Stomping Grounds Cake and a Contest

First things first. The cake. I was asked to make the birthday cake for one very cool vegan kid celebrating his fifth birthday. The party was held at the "Stomping Grounds" playland, so to continue the "stomping" theme, a dinosaur cake was in order. I know my brontosaurus and his footprints aren't exactly anatomically correct, but at least they are cute. The volcano was apparently the hit of the party when the birthday boy was blowing out his candles.
Even though this was the largest cake I've ever made (11'x15'), I was nervous that it wouldn't be enough for a crowd of hungry toddlers (is 5 a toddler? I don't know these things) so I also whipped up a batch of carrot cake cupcakes. These were also stomped, I mean stamped, with a dinosaur footprint made of fondant.


And now, the contest and some stomping of your own (which has nothing to do with cake). Onlineshoes has asked me to host a giveaway for a $100 gift certificate to their store, which carries plenty of vegan friendly shoes including the super comfortable Earth brand shoes. The rules are simple. Just leave a comment describing your favorite pair of shoes that you have ever owned (mine are the shoes on my feet right now, forest green vegan flats). On February 16th at noon (CST) I will randomly select a winner, so be sure to check back and see if you've won! The contest is only open to those who currently reside in the US. Now stomp to it!

And you can triple your chances of winning if you head over to The Urban Housewife's blog and Awesome.Vegan.Rad , where they are both running the same giveaway!

Pushing 30

I am now officially in the last year of my 20's. Here I am blowing out the first of two sets of candles.

If you remember my birthday last year, John made me an ice cream cake. Well this year he outdid himself and made a mocha devastation cake (from My Sweet Vegan) and got fancy with a piping bag! It was a lesson in patience to stand by and watch someone else decorate a cake, but I tried my best to keep my mouth shut (except I had to say something when he accidentally wrote a "b" instead of a '"p" in "happy"). I can't wait to see how he tops this next year!!
Sunday was the Houston Vegan Knitters first meeting, the perfect occassion to make knit cupcakes (inspired of course by vegan yumyum's version)! Simple vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream right out of VCTOTW decorated with natural sprinkles and fondant "knitting". One was a mini-version of my very first knitting project, a pink and white dishcloth (which I'm still working on). I am so excited for more knitting projects, including making blankets to donate to pet shelters, a hobo bag, belt, fruit cozies, cupcakes, and maybe a scarf or two. Now I just need to learn how to purl....
I have been in the mood to make a fancy dinner ever since I saw the recipe for Emerald Rice Cakes in the June 2008 Vegetarian Times (originally from Millennium). There were four separate elements to this dish, including a butternut squash puree, habanero jerk sauce, homemade seitan and cauliflower stir fry, and jasmine rice cakes. It was certainly worth all of the work, and the puree and sauce could easily be made a few days ahead.

And on my actual birthday (the 8th), my mom made me a chocolate pecan pie (from La Dolce Vegan), since the weekend had been been filled with too much cake already. The two red candles apparently represented 10 candles each.... 29 candles on one cake is a bit too much.
Thanks so much to everyone for the birthday wishes!!! And a special thanks to my family and friends for making it such a special weekend.

Birthday Baking

Two very special people in my life celebrated birthdays during the month of May, my mom and my husband, John. And birthday celebrations call for baking!! For my mom, I was excited to try out my new Wilton giant cupcake pan. To decorate, I decided to do something of a tribute to all my mom's hardwork on our wilton character cakes when we were growing up (I recall strawberry shortcake, cookie monster, He-man for my brother, among others), using the star tip, #21. The cake was hazelnut and filled a hazelnut chocolate mousse, topped with buttercream. I think from this distance the cake looks all right...

But up close it was just a big old mess! (I am hearing Cher say this from Clueless) From the start, there were problems. The cupcake pan doesn't really bake evenly and I didn't have the patience to bake the two halves separately. And then there were multiple decorating disasters.... a basketweave that refused to adhere to the cake, a top border that had to be completely removed, and by that time, I was just too flustered to do my drop stars very neatly. I nicknamed this "a cake only my mom could love".
Taking a break from birthday cakes, for John's birthday I made a strawberry rhubarb galette from a Millenium recipe (the recipe is online), one of John's favorite fruit combinations. The walnut pastry crust turned out great, and it was a pretty fancy little dessert that required minimum effort, especially from a Millenium cookbook (this is the first time I have made anything from it!). Next time, I would add about half the fresh ginger the recipe called for in the fruit filling, it was a bit overpowering.
And finally, an actual meal (it seems like real food always ends up at the end of my posts lately?!), the orange chipotle glazed tofu from the June issue of Vegetarian Times. Very tasty and so simple! This was also a recipe that John and I could agree on since I like sweet sauces and he likes spicy ones, and this dish was a little of both.
I finally got my new blog banner up after about six months of procrastinating! I went for a Texas theme that I'm sure makes my mom proud.

