New Blog.

We have decided to move our food blog to Tumblr! It's prettier and cleaner looking, and also we like that people can reblog our stuff ;) Here is the new blog: http://themaisisters.tumblr.com/

Goodbye blogspot! It was fun while it lasted.

Mini Chocolate Crêpes

Chocolate crêpes, before the chocolate ganache drizzle! Picture from Jessica's phone. ;)

As the picture and the title of this post indicates, a delicious chocolate crêpe recipe is about to follow. ;) I made these for UTA's Honors College Spring Potluck. In the words of my dear friend Zak Curet, these are "...lovely and extremely delicate, just as crêpes should be." This recipe is an adaptation of Lauren Ulm's basic vegan crêpes. (Search "crêpes" on veganyumyum.com).

Note: You can use any kind of nondairy milk in this recipe, Almond, Hazelnut, Hemp, Soy, or Rice; they all work fine. (But if you use rice milk, I would suggest lowering the sugar, since rice milk is very sweet). I used Hazelnut milk this time. :)

Mini Chocolate Crêpes

(makes about 18-20 mini crepes)

1 Cup Flour

1/3 Cup Cocoa Powder

1/2 Tsp Salt

3 to 5 Tbsp confectioners' sugar (I used the Wholesome Sweetener's Brand)

1/2 Cup and 2 Tbsp Nondairy Milk

2/3 Cup Water

1/2 Cup Earth Balance Margarine, melted to liquid state

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

1 Tsp Almond Extract (or Chocolate Extract, if you have it)

2-3 Tbsp Water, to thin if needed

1. Whisk all the ingredients together until smooth (add the dry ones first, and then put the wet ones in). Add water if you think it needs more thinning. The batter should not be as thick as cake batter, pourable, but not too runny. Chill the batter in the fridge for at least half an hour. This prevents the crêpes from tearing when you cook them.
2. While you're waiting, make your filling (slice up some strawberries or other fruit of your choice), and watch this step-by-step video on how to make crepes: http://vimeo.com/3843098 They are much, much easier than pancakes, in my opinion. You can see why in the video. I used a small pan for my crepes so that I could make mini ones. ^_^
3. When you're done making the crepes, you can fold them into quarters and place your sliced fruit into the pockets. Arrange them prettily on a plate or a cupcake liner (like I did), and drizzle with agave nectar or chocolate ganache.

For chocolate ganache, I use a 2:3 ratio of nondairy milk to Ghiradelli semisweet chocolate chips. Just combine the two over low heat in a saucepan and stir frequently until they are combined. Then take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes (not too long or else it will set!). Transfer the ganache to a plastic bag, cut off a corner, and drizzle your crepes with it.

GAWD the ridiculous spacing in this post bothers me. I don't know how to fix it, sorry. I'll look into it. And now, what is with this hyperlinky font?! I did not request a linky looking blue underlined font. Blogger, you are one of the most frustrating things I've had to work with. You could be friends with AutoCad. Maybe you are AutoCad's apprentice...

Banana Nut Muffins

^__^
Hi everyone, this is going to pretty much be my first post (I usually bake everything with Ann :P)
I made vegan banana nut muffins yesterday and they turned out beautifully, the batter is a little sticky though so I suggest adding in some more soymilk/water to make it less sticky

Recipe from here: http://suprememastertv.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=vege&wr_id=436

INGREDIENTS: (these made about 13 muffins for me in a big muffin pan)

• 2 cups unbleached flour
• 1 cup fine white sugar
• 1½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped walnut
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup Soymilk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 4 ripe bananas
• 2 teaspoons of water

Directions

1) Put all dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl

2) Add in the "wet" ingredients and break up the bananas when you put them in

3) Mix the batter and add in water/soymilk if you feel the batter is too dry/sticky the recipe video suggests that for every banana you use you should use about 2 teaspoons of water/soymilk to counteract the "egg whiteness" of the batter

4) After you put the batter into baking cups set the oven to 350 degrees

5) Bake for 20 min or more, mine took about 25 min

Banana Spice Pancakes in 5 Easy Steps =)

I made these for my cousins over Christmas break when we were snowed in together at my grandma's. There was an abundance of bananas and no one knew what to do with them. I'm glad that those bananas were put to use in these pancakes. ^__^ These pancakes are sugarfree! Agave nectar has a very low glycemic index. Well, they are sugarfree, except for the vanilla soymilk, I guess. Plain, unsweetened soymilk will work just as well, if you are diabetic or don't want to eat sugar. :)

Banana Spice Pancakes

1½ cups whole wheat flour (or all-purpose flour)

