Do you even know what a wah wah is, girl?

Every time I cook quinoa I have to remind myself of its stupid pronounciation and then I start singing that song into my spatula!!

Tonight's dinner was a simple pilaff, but made with quinoa instead of rice - that I have christened Bean-Wah. It was awesome.

So although it's not that hard to whip up a pilaff, I included a recipe. Mainly so I could give it a stupid name.

Feel free to vary the veggies & spices to suit your taste or whatever you have in the fridge, I always do but this is what went in it today:

Bean-wah

Ingredients:

1 medium onion

1 tsp olive oil

1/2 an orange pepper

A couple of mushrooms

1/4 of a large aubergine

1 clove of garlic

1 tsp (ish) paprika

1 tsp no salt added poultry spice

pinch of chilli flakes (optional)

1/2 cup / 90g Quinoa

1.5 cups / 375ml boiling water

1 veggie stock cube

1 tbsp nooch

1/2 cup / 8 tbsp cooked beans of your choice (I used black beans)

About a tbsp each of fresh parsley and chives

Salt & pepper to taste

Method:

Saute the onion in a medium frying pan, in the olive oil with a pinch of salt for a few minutes, over a med-low heat. Add the other veg and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the quinoa and garlic and stir well. Add the water and crumble in the stock cube and a pinch of pepper. Mix well to dissolve and then turn the heat up and bring to the boil. Don't add salt at this point, unless you used a no-salt stock cube.

Once boiling, turn down the heat to a simmer and cover the pan with tin foil (or a loose fitting lid). Cook for 15 minutes, until the germ separates and almost all the liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally.

Add the beans and nooch and turn off the heat. Stir well and cover with the foil again. Leave covered for 5 minutes then check the seasoning and stir in the herbs.

Serve with crusty bread or if, like me you don't have any, whatever frozen bread like thing you can toast up while the bean-wah is cooking! Mine was a low fat naan! haha. It was good.

Next time on Alien on Toast.... I suck at okara!

Cooking to: Airbourne - Runnin' Wild (if you like AC/DC and that sort of good stuff, I recommend this band. They are totally awesome, pot banging, stripper rock, fuck music! Rad!)

Vegan MoFo: What do you do if you see a space man?....

... park in it man!

Rubbish joke courtesy of my R.E teacher when I was 16!

I had a day off today and spent most of it cleaning the flat. It's amazing how long it takes to clean such a small flat! But also tidied up my little area where I have had to start storing stuff. I need this space because as you can see, my 2 teeny cupboards are rammed full:



I should add that I am the only person I know who frequently gets hit on the head by falling spice bottles / nooch tins / cans of veggies! Everyone else I know has very sad, empty looking cupboards. Happiness is a rammed cupboard / fridge in my opinion.

So anyway, there is no room for any more bags of stuff so I bought some storage jars for my little area behind the dining table. The spirally long one is now holding wholewheat spaghetti......


......but used to hold my hair straighteners - I knew I'd never be disciplined enough to put them away after I use them so I found a better use for the box.


But that still isn't enough room for all my crap, so I had to line up the 'essentials' behind the cooker:

Extreme close up....

Since seeing into everyone's freezers was so much fun, I want to see your cupboards too - so I think everyone needs to take pics and post them so I can be nosey!! :)

Onto more interesting stuff - today's food. I had banana wholewheat pancakes, drowned in maple syrup, for brekkie (love days off!) - I haven't got this quite right yet but promise to post the recipe when I do.

For dinner I had to ransack the fridge because I don't have much in until I get to the supermarket tomorrow. I had some leftover blended tomatoes from yesterday's dinner so I made a quick pilaff. It was going to be a quinoa pilaff but I searched and searched and couldn't find any so basmati it was instead.

I baked some tofu with a mustard / agave glaze on. I overcooked it though so it was a bit dry and chewy but the flavour was pretty nice. Needs work but I think it'll be pretty easy to fix so I can post the recipe.

Cooking to: my "mullet rock" playlist!

Do you want to love me sexy?

You will when you bake this cake! I promised a chocolate cake and a chocolate cake I give you. Recipe is at the end of this post.

I made the cakes Tuesday and refrigerated them overnight to help them firm up a bit. Then I frosted it today when I was slacking off instead of studying for my safety exams – bad me! (I did make up for the studying later though!)

I wanted a cake with a softer icing than normal. Also, much as I love buttercream, it can be a bit sickly. Although it’s not the prettiest cake ever, I think it turned out absolutely freaking awesome. You could replace the vanilla extract (in the cake and the icing) with orange for a chocolate orange cake too.

The frosting is really runny when you make it and personally I like to frost it when it’s still pretty soft – I like the messy homemade look! If you don’t though, just refrigerate the frosting an hour or so and it will thicken up enough (not overnight though, it wouldn’t be very easy to spread if you did this). I kept the cake refrigerated once I assembled it. I’m not sure how the frosting would hold up out of the fridge.

A couple of things I learnt from watching the Barefoot Contessa: 1) that cornflour in combination with regular flour lightens the batter; and 2) that a bit of coffee added to chocolate cake intensifies the chocolateyness! I got love for Ina, even though her recipes are full of butter, cream and eggs, she does come up with some good stuff! I’ve printed off a couple of her cake recipes that I’m gonna try and veganise – I’ll post the results of any successes!

This cake is super chocolately and really REALLY messy to decorate; that is the joy of it. But the absolute best thing about this cake? You can feed it to un-suspecting omnis, wait for them to moan with pleasure then smugly inform them it contains tofu and wait for the nauseated look to appear on their face. Score!

