Cheeses (plus pizza and chocolates).

I think the response I hear most when I tell people I'm vegan is "I could never give up cheese"! I get that, cheese is mighty tasty. I loved eating cheese too and found it hard to give up, and most vegans I speak to say that cheese was the last thing to give up. I have tried various (vegan) cheeses, mostly the Cheezly varieties, some are better than others. Recently I tried the Vegusto Melty, everybody says it's great, not me! I thought it was ok, again, better than some others, but not *that* good. And the other 2 that aren't *too* bad are the Tofutti American and Mozzarella, again, ok.

So I decided to bite the bullet and shell out a shitload of cash to try the 4 cheese varieties I have heard everybody rave about: Daiya, Notzarella, Bio Cheese and The Loving Hut Aussie Vegan Cheddar. 

I have tried all of them raw.

The Daiya was not great raw, and despite it being soy-free I felt it smelt quite soy-like.
The Notzarella didn't really taste like anything, which I thought was good as mozzarella doesn't really have much of a flavour.

The Bio Cheese was fairly good, still had a mild soy taste, but much better than most others. I can see why people have been going crazy over it. I really liked the way it cut, it is nice and firm and that was a nice change.

An finally the Loving Hut Aussie Vegan Cheddar. this one I was the most skeptical about, but I found it fairly decent actually. Not as firm to cut as the Bio, but not much softer.

All blocks grated fairly well, especially the Bio, the Notzarella was a bit soft and more difficult to grate, but that didn't really surprise me.

The Bio and Loving Hut cheeses will be pretty good in toasties and on crackers, so that is a win and the Daiya was much better cooked than raw, though I was disappointed that it didn't melt that well and did not go stringy as promised on the pack. The Bio seemed to melt the best.

So to test all of these guys I made pizzas, something I'm not normally that in to, but in the interest of testing new products I figured this would be a great way to do it. The Daiya was definitely my fave in this regard. Now I will have to find some other cheesy recipes to test and use all of them before they go off.

Now for the chocolate.
Go Max Go chocolates are some of the best I have ever tasted, vegan or not, I love them!! Cleo's are peanut butter cups, Jokerz are a Snickers style and the Thumbs Up are a Butterfingers style, my favourite! The others I like of theirs are the Twilight (Mars bar) and Buccaneers (kind of like Milky Way). At around $4 per bar they aren't cheap, but they are so incredibly worth it! The only problem is I just want to eat them al, NOW!!

I got this haul form Vegan Online, my favourite online vegan store. They do ship cold products over night express which costs around $27, again, not cheap, but worth it if you REALLY want stuff!

If you live in the Launceston area and shop at The Organic Grocery Store on Hobart Road at Kings Meadows they order vegan produce from Vegan Perfection and these guys have started stocking Go Max Go Bars (YAY!), the Organic Grocer will order in stuff from VP for you so you don't have to pay for shipping (DOUBLE YAY!!). VP were going to stock Daiya, but so far this hasn't happened, hopefully they will start stocking that and Bio Cheese, this is my hope :)

Cheese overload pizza.
Top left: Daiya
Top right: all 4
Bottom right: Notzarella
Bottom middle: Bio
Bottom left: Loving Hut

Notzarella and Daiya with mushrooms, capsicum, pineapple and onion.

"Bounty" Slice

Yesterday I made these gorgeous fingers/bars by Karly at Clean Eating Survival Guide. They taste so much like Bounties it is crazy!
It's not my recipe so I won't publish it, but here is where you can find it, on Karly's Vlog.

I will say that I used agave as my sweetener and I didn't have enough dark chocolate, only about 40g, so I topped up with Sweet Williams choc chips which was fantastic!! 

Another long time between posts!

OK so yet again I have been busy as all hell! I started 2 new jobs in as many days and LOVE them both! I am SOO much happier than I was when I was working at the shelter. I have now returned to veterinary nursing and also started teaching animal studies at TAFE. Both of these jobs keep me really, really busy and I have been putting in A LOT of long hours at nights and on my days off to keep up with my workloads. Seriously not at all complaining, I never thought you could really be truly happy at work, but now I know you can! (:
AND a week ago my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew moved down to Tassie as well, they join my folks in muscling in my mine and hubby's "territory", at least the live like 40 minutes away!!!

