Vegan Spinach Hummus Wrap

I don't like to cook just for myself. Usually if I am alone a big salad or something fast and filling will do for lunch or dinner, in fact when I was in college I was known as the "rabbit" and the "bird" because of my salad meals topped with seeds and nuts! Yesterday I cooked pasta for the kids but I wanted something fresh and not cooked so I prepared a cold tortilla wrap for myself:

I spread hummus on a soft tortilla and added a bit of organic sweet relish (from Trader Joe's). On top I added a bunch of fresh spinach and rolled up everything into a wrap. I also cut some organic tomato which I could have put inside the wrap but it would have made the wrap too soggy for my taste. This lunch was satisfying and I loved the freshness and crunch of the spinach!

Coconut Banana Vegan Cake

As I wrote in a previous post, I have never been a great baker and the only cake I was preparing since the 90s was a popular and easy recipe where you used yogurt and the yogurt cup as a measurements for other ingredients. I recently bought few dairy-free yogurt cups made with coconut milk and I decided to dedicate one of them to making a cake the way I was used to...just the vegan version of it. I found a recipe on an Italian site for a vegan cake which seemed easy and required a vegan yogurt cup for measurement. The recipe goes like this (keep in mind that the "cup" refers to the actual yogurt cup):

- 1 cup vegan yogurt (coconut, almond, soy or rice)

- 3 cups flour

- 2 cups sugar

- 1 cup vegetable oi

- 1 t baking powder

- 3 small mashed bananas

 Bake in the oven at 350° for 25 minutes.

For my cake I reduced the amount of sugar to 1 cup because I used nicely ripened bananas which were already sweet. Also, I only used two bananas because they were big ones. I added a teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut. After the cake cooked and cooled down I sprinkled powdered sugar on top and added one of our passion flowers from the garden as decoration (I don't think it's edible though it's an amazing flower!).

I had to cook the cake for more than the required 25 minutes because the bananas made it kinda too wet inside, even when the "toothpick test" came out dry. The taste was good but I'd rather find a different substitute for eggs, I feel that the bananas just didn't do well in this recipe and made the cake feel heavy. If I will be trying this recipe again I will rather use applesauce instead of the bananas.

Almond, Apricot and Cardamom Vegan Cookies

This is another great recipe which I found in one of my favorite cooking blogs. I love anything with cardamom so for these cookies I was happy to take out my small Ikea mortar and pestle to ground our whole cardamom pods. The recipe called for walnuts but I added chopped silvered almonds instead and they nicely fit the other flavors.

I liked the chewyness of the apricots in these cookies which are on the soft side, not the crumbly one. They also passed the children and husband test so this recipe is a keeper! 

Next time we are craving for cookies I am actually planning to modify this recipe a bit to try different flavor combinations and see whether I can come up with something interesting. Results will be posted here!

Focaccia, Part Deux

I found another great recipe for a focaccia, the result was perfect and everyone loved it! It was so soft inside and it leavened so well, I must say that the whole recipe process was interesting. My favorite part is flattening the elastic dough on the pan and imprint my fingers on it! I used an aluminum pan because I liked the elegand scalloped edges it would have imprinted on the focaccia.

The original blog post called for onions and cherry tomatoes but I instead used green olives and rosemary, my favorite focaccia toppings. The top gained a nice golden color and the inside was perfectly fluffy and airy.

I will definitively save this recipe for whenever I am craving for a soft focaccia. If you are looking for a traditional Italian focaccia recipe, this is it!

Vegan Focaccia Tiles

I have sweet memories linked to focaccia bread, to me it's linked to the Adriatic sea and my summer vacations as a child there. I tried the original focaccia in Liguria (that's where it's traditional) but I remember another great focaccia from a bakery in our favorite city by the Adriatic sea. We were buying the warm focaccia cut in squares for then bringing it to the beach, it was a fluffy focaccia topped with rosemary and salt crystals. 

