Carrot Cake Part II

For Hannah and my fourth monthiversary, Valentine's Day and my birthday I made a recreation of my original carrot cake. I figured, what's a celebration when there is not cake, besides I had been craving cake for some time and really wanted to redeem myself at making carrot cake. I had also picked up some vegan cream cheese and really wanted to make the frosting that is so totally essential to a perfect carrot cake.

Because I didn't like my first carrot cake recipe, I again went to the internet to find a new recipe. This time I found a new recipie on what soon became one of my favorite vegan recipe websites. hellyeahitsvegan.com
In the morning before work I made my carrot cake. I was so impressed by my creation that I decided to share it with my coworkers. Unfortunately I placed the cake for my trip to the PATH station on the back of my bike and when I had gotten to the PATH station, my cake was no longer in the state it had started in. I was upset, but because it was so good I still offered it to them. But none of my coworkers wanted to try it, claiming that they ate with their eyes not with their mouths... I was sad that they would not try it because it was delicious! In the end it's their loss, it was soo good!

But enough from me and my woes of exploding cake. Here's the recipe from HellYeah ItsVegan:

Classic Vegan Carrot Cake

2 1/3 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp salt

6 tbsp flax seed meal
3/4 c warm water
1½ c sugar
1 c oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 c shredded carrots
1 c raisins

Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz vegan cream cheese
¼ c margarine, softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 c powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350º. Line two 8×8″ pans with parchment paper. In a small bowl, sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt). In a large bowl, whisk together flax seed meal and water. Beat in sugar and oil. Add vanilla and carrots and mix until combined. Add dry mix and stir until moistened. Fold in raisins. Pour equal parts into pans. Bake for 18-20 min, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pans 10 minutes.

For the frosting, beat together cream cheese and margarine. Add vanilla and powdered sugar; whip until smooth. (Don’t overbeat; in my experience, store-bought vegan cream cheese has a tendency to get runny.)
Use a knife to loosen edges of cake from pans. Using parchment paper, lift cakes out of pans. Carefully remove parchment paper from one cake. If you are making a layer cake and a large pan, cut the cake in calf, frost then stack and frost again.

Last Step, enjoy!

The cake was soo good. I gave it to Hannah and she nearly went crazy. You may remember a blog link I put up here a few posts ago, well it is exactly how Hannah acted after she tried the first tiny test bite. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-of-cake.html

Tofu Scramble and Sandwich

So I have been cooking for Hannah for about three months now, trying to make her introduce new foods, cooking so that she can always eat the food and so that she would only introduce at most one or two foods at one time. But cooing only for her just wasn’t cutting it any longer to satisfy my vegan adventures. I needed to branch out and start cooking for myself.

There is one thing that Hannah and I both share. We both cannot eat eggs. For Hannah if she eats an egg she could potentially end up in the hospital with a closed up throat. For me, when I eat an egg in an egg state (not in a baked stated) I get the worst stomach aches. Since I have not been able to eat eggs, eggs are the one thing that I have missed the most. Almost any breakfast food has eggs in them: omelets, French toast, scrambled eggs, fried eggs; I used to love them all. So not being able to eat them I started thinking about how I could substitute a morning egg dish.

While I was volunteering for a year I started experimenting with substitute egg dishes. The one recipe that I came across the most often in my searches was tofu scramble. My favorite so far is the one I found from Post Punk Kitchen   http://www.theppk.com/2008/10/scrambled-tofu/

And for convenience sake, I'll write down my own version of the recipe.

Tofu Scramble

1 lb extra firm tofu drained and pressed
1 tbs olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
1 1/2 c chopped artichoke hearts
2-3 cloves garlic
¼ nutrition yeast
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt

Place oil in skillet on the stovetop. Brown onions 5 minutes add garlic and sauté for 2 minutes add artichoke for another 2 minutes. Add spices. Add ¼ c water to deglaze the pan.
Crumble tofu and mix well. Do not break up tofu, lift and turn in pan. Cook for 15 min stirring occasionally and adding water if tofu sticks. Combine nutritional yeast cooking for another few minutes. Serve and enjoy with a piece of toast and Fake’in.

The next day I used the leftovers in a sandwich with fake’in and mustard. I’m sure it would also be good with tomatoes, although I’m not a fan.  

Split Pea Soup

For a while I’ve been thinking that I needed to feed Hannah some more dinner like foods. I’ve made a whole bunch of desserts which are delicious, but as Hannah said the other day; with all the sweet food I've been making her, I'm going to make her fat. Now I don't want that, besides I want to be able to feed Hannah at all times, providing her with a well-rounded diet.  I mean she eats great already, but I don’t want my contribution to her diet being only the sweet stuff. So I started wracking my head for new dinner ideas

From time to time I find myself craving some of my food growing up. One of which I particularly crave when it is especially cold and raw out, split pea soup. A few times now I have suggested to Hannah that we make split pea soup for dinner and every time I suggest it she was excited, although perhaps not as crazy about it as for French toast or cake. But I was never able to get around to making it, probably because we never had split peas on hand or we were just too lazy to go out and get some. Well one week into February I decided to make her a delicious dinner, complete with split peas soup, fake'in (fo bacon), and dinner rolls (not containing any corn). It was perfect and I was really excited to finally be able to share my love of split pea soup with Hannah. 