Living Longer

While channel surfing, I caught a few minutes of the Friends episode where Rachel turns 30 and they flashback to everyone else's 30th birthday (i.e. Monica getting drunk before surprise party, Ross and his fancy car that is trapped via parallel parking). This felt a bit surreal knowing that I am fast approaching (a tad more than 16 months away) the age of the Friends characters that I watched a teen and in my early twenties. And it just so happened that this weekend we also helped a good friend celebrate her impending 30th birthday with a surprise party. I was in charge of the cake, chocolate with chocolate mousse filling and mint frosting. The candle set also came with a red "OH NO" which I chose to leave off. Like my top border? It's one I just learned in my second cake decorating class (which wraps up this weekend), so it still needs lots of work.

In addition to cake, I also brought a salad (my favorite roasted fennel with hazelnuts and creamy shallo dressing from V-con) and a vegan main dish. I tried to recreate the lasagna I had recently at the PPK Texas Gathering, since Crystal posted the recipe on her new blog, Vegan Explosion. I really wanted to leave the olives out, since I usually dislike them, but I stayed true to that part of the recipe and I think they really added a great flavor to the tofu ricotta. The only thing I did change was using fresh sauteed mushrooms instead of canned. If you notice my new twittering updates (sidebar), you'll see that I enjoyed leftovers of this for lunch today.
Now I know I've posted about Mighty O's several times before, but I just had to brag one more time. My mom brought these back for me after spending a week in Seattle helping my sister move to her very own condo. One of them was the special seasonal flavor; chocolate oreo. But I didn't hog them all to myself, I brought them along to an art car decorating party. I can't wait to show everyone the car (less than two weeks till the parade!), it is amazing, but here's a sneak peak at one unfinished part.
And finally, while we were driving to the birthday party, I saw this bumper sticker on a Texas-colored Ford truck "Live Longer, Eat Beef". I scrambled so fast to get a photo of this, I just couldn't believe it. I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. I ended up laughing with the birthday girl (a vegetarian) about it. Laughing and not eating animal products is what really helps you live longer.
Here's hoping that none of you are following this bumper sticker's advice....

Someone Else's Baking

I've been lucky enough the past few days to have someone else do my baking for me! It began with John baking his first cake ever, the Caramel Banana Pecan Ice Cream Cake from Vive Le Vegan. I have loved ice cream cakes since I was a kid, and thought this would be a fun thing to try! Here is John mixing the wet ingredients with the dry for the bottom cake layer...



We opted to use chocolate soy ice cream instead of vanilla, this was a good call I believe. It paired well with the vanilla cake, pecan, and caramel sauce. Here is John scooping the softening ice cream over the layer over bananas and pecans.... looks like the perfect finger licking opportunity.



And here is the finished ice cream cake! I don't think we let it sit quite long enough in the freezer, hence the fast melting ice cream, but we still both devoured our own pieces in record time. Not sure how long this will last in the freezer, but my guess is not long! (I'm sure you're wondering, what happened to cutting out sweets....)


Before enjoying half melted ice cream cake, we went to celebrate my 28th birthday at Ruggles, one of our favorite more upscale Houston restaurants (I even went dinner there before prom back in the day). To start off with I had my favorite green salad, which I have my own version that I love to make at home. ( yes, I know this isn't baked... but cmon, give me a break)


Follow that up with a vegan veggie pizza topped with plenty of basil, spinach, zucchini, artichoke hearts, mushroom, onion, and asparagus.... and you've got yourself a meal!!



And finally, the last baked good that I didn't have to make myself I ordered from Celine of Have Cake Will Travel on etsy (you must know by now that I'm addicted). The cookies arrived right on my birthday and even included a sweet birthday card to go along with the sweet cookies :-) I ordered a combination of coconut chocolate chip and chocolate peanut butter fudge. She even threw in a few chocolate chai snickerdoodles as a little extra! My fave had to be the choco pb cookies, they were HUGE and moist and absolutely chocolatey, peanut buttery good. If you get a chance, go order some yourself!!

Koala Cupcakes

Here is Barnaby, the koala birthday cupcake...



Last night I headed over to my parents place for an early birthday celebration, since they are headed to England for vacation and another wedding this week. My mom went all out, as she usually does for birthdays, and fixed an excellent meal including stuffed manicotti, green beans, her homemade bread (which I've love all my life), and a delicious fruit salad. The best part though had to be these adorable koala cupcakes (inspired by Bake&Destroy on flickr), which have been my favorite animal since I was a little girl (I even went through quite an obsessive period, when I planned to move to Brisbane, Australia and work for the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, but that's another story...). My mom used the chocolate cupcake recipe from VCTOTW and the fluffy buttercream frosting. The ears are walnuts (obviously), eyes are a sugar wafer with a dot of white frosting to hold on the chocolate chip pupil, and the nose is a dark chocolate covered almond. She served it with chocolate soy ice cream on the side. I thought I could have eaten ten of these, they were so good!! My family was quite impressed with the vegan cupcake. Here I am before blowing out the candle....



My family really spoils me, they are the best!! Not only did my mom make an all vegan birthday meal (she makes all vegan meals most every time I come over actually), but my parents, brother, and sister, all gave me awesome vegan gifts! I feel so very lucky.... thanks for an wonderful early birthday! Here are the roses my dad picked out for me....




Okay, gotta run now. Off to enjoy the evening with some friends and the end of this rainy holiday here in Houston.