Happy Halloween!! The vegan month of food has come to an end. What better way than to celebrate with Dia de los Muertos cupcakes?
Oh no! The holiday season is now upon us. Time to start making christmas presents (my goal this year is to make at least part of every present I give).
So this may be a lame way to finish mofo, but it's 3 minutes to midnight and I'm out of time!
Whenever I tell people that I'm from Texas, they are usually amazed because I don't have an accent. But I am always quick to point out that I do use the word "y'all"... a lot. I even use "all y'all" with an amazing frequency. So I couldn't resist these Halloween napkins.... the mummy cupcake is saying:
I also made some spiderweb cupcakes with chocolate ganache. Both were for a SOP vegan potluck picnic yesterday which, by the way, was a perfect Texas fall day. 
Is everyone ready for the final week of mofo?
Yes, something is wrong with my camera. Ever since the Halloween party, my pics have turned out very fuzzy. What's wrong? I don't think it's user error, since I took like 20 pictures of the same thing to test. It must be bewitched.....
But, regardless of my camera problems, I will go ahead and show you my Halloween meal, beginning with dessert! I made the gingerbread cookies from JOVB, plus this sounded like a good way to get rid of the rest of my cupcake frosting from the weekend. The process was a little finicky, the dough seemed really dry until I added some water. I am also not very skilled at rolling out dough evenly yet. But in the end, the cookies turned out well, crisp but not too crunchy, just the way I like my gingerbread (I cooked them on the short side of the suggested time). I even got to use my seasonal cookie cutters for the first time! First a happy pumpkin with my cute skulls mini-bag from here on etsy....
And a fall leaf...
For dinner, I was excited to try my first recipe from ED&BV! Yep, I got it (and Veganomicon, still trying to decide where to start with that one!) a few days ago and now I'm officially overwhelmed with recipes. So I started with something simple that Dreena had also blogged about, the Cashew-Ginger Tofu. Served over quinoa with roasted Halloween colored vegetables (butternut squash, carrot, parsnip). Ooops, forgot to turn the oven down when I put in the tofu, so the sauce got pretty thick and pasty. My bad. But I enjoyed the flavor nonetheless. Oh, except for the parsnips. This was my first time eating them, and something about the roasting really dried them out and I thought they were pretty nasty. John told me not to give up on them though.
Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!! Just curious, what did those of you who had trick-or-treaters hand out? We don't have any since we live in a gated townhome, but if we ever move, I need ideas for vegan candy!
Saturday night John and I went to a Halloween bash.... yes! An excuse to make cute Halloween cupcakes and other vegan munchies. And, since I have now become addicted to scrapbooking (working on one for my wedding and the other will be a few pages for every month of our first year of marriage....I know, dorky), I even made cute little Halloween-themed signs. I had been so excited about my idea to use those little spider rings you got as a kid for cupcake decorations. I call them my Creepy Crawler Cupcakes.
Recipe for the chocolate cupcake and vegan buttercream frosting (dyed orange) from VCTOTW. And, I discovered the secret for making cupcakes disappear at parties ... make them mini! I think full size cupcakes are too much of a commitment for parties, people want bite-sized items. So I just shortened the baking time to about 14 minutes. And what better way to display my mini-cupcakes than in my new mini-cupcake tower! These were gone before the end of the evening.
I was also in the mood for hummus, and lots of it, hence my Tricky Trio of Hummus. Clockwise from the bottom right: sesame peanut hummus (from Everyday Dish DVD), sun-dried tomato and caper hummus (modified from Everyday Dish DVD), and regular hummus (from Vive Le Vegan). I love Dreena's hummus recipes, and I love how quick and easy it is to make them! For dippers, we had pita chips, baby carrots, sugar snap peas, and rice crackers.
And finally I made another favorite appetizer of mine, Spooky Stuffed Shrooms from VWAV. I substituted panko for regular breadcrumbs, I just love the crunchiness. Party goers popped these like candy, I should have doubled the recipe! But I did save some of the stuffing for our dinner last night, just put it in portobellos instead. I think I even got a conditional invite to another party from someone I barely knew, as long as I brought some of these!
I love baking with a theme! I think I will need to do some more Halloween-themed baking before Wednesday. Of course, you are all probably wondering if we went in costume. Well, yes, sort of. Neither John nor I get very excited about dressing up, so we went for something that wouldn't involve any effort, and something we thought was appropriate for us. So we went as an office couple "caught in the act". You know.... my shirt on inside out, his tie loosened, our hair disheveled, lipstick smeared on both of our faces. It was subtle but cute, especially since we met in the office! It was the best costume scare we dared to bare.