My love of split pea soup goes back to memories eating it at home when I was younger. When my mother used to make it, she would stew the peas in a crock pot with ham hocks and all the necessary herbs and spices, giving it the right amount of porky, smoky, delicious flavor. Add a fresh dinner roll and I was in heaven. So warm and tasty, a soup that could really fill you up.

Since I left my parent’s house I have not had split pea soup with ham hocks, but thanks to my ingenuity I have been able to make some pretty good split pea soups sans the ham flavor. Although not going to lie, split pea soup is always better with the ham… But since my girlfriend is vegetarian and will not eat anything that comes from an animal with four legs I had to forego it yet again. Luckily split pea soup is still delicious without the ham.

So as I have never written down any of my recipes except a few that my mother gave me when I left the house the first time, I had to go to my favorite recipe book, the internet. Luckily there are millions of vegan split pea soup recipes out there. This is the one I chose:

Vegan Split Pea Soup


2 c split peas
8-10 c water
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 medium potatoes
2 large carrots
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sage
Salt and pepper to taste
4 strips of Fake'in precooked and cut into bits (optional)


Rinse peas in order to remove any impurities or rocks
Place peas and water in a large pot on stovetop, bring to a boil. Once at a boil add remaining ingredients and let simmer for 1-2 hours.
Peas should be soft and easily dissolvable when done
Add salt or pepper for taste
Serve with a fresh roll or slice of bread


When I made this for Hannah I was also making it for guests and as this was the first time I had made it I was a little nervous. What if it didn’t taste that good and nobody liked it… It’s not that bad when I am just feeding Hannah, but when there are also other people on the line, it becomes a different story. In the end my first try at an all vegan split pea soup came out good. I almost completely forgot the salt and only remembered to put a bit in when I put the soup on the table. But surprisingly it wasn’t that bad. Needed some salt, but other than that everyone devoured it. At least next time I will remember to put the salt in ahead of time.  

Rice Pudding

Hannah's family has a tradition where at every family reunion the entire family makes all these different recipes of rice pudding. They are even so into rice pudding that they have a rice pudding song!Sounds like the most amazingly sweet family reunion ever. But unfortunately not for Hannah, as she can no longer partake in the festivities due to her whey allergy. Which is in all dairy products. NO Whey!!
Clearly this last bit of information must mean that after only 4 months of dating I was going to be taken to a family reunion. Nope, not going to her family reunion, I just needed inspiration for my next vegan food experiment. And so after hearing Hannah's poor story about never being able to have rice pudding again (I don't even remember why we were talking about rice pudding in the first place) my adventure to create vegan rice pudding began.
Not surprisingly enough, rice pudding is one of the easiest deserts one can make, not to mention the cheapest. For a normal rice pudding recipe all you needs is rice, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and not quite as necessary but definitely makes it delicious, raisins. And after not so much searching on the internet I found out that it is still not very hard to make vegan rice pudding. This is the recipe I found...

Rice Pudding


2 Cups of Water
1 Cup of Rice
1 1/4 cups of almond milk
1/3 cup of raisins
1/3 cup of brown sugar or maple sugar
1 t of vanilla
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t ginger
1/8 nutmeg

In a saucepan cook rice. While cooked rice is still in the pan, add the remaining ingredients. Stir to combine and continue to cook on medium low until all the liquid have been absorbed. Serve hot or place in refrigerator to serve cold.

Simple as that! Not to mention delicious, and one could even argue healthy!

Hannah and I shared this recipe with friends at dinner and and informed one of Hannah's rice pudding fiend friends about our creation, promising to bring him some. But the pudding was just too good and none was left at the end of the night. I believe that we still owe that poor man some rice pudding. Perhaps we will have to bring this recipe back sooner than later.

French Toast

While Hannah was away on her epic cross country train trip, I did some research into vegan cooking. I went to the library and got out the first vegan cook book that stood out to me. A Quick and Easy Guide to Vegan Comfort Food by Alicia Simpson. In the entire book there were two foods that stood out, French toast and Mac and cheese. But the first one to try had to be the French toast.

As a child my mother would always make French toast in the morning with cinnamon raisin bread. I have many fond memories of those mornings sharing French toast with my mother. Since my senior year in college I have developed an intolerance to eggs. Which is lucky for Hannah and me as she also is unable to have eggs. Finding a French toast recipe that would not use eggs was heaven for me.

I tried the recipe out first just for myself just to make sure it would come out right before I gave it to Hannah. It turned out delicious! It almost tasted like the real thing. The only thing that I had to figure out was how to work my stove top and how much heat to use. On my first try I made one that was light and warm, the next one I made was far too crispy. I have never owned a gas stove before, and this one in my apartment is iffy.

Vegan French toast

1c Almond Milk
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp Vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
Four slices of bread

Combine first five ingredients and whisk together until smooth, no lumps.
One at a time, place a slice of bread in mixture, flipping it to make sure mixture if soaked into bread
Spray pan with Pam or add oil
Place soaked bread on pan until golden brown or cooked to desired crispness.
Enjoy with apple sauce or pure maple syrup.

I served this recipe to Hannah for the first time the first morning we spent together after she got back from her trip. She loved them, saying that they tasted just like the real thing, just as she remembered them. Although she could not use the syrup I had at my apartment she had them with apple sauce. I made her French toast first and by the time I had finished mine she had already devoured hers. Her reactions to the option of eating French toast in the morning since I first fed them to her are very much akin to a blog both Hannah and I enjoy reading.   http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-of-cake.html