Yeah, I made cookies...so bite me!

There are three wonderful men in my life - one human and two non-human. Today I baked cookies for them all - well, everyone needs a cookie now and again. So the pups got a batch of 'Peanut Butter Bite-Me' cookies which are a slight adaptation from a recipe in K-9 Nation Biscuit Book (as featured a couple of posts ago). They are basically a PB & J for pups and this is how they go....

You will need:

1.5 cups all purpose flour
1.5 cups wholewheat flour
3/4 cup rolled barley
1 cup water
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp jam - I like strawberry
2 tbsp fruit juice

OK, let's bake!

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. In a large mixing bowl combine the flours and the rolled barley
3. In a measuring jug combine the water, olive oil and the peanut butter. I popped mine in the microwave for about a minute to warm the peanut butter a little and make it easier to combine.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix gently.
5. Add the jam of your choice and the fruit juice and mix until a supple dough forms.
6. Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes
7. Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden-brown and firm to the touch.


The oddest thing happened - when they emerged from the oven, some of the cookies were pre-tasted, ready-nibbled you might say, as this close up quite clearly indicates...




Hmmm....hence I dubbed them 'Bite Me' cookies!





Moving on....the cookies for My Beloved were also a slightly adapted recipe, this time from Isa's new book, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Since My Beloved is not partial to nuts, I switched out the macadamia requirement of the Macadamia-Ginger Crunch Drops (in the 'Drop Cookies' section - page 57, I think) and substituted vegan white chocolate chips instead.

Here's how they looked right out of the oven:





You have to let them cool 5 mins on the baking tray before transferring them to a cooling rack so I had time to get a shot. Then, once completely cooled, I managed to snap a few close-ups - well, you gotta have cookie close-ups, right?




More? More!




White chocolate and ginger-y goodness...what's not to love?

Stay vegan, friends! :)

K-9 Nation Biscuit Book

Boy, do I miss baking. I mean, take a look back at posts in this blog and you will see that they were overwhelmingly focused on food and especially on baking. I love to eat food so I also love to create it and, since becoming vegan, baking has brought me the most joy of all. Cupcakes, birthday cakes, scones, pastries, cookies, chocolate confections...you name it, I've baked it. My bookshelf is groaning with all of the titles any respectable vegan baker needs to own: The Joy of Vegan Baking, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar, The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes, BabyCakes: Vegan, (Mostly) Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York's Most Talked-About Bakery, My Sweet Vegan....and that's just the titles devoted solely to baking and desserts!

So, given my new drive to lose some weight, now that I have sworn off such temptations, how do I channel my energies? I am not sufficiently selfless to be happy making a batch of cupcakes and not partaking of one or two and I know that if I whip up a tray of scones, I will simply have to indulge - if only for quality control purposes, you understand?!?!

However, while pondering this dilemma during an unusually tedious moment at work, I hit upon the solution: more baking for doggies. Yes, Darwin and Humphrey - my two 'recycled pups' - are thriving on a vegan diet of Natural Balance, fresh vegetables and fruits and homebaked treats. The occasional shipment of Boston Baked Bonz also helps to make their day super-special! I first moved the boys away from a conventional meat-based diet because it was more consistent with my own values: if I refused to eat the flesh of tortured animals, why would I feed it to my own animal companions? I spent some time researching the subject and, when I learned specifically what goes in to the commercially available dog food, I never looked back. The 4-Ds sealed it for me: dead, dying, diseased and downer animals are what ends up in your can of (name the brand of your choice) dog food. Cancerous tumors, parts of heads, feet, viscera of all kinds are earmarked for Fido's dinner...yes, probably even ears, yum!

So I settled on Natural Balance ('vegetarian formula' which is actually vegan) because it's a good formula and is widely available. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the boys love it! Personally, I would prefer to support V-Dog as it's an out-and-proud vegan food but am leery of opting for a brand I cannot get locally - being sufficiently organized to purchase the boys' food online in a timely manner is not something I feel completely confident about, so until an East Coast store picks it up, I guess I'll stick with NB.

But getting back on track...although my decision was initially based on my own ethics, I am very encouraged to see how the diet's affecting the pups. Darwin, the beagle boy, came to us via a municipal pound and is around 11 or 12 years of age. Like us all, he has his 'creaky days' but in general he has abundant energy. On off-leash walks he is frequently mistaken for a puppy - his bounding gait, wide grin, lolling tongue and fierce tail-wagging reinforce his youthful appearance and 'Hello Pretty Puppy!' is the greeting most often overheard from his 'new friends'. Humphrey, the dachs/minpin mix, is considerably younger so has been vegan for proportionally more of his life. He is superby fit with not an ounce of fat on him, has the brightest eyes and glossiest coat of any dog I've ever known, and he can run, jump and play for hours. I think he also holds the local record for the High Speed Tail Wag (2009).

In short, both dogs really are thriving. Snacks are now composed of carrots, celery, strawberries, melon, cucumber slices, fresh blueberries, apple wedges and the like. And it's amazing to see just how well they will behave to get their chops around a humble chunk of freshly peeled carrot! I guess the sweetness delights them and the dramatic crunch which sprays orange splinters around the room must be pretty satisfying too. According to their veterinarian they are both very healthy - albeit Darwin could stand to lose a pound or two - so I think we're on the right track.

Vegan dog cookies, however, are always welcome, so today - to quell my desire to Bake Something - I whipped up a batch of Peanut Butter-Brown Sugar treats from a new cookbook I got 'from Darwin and Humphrey' for Christmas. This one:



Nope, it's not vegan, but it was a snap to veganize the recipe and it goes like this...