2 tsp baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon allspice

3 medium sized ripe bananas, peeled and sliced or mashed

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1¼ cups vanilla soymilk

1 to 1½ tablespoons agave nectar

some oil for the pan/griddle

Note: The measurements for the spices are approximate; I don't really remember how much I put in. I used my nose. ^_~ If you want your pancakes to be more/less spicy, change them according to your taste. ;)

1. In a bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients, except for the bananas.
2. Put half of the bananas and the soymilk into a blender. Puree until smooth. Add the other wet ingredients & the rest of the bananas to the blender. Puree until smooth.
3. Heat a griddle or pan with some oil in it over medium heat.
4. Using a spoon, pour some of the pancake batter on the pan.
5. Cook until you start to see lots of tiny bubbles popping. Flip the pancake over and cook until it is browned on the bottom. You could do more than one pancake at a time, depending on the size of your pan/griddle.

I served these with sliced fruit and agave nectar or pure maple syrup (none of that high fructose corn syrup crap!). My cousins gobbled them up, and I hope you enjoy them too! <3

Cake Truffles, of the Chocolate-Peanut Butter Variety

Nom Nom Nom! ^_~

AKA Reese's Cake Balls. :)

Ever since I made "oreo truffles" two Christmases ago, I have toyed with the idea of making cake truffles, an idea brought to me by Bakerella (google it if you wish to know about her blog).

I made these for UTA Vegan Club's Valentine's Day Bake Sale. =) It was our first ever event, and we doubled our expenses in profits! We were afraid we would not do well, since it was snowing and many people did not bother to show up for class (I know I wouldn't have gone if not for the bake sale), but we did quite well. That means that we'll do even better on a regular, non-snow day, in the sunshine!

Above picture courtesy of Georg. ^__^

The procedure for these cake truffles can be divided into four parts: baking the cake, letting the cake cool completely & making the frosting, rolling cake & frosting into balls to freeze, and dipping the frozen cake balls into melted chocolate.

A note I want to make about these cake truffles is that they are extremely decadent and sweet! I'm not sure if it was because I was baking and tasting for 9 hours with the vegan club that day I made these, but I could barely finish the one I was testing. Anyway I feel that using semisweet chocolate for the coating makes the truffles a bit too sweet. I think next time I will either use dark chocolate coating, or omit the sugar from the cake recipe and use the semisweet chocolate coating. The dark chocolate coating looks so beautiful though. I think maybe it was because I was using dark chocolate specifically for coating or something, whereas the semisweet chocolate was just semisweet chocolate chips for baking in general. That's just my guess though.

Part I: Baking the Cake

Basically, I doubled the basic chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (http://www.chow.com/recipes/10794), and baked it in a cake pan. When I make this recipe, I have a few modifications I like to make. It's up to you whether you want to go with the original recipe, or use my modifications, which are as follows:

1. I use chocolate-flavored soymilk where the recipe calls for soymilk. Anna and I find that this gives a more "luscious" chocolatey cake. =)

2. Where the recipe calls for 1/3 a cup of canola oil, I prefer to measure out a scant 1/3 cup (less than 1/3). I find that if I do 1/3 exactly, the results are too oily for my tastes.

3. I also like to use only a scant 1/2 tsp almond extract, or even 1/4 tsp almond extract. The almond flavour overpowered the chocolate (imo) the first time I used this recipe.

Part II: Making Frosting

While the cake is baking, I made Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. I am sure that PB frosting would work just as well if you don't have Tofutti. I just felt like making PB Cream Cheese Frosting..mm :) I know, I'm a fatty. =P

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz Tofutti cream cheese

1 cup & 3 tablespoons natural creamy peanut butter (Use crunchy if you want your truffles to have a crunch)

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teeny pinch of sea salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tablespoons of soymilk, for starters

1. Using a hand mixer, cream together the Tofutti cream cheese and peanut butter.

2. Mix the powdered sugar in gradually (about 1/4 a cup at a time).

3. Add the sea salt, vanilla, and soymilk and blend until smooth and creamy. Add small amounts of soymilk if you feel your mixture is too dry or crumbly.

4. Put the frosting in the fridge until after the cake has been baked and cooled.

Part III: Constructing the Cake Balls

1. Once the cake is completely cooled, crumble it into the frosting bowl.

2. Thoroughly mix the cake and the frosting together. Use clean fingers! =)

3. Roll the mixture into balls. The average size is about the size of a quarter, or make sure that your ball can fit nicely into a mini cupcake liner. You could make them as small or big as you want, but I like to make mine fit into the mini cupcake liner so that I can put the finished truffles into the liners. It's so cute!

4. Chill the cake balls for several hours. I put mine in a rectangular box in the freezer overnight. To make sure that the cake balls didn't stick to each other, I put a layer of plastic wrap over each layer of them, and topped the plastic wrap with more cake balls. I hope that makes sense.