Sometimes I crave that focaccia flavor so I prepare it at home, it's also a good way to use the rosemary from our garden. Few years back I fell in love with a focaccia recipe I found in a Better Homes & Gardens issue, the photo of the recipe was so beautiful and the idea of having different tiles on one focaccia which I could customize intrigued me. This is the photo from the original recipe:

Isn't it a mouthwatering photo? This recipe became a staple in our family, I prepare it whenever we want to snack on focaccia. The kids requested a pesto tile and I made a tile with oninon and anchovy for my husband. The other tiles were vegan and my favorite was the roasted red bell pepper. This is my focaccia tiles (before hitting the oven...when they came out we were too hungry to wait for pictures):

After the focaccia came out of the oven I broke some of the rosemary leaves on top of each tile...because you must have rosemary on your focaccia! I look forward to prepare this recipe during summer to use our tomatoes and zucchini on top of it!

Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Vegan Cookies

I bought some almond flour few weeks back and stored it in my refrigerator waiting to find a good recipe to try. Finally the web came to the almond flour rescue when I found this vegan recipe. Because I had not enough agave syrup I have used raw brown sugar and added 2T of unsweetened applesauce to add moisture.

 



 

The cookies look dry in the picture because of the "crumblyness" of the almond flour but in reality they came out perfect! The kids loved them and I feel it will be the perfect breakfast cookies to get energy in the moring. I have never baked so often! I just like the many choices of healthy desserts and cookies that the vegan world offers! 

Raw Vegan Lunch

What can I say? This is beauty and joy in a bowl. Raw kale salad, recipe here.

Strawberry Jam Vegan Tartlets

Today I wanted to prepare a snack for my son's after soccer practice. Few days back I found a tartlet recipe on an Italian site so today I felt it was the perfect time to give it a try. The recipe is for a whole "crostata" jam cake but I made instead small tartlets, filling them with strawberry jam. After 10 years cooking with American recipes I somehow feel strange following a metric recipe but the result was great and my son and daughter loved the tartlets. The same recipe can be used to prepare fruit tartlets, where you cook the empty tartlets in the oven, fill them with vegan cream and top it with fresh fruit. I will definitively try that as well.

Growing up in Italy the "crostata" was a cake which my mother was often preparing, always made with some kind of homemade jam. I am happy to have found a great vegan recipe for these jam tartlets so I can continue the tradition of "crostata" cooking in my own home.

Raw Cauliflower Salad, Two Ways

I did not know you can eat raw cauliflower. Of course I did know that eating a vegetable in its raw form would be the best way to preserve its nutritional value so when I found a recipe for a raw cauliflower salad I thought I would give it a try. This was the result:

I loved the crunchiness of the cauliflower and the sweet, salty and sour combination of the ingredients. As you can see there also are broccoli florets which I already eat on a regular basis. Adding nuts was a great way to add protein to this raw dish. 

In one of my favorite food blogs I found another interesting recipe which I tried the other day. Again, the sweetness from the applesauce and the tangy flavor of the capers made the salad really interesting and pleasant to eat. 

Cauliflower Salad with Applesauce and Capers

These were definitively two filling and satisfying salads which I will be happy to eat again!

The Best Vegan Pancakes!

I always have wanted to start a "Pancakes Sunday Breakfast" tradition in our home so I started researching for a good vegan recipe around the web but all the recipes I found where never giving me results of a perfect fluffy pancake. My search for it finally came to an end when I found this recipe which was written to celebrate National pancake day so it HAD to be the best one! The pancakes came out fluffy and delicious, making all my family happy and ready to start a great Sunday! The only thing I would change is the amount of baking soda to add to the batter, I would rather use 1T instead of 2 because I don't like too thick pancakes. Also, to the basic recipe I added dried blueberries and for toppings I added fresh blueberries and maple syrup. Let the "Pancakes Sunday Breakfasts" begin!