Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Hump Day Ha Ha

Serials and Scenarios ~ Fran Costigan's Vegan Chocolate Cookbook Review

A publisher sent a copy of Fran Costigan's Vegan Chocolate for my review and opinions. This cookbook is gorgeous coffee table art. The photos and recipe titles are drool worthy. 

So much chocolate, so much eye candy. 

I flipped through the book, almost afraid to touch the pages, they are that beautiful. I also set it aside until I felt brave enough to cook from it. 

Seriously, this is a real deal cookbook. Gourmet treatment, serious attention to detail. These are recipes to make when you want to knock someone's socks off. I didn't have an event planned or opportunity coming up that required a beautiful, glorious dessert of this caliber. Just like I look at Julia Child's epic cookbook as above my skill levels, Vegan Chocolate intimidated me. 

Then I got a touch of cabin fever. I've spent the last two weeks doing a whole lot of resting trying to kick a viral hybrid of yuck. And Sunday afternoon I decided I needed to do some cooking. So I flipped through this gem and picked some recipes for which I had the ingredients. This was a challenge based on the whole two weeks virus thing. I haven't been spending much time in the grocery store. 

For my experiences with the recipes and my opinions keep reading. 

Recipe 1... Graham Crackers. Store bought graham crackers are sure nice and convenient when you can find a vegan version. However, they don't touch the flavor of homemade. And honestly, these are delicious. I didn't get fancy and cut disks and make them cute like in the cookbook, I ran my knife over the flat sheet of dough and poked some holes. Nothing gourmet on my end. But this is an easy recipe and one that is the base for her Magic Cookie Bars, Smores and Moon Pies. I can only imagine how off the charts those are going to be based on how great the other desserts were. 

Recipe 2... Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I dare anyone to guess these are vegan. No way. These are chewy, crispy, chocolatey and delicious. The recipe doesn't make a huge batch and that is probably good. Just sayin. 

Recipe 3...Almond Cookie Crust. I put this together for a base for a chocolate cream pie made with her chocolate pudding. Let me talk about the crust. Yum. It would be a delicious base for just about any filling you could come up with. Cookieish and pie crustish at the same time and tasty. 

Recipe 4... Okay. The piece du resistance. Almost Instant Chocolate Pudding. Holy moly. Wow. This took me back to 8th grade Home Ec when I struggled over home cooked pudding. The horror of eggs being put in the pudding was replaced by finally getting it cooked without floaty nastiness...once. This Almost Instant Chocolate Pudding tasted so much better with no eggs and it really was easy. Easy. And honestly...so delicious. I consider the price tag on this book worth it for that recipe alone. It set up amazingly as chocolate cream pie. I can't wait to serve it for guests down the road. Off the charts creamy and decadently chocolately. 

With these recipes turning out to be so delicious I can't wait to try others. Yes. This cookbook calls for some ingredients you might not have in your cupboard. Yes there are steps to many of them that seem intimidating. But with results like I got, I am so ready to embrace vegan gourmet chocolate desserts that could absolutely make an omnivore weak in the knees. If you are tempted by this book, I don't think you'll be sorry for hitting "add to cart." 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ First Day Advice for Monday...

 I saw this video over the weekend at a women's conference. So true and so sweet. And perfect for Monday viewing. 

Scraps and Snippets ~ Marigold Cheesecake Bars

I suggest making this the full day before to let the flavors marry fully and to make the cake the perfect serving texture. This recipe will serve 12 in bar form or 20 in the cupcake version (I suggest silicone cupcake liners. I’m guessing paper will stand up just fine, too, but I didn’t try that scenario out.)  I’m also suggesting possible add-in’s just for the fun of it.

Marigold Cheesecake

10 Golden Oreos (complete) or Vanilla Jo-Jos

10 Golden Oreos or Jo-Jo outside cookies (for a total of 20 outside cookie disks)  (Scrape the middles into a bowl for the filling).

1 TBSP Earth Balance or coconut oil

In a food processor whir the 10 whole cookies, twenty cookie shells and 1 TBSP of butter or coconut oil.

Press the mixture into a 8 x 11 pan.

Or to go even easier. Place one cookie shell on the bottom of a cupcake liner. Fill 20 cupcake liners. Scrape the middles into a bowl for the next step. In this scenario you only need 10 total cookies.