Here's what you need:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tbsp baking soda
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup nondairy milk (I used coconut milk)
1 flax 'egg' (1 tbsp ground flax seeds whisked with 3 tbsp water until thick and foamy)
veg stock for basting

Here's what you do:

1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
2.In a large mixing bowl, mix together the flours, baking soda and the sugar.
3. Mix the non-dairy milk with the peanut butter so that it disperses easily (I popped it in the microwave for a minute or so to soften the peanut butter)
4. In a separate bowl, whisk the flax seed with the water until foamy.
5. Add the flax 'egg' and the milk/peanut butter to the dry ingredients and mix until you get a stiff dough. If you need to add a splash more milk, it's ok.
6. Flour your work surface and roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick.
Transfer to a baking sheet lined with baking parchment and then use a pizza wheel to cut into cubes.
7. Bake for 10 mins, then remove and turn oven down to 375 degrees.
8. Brush the cookies liberally with the veg stock and put back into the oven for another 15 mins.
9. Baste the cookies again and then bake for another 15 mins. Repeat until the cookies are completely baked through. Mine needed about 45-50 mins total, but I think my oven's not calibrated correctly so yours might take less time.

Once they're cooled, this is what you'll get:



A stack o' cookies...

And perhaps your own versions of these too:


Humphrey doing a powerful 'leave it'.


Darwin: "Can I just eat already???????

Happy Baking and stay vegan, friends!

Humphrey's First Birthday Cake - Not Before Time!

And now for something completely different!

Fans of this blog (yes, I know you are legion!) are accustomed to my ramblings about food I'm preparing for My Beloved and I, potlucks, various friends' dinners etc etc. But here is a first!

Deep breath!

The promised vegan doggie birthday cake!!!

I have adapted a recipe found in The Everything Cooking for Dogs - a nice little publication, but one which is not overtly animal-friendly if you don't happen to be canine, calling as it does for ground up turkeys and chickens' eggs. Not to worry, I thought, this can be veganized! And so I went to work....

Step 1:





Pour yourself a nice glass of wine! It's Sunday afternoon (in this case) and you are baking a cake for your canine companion - you deserve a nice glass of something!!

Step 2:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and then assemble the ingredients. You will need the following:

1 cup canned beets
2 bananas
1 cup canola oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup carrots, shredded
1/4 cup of soy crumbles (cooked)
1/4 cup non-dairy milk

In this recipe, the bananas replace the 4 eggs you would have used and the soy crumbles replace the ground up turkey flesh of the original recipe. Think of it this way: no cholesterol for your beloved pooch and no-one - not man or beast - gets hurt in the creation of that special little gift for your beloved four-legged friend.  

Step 3:

In a food processor, blitz the beets thus:




Then add the oil and bananas and blitz until smooth, thus:




The mixture is now thick and creamy, mainly due to the mashing of the bananas.

Step 4:

In a large bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together and form a well in the center.



Pour in the pink beet mix and stir until combined.




Step 5:

Stir in the grated carrots and the cooked soy crumbles. If you are unsure about the soy crumbles, this is what I used:




And it looked like this:







Step 6: 

The mixture is likely to be very thick, so now is the moment to thin it down a little with a scant 1/4 cup of non-dairy milk. I used soymilk, but ricemilk is equally good!

Step 7:

Lightly oil 2 8-inch pans and coat with flour and divide the mix between the pans.



Bake for approx. 30 minutes, or until a toothpicks comes out clean.


Turn out onto a cooling rack and leave until completely cool.





To finish the job, I creamed together some vegan cream cheese, a little powdered sugar, some additional grated carrots and a hint of non-dairy milk, sandwiching the cakes together like this:




And here is the almost finished result:



A close-up of that yummy beety-fake sausage-y mix...




I must say, it was a particularly odd thing to bake insofar as the kitchen smelled disturbingly like roasting pork. I have no idea to what I can attribute this happening - no pigs were involved directly or indirectly in the creation of this celebration. My Beloved was dog-proofing our last floor-level cupboard when he noticed it, and dragged me in to confirm he was not, in fact, completely losing his marbles. No, I verified, that really smells like pork crackling...

So if anyone out there in Blogland can explain this phenomenon to me, I would be especially grateful!

Humphrey and his brother Darwin are currently eating their dinner, after which they'll have a slice of cake. I'll document that as it happens, but for now...

Stay vegan, Friends!

 

Priority Cupcake Delivery

You may recall me talking in an earlier post about the 'secret santa cupcakes'...if not, here's the gist: to overcome that awful problem at Christmas parties of what to do about the person who brings you a gift even when you have nothing to give in return I devised a cunning scheme last holiday season whereby I gave out 'promissory notes' to all party goers. These little notes promised the recipient a variety of vegan baked goodies - a dozen cupcakes here, a dozen cookies there...and the first note was called in last weekend.

My friend, we'll call her D, had 'won' a dozen chocolate-stout cupcakes so she called in the order and I sprang to action, whisk in hand. This is what they looked like:



The box was slightly too large, which is a shame as I bought 3 of them (to have 2 in hand for the next couple of callers) but all in all it worked out. I arranged with a mutual friend, who we'll call MES as those are her initials - she knows who she is!, to drop them off at her house for D to collect when convenient. That way, I don't have to go driving all around Western Mass delivering these little wrappers of fun! Not that I mind, but on a journey longer than say 5 minutes I'd have given in to the temptation and eaten the lot! This way, as MES lives not 2 minutes from my house, all arrived safely!

So, one down, around another 15-20 to go!

Stay Vegan, Friends!