So with all of this wonderful craziness going on I have really not had time to cook, let alone blog! Thankfully though hubby has kept my belly full as until last week he has been unemployed since Christmas, just one of may casualties from the Tasmanian state government not being able to budget properly. Luckily he now has a part-time job at one of the local collages, which is awesome because it it super close to our house and he's only entering his 3rd teaching year and and we expected about another 7-17 years before he got such a position. So, yay for us, we both have income, something really handy when you have a mortgage! And him only being part-time (at this stage) means I still get a house-hubby for half the week, SCORE!! :-p

We were, however, able to take a mid-week weekend recently to Melbourne. It was awesome, I had never been before and really I had never before had any desire to go to Melbourne, why would I when I had previously lived 1-3 hours south of Sydney? Plus Canberra, believe it or not, had plenty of advantages, and after they got a DFO there was even less reason for me to care about Melbourne!
So what was the reason for this life-changing (stay tuned) trip?

SYSTEM OF A MOTHER EFFING DOWN!!!!!!
At Rod Laver Arena

Oh man I loved this gig, I was head banging like I was a good 10-12 years younger than I am, and even though I'm only 28, I found out the next day that I was WAY out of practice for such activities! I didn't care though, I also didn't care that I screamed and threw my right arm around so much that I was barely audible and my shoulder was competing with my neck for sympathy! 

Now it wasn't just  SOAD that had me all excited, since going vegan I have wanted to visit Melbourne, and in the end I was actually getting more excited about food than I was the band! This was actually the 2nd time I saw SOAD, but only the first time that I had gone to Melbourne, and as a vegan at that!
A couple of days before I left I asked "the Facebook vegans" where I should go for meals and to stock up on vegan junk food to bring back.

I was directed to some great places, THANK YOU to everyone who made suggestions for me, including one of my fave places in Melbs: 

The Radical Grocery Store

I spent $100 here on junk such as Dandies, various Bonbarr chocolate bars, jelly, toffee, coconut ice, tofutti cuties, AND:

Mister Nice Guy Cupcakes
This was a Peanut Butter Cup and it was SOOO moist and chocolatey
and peanut buttery!!

I also ate at Enlightened Cuisine where we had:

Crispy Duck with Plum Sauce.

And

Kung Po Lamb.

AND on my way back to my plane I made my way to Chan House where I had:

"Honey" "Chicken" with Steamed Rice and Veggies.

We also visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image which was really great AND FREE! Well worth a look if your hanging out around Federation Square.

But I think the place that got me more excited than ANYTHING else was visiting Lord of the Fries my new favourite place on earth, SERIOUSLY, I'm even spearheading a campaign to bring them down to Tasmania, not just for me, but we NEED more veggie choice down here!
LOTFs was my first stop on my whirlwind trip and then I had breakfast there the next day for breakfast as well. 

This was my breakfast meal, a big original burger and fries with vegan cheese and gravy
I have recreated these fries a few times over the past few weeks with
Redwood's cheezly and Redwood's vegetarian gravy, YUM!!!

Nuggets, onion rings and fries munch box with BBQ sauce .

Mini original burger

The best OJ I have ever had!

Now I can't wait until the next time I get to go to Melbourne, and I plan on spending more than 36 hours there!

Stay well,
Love SJ (:

My Favourite Dessert.

Recently I made a chocolate "cheese"cake which I originally got from a newspaper website, but I didn't copy down the link.The recipe comes from a young lass by the name of Kamina who lives in Brisbane, she has a website called Kamina the Vegan and can be found on Facebook also.
Anyway I love this recipe, and I haven't met anybody who doesn't like, but it comes with a VERY RICH warning attached!
I call it chocolate"cheese"cake, but technically it's called Kamina's Chocolate Mousse Tart. This can easily be made gluten-free, I do this by using Orgran's amaretti biscotti.
Oh, and it is totally packed full of goodness as one of the main ingredients is tofu. Yep that's right TOFU! And trust me, you would never know!
So the original recipe follows with my changes in this colour :)

