Happy St. Patrick's Day to You!

And may the luck of the Irish be with you today!

No, I'm not Irish but heck, I'm not letting that stop me from making some chocolate-stout cupcakes with whiskey frosting.

The recipe is from VCTOTW and the frosting is just basic vegan buttercream with a healthy dose of whiskey instead of soymilk......The pix are courtesy of my friend and coworker who was terribly excited at the prospect of stout and whiskey at 08:30 in the morning!



And here's another she took having eaten a cupcake!



And how do they taste? I haven't the foggiest! For the first time, I have abstained from sampling my own creations - even to the point that I recruited My Beloved to taste test the frosting last night for the right level of whiskey-ness (yeah, he has a tough life, I know!).

However, today is Day Two of Week One and breakfast is oatmeal with walnuts and raisins, oranges (2) and an apple. And I am strangely content with that!

Oh, and for today's WTF Moment, I bring you Corned Beef and Cabbage Cupcakes. Yep, these sure were worth taking a life for.....sheesh!

Anyways, Happy St. Pat's Day to all those celebrating and - even amidst the corned cow platters - stay vegan, friends!

'Tis the season....

...for folks to play 'Surprise the Vegan'. Or so it seems to me.

On Friday, my department (a small one of 6 people) held our pre-Christmas party. Like plenty of companies out there, our employer has scaled back the official festivities - 'given the economy' - and so it fell to us to amuse ourselves. Which we did by way of a potluck.

Now, of course, I am the only vegan in the group and, as such expect, to be overlooked and disregarded. I have learned that it's vital to bring waaaaaaaay more food to such events because inevitably everyone will **love** the vegan food, won't be able to believe that it's vegan, will nonetheless scarf it all up PDQ and your plate - and hence tummy - will be left woefully empty. And so it was simply astonishing to me when I was faced with the following:

- My boss brought in a massive crockpot of vegan 3-bean chilli.
- His boss brought in some homemade hummus, pita bread and red onions.
- One coworker's husband had made a massive tray - a veritable fieldful - of roasted root vegetables with rosemary.
- Another coworker got up super-early (we start work at 8am) to bake stuffed mushrooms.
- And there was also plenty of homemade salsa, chutney and sundries.

All vegan.
All wicked delicious.

Now I know that I said of the last group of people that I worked with that they were fantastic and I couldn't have found a better crowd, but I think my current coworkers - and friends - are just about the most accommodating people I have ever had the privilege to work with.

So C'pak people - you know who you are - I think you guys are awesome!

:)

Oh, and if you are wondering what I brought to the event:

Chocolate-Stout cupcakes with peppermint 'buttercream' frosting (from VCTOW)
Super-fudgy brownies (from JVB)
Almond cake topped mincepies (from my own special recipe)

I also baked up some of Isa's Rumnog Pecan Ball Cookies and some Snickerdoodles, from VeganYumYum, as presents for the gang.

Despite the snow storm which initially dumped about 12 inches of snow on us and is **still** snowing even today (almost 2 days later) a good time was had by all!

Am starting to feel all kinds of festive. Bring on Christmas Eve!

:)

Oh, and stay vegan, Friends!

Iron Cupcake Challenge

With the turkey massacre that is Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, I am feeling more glum by the day so it is time to think about something slightly lighter....the Iron Cupcake Challenge. This is some fun devised by the Milwaukee Cupcake Queen whereby each month an ingredient is announced and folks compete to create a cupcake using that 'guest' ingredient.

There are monthly prizes and the November ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from the following artists:

* LOLLIPOP WORKSHOP
* COOKIE SUNSHINE

as well as a pair of cupcake earrings from LOTS OF SPRINKLES.

OK, so last month it was cheese which presented a unique challenge to a vegan baker to be sure and so I ended up letting my entry slide. This month, however, the mytery foodstuff is the ever-so-humble-but-completely-wonderful-superstar-of-the antioxidant-izers: the CRANBERRY!

So for my entry I have created the Thanksgiving Stack cupcake!





Its base is a lemon, almond and vegan white chocolate cupcake - lusciously light yet moist and a fraction chewy from the ground almonds. To create the multi-layered effect, I just added some red food colouring to one half of the cupcake batter and then sliced and stacked the layers alternately. The filling is a light vegan buttercream frosting with a swirl of fresh cranberry confit.

As part of the entry I have uploaded my pix to the cupcake group on Flickr where you can see the competition is in full swing! I know I need to work on my 'mis en place' a bit more, but heck...this is going to be one sweet dessert to share with My Beloved in front of the fire tonight!

