Xmas is all about baking food for and with family and friends to me. I used to have gingerbread house making parties near Xmas, and my sister threw a tea just before New Year’s. Getting friends together to decorate cookies or just eat them and socialize is pretty much my favorite part of the entire year, not just because I love cookies but because it always feels so warm and comfortable to me. How often do we actually eat homemade baked goods? I haven’t had time or energy to bake lately and I miss it.
This year, I won’t have my mom’s kitchen to mess up, so I’m dreaming big. I’m full of ideas, and most of them probably won’t come to fruition, but we’ll see.
- Petit Fours. I’ve always wanted to make petit fours. The last time I celebrated Rosh Hashanah (sp?) I tore through a box of pre-made petit fours. They were tasty and pretty, but I’d like to try my hand at making my own. The current plan is to make castella – a sponge cake (imported from Spain to Japan) of eggs, flour, sugar and milk. Square the castella, use preserves (apricot or raspberry or both) as filling and then get pourable fondant, and a tiny sugar flower to top things off. Not sure how well these will turn out, but if they don’t turn out well, at least the castella will be tasty.
- I told Michael I wanted to make vegan marshmallows. He told me this is impossible with agar unless we have all sorts of big industrial equipment. It made me sad, but I’m still brainstorming.
- Maple cream candy. This is a recipe I remember fondly at Xmas throughout my childhood, but my mom hasn’t made it in years. It’s a ball of creamy mapley goodness full of walnuts and then coated in chocolate and wax. I’ll probably adjust the recipe a bit, but we’ll see. If I don’t find time to do this, I’m just buying me some nut goodies – although I prefer walnuts to peanuts.
- Caramel popcorn. Mayhaps I’ll drizzle it with some good, dark chocolate.
- Chocolate covered pretzels. Very simple, very quick, very cute, very tasty. Dark chocolate, of course, and maybe some soft sprinkles (Michael broke his tooth on a non-pareil last Xmas).
- Gingerbread cookies. (a must). My mother makes them with a slightly lemon-flavored royal icing for decorating. I had the most fun decorating them in strange ways (gingerbread hockey players, gingerbread girls in underwear, etc).
- Vegan lemon cut-out cookies – I think these are tasty and cute. They’re also super simple to make. The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance, but I fashion my own icing using a little bit of cherry juice, so I get a pink tinge. Very pretty.
- Chocolate chip shortbread cookies. My mom has this recipe, I make them every year. They’re super rich, and I like to use my fancy cookie cutters and wrap them up to give to friends.
- Biscotti. I’ve never made biscotti, but it’d be a good counterpart to all the black coffee I intend to be drinking.
- Cordial cherries. Simple recipe, using maraschino cherries with stems. Drain the jar of cherries, fill it back up with brandy. Let them babies soak and then dip them in some good chocolate and set them on wax paper. Sounds so tasty.
Chances are, I will do two or three things off this list, and then get drunk. That’s how we roll in the apartment. We’ll bring out the gin, or the wine, and we’ll get plastered and play the wii. That, my friends, is the holiday spirit.
K.
Ed. Note: When I type “good, dark chocolate” I mean dark chocolate that contains NO dairy whatsoever. Usually the ingredient list goes something like: cocoa liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, vanillin, soy lecithin. This chocolate is relatively difficult to find, for no very good reason except that the chocolate companies are trying to rip you off, while simultaneously trying to make you believe dark chocolate is good for you. It’s not really dark chocolate they’re selling, and it’s not good for you it’s still CHOCOLATE.
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i dunno, I don’t have trouble finding “good dark chocolate!” scharffen berger for one (CACAO BEANS; SUGAR; COCOA BUTTER; NON-GMO SOY LECITHIN; AND WHOLE VANILLA BEANS). Cocoa butter is non-dairy. So is soy lecithin. (their milk chocolate does have… milk in it though). However, cocoa liquor in chocolate is an obvious note that this ain’t real chocolate!
Do you remember when mom made petit fours?
I know a little something about vegan marshmallows…
A lot of the closer grocery stores don’t have anything like that. The closest I can get to a dark chocolate is to buy a lindt chocolate bar, which is ridiculous (and expensive). I usually go to Trader Joe’s and get some dark chocolate for cooking there.
Cocoa liquor (Chocolate Liquor) is the ground up bits of the cacao beans. Wikipedia says when it’s solid it forms baking chocolate, when the cocoa butter is taken out, it makes cocoa powder. How is that different from cacao beans?
mom made petit fours? and what is this about vegan marshmallows?
At this point, I’m relatively convinced that vegan/vegetarian marshmallows are something of a mythical entity.
A Google search for vegan marshmallow recipes basically turns up a bunch of copies of this recipe, which relies on a product that was later found to contain over 50% animal gelatin, despite its labeling, as described in this article. The company subsequently went out of business in somewhat scandalous circumstances.
I can’t find any reports of anyone making marshmallows with agar or carrageenan with any success. People who have tried the recipe I linked to with other brands of “vegetarian gelatin” have failed. So my guess is that the recipe only worked in the first place because those following it were unwittingly using animal gelatin.
The most popular brand of commercial vegan marshmallows used to be the one produced by the manufacturer of the fraudulent gelatin. Since then, a different product (VeganSweets brand) has risen to popularity, which appears to contain agar, carrageenan, and soy protein. If I had to guess, I would say that this product is vacuum extruded in a process similar to puffed cereal, given the widespread failure of people online to produce anything close to a real marshmallow following a similar recipe. The texture of that product isn’t said to be that similar to a real marshmallow either. Incidentally, they appear to currently be out of stock nearly everywhere due to “reformulation by the manufacturer.”
I don’t see how you could make anything acceptably close to a marshmallow with a thickener as opposed to a true gelling agent. Why do vegans insist on trying to veganize stuff that makes no sense to veganize?
EDIT: It looks like there is one other brand of vegan marshmallow available (Sweet & Sara marshmallows) but they’re extremely expensive ($6 for 12 large marshmallows) and seem–from the reviews at least–to have some pretty serious flaws.
This stuff is supposed to work:
http://www.pangeaveg.com/index.html?stocknumber=246
I was thinking — I bet tapioca will work and hey, lookie there!
a friend of mine has unsuccessfully made marshmallows with agar agar. He also used to make them with the old ‘vegan gelatin!’ that was supposed to be vegan AND kosher… but it ended up being, uh, almost 100% pork.
Not vegan but would work: fish gelatin. Problem is that unless you want to make it yourself, it’s nigh impossible to find food-grade fish gelatin (they use it in book restoration).
oh, and then there’s the ‘ancient’ way of making marshmallows with marshmallow root powder:
the recipe:
http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m010702.htm#2
marshmallow root powder:
http://www.starwest-botanicals.com/category/marshmallow-root/?gclid=COuumsetgJACFSosagoden6Ctw
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