My friends loved this cake, one had seconds and one took a piece home for her fiancé, as he gets upset if he doesn’t get cake too! She also told me last night that she wants me to make cupcakes for her wedding reception next year! I’m so thrilled, but a bit terrified too. I’m already doing the wedding make-up and I’m a bridesmaid – I think she wants to give me a nervous breakdown! Haha just kidding, I can’t wait.

Back to tonight’s dinner and I know the main course is not really that important when cake is on the cards but this is what we had; mushroom & sun-dried tomato pilaff and garlicky spring greens! Mmm mmm! Weird that you can hardly see any mushrooms in this pic considering it was chock-full of 'em!


OK onto the important part - the cake.

UK peeps, I weighed the frosting ingredients but not the actual cake so the cake ingredients are in cups - but if you don’t have American cups you just need a measuring jug. The 250ml / ¼ litre mark is one American cup! (But go buy some cup measures seriously, they are a couple of quid in the supermarket and are SO much easier than weighing!)

Sal’s superrad messy chocolate cake
Wet ingredients:
185 ml / ¾ cup non dairy milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
125ml / ½ cup light oil (I used sunflower)
½ a pack of firm silken tofu (I used Mori-Nu) – or you could use 125ml / ½ cup soya yoghurt
1½ tsp good vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee powder (I know that’s dry, but trust me!)
Dry Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup / 4 tbsp cornflour
⅓ cup cocoa powder
1½ tsp (level) baking powder
½ tsp (level) baking soda
½ tsp salt
¾ cup golden caster sugar
Frosting:
140g / ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
125ml / ½ cup soya cream (I used alpro)
4 tbsp / ¼ cup vegetable shortening
4 tbsp / ¼ cup vegan margarine
1 tsp good vanilla extract
80g / ½ cup icing/confectioners’ sugar
Optional:
2-4 tbsp jam
Chocolate sprinkles or shavings to decorate

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.

Combine the non-dairy milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle.

Whizz the tofu in a blender until smooth, then add the rest of the wet ingredients. Mix the coffee into the soymilk mixture, then add to the tofu mixture and blend well. I use a hand immersion blender and a pyrex jug, because I don’t have a stand blender yet.

Then sieve together the dry ingredients into a large bowl (except the sugar). Don’t skip this step, cocoa really needs to be sieved or you get mingin lumps in your cake! Blech. Stir together and add the sugar and mix well.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well until no large lumps remain, a few small ones are ok – just don’t over-mix or you’ll get tough chewy cake – ick.

Pour into 2 round sandwich tins and bake for around 25 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out clean. Cool for 5-10 minutes then carefully turn out and leave on a cooling rack until completely cold. I put them in the fridge overnight to firm up.

Then make the frosting. Melt together the chocolate and soy cream gently in a double boiler, mixing well until smooth and shiny.

Remove from the heat and leave to cool a bit while you mix the other ingredients.

Measure out the other frosting ingredients into a large bowl and cream them together with a fork until just combined. Pour in the chocolate/cream mixture (don’t add the other ingredients to the chocolate, the residual heat in the bowl will be too high!) and use an electric hand beater to mix it till smooth and creamy (a minute or so), scraping down the sides as necessary.

Put the frosting in the fridge and leave it for about 20-30 minutes before assembling the cake.

To assemble, upturn one cake onto a plate or cake tray so you have a nice flat surface. Spread a generous dollop of jam over the cake if using (it is easier if the jam is at room temp, if it’s cold it will be hard to spread). I like to add the jam because sometimes chocolate cake can be a bit too much without some fruit to break it up a bit. I used blueberry because blueberry & chocolate make sweet sweet love together!


Then spread a good blob of the frosting over the jam and sandwich the second cake on top.


Pour about half to ¾ of the remaining frosting into the middle of the top cake and using a spatula, spread it gently out and ‘encourage’ it to drop over the sides, then use the remainder to build up the top and cover any holes. (Alternatively, leave the frosting in the fridge for an hour or so and spread it on.)

Decorate with sprinkles or shavings and put back in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Inside shot of what was left this morning - it was excellent for breakfast by the way :-) :


Cooking while watching Semi-Pro (hence stupid post title)

Come over to the darkside - we have cupcakes!

I worked from home this morning so I got to make myself a hot brekkie - pancakes! I'm so happy with these; not only were they awesome but they came out the pan in one piece - hurrah! Here they are smothered in maple syrup!


For dinner I did a mushroom and sun-dried tomato pilaff. To go with it I cut up some smoked tofu, gave it a gentle coating of flour and fried it in a little olive oil. I have discovered that I really love cutting the tofu up in these little triangles.

My mum and dad are going to visit my grandad this weekend and as I'm not going I sent up a box of cupcake love - the best kind! Here they are straight out the oven.


And frosted: chocolate orange cupcakes and vanilla cupcakes with blueberry frosting.

All packed up and ready to go

Cooking to: Charlotte Hatherley - Grey Will Fade

Edit:
Someone on the ppk asked for instructions on the blueberry frosting so I posted it but thought I'd add it in here in case anyone wants to have a go - it is perfect with the basic vanilla cupcakes (VCTOTW).

Ingredients:
5 tablespoons / heaped 1/4 cup blueberry jam
5 tablespoons / heaped 1/4 cup shortening
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
enough soymilk to make it creamy (about 1 tbsp)

Method:
Push the jam through a fine seive with the back of a spoon just to get out the lumps (there will still be some seeds in it but I think they look pretty). Add the shortening and mash together with a fork.Add the sugar in two goes, mashing with a fork in between. Add the vanilla and soymilk, mashing still.

Then get the electric beaters in there and whip it till it's fluffy and you're done.