Anyways, click on over the ICC page and vote for Cackleberry! Let's have a vegan cupcake win this time!

And...stay vegan, friends!

Happy World Vegetarian Day, 2008!

I am off to a blazing start on this MoFo Challenge! Today, dear reader, as you probably know is World Vegetarian Day and, in anticipation thereof, I devised a cunning plan. It was breath-taking in its simplicity: offer great vegan baked goods and they will come!

Yeah, and when they showed up, I also had available some brochures from Vegan Outreach and some podcast sampler CDs from Compassionate Cooks. Let me explain....

Last night I spent most of the evening baking. I made scores of mini chocolate-orange cupcakes, battalions of carrot cake mini cupcakes, great troughs of chocolate-raspberry chewie cookies and hods of ginger sparkle cookies. The overall haul looked like this:



and these were my supplemental materials:



and



Devious, no?

So, I arrived super-early at work to set it all up. We have a central cafeteria where everyone comes to swipe in, so that seemed like a logical place to host this 'event'. 07:40 in the AM (yeah, I said 'super early!) saw me spreading leaflets and CDs on the table, uncovering cakes, pinning flyers to notice boards and generally having a great time. As you can see, this whole event was carefully orchestrated. I took these pix and stole quietly away.

The general scene:



...and a close up or two:







Anyways, it was not long before folks were happily tucking into the food and by mid morning there was - by all accounts - only a single, solitary choc-orange mini cupcake left. People were obviously too polite to take the last one, methinks! At lunchtime, however, I peeped into the cafeteria to take stock and beheld a scene of utter devastation. Not a single crumb remained!

But even better than that, approx. two thirds of the outreach materials had been picked up and 24 out of 30 podcast sampler CDs had also been accepted. Which means, I hope, that the whole experience provided not only a mid-week morale boost and a tempting, semi-healthy snack but also great Food for Thought.

Which is, of course, what it's all about.

A great day to be vegan, friends!
:)

Not Your Momma's Cupcakes...

After something of a lull, I am back to blogging and hope that the upcoming MoFo challenge will reinvigorate me for two of the things I love best in the world: cooking great vegan goodies and boasting about them! I think I must already be feeling the effects because, at lunchtime today, I took a deep breath and signed up to become an Iron Cupcake.

Yes, you *did *read that correctly: an Iron Cupcake!

The website happily proclaims:

This is the central hub for the ultimate world-wide cupcake competition. A monthly ingredient, a monthly challenge, fabulous prizes, new ways to find other cupcake fanatics just like yourself.

And, as far as I can see, the idea is that each month a new ingredient is proposed for inclusion within those little packets of fun we call cupcakes. From the IC site, the challenge:

is a way for bakers from anywhere, all over the world, to take place in the ultimate flavor challenge and promote world peace, one cupcake at a time.

Last month's challenge was basil - a herb more commonly considered in connection with stewed tomatoes and with pesto than with cupcakes, I suspect. However, I learned of it through Vegan_Noodle and was inspired both by her creative use of this wonderful leaf and her subverse thumbing-of-the-nose at Hurricane Ike. So, now I want in! I have emailed the IC folks and begged to be included on their blogroll so hopefully we will soon see Cackleberry listed there too.

Bring on the next challenge: I am ready!

Oh, and 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!

Cupcake Friday!

So as you know, I love to cook and share food with folks. And you might also know that I now have a second part-time job. How are these two factoids connected?, I hear you ask in breathless anticipation. Well, bear with me....I really like the folks in my new place (I've worked there in the past too) and so, to show my generous, giving, likeable side, I decided to institute 'Cupcake Friday'. The absolute beauty of this scheme is that it simultaneously provides folks there with some end of week cheer, introduces them to the concept of yummy vegan food, and gives me with an outlet for all of this frenzied baking I'm doing lately.

So here was my grand plan for World Cupcake Domination. I drew up a chart with everyone's name on it and a choice of orgasmic vegan cupcakes: mexican hot chocolate, margarita, banana split, coconut-lime, rum 'n' raisin, etc etc etc. This jolly little chart was printed out and stuck in the kitchen with the strong suggestion that folks all vote for their favourite cupcake choice. When votes are tallied on Thursday, I will know what kind to bake that evening to bring in for Friday.

Sheer genius!

Even if I say so myself! :)

Stay Vegan, Friends!