Speaking of Martha Stewart - Vegan Coffee Cake Adaptation

I found a crumb cake recipe on Martha Steart's recipe and "veganized" it, as I like to say. The adaptation worked well on my first try! This is so tempting and deliscious. I almost ate all of it, I probably ate half of it and my husband ate the other half. For those of you on a diet, one bite is enough to satisfy your craving for sweet. Here is the recipe - I had issues uploading the picture:

Recipe - Vegan Coffee Cake (adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe)

Cake
2 Cups Unbleached White Flour
3/4 Cup Sugar plus 2 Tbsp Sugar
1 Tbsp Bakign Powder
1 Tsp Salt
1/2 Cup Vegan Margarine (sticks work best)
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1/4 Cup Vanilla Soy Yogurt
3/4 Cup Soy Milk
2 Tbsp Vegan Margarine, Melted

1. Preheat Oven to 350 Degrees and Grease an 8-Inch Square Pan.
2. In a medium bowl or mixer combine flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt.
3. Cut your vegan margarine in little pieces until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Put 1/2 cup of this mixture into a separate bowl. Stire in remaining 2 Tbsp of sugar and cinnamon and set aside.
4. Stir soy yogurt and soy milk into remaining flour mixture.
5. Spoon batter into pan and smooth. Pour melted butter over the top and sprinkle the 1/2 cup of reserved crumb mixture evenly over the top.
6. Bake cake until a toothpick entered into the center comes out clean, approximately 35 minutes. Enjoy warm or at room temperature.

Can be stored at room temperature for 3 days or frozen for three months.

Celebrate Cupcakes This Week...A Little History from Martha Stewart

This is from Martha Stewart's Martha Moments Blog This Week, I Love a History Lesson, Especially About Cupcakes!

Cupcakes originated in the United States in the late 1800s. They were so called because the ingredients for them were measured in cups instead of weighed, as had been the custom. They were first believed to have been called "number cakes" because of a numeric simplicity of the recipe: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour and four eggs plus one cup of milk and one spoonful of soda. According to "Baking in America" by Greg Patent, this was revolutionary because of the tremendous time it saved in the kitchen. Whether it was a "cup," "measure" or "number" cake, the shift to measuring from weighing was indeed a significant one, according to "The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America." But it goes on to explain that the cup name had a double meaning because of the practice of baking in small containers -- including tea cups. The cups were for convenience because hearth ovens took an extremely long time to bake a large cake -- and early cakes, by the way, were enormous -- and burning was common. Gem pans, early muffin tins, were common in households around the turn of the 20th Century and cupcakes were then baked in those.

http://marthamoments.blogspot.com/2008/03/this-week-is-cupcake-week-on-martha.html

Bake A Perfect (Vegan) Cookie Everytime!

I have spent many many hours working on vegan cookies and have come up with my list of tips and tricks to the perfect vegan cookie:

• I have had good luck using Ener-G Egg Replacer in my recipes in lieu of eggs. Sometimes, if I want an extra fluffy cookie, I add an extra "egg" equivalent.


• Get to know your oven! Some take more or less time than a recipe indicates so this is really important.


• To save energy (and the earth), don't preheat your oven until after your dough is ready (unless your oven takes awhile to preheat). Most ovens take very little time to heat up and this way if you have a complicated recipe you will save on energy and save yourself some money!


• Vegan cookie recipes can be dry. I add water to make it easier to work with. But, I only add One Tablespoon at a time, otherwise the cookies get too watery :).


• Use a cookie or ice cream scoop to place your cookies on the baking rack. It makes your cookies the same size and takes much less time than measuring out tablespoons, rolling the dough, and placing it on the sheet.


• For chewy cookies like snickerdoodles and peanut butter cookies, take the cookies out no later than the maximum time allotted. They might not look done but they will finish cooking on the baking sheet.


• Always cool your cookies on a cookie rack.

And always remember when you're done to put that spatula down, pour yourself a glass of (soy) milk, and enjoy at least one of your cookies :).