Saturday, February 26, 2011

Lasagna and Mini-Bundt Goodness!

Hey friends!
So I guess I suck at having a blog. It's not you, it's me.

I've been cooking a little bit less lately and kinda realizing that trying to cook for the blog sucks the fun out of cooking. So I'll cook, have fun, eat good food and maybe sometimes remember to share recipes on here. Sound good? Well you have no choice, so it's no use crying over lazy bloggers.

This week I'm pretty sure I perfected my tofu lasagna filler. It could be compared to a ricotta, but it's a little bit closer to a mascarpone. Well maybe if mascarpone and ricotta had a baby, and that baby was made out of tofu and tasted really good on lasagna. Yeah, that sounds about right. I would also suggest making more of the tofu spread than necessary for your lasagna. When refrigerated in an air tight container, it makes a great vegan paté for crackers, bread, carrots or whatever you want to paté with.

Holy Mascarpone Batman!
*High Protein Extra Firm Tofu (Drained and pressed for at least an hour. Seriously.)
*Olive Oil - Added for correct riccota-esque consistency. Usually about 3-4 T.
*2 t dried basil
*1/2 t white pepper
*1/2 t fresh cracked black pepper
*1 t Spike or an extra 1/2 t of sea salt
*4 T Parma or
2 T nutritional yeast
1 T ground walnuts
1 T ground cashews
1/2 t sea salt
*1 t thyme
*2 cloves garlic

Instrucciones: In a food processor, mince garlic cloves before adding manageable chunks of the pressed tofu. Make sure that your tofu is as dense and dry as possible, try to get all of the excess liquid out. While the food processor is slashing the tofu like a hot blonde in a scary movie, add all the spices and then the olive oil (a T at a time until the tofu has good consistency). Et voila! You might want to add a little bit more salt or garlic to taste, but this is a pretty great mixture.

Use it in place of ricotta in a typical lasagna recipe. Lasagna is one of the easiest things to kitchen-sink-ify. I made one with the scraps of our CSA box. Broccoli, spinach and heirloom tomato sauce. I wish we had some zuchinni, because that's my all time favorite lasagna filling, but the broccoli gave it a nice crunch. I baked the lasagna for about 50 minutes at *350, taking it out once at about 30 minutes to add more sauce and tofu spread to the top. I like my lasagna crispy and creamy at the same time.


After completely messing up the kitchen, I figured this was a good a time as any for my famous mini-bundts. This recipe is stupid easy and always comes out great. These are also soy-free, which is pretty exciting, since I always feel like I'm eating too much soy. This recipe is also gluten free! Just make sure you're using GF all-purpose flour.

This makes about a dozen mini-bundts, or one actual bundt cake.

Baby Got (Mini) Bundts
*2 cups all-purpose flour
*1 cup oat flour
*3/4 cup vegan turbinado sugar
*1/4 cup brown sugar
*1 t baking soda
*3/4 cup vegetable oil
*3 fuyu persimmons and 2 sweet apples, pureed (about 2 cups). Watch out for seeds!
*1 1/2 t vanilla
*1 t cinnamon
*1/2 t nutmeg
*1/2 t ground cloves


Combine wet ingredients (oil, puree and vanilla) with the sugar in one small bowl. I like to combine the dry ingredients (flours, baking soda, spices) and then use a sifter to add them to the wet. Mix everything together by hand, being careful to not over-do it. That will make the bundts come out a little tough, at least in my experience. Pour into mini-bundt, or big bundt pan. You should fill it so there's room at the top (these rise a bunch) or just know that you're going to have a little bundt butt to chop off later. I actually like the little butts, they are like tiny biscuits. Adorable. Put into a preheated 350* oven. Or if you're me, remember that you didn't preheat the oven and then wait around for fifteen minutes until it's ready. Pinche. Cook for about half an hour, double checking at 20 minutes that they're rising and turning brown. When a toothpick comes out clean, they're ready to come out. If you do have the over rising bundt butt problem, chop them off and put the bundts back in the oven for about 5 more minutes to make sure the center is done.

You can leave this bundt recipe uncovered, it's great as a morning sweet treat. I like to do a citrus fondant on top, it's like yummy candy. I generally follow this fondant recipe on Vegan Yum Yum using clementines, oranges or meyer lemons.



Yay! I updated the blog!

No comments:

Post a Comment