I asked Billie what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday this year. She said she wanted something plain…
Yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
And that is what she got.
I did, however, make the frosting chocolate MOCHA.
You know, just for a teeny bit of variation.
Anyway, I didn’t have all that much time for the decorating, so i kept it pretty simple.
A little fondant embellishment to add some color. Turned out alright in both looks and taste.

and of COURSE i was psyched to get to use my tiny cake pan for the little one on top!

OH…and of course I had to top it with the knife (a not-so-great replica of her favorite one, in fact) and a fork, since ALL she does is cook, eat, and (luckily for us) feed her friends!

As per tradition, my friend Billie always has people (ahem…all of us “orphans”) over for vegan thanksgiving. This year, however, was the biggest one yet! I think there were 30 people there throughout the course of the evening.

After having baked some mini banana-pecan bread muffins, I took 2 more bags of groceries and a giant pot for mashed potatoes over to Billie’s house to help with the cooking process. She and her house-guests had already been cooking the day before as well. SO…by the time i got there, we only had 4 more hours of preparation to go! The mini-muffins were by far the best ones i’ve made. I have SO many banana bread recipes, and for the last 6 months, I had lost the one that was my favorite. LUCKILY, i found it again, and the banana bread got back on track! PHEW!

Anyway, i was already stressing when i got there, so i went straight for one of the many bottles of wine we consumed throughout the evening. by the time people showed up at 7-8 i was nicely NOT stressed out anymore.

This was the most amazing feast ever, potluck style! We filled up an entire folding table (and counters) with food, as well as another table just for desserts! and although i know i don’t usually blog about food (ahem…desserts only), i feel as though the event needs a more holistic food coverage than that! SO…let me list just SOME of the delicious things we had even BEFORE dessert crossed our minds:

2 tofurkeys
10 lbs of mashed potatoes
chipotle mashed sweet potatoes
2 large pot pies
green bean casserole
green beans with almond slivers
mac and cheeze casserole
brussel sprouts with a delicious tamari-ish sauce
broccoli with peanut sauce
the biggest cast iron skillet of DELICIOUS stuffing you’ve ever seen
stuffed acorn squash with wild rice, dried fruits, nuts & seeds
hummus, mushroom pate & spinach dip

and get this…A BUCKET of soup! deliciously brothy, perfect minestrone to be exact. people who know me know that i’m completely obsessed with the stuff. SO, it was beyond exciting for me. For more info on THAT…check the
Soup Gang blog for details! seriously.

and the list goes on!

NOW…dessert was ridiculous! Here is a picture of the dessert table at the end of the night. Clearly, there is still a bunch of leftovers…even with that many people.
Some delicious things include:

Banana cream pie (we never knew stew could cook! but between the mac & cheeze and this, he’s now given himself up!)
at least 2 types of cookies
chocolate pecan torte
apple upside down cake
pecan pie
pumpkin pie
pumpkin chocolate chip bread
(my banana breads)
soyatoo soy whipping cream to top it all off!!!!

and if i missed anything, i apologize!!

SO…thanks to Billie for letting have this awesome event at her house; so that we whose biological families are far away, who don’t cook at all, or who are just passing through town, got to spend the holiday in the most amazing way possible! Best thanksgiving yet.

here’s to hoping next year’s soup requires an upgrade from bucket to garbage can! (and that stew makes a VAT of the banana cream pie!)

me & the gracious hostess:

well…i haven’t posted anything i’ve made this week. BUT…i have been making things, what with thanksgiving and all.

first though, the weather in austin is getting chilly. right now it is actually BELOW 50 degrees, which is insane. you know, when you live in texas, you really buckle down for the two weeks of cold weather! ha! and with the buckling down, you do things like make oatmeal with delicious aromatic spices and fruits. mostly, i was inspired by all the people blogging about steel-cut oats. but i didn’t have that on hand, so i went the boring route. this is oatmeal with sauteed apples, raisins and pecans with cinnamon, maple syrup, nutmeg & cloves. mmmmm….

the first thanksgiving feast i went to was held at the house of my bosses. for this, i tried my hand at making a traditional (and not vegan)pecan pie with all the pecans i had gathered and cracked from my back yard. i have to say…any time i bake something that isn’t vegan…i can never get it just right. i guess you have to stick with what you know, for the most part. ANYWAY, this pie tasted delicious, but didn’t set in quite the way that a pecan pie should. i also used *gasp* corn syrup (an abomination, i know), because i could NOT find a traditional recipe lacking it.
ah well…C’est la vie. looks good though, right?

and now…an entire post devoted to the Vegan Thanksgiving Extravaganza that my friend Billie had.

As much as I miss the NY autumn, the one thing that is amazing about fall in Texas is the abundance of pecans everywhere!

I rent a house that has a GINORMOUS backyard, and along with it, two towering pecan trees. Thanks to a very rainy year, there are TONS of pecans that have fallen. I now refer to the area behind my house as my SNACKYARD since you could literally sit out there and snack on delicious nuts all day if you wanted to.

ANYWAY…We’ve been collecting them into a wholefoods bag, and cracking them whenever there’s time. Today, Billie came over and had heard about a cheap gadget that cracks them for you. SO, with a little internet research and a trip to
Callahan’s General Store (which is amazing, and very Texan, by the way!)we were totally in business!

We sat around and cracked for maybe an hour. And as you can see, I now have an entire giant freezer bag of pecans just screaming to be made into pies, cookies and other deliciousness.

The leaves in the picture are some that my amazingly thoughtful and wonderful friend Britt brought me back from her trip to Ohio. They even smell just right, if you put your nose into the pile of them! Sigh…i love fall.

life is alright.

Stay tuned for an update with pecan-filled goodness!

As I mentioned before, Billie and I were a bit ambitious with our Halloween treat preparation. This means I had a ball of sugar cookie dough left in my refrigerator for a week.

Luckily, yesterday I was inspired to cook AND bake, thanks to a little drop in temperature down here in the Texas atmosphere. I had a bizarre craving for thumbprint cookies, and thought i’d experiment by seeing how well sugar cookie dough translated. I am still relatively unsure of how i felt about them.

Whereas a thumbprint dough is usually pretty soft, these were crispy like sugar cookies. The texture definitely took a minute to adjust to, but then after i did…i wanted to keep eating them. The flavor of the dough and the blueberry preserves were definitely a match.

Now i’m just hoping it stays chilly in Austin for a little while.
i’m really enjoying the bundling up.