Pre-St. Patty's Update

I was going to wait to talk about these, but oh my goodness these are the most amazing cupcakes I've ever had!  AND they are vegan.

Let me start from the beginning.

Being mostly (well, probably summing up to half) Irish, I approach St. Patrick's day with a strange hodgepodge of food traditions gathered from both sides of my family.  It's funny to realize that my cooking has been largely influenced by my mostly German grandmothers, but some of my family's traditions come from Americanized cuisine, and some are the result of catering one of my grandfathers, who is mostly Irish.

It's perhaps silly for me to talk about family members being "mostly this" and "mostly that," but this is how we identify ourselves.  Yes, from the outside we're American.  From the inside, well, let me put it this way: As far as I know, my entire lineage can be traced to people who immigrated to the United States from - you got it - mostly Ireland and Germany in the mid to late 19th century.  The most recent immigrant in my family is one of my great-grandfathers, who came to America from Germany as a little boy.  What ethnic traditions that have trickled down through the generations are miscellaneous and diluted, but still a part of how I identify myself as a member of my family.

All that said, I like to cook something Irish when St. Patrick's day rolls around.  In the past, this has meant corned beef and cabbage, and maybe some Guinness with dinner.  This year, since I'm eating mostly vegan (yes, the 'mostly' qualifier is ubiquitous today), I've had to be more creative with my food choices.  Also, this year, since I'm busy and Thursday is not a day to cook for 3 hours, I've been doing a lot of prep work this week.

Tonight, I decided to go ahead and prepare a vegan Chocolate Stout cupcake recipe I found last weekend.  The recipe doesn't require any unusual vegan ingredients, but it does call for about half a bottle of chocolate stout.  That's right, there's beer in these cupcakes.  And oh, are they delicious.  I tasted one while it was still warm, and ended up eating two.

As of when they were still a little warm, these are fluffy, moist cupcakes, with a rich chocolate flavor.  That flavor is due, of course, to a hefty helping of unsweetened cocoa powder both in the cupcakes and in the crumbs topping them.  The bitterness of the stout really enhances the chocolate, adding a depth of flavor I never would have expected.

I am posting this now so that if you want to make some of these for Thursday, you can have a little bit of time to go ahead and try them.  Seriously, you will not regret it.  Unless you end up eating them all, and then you might.

Interlude -- Kitchen Overachiever, Part 2

I've been playing around with exploring more vegan recipes, and tonight I tried one that was quite good.  Thus, I will share it here (and put up a picture when I make my second batch).  The trick with vegan food is to cook things that are good without meat and dairy, rather than cutting them out of normal recipes and lamenting the loss of flavor/texture.  Since I've had to look into cooking more things from scratch, I've started to learn what more herbs and vegetables are for, and have by now explored nearly all of what is offered in Meijer's produce section.  Muah ha ha!

The following is from Supermarket Vegan, which is an interesting book, although I prefer to buy less canned stuff and find a lot of the recipes in the book have higher fat and sodium than I like.  This recipe is good: with 350 calories per serving, there's 13g protein, 9g fat, and 4g fiber (and nearly 600mg sodium... you can't win 'em all).



Stuffed Acorn Squash with Long Grain and Wild Rice, Pecans, and Cranberries


(makes 4 main dish servings)


2 medium acorn squash, halved, seeds and membranes removed
1T extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 C chopped onion
2 T dry sherry or cooking sherry
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
2-1/3C low-sodium vegetable broth (chicken broth works too, if you're not vegetarian)
3/4 C wild rice mix (I like Lundberg Jubilee)
1/2 C dried cranberries
1/4 C pecans, slivered almonds, or walnut pieces
2 T chopped fresh sage
1/2 t salt, or to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste


Preheat oven to 425˚F.
Cut a very thin parallel slice on the uncut sides of the squash to help them sit upright without wobbling. Place the squash, cut sides down, in a shallow baking dish just large enough to hold them in a single layer. Add about 1/2" water to the pan. Cover and bake 45 minutes, until flesh is fork-tender. Remove from oven, pour off water, and turn the squash cut sides up; set aside. Reduce oven temperature to 350˚F.


Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes. Add the sherry and garlic and increase the heat to high; cook, stirring constantly, until the sherry has evaporated, about 1 minute. Add the broth, rice mixture, cranberries, pecans, sage, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to between low and medium-low, cover, and simmer until the liquid has been absorbed, but the mixture is still quite moist (follow the time guidelines on the rice you bought). Remove from the heat and let stand, covered, 5 minutes. Uncover and fluff with a fork.


Mound equal amounts of the rice mixture into the squash halves. Return to the oven and bake, uncovered, until heated through, about 10 minutes. Serve warm.




This is a really tasty recipe, especially if you like squash.  It's important to actually go and pick up fresh sage for this recipe - it really sets the aroma, and hence the flavor, of the rice.  The smell while the rice is cooking is really quite fantastic, it kind of reminded me of the way breakfast sausage smells, which leads me to suspect that sage has a place on my dinner table, and not just at Scarborough Fair.  Also, be careful about adding too much salt, especially if you use cooking sherry, since it has a lot of salt already.

How to make your own caramel

I know I've complained before about how I am not fond of caramel.  It's usually too sweet, and the way it sticks to everything is just not pleasant.  The solution: make your own (with salt, which makes all sweet things taste better)!  This is actually the topping recipe from the turtle brownies I made a couple weeks ago, so perhaps I should start with my cookie project update.

87. Turtle Brownies
Do not let the picture fool you - although the brownies here look dry, they were actually quite moist and delicious.  These are basic brownies covered with a mix of homemade caramel and toasted pecans.  Honestly, I think these were really delicious, although my friends complained that they got too much of a sugar rush.  That would be the fault of the caramel, which is basically a supersaturated sugar syrup that is boiled until the sugar caramelizes (more information at the end of the post).  I didn't think this was a problem, though, so I intend to make these again sometime as summer approaches.

88. Rugelach Fingers
These little bars were a big hit in my office: the top and bottom layers are a flaky cream cheese pastry dough that was rolled out to be very thin (which was kind of a big hassle), and the filling is a mix of semisweet chocolate, currants, toasted walnuts, orange zest, cinnamon, and sugar (plus some butter and corn syrup to hold it together).  As I said, it was kind of annoying to roll this dough out to be so thin, but the result is visually and gustatorily pleasing, the latter especially after the filling flavors had a day to mingle properly.

And now what I promised: how to make caramel:

• 1 C sugar
• 1/3 C water
• 1/3 C heavy (whipping) cream
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1/2 t coarse salt

Bring sugar and water to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved.  When this mixture begins to boil, stop stirring and cook until medium amber (5-7 minutes).  You'll want to have a wet pastry brush available to wash down the sides of the pan to keep crystals from forming, and can swirl the pan occasionally while the sugar is cooking.

Remove the mixture from heat and immediately add cream, vanilla, and salt.  Stir with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula until smooth.  Take care of this quickly because the entire mixture will begin to thicken as soon as it starts to cool.

From here you can add pecans and pour it on top of brownies, or pour it out into a pan or something and let it cool in the refrigerator for ~30 minutes before trying to cut it.

That is all for now, work has got me very busy these days with some stuff I'll probably discuss once I get it figured out, and I've got a couple long-term projects running that I expect to also talk about when they're done (one involves leaving lemon peels soaking in vodka for 80 days, which should be ready right in time for summer).