CambridgeVegan.com: Boston area vegan food, event and product news from a Cambridge-area vegan

Oatmeal Maple Cream Sandwich Cookies

miguel — Mon, 14 May 2007 10:59:37 +0000

One of my favorite culinary things to do is combine my favorite recipes to create interesting new creations. Many different types of desserts are possible if you simply combine various cookies, bars, frostings, cakes and then play around a bit.

Recently I combined a standard oatmeal cookie with a maple frosting recipe I had wanted to make for a while but had not gotten around to. The result was the pictured sandwich cookie. I have since become a big fan of the sandwich cookie and have made several others which you’ll find here soon.

Another good recipe for adding whatever comes mind is brownies. If you have a solid brownie recipe, you can add any number of toppings to create very different tastes. My peanut butter brownie recipe will be posted shortly, and that recipe is quite adaptable in this way.

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Vegan Raised Dougnuts

miguel — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:24:33 +0000

This past weekend I decided to deliver some sugary sustenance to the good folks of the Massachusetts Animal Rights Coalition during their protest of Harvard University’s animal experimentation practices. One of the things I made was a batch of cinnamon sugar raised doughnuts (I’ll post more recipes from this event soon). For many years, it has been very difficult to get a vegan doughnut of any kind. The west coast has a few options, but except for a very recent development rumored to be occurring in the NY/Philly area, nobody on the east coast has ever had a local vegan doughnut. Therefore, I decided it was time to conquer this gaping hole in the vegan Bostonian’s palate.

Vegan Raised Doughnuts
1 packet active dry yeast
1/2 cup plus 1/2 cup warm water
1/3 cup shortening (I use Earth Balance shortening sticks)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup soymilk
Egg replacer to replace two eggs
4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp mace or nutmeg (optional)

Canola oil for frying (you’ll need about half an inch in a large frying pan)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp cinnamon

Place 1/2 cup warm water in a small bowl. Pour yeast packet in and allow to sit for five minutes. Bring the other 1/2 cup water to boil in a sauce pan and dissolve the 1/2 cup sugar and shortening until melted; allow to cool. In a large bowl, mix the shortening/sugar mixture with the soy milk, egg replace, and last (when the mixture is warm, but not hot) the yeast mixture. Mix in two cups of the flour until incorporated. Then work in the remaining two cups and knead on a generously floured surface until smooth. Place dough into an oiled mixing bowl and allow to rise for one hour (cover with a damp cloth). Next, knead the dough slightly to remove air and roll out to 1/2 inch thick. Cut circles in the dough with a doughnut or biscuit cutter (or a small glass) and place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet to rise for one hour (again, cover with a damp cloth).

Mix the 1 cup sugar and cinnamon in a medium sized bowl. Heat oil to 350 degrees and fry doughnuts until light brown on the cooked side — then flip and repeat. Remove doughnuts from oil and place directly in cinnamon sugar mixture until coated. Place completed doughnuts on paper towel to cool. Serve immediately (doughnuts do not keep for longer than a day and should not be stored in an airtight container).

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Purely Decadent Flavors in Cambridge

miguel — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:11:54 +0000

The hard-to-find “old” flavors of Purely Decadent soy ice cream are now stocked at Harvest Co-op in Central Square, Cambridge. This includes Turtle Trails and Rocky Road, which I have never seen in any Cambridge store before this week. My friend, Paul, also informed me that two of the brand new flavors of Purely Decadent (namely, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Coconut Craze) are now available at the River Street Whole Foods in Cambridge. Upon checking, none of the other new flavors of Purely Decadent are in stock.

Blueberry Banana Muffins

miguel — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:14:06 +0000

I recently added blueberries to my favorite fat-free banana muffin recipe and liked what I got. My original recipe has no added fat, so they are quite healthy.

Blueberry Banana Muffins

1 3/4 C. White Whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 C. sugar
3 ripe bananas
1/2 C. soy or other non-dairy milk
1/3 C. natural apple sauce
4.4 oz. blueberries (small container)

Topping
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 Tbsp. granular sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and prepare muffin tin with light oiling or paper liners. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Blend bananas, soy milk, and apple sauce in blender. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just until integrated. Carefully fold in blueberries and pour batter into muffin tin. Sprinkle mixed topping even over twelve muffins. Bake for 18-24 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

New Purely Decadent Soy Cream Favors - Pictures!

miguel — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:21:46 +0000

Following up on my earlier post about new flavors of Purely Decadent soy ice cream coming out in March, I was pleased to see in the latest edition of VegNews that Turtle Mountain has begun their marketing efforts for the new flavors. I checked their website and they don’t yet have information on the new flavors, so I thought I’d post a picture of the ad from Vegnews. The new chocolate chip cookie dough flavor is featured, but all of the new flavors are shown. I have not yet seen the new flavors anywhere in Boston, but the product is not supposed to be launched until “sometime” in March, so I suspect it will be a little while longer before anyone gets them. If you patronize a particular grocer that carries Purely Decadent, you might inquire about the new flavors. (Click the image on the left to see a larger version of the ad).