Part IV: Dipping the Cake Balls

1. Melt your dipping chocolate of choice (I used vegan semisweet chocolate chips by Ghiradelli for half, and dark chocolate for the other half), using a bowl and a microwave, or a double-broiler.

2. Roll a cake ball into the chocolate and set on aluminum foil. I find chopsticks to be very useful for this. If any of the chocolate gets messed up, carefully dab a little on there with your chopstick or spoon.

3. Immediately after setting the cake ball on the aluminum foil, sprinkle some chopped nuts or cute sprinkles on the cake truffle.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have finished dipping all of the frozen cake balls.

5. Let the cake truffles sit until the chocolate has hardened. Once the chocolate has fully set, place the truffles into mini cupcake liners. Yay, homemade vegan cake truffles! =)

Whole Grain Mexican Rice

Yesterday, Anna and I were craving something Mexican-like for lunch. While Anna was at school, I improvised this Mexican rice. It was scary for me, improvising a cooking recipe without Anna! And when I got done, I was afraid that the flavor was too strong and that it would have to be fixed by Anna when she got back from school. However, when she got back from school, Anna tried my rice and she said it was perfectly fine, which is kind of a big deal for me. I have never made a new cooking recipe without Anna before. I'm more of a baker than a cook. ^_^'Anyway, here is the recipe; the measurements are approximate. Don't forget: the most important tools here are your tastebuds! At least, that's what Anna says all the time. ;P

Mexican Fried Rice

Some vegetable/canola oil

½ large red onion, diced

1 or 2 green bell peppers, diced

1 small can of tomato paste (about 6 oz.)

2 ½ to 3 cups of cooked, whole grain brown rice

Garlic Powder

Cumin

Mushroom Powder

Any other seasonings of your choice

1. Heat up a saucepan on high heat.
2. Pour some oil (about 1 tablespoon or so) into the saucepan (keep it on high heat).
3. Add the onions when the oil gets hot.
4. Once the onions start to smell good, add the green bell peppers, and add half of the tomato paste. Stir the mixture around so that it doesn’t burn.
5. Add all the rice to the mixture, and lower the heat to medium heat.
6. Put the rest of the tomato paste into the rice (put some rice into the can to get the last bit, if you know what I mean).
7. Keep mixing, and add dashes of garlic powder, cumin, mushroom powder, and any other seasonings to your taste. I would suggest chili powder.
8. Once you are done seasoning the rice, take the saucepan off the stove and transfer the rice to a rice cooker to keep it warm until you are ready to serve. Be sure that the rice cooker is set on the “keep warm” setting, not the “cook” setting.
9. Serve with a dash of pepper, a couple of scoops of guacamole and refried beans, or whatever you like! ^__^

Hearty Creamy Pasta Recipe!

This pasta recipe is my favorite!! =) I bring it to potlucks and it always wins everyone over, vegans and omnivores alike. It is a modified recipe based off of Lindy Loo's "Creamiest Vegan Mac'n'Cheez EVER". It was originally Anna's idea to add pasta sauce to the recipe to make it a creamy pasta. This dish is pretty decadent, so I wouldn't suggest making it alll the time. But it is a wonderful treat to have once in a while. For a healthier version, I substitute the pasta with whole wheat pasta.

The recipe is very simple.

First, we make Lindy Loo's recipe: http://yeahthatveganshit.blogspot.com/2007/10/creamiest-vegan-mac-n-cheez-ever.html

We follow her instructions exactly, but we don't bake the pasta like she says to, not until after we add our pasta sauce. Anna and I also like to use more nutritional yeast, like 1/8 to 1/4 a cup more. ^__^ The Red Star brand is the kind we use.

Once we are done with making Lindy Loo's recipe, we make a pasta sauce.

Here is what Anna and I usually put in our pasta sauce (the measurements for the vegetables are not exact; we usually just use whatever we have on hand):

The Mai Sisters' Standard Pasta Sauce

[flexible]

1 medium to fairly large onion, diced

Mushrooms (about 1 1/2 cups, chopped)

1 large green bell pepper, diced

Zucchini, diced (one or two medium zucchinis, depending on how much you like them)

Black olives (as many as you like, you know)

3 Tofurkey sausages, Italian flavor, chopped into 1/4" slices

1 standard jar of tomato sauce (about 3 cups, or 25 ounces)

1. Saute the onions with some oil until they are nice and brown and smell nice.

2. Add the rest of the vegetables and tofurkey sausages.

3. When the vegetables are cooked, add the spaghetti sauce; let it simmer for about 5 minutes.

4. Season it according to your tastes; we use onion and garlic powder, oregano, and some salt.

5. Add the pasta sauce to the mac'n'cheez and mix it thoroughly.

This recipe usually fills up two large plates. ;)

Enjoy!