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! =)

Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies! :)

Although you can't see the raisins or chocolate chips in this particular picture, these are the vegan oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies that I made with my engineering group a while back! I also made them with Anna. :) These are quite possibly the best cookies I have ever made ^__^

I decided to try to make oatmeal raisin cookies, because they are Kenny’s favorite. xD

I was debating which oatmeal raisin cookie recipe to use, as I have never made oatmeal raisin cookies before, vegan or otherwise. I came across two that looked promising. I went with a recipe from Vegweb, based on the raving reviews. I am always skeptical of recipes that don’t have substantial reviews.

I made some modifications, because I don’t trust EnerG Egg Replacer at all, haha. Everyone says it makes things crumbly and that you can taste it in your final product. No thanks :/ One of the reviewers said applesauce worked well, so I listened to her advice. Since I omitted the EnerG Egg Replacer and subbed it with applesauce, there was no need to add water or soymilk. On a whim, Hannah and I decided to throw in some chocolate chips, as well. Brian and I topped some of the cookies with pecans. Creativity wins~the cookies were a success—everyone gobbled them up. =D In my opinion, they were a bit too sweet, so next time I may add less sugar. The sweetness is probably because we used Cinnamon Apple Quaker Oatmeal. The cookies probably would have been just right had plain oatmeal/oats been used. But, everybody thought they were the perfect sweetness. Maybe I’m getting old. D: haha. But seriously, I plan to make these for a family gathering sometime, and the adults in my family don’t like super sweet treats.

Oh yeah, the recipe on VegWeb says that it makes 2 dozen, but we went with our instincts and doubled the recipe. We got a little over 2 dozen. Haha. That always happens to me, especially with cookie recipes! I always end up with half of the projected yield given by the recipe. The following measurements are for 2.5 dozen, from my experience. Don’t make the cookies too big, because they are a bit fragile (I think next time I will add tapioca starch to make them more sturdy). These do spread a little, so be sure to space them out. =)

So, here is the recipe for Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies, a modified version of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies I found on VegWeb (http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6459.0)

Be sure to check out the link to the original recipe, and look at the comments. The reviewers have lots of ideas on how to modify this recipe; it seems to be very adaptable.

Ingredients:

(use vegan versions, and try to find organic products)

• 1 cup softened (NOT MELTED) non-dairy margarine (I use Earth Balance)
• 1 ½ cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• a little over ½ a cup of applesauce (I used the cinnamon applesauce)
• 1 cup raisins or other dried fruit
• 1 cup chocolate chips (I always use Ghiradelli’s semisweet chocolate chips!)
• 1 ½ cup all-purpose (or whole wheat pastry, etc.) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• about 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal (or plain rolled oats)

Equipment:

• 1 large mixing bowl
• Measuring spoons & measuring cup
• Electric mixer
• Cookie tray ;]

1. Place the margarine in a large mixing bowl and let it soften on the counter. Just leave the kitchen and do something else for ten to fifteen minutes, but don’t forget all about it, as I have done before. You can microwave it for a teeny tiny bit so that it softens faster, but I often find this method to be unreliable…I end up with completely melted margarine, not the desired result.
2. Add the sugar to the bowl. Using the mixer, cream the margarine and sugar until fluffy.
3. Add the vanilla extract, applesauce, dried fruit, and chocolate chips (if using), to the bowl and mix.
4. In this order, add the following ingredients in and mix after every couple additions (so that the batter doesn’t get too overburdened): flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, oatmeal.
5. At this point, the batter should be extremely sticky and thick. If it’s dry, add some soymilk. If it is looking too soupy, add some more flour, but don’t overdo it.
6. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
7. Use your tablespoon to scoop the batter out onto your cookie tray. I used a nonstick one so I didn’t need to oil it. If you’re not using a nonstick pan, you may want to oil it a little bit. Kind of flatten out the scoops.
8. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
9. Take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool for at least one minute on the cookie tray. They’ll be too fragile and too hot for you to move.
10. Using a wooden spatula or something of the sort, transfer the cookies to a rack and let them cool completely.

Enjoy the cookies with a glass of soymilk and a friend or two. ^__~

The cookies will be soft and chewy. Mind you, they’ll still be a bit delicate, but they seem to get better the following day (that is if they last that long =P)

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Confusion [Ann]

I'm wondering how to add songs to our music playlist thing at the bottom of this page. Agh. So confused. I don't know the password to our playlist. :'(
Mmm, look, chocolate chip cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance! Nomnomnomnom xD

Last week, Anna came to Texas! We had great fun baking (without a certain LAZY someone who would rather see a crappy movie for free than bake with us...har har jk) those chocolate chip cookies and also chocolate thumbprint cookies for the WHS STAND bake sale! (both recipes from Vegan with a Vengeance ;) I made Kenny some special ones! :}
(Please do not delete this post, Anna)

Dear Jerry & Kenia, I will post oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies later on today just for you! :]

[edit: WHAT HAPPENED HERE?! WHERE IS THE SENSE? I HAD TEXT ABOUT MOONCAKES. Please refer to post titled "I smell censorship!"]

>:[ The mooncakes are going to be so beautiful and cultural and all that jazz...yeah. If you don't know what mooncakes are, they look something like the picture at the very top of this post (Yeah I don't know. I tried to move it closer to this paragraph that relates to mooncakes, but it just wont listen to me). Ours will look so much better because my aunt has beautiful intricate flowery designs in her mold. Hm, taken out of context, that phrase sounds kind of gross...or like morbidly fascinating. Ah so exciting! I love Autumn.
Anna's coming again this weekend! YAY!

Posting a blog is complicated for me. My pictures don't match up with what I've typed. I tried to move them. They're stuck! :( LWTC?! Maybe next time I'll just post pictures and no words. A picture is worth a thousand words, anyway.