So there is this one thing I made....

I had still have a bounty of zucchini from my garden this year. One recipe I have fallen in love with is this chocolate zucchini bread. The recipe said it was brownie like so I took a chance and cooked it in an 8 x 8 pan and let me tell you, that is one of the best brownies I have ever tasted. Ever. Uuuuunfortunatly, despite their deliciousness, they do not stay together very well and you end up with brownie crumbles. Not that I'm complaining. I am going to experiment with baking them in muffin tins to see if they hold up better to travel that way. As soon as I work through the 2nd of two batches I baked and froze about a month ago. Zucchini, by the way, picked fresh from the garden, survives remarkably well in the fridge unwrapped.

So this was all leading to a picture, and a description of what I did with the frozen brownie bits.

That's right, I ate it with ice cream. Sometimes I warm the brownie first and other times I eat the whole thing cold. It reminds me of Coldstone where you get to mix in whatever you want. I love So Delicious coconut vanilla ice cream because I can mix in whatever I want. I usually only eat a small portion and mix in whatever sounds good. Last week I had frozen cherries. Yum. This ice cream you may notice is a bit green. While I wish I could say that it was spinach in that ice cream, it's not. It is however matcha. The flavor was a little strong for me to eat by itself, but mixed with the brownie it was very good.

Home Made Chocolates

 


When I went to All Vegan a few weeks ago you may remember that I picked up some vegan marshmallows.  Ever since then I had been dreaming of recreating my favorite See's candy:

Scotchmallow

Last weekend I went to Micheal's and bought this brownie candy mold:

 

Then I failed to have the ingredients necessary to make caramel and decided that it wasn't really worth it to try.  So I put away the mold and decided to use it later to make peanut butter cups.

Well, yesterday was later.  First I lined the molds with melted dark chocolate.

 

I then stuck them in the freezer to harden up.  

 

Once the shells were hard I filled half of them with my marshmallows and the other half with my crunchy peanut butter that I ground myself at the People's market last weekend.  I stuck these back in the freezer for a few minutes to harden up the peanut butter.

 

Then I covered them to the top with more melted chocolate and returned them to the freezer one last time.

They turned out fabulous!  Apart from a few of the shells not being thick enough and cracking upon removal from the mold this was a major success.

 

I toyed with the idea of wrapping them individually in foil and bringing them to work to give as samples and then trying to sell them later on, but the amount of work and the cost of the raw materials that went into them was not so very cost effective and also the chocolate has a tendency to melt a bit.  I am going to tinker with it another time and see if I can get it more stable.  Meanwhile, here is what they would have looked like.

Perhaps I will try again if a special occasion arises.  I also made some larger, more traditional peanut butter cups using my silicone cupcake molds.

These are the definition of decadence and I don't condone eating a whole one in one sitting.  Next time I might try to fill the cups less to make them smaller. I also did six of these using almond butter which was a bit runny and they didn't set up quite right.  They all cracked when I took them out of the cups.  They are still delicious but a bit messy.  As for the chocolate covered marshmallows?  Oh my god.  I am keeping these frozen in an attempt to ration them.  The marshmallows themselves are delicious but when combined with dark chocolate, I take it back, that is the definition of decadence.

One more idea I thought of but decided to leave for another day, is to replace the peanut butter and marshmallows in the chocolate shells with ice cream.  Particularly this ice cream from Purely Decadent (notice a trend here?):

Imagine chocolate covered vegan ice cream.  Nom.

Chocolate Covered Katie Love

Today I finally threw together some fudge babies following Katie's recipe.  I found a digital scale right before xmas and have loved having it.  I attempted 3 kinds.

First

Cashew Cookie Larabar
These ended up a little too gooey so I rolled them in shredded coconut.

Then I had a little fun and added some almonds to the top.

Next

 Original Fudge Babies

These were also a little gooey but I think my dates were extra juicy.  I think I could have added a few more walnuts.  But they weren't so gooey that I needed to roll them in coconut.

Finally I attempted the original fudge babies sans cocoa powder but with the addition of chocolate chips.  Unfortunately this one did not come together because it was a little wet.  Doesn't mean it wasn't delicious, it just didn't form into bars.

I also spent some of the day looking over Katie's older posts.  So far I want to try Texas Caviar and Sweet and Sour Seitan.  My boyfriend and I went to dinner at Sipz on Wednesday and though I am usually not the biggest fan of the restaurant or of imitation meat, their "chicken" had the most realistic texture ever.  I really want to try to master seitan.  When I was looking up seitan I came across this recipe that I also really want to try.

And in case you haven't heard, Katie is giving away a vita-mix blender.  If you have ever wanted one, I suggest you visit this page.

Thanks!

Mmmm

I don't recall at this point which recipe I used to make the brownie (I believe I have it written somewhere in my kitchen) but these were some of the best brownies I have ever made and that includes the beet brownies which were darn good.  I topped this one with some vanilla coconut milk ice cream and some cocoa powder mixed with agave and water.  I may or may not have had this for dinner 2 nights in a row.

I don't feel so bad about that because I also had this delicious salad somewhere in there.

 Again, can't remember the specifics, but avocado, kalamata olives, spinach, tortilla strips and a dressing probably made of tahini and lemon juice.  Yum.  Now I wish I had eaten that for dinner.

I also made this delicious refrigerator soup using up the last of my veggies.  Red cabbage, chard, fresh corn, carrots, onion, a couple of potatoes and some fresh dill.  Man was it delicious.  I ate it with avocado and some rye toast with earth balance.  All in all I recreated this meal 3 times in 3 days.  Once with guacamole instead of plain avocado.  Yum.