cake is my life
All weekend I'd been craving french toast, pancakes, crepes...any sweet breakfast treat that I could lather in maple syrup. So when Sunday morning rolled around, I thought it was finally time to give in to my desires and make a delicious carb feast. I decided on pancakes since I had all the ingredients handy and could finally use the buckwheat flour that's been sitting in my pantry unopened. A few months ago I went on a yoga/hike/vegan picnic organized by Dan Ward yoga extraordinaire. His wife brought a portable griddle and made the most amazing buckwheat pancakes atop a mountain a Malibu. They have since then been on my mind, hence the buckwheat flour I have been waiting to use. I found a recipe on a blog that's new to me called Clean Eating Mama. (http://www.thecleaneatingmama.com/2010/03/vegan-buckwheat-pancakes.html) The pictures looked amazing and very similar to the pancakes I fell in love with. I can't say that mine were as pretty but they sure tasted good. Even the one that looked like an ameba. I added some cinnamon and flooded my plate with maple syrup (I have a bit of a sweet tooth). With coffee on the side, The Morning Benders playing in the background and the pleasant company of my roomies and the dogs, Sunday morning was perfect. The whole week in fact has been very heavily revolved around sweets and baking. I experimented with two recipes from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. The first was a Coconut Chai Cake (http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/03/coconut-chai-breakfast-cake.html) I substituted the unbleached white flour with spelt flour and I think I made the cake a bit chewy but I didn't mind. It was delicious especially if you like spicy chai lattes!
The second recipe I tried was the Banana Maple Oatmeal Cookies recipe (http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2010/02/banana-maple-oatmeal-cookies.html) These were a huge hit in my household. I left out the raisins and added some maple frosting. To make the frosting: Start with two tablespoons of softened vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance). Add confectioners sugar and non-dairy milk (I used Pacific Almond Milk Light) alternating until you find your desired consistency. Then add some maple syrup to taste. I threw in a pinch of salt as well. It's simple, light and compliments the cookies very well!
These did not last long! And if you don't have the time or energy to bake there is always Sprinkles Cupcakes. I made my first trip in months on Saturday while waiting for Winston to get a haircut (which looks adorable by the way...Oh My Dog in Scottsdale gives the best cuts!!) Sprinkle has locations all over the States and now has vegan red velvet cupcakes. Ama-za-zing!!
And now I can safely say that I'm pretty set on sweets for awhile. Pancakes, tea-cakes, cupcakes...is there such a thing as too much cake?