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Tofurky Franks Arrive in Boston

miguel — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:08:10 +0000

Turtle Island Foods, makers of the famous Tofurky, have been selling various sausage-like products for a while now. Their first such products were a line of sausages that came out several years ago. More recently, Turtle Island has come out with a line of hot dog products that have slowly been making their way to natural food outlets across the country. As usual, Boston has apparently been one of the last areas to see these latest products, but I recently came across my first Tofurky Frank sighting at a local store. In particular, the Whole Foods at Alewife in Cambridge now stocks the regular and Chipotle flavor franks. I tried the regular flavor and found it to be pretty good, but probably not better than my favorite vegan hot dog, the Good Dog from Yves (which, interestingly, started out as not being vegan, and then changed with an updated recipe and now features vegan labeling).

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Vegan Chocolates from New Jersey

miguel — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:57:37 +0000

It took me a number of years before I finally discovered the world of quality vegan chocolates — the kind with gooey, creamy, rich centers and fillings of all kinds. Marzipan, vanilla cream, fruit creams, truffles, cordial cherries, coconut, and all the usual goodies you crave from a neatly packaged box of chocolates, are available in vegan form — if you know where to look.

For Bostonians on the hunt for such goodies, you will be pleased to know that the closest confections are merely a few states away at Rose City Chocalatier in Boonton, New Jersey. Rose City operates a wonderful mail order operation and all their chocolates come with free shipping. Since Massachusetts is so close to New Jersey, an order from Rose City usually arrives in two to three days vis USPS Priority Mail.

Right now, Rose City has some great specials going on. Be sure to check them out. As someone who has tasted hundreds of Rose City’s dandy confections over the years (and given away hundreds more), I can attest that they are second to none. You will be hard pressed to find a better vegan chocolate experience this side of, well, anywhere.

New Ice Cream Flavors in 2007

miguel — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:45:01 +0000

Soy Delicious soy ice cream is pretty ubiquitous throughout the country (including the Boston area) and if you’ve stepped into a Whole Foods recently, you probably have seen a multitude of flavors available under this brand. The makers of Soy Delicious (Turtle Mountain) are apparently hard at work on new flavors for their Purely Decadent line, which already boasts 15 great flavors, including Peanut Butter Zig Zag and Praline Pecan (my two favorites).

The new flavors, which are going to be available sometime in the first quarter of 2007, are:

So Very Strawberry: strawberry ice cream, ribbons of strawberry sauce, chunks of strawberries.
Coconut Craze: coconut ice cream with shredded coconut, roasted almonds, and dark chocolate flakes.
Pomegranate Chip: pomegranate ice cream with dark chocolate flakes.
Cookie Dough: vanilla ice cream with cookie dough and dark chocolate chips.

You heard it here first.

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Maple Farm Animal Sanctuary

miguel — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:13:24 +0000

Maple Farm Animal Sanctuary is a great new organization in Mendon, MA, that is just getting off the ground. Maple Farm is a former dairy farm that has been converted into a sanctuary for farm animals such as cows, horses, goats, sheep, llamas, chickens, ducks, pigs, in addition to some dogs and other animals. I have had the pleasure to visit the sanctuary on a few occasions, both as a volunteer, and as an attendee at one of their fundraisers. They are always eager to have a helping hand if you are interested in volunteering, and donations at this point are critical to getting everything running smoothly. I am hopeful that the Maple Farm sanctuary will be a large and wonderful resource for those of us in the Boston metro.

Check out their website for lots more information as well as a link to provide a donation. If you live in the area and would be interested in volunteering, feel free to contact Cheryl, through the site, or let me know if you’re in the Cambridge area and would like information on coordinated efforts to volunteer by those in this area.

Temptation Ice cream Comes to Boston

miguel — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:48:29 +0000

Many people have heard me complain that the Boston area tends to be last on the list to get interesting new vegan products on store shelves. It was probably two years or so after I heard about Follow Your Heart soy cheese that it actually appeared anywhere in Massachusetts. And so it was with another highly touted product that I had heard about well before I found it in the Commonwealth: Temptation soy ice cream from Chicago Soy Dairy.

I first heard about Temptation on the Internet, from some folks who were native to the city it is manufactured in, Chicago. All reports were that it was top of the line stuff, and that, even better, they used organic and fair trade ingredients and were a small, completely vegan owned and run company. However, for me, the real story was this: Temptation flavors included the never-before-vegan chocolate chip cookie dough. And here I had given up on reliving my college days when I used to get sick off of trying to eat a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream (I know, I’m an ice cream whimp). Also very interesting was the Peach Cobbler flavor, which had also had never been available from any of the existing soy cream manufacturers.

At any rate, the long story short is that thanks mostly to the excellent work of a Whole Foods employee connection (thanks, Dan!), Temptation soy ice finally made its Beantown debut a month or so ago. For those playing at home, as of this writing it is available at the Symphony Hall and Brookline/Brighton Whole Foods, but not at any others I’ve been to (including River Street in Cambridge, Cambridge Street in Boston, and Prospect Street in Cambridge). My guess is that if it sells well enough, it should matriculate to all of the area Whole Foods. So start buying!

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