The Cranberry Finally Realizes Full Potential

I've been baking so much in the past month that by the time Thanksgiving comes, I will just drink the blackest coffee I can blacken and eat rice crackers.

But not without cranberry cinnamon monster rolls.

I made some cranberry orange sauce and slathered it on my sheet of dough with Earth Balance, brown sugar, and cinnamon. It was a much messier concoction and not as easy to roll up or slice into rolls. It was GOOD. The cranberry takes over the cinnamon a bit.

I was inspired by Mr. Landers of North Port Fishington who tried this. I didn't do a cream cheese icing, although I have two containers of Tofutti cream cheese in my fridge and it would have been reality-burstingly insane. I would have made an icing if I were serving to other people. I oddly prefer a more savory roll. I think it's the yeasty flavor of the dough that cries out to me. It's serious business.

Vegan Chocolate Times

Someone recently asked me about chocolate gift basket ideas for vegans.

Which led me here, here,  here, and here. The Nicobella chocolates look polished and suave, darker and flaxxier.Bluestockings Bonbons had me gyrating in disbelief.  Coconut Cream Pyramids! Coriander Beet Truffles!

bittersweet chocolate vulva with pink peppercorns and Hawaiian pink sea salt

You see. You get 12 vulvas for $12. That's cheaper than K&A vulva shopping.

Allison's offers more of your basic chocolate sampler style. Rose City makes chocolate as an @ symbol and dreams up all kinds of creamy fillings.

That's when I found a vegan chocolate Santa. Made from 72% dark chocolate,the real way.

Moments in Ohmymy, Round 2

Feeding Zahav hummus to 90-year-old grandmothers is just a perk of the job.

The mushrooms were picked that morning and delivered to Zahav. They rose from the smooth mound of  hummus, exalted, sauteed specimens. It was like they grew in that hummus and plucking them from an already fertile, rich-in-ohmymy landscape was what separated the hunters from the gatherers.

Yes, I am gatherer.When our server told us how fresh our funghi were, I believed him because he confessed that he had eaten several pounds of them in the kitchen and was still glowing. He gave me more excitement about mushrooms than the staggering, hyperventilating enthusiasm that I typically bear.

This season's menu at Zahav has more vegetarian OH YEAHS than before.

Your refrigerator hummus just killed itself after reading this post.

Take your grandmother to Zahav and make her eat mushroom hummus.

Whole Foods Pizza on the Daiya Cheese Train

I certainly don't go to Whole Foods for pizza and promise not to start. It's typically some obscure baking ingredient that I've come to procure. So for the past few weeks now, I've ignored the vegan pizza in the prepared foods section. I didn't realize it was made with the Great Daiya, the latest dairy-free and allergen-free cheese alternative, the talk of vegans nation-wide.

There I was, trying a slice, just so I could understand what everyone was all excited about.

There are usually two varieties of vegan pizza at the Whole Foods on South Street - plain and a "Fiesta" pie with veggies on it, both made with whole wheat crust. I went with the regular, immediately impressed that the slice looked appealing: the cheese was melted properly and blanketed the pie with gleaming coverage. Shreds could not be detected and it didn't have the typical vegan pizza look to it. After biting into it, I thought the cheese was overwhelmingly oily and slick, slightly creamy, leaving a film in my mouth. I missed the stretch of mozzarella. I missed the sauce. I missed the snap of crisp pizza crust. Overall, I thought that there was way too much Daiya on the pizza. A lesser application and I might not have found it so odd.  I've tried many a vegan pizza and have yet to find anything simply amazing.

After checking out Daiya's website, I now see that the cheese is made from canola and safflower oils and tapioca. That might explain the extreme greasiness of it. It comes in Italian Blend and Cheddar Style, and I imagine it might work a lot better for use in things besides pizza. The cheese is entirely vegan and is soy-free and devoid of other allergens. It should be available for retail in the future.

The Apple, in Current Preferred Forms

There is the ever lascivious Jewish apple cake. It is almost never dry and always an exquisite precursor to a fine mug of steaming beverage. This slice looks like a Pac-Man face.

Also contestably brilliant is the apple accompanied by Peanut Butter & Co's Cinnamon Raisin Swirl. The sweet spread, while lacking in peanut prominence, boasts enough cinnamon shine and chewy raisin contemplation that you could sit there all afternoon appreciating the simple things in life.

I love apples so hard that it makes me sound like a 12-year old pretending to be a food critic.

The Vegan Cookies Have Invaded: Spiced Sweet Potato Blondies

Cakey, fudgy, allspicy bombshells

I was not expecting Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar from baking power couple Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero to be in stores yet. I almost ordered it online but am glad that I didn't or I might be waiting on it.

Waking up to blondies

I paged through the book and decided to buy it for the blondie recipes alone. What I love about blondies is that they are a blank canvas. With 43 cents worth of sweet potato (.88 lb at Spring Garden Supermarket), the Spiced Sweet Potato Blondies came together quickly. I had no idea that they would taste like Natalie Portman's beauty.

I discovered another surprise in the beginning pages of the book (media praise). One of the lines from the Philadelphia City Paper was plucked from a book review that I did for Veganomicon from 2007. Somebody actually read it.

I am already loving this book and have signed a contract to make Lazy Samoas for my fiancé. The Silk Nog in my fridge is begging to be a blondie sacrifice. I am opening an only-blondie truck underneath the Girard El in three years.