First, I’d like to mention that today in my analytics, one of the keywords that led someone to my blog was “Eggwhite Gasoline Pictures Napalm”. Man oh man, people sure are searching bizarro things on this intermaphone these days!

But anyway, on to the important things. Desserts.

What kind of birthday cake, dear readers, does one make for a wonderful yogi-to-be? This is exactly the question I asked myself last week. Luckily, said wonderful yogi-to-be (ahem…my lovely friend Jacque), had a birthday cake request. This is what i like to hear! It’s a lot easier than someone saying they don’t care what kind of cake you make them.

Here was her request: Lemon Poppyseed Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Perfect.

SO…what did i do? Went on a grand mission for the perfect recipe. When nothing seemed to scream at me, i decided to adapt something. . Isn’t that always more fun anyway?

Well, If you own “The Joy of Vegan Baking” (which you really should), you will find a recipe for a “Light Lemon Bundt Cake”. So…almost there. I tweeked the recipe in the tiniest way, and also added poppyseeds, of course. I also like the fact that the recipe uses maple syrup instead of sugar.

However, I used sugar in the frosting. Vegan Cream Cheese Frosting, which I free-styled. You know, normal frosting ingredients plus tofutti vegan cream cheese!

The Cake turned out amazingly. Seriously, i loved it, Jacque loved it. Definitely worth making again. If you use the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking, however, be sure to double the recipe…because it makes less than you would expect (if your bundt pan is on the large side, like mine is!). My cake turned out pretty small, so I made a second batch and turned it into cupcakes. yum!

here’s to lemons and gasoline! ha!

For some reason, this week I’ve really been craving peanut butter. This is pretty rare for me. It’s not that I don’t like the stuff…I do. I just rarely have a hankerin’ for peanut butter in particular.

SO…I whipped up a batch of cookies. For no real reason other than I felt the urge. They’re Chocolate Peanut Cookies, drizzled with peanut butter glaze.

Turned out pretty good for throwing a bunch of stuff into a bowl and baking it.

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine emailed me a link. He occasionally sends me links to crazy baking articles, and this was certainly no exception! He had found some pictures of these rad cupcakes with old school Mario Brothers characters donning the tops of them. The wheels started to turn, and he wrote to me, asking if I could make similar, but vegan cupcakes. WELL COULD I?

This is where the plan was hatched to create the original Nintendo characters (in 8 BIT!) to put on top of vegan cupcakes!
Who doesn’t love a good food challenge??

SO, I started thinking about the best way to put the plan into action. I decided that the move was to make tiny (and definitely EDIBLE) squares of colors (my “pixels”) and build the characters from those. This required piles upon piles of 1/8″ squares of various colors, to be meticulously placed in the same way the pixels are arranged in the video game. It also requires quite a bit of freestyling, since it’s really hard to get a good image of the original characters.

I’m kidding!
In all seriousness, however, it may not appear so…but making, coloring and cutting TINY squares of sticky sugar paste, and then placing them in patterns is harder than it sounds! It took quite a lot of time and even more focus. But in the end, they looked really good, I think, and I was happy I’d done it. I’m also a product of the 80’s…so what can I say?

The only thing I would have done differently is to wait a while to photograph them, so that the characters would moisten back up, and adhere to the cupcakes, instead of just laying on top.

Speaking of photographing things…these shots were taken by the amazing and talented Chris Hallman. Do yourself a favor and check his stuff out at Chris Hallman Photography & Design!

I’m pretty psyched on how they turned out.
AND, they taste good too…vegan red velvet cake topped with vanilla buttercream in electric blue.

What’s better than art that you can eat?
I think you’d be pretty hard pressed to find me an answer to that one!

Not sure if I’ve yet mentioned my amazing BFF, Britt.
WELL…if I haven’t, now is the time for you to get familiar with her.

Britt and her friend and biz parter, Haylie, have just started a new jewelry company!

It’s called bird&monster, and it’s definitely something you DON’T want to miss out on.

SO…here’s what you do…follow the link to the
birdandmonster. Etsy store and get involved with the fabulousness a.s.a.p!

who loves crafty ladies?
i do!

I love it when I find new products.
Today, on my way home from camping at Guadalupe River State Park, I stopped at a little bakery that was in Dripping Springs (or very close to there anyway). They were about to close, but they had the most amazing thing…

FLAVORED Agave Nectar. Of course, after reading the label, i realized that it is made just up the road from where i live in Austin. and with a little internet research, i found that you can get them at whole foods.

Either way…i now have both lavender AND tangerine ginger varieties. I can’t wait to use them for baking. I keep thinking about what nice tea cookies either would make.

I’ll keep you posted on how i end up using them!

In the mean time…check out the companies agave’s here:
Agasweet Flavored Agave Nectars.