Filling:

Move the bowl of the cookie middles to front and center. To them add:

8 ounces cream cheese (I use TJ's Not Cream Cheese)

1 TBSP orange marmalade

Zest and juice from 1/2 an orange (you could also replace this with 2 more TBSP of orange marmalade)

1/4 Cup powdered sugar

Whip with mixer or food processor.

Fold in:

2 Cups whipped coconut cream. (1 can full fat coconut without water) (-- if you don't know how to do this it's simple. Get a can of full fat coconut milk (I love Trader Joe's - put in fridge for at least 2 days if using another brand.) Open and scrape out the solid, leaving the water behind for another purpose (smoothies, Thai cooking) Whip into creaminess with your mixer. Toss in a few TBSP of powdered sugar and a dash of vanilla if you desire. That's it.

Spoon over crust in pan or cookie half in cupcake liner  and refrigerate until set. Several hours or overnight is even better.

Additions and Wows: 

Stir in additional broken cookie bits if desired. Or add craisins, or both.  Switch out the crust for chocolate sandwich cookies and add mini chocolate chips to the filling. Make a drizzle out of melted chocolate chips and marmalade or raspberry seedless jam,  2 TBSP chips melted with 1 TBSP jam/marmalade. Place in a zipper bag and cut the corner off and squeeze over the bars/cupcakes.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Tuesday Tee Hee

I saw the actual video tutorial a few months ago and thought it was pretty funny. But seeing Ellen's Q and A and Tori's great sense of humor made it even better. 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Learning Slugs

I have a confession to make. I don't have cable which is probably real, real good. Because if I did I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to get anything else done outside of watching shows about food. 

Fortunately, we only have Netflix which is dangerous enough. 

Our usual nightly routine is Rob and I winding down our day watching something together. By watching I sometimes mean bingeing on old series. The more intense the more likely we are to extend beddie-bye time. Our current series is Kitchen Nightmares. Okay, it was. We watched the last episode last week. I can't really recommend it because it's A) offensive. B) nauseating. C) highly dramatic. However, there is a sense of escapism and the whole check-out-that-accident,-don't-look,-don't-look,-whoa!!!! syndrome.  My favorite episode included the owner of a reformed and fixed up restaurant that Gordon Ramsey revisited tricking him with a vegan chicken salad! Yes!

Since we watched our last episode we searched Netflix for more cooking/chef shows. We found one that's a PBS show called The Mind of a Chef Sunday around dinner time while I was continuing to convalesce. (Who slices an eye, has random rounds of gastrointestinal distress, a cough, random headaches, a raging sore throat, and intermittent blasts of fever?) (No change of life jokes allowed!) In The Mind of a Chef a different dish or topic is covered by a chef and a scientist. I got mini lessons on making gnocchi out of ramen noodles and good bacteria in food. Short episodes might be dangerous, easy to justify just one more bite.  

On another note. Since I'm randomly nauseated I have not cooked a blasted thing all week. Seriously. I'm living on dry toast or cereal and tea with a random attempt at something else every once in awhile. And oddly, chocolate soy milk. Good times. At least I washed and folded laundry. Now to put it away.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Wonky Eye Argh!

 So. On Monday my eye started feeling irritated. On Tuesday it was raging, like I couldn't open it very far wonky, and I ended up losing two days of work. Thursday I went into my job and took advantage of one of my benefits, doctors and a PA who can listen, look and prescribe. One of the docs likes "toys" black lights and numbing and cutting and freezing. He was only too happy to numb my eyeball, drop in some dye and take a peek with his black light. I had been concerned a couple of sore spots on my forehead and cheek with a icky eye might mean shingles. 

Fortunately, not shingles. unfortunately a scratched cornea. He sent me to the eye doctor for treatment. In the meantime one of my coworkers really wanted me to patch my eye. So I found a black spoon and struck a pose. 

Then I went to the eye doctor. Fortunately, she found out how I irritated and scratched my eyeball. Unfortunately. it required her to numb my eye again and bring out some very horrifying tools which she used to slice a tiny growth off the inside of my eyelid. Tools? Super pointy tweezers and either a scalpel of some sore or a razor blade. I saw it coming at me and held my breath. UGH. Don't want to see that again anytime soon. (My doc employer will be bummed he doesn't have that set up.) Seriously, the growth was literally like a grain of sand, sharp, hard, tiny. Fortunately I only have to use lubricating eye drops til my eye feels better and it was the quickest trip I've ever had at any clinic. 

Unfortunately. No patch required. Argh!