holding on. Good thing too, because it was only recently that I got to go out and pick some. Tougas

Feeling Fancy: Five Courses of Vegan Love

2007-10-31T23:54:00.000-05:00

Special occasions usually seem to call for dinners out, but sometimes it can be fun and more personal to stay in. I especially wanted to come up with a memorably romantic dinner for my partner this week as we celebrated the seven years we've been together through thick, thin, sick, health, grad school...twice... and everything else. Since the time around our actual anniversary was spent in the

Cranberry Bean and Tomato Soup

2007-10-23T08:39:00.000-05:00

Right about now is the time of year soup gets back on my radar. Freakish 80 degree weather at the end of October aside, Boston is creeping into fall. Cool nights are making me encourage all of the cats to sleep on my feet and keep them warm, there are pumpkins and dried corn stalks everywhere, the leaves are crinkly and orange gold, the sky is darkening before I leave work, and Halloween is

Hazelnut Quince Cake, In Three Acts

2007-10-15T22:43:00.000-05:00

As naturally and constantly as I breath or blink, I think about food. There are times when this gastronomic backdrop is a little more distracting than others, like when I recognize a craving that must be sated or when I get something stuck in my head, like figs or cornbread or date sugar, an ingredient or a dish that I can't stop considering until I do something with it. Recently this happened