Chocolate "Cheese"cake :)

Fills 1 x 24cm fluted flan tin with delicious goodness.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 300g sweet biscuits - these can be vegan or gluten free or a simple plain sweet biscuit like I said I use Orgran's amaretti biscotti
• 125g vegetable margarine or substitute I prefer Nutelex olive lite

For the filling:

• 1/3 cup corn flour
• 1 cups soy milk ( rice milk or almond milk) can also be used
• 300g 50-60% dark chocolate - organic or vegan I generally use a mix of chocolate, usually 1 block of Sweet William's dairy free "milk" chocolate, sometimes a block of 80% cocoa dark (dairy-free) chocolate and 1-2 blocks of 50-70% cocoa chocolate, depending of course whether or not I use an 80% block or not. Each block is 100g
• 300g drained silken tofu - Kamina recommends the Japanese firm tofu, Morinaga Brand available at Asian or Japanese grocers on the shelf, I don't know the name of brand that I have used, but since moving to Tasmania I have only seen one type/brand of silken tofu, it has a black label and I have found it at Coles and Eumarrah.
• 225g soy cream cheese - Tofutti brand or king land soy available from health shops or supermarkets in the dairy cabinet, I WAS using the Tofutti brand, which I really liked and could buy at Coles, but now they have decided to stop stocking it (GRRRR!!), thankfully they have started stocking the King Land brand. 
• 2/3 cup raw organic or rapadura raw sugar I use organic raw caster sugar.

Method:

• To make the crust, place the biscuits into a food processor or crush them in a blender until rough crumbs, transfer into a bowl and using your hands mix the crumbs with the melted margarine until the crumbs are moist and keep their shape when squeezed. Wipe out the processor or blender to use for the filling.
• Press the mixture into the tin until the bottom and sides are well covered and extremely compact. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• For the filling, in a small saucepan whisk some of the soy milk with the corn flour until smooth and then add in the rest of the soy milk. Simmer over a moderate heat bringing the milk to a boil and stirring until it makes a thick smooth custard. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave at 30 second intervals mixing in between until smooth.
• Strain the custard through a fine sieve (this NEVER works for me properly so I don't waist my time with this step anymore!) into your blender or food processor and add in the tofu, melted chocolate, raw sugar and cream "cheese" and blend until smooth and runny. The mix will have the texture of melted chocolate.
• Pour the filling into the prepared base and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until firm to touch. Serve chilled with fresh berries. The first time I made this I served it with a raspberry coulis.

Making it is a lot of fun!

Mmmmm melted chocolate *drools*

Yum, chocolate!

A while ago somebody put a post on either (I think) Animals Australia or Brightside Farm Sanctuary's Facebook page. The post was for the Cruelty-Free Chocolate Mud Cake. 

Unfortunately I don't remember who posted it or which wall it was posted on, but I did scribble down the recipe. I did, however, manage to record a quote from the original post "Genuine, rich, totally delicious mud cake".

Two nights ago I made said recipe and found a new favourite, I also found out that the quote is very true!

It may seem like a slow process , but I found it great to have this cooking whilst making dinner and cleaning up the kitchen and whatever else I had to do that night, so I was actually pleased to have a 1 1/2 hour baking time.
NOTE: This is a VERY wet mixture, do not try to thicken it up.

Cruelty-Free Chocolate Mud Cake

 

Ingredients:

• 2 blocks (200 grams) dark chocolate e.g. Lindt 70% (this is what the original recipe calls for, but I prefer 100g Sweet William and 100g dark Lindt).
• 250g margarine
• 1 ½ cups fresh coffee, probably as strong as you can handle
• 2 cups caster sugar, I use raw caster sugar
• 2 tsp egg replacer mixed with 4 Tbs water, whisked well
• 1 tsp of vanilla paste or 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 ½ cups self-raising flour
• ¼ cup cocoa powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160^oC.
2. Roughly chop or break up the blocks of chocolate and place into a microwave-safe bowl.
3. Add the margarine to the bowl and melt them together in the microwave, on high at
   30-45 second bursts, mixing at the end of each burst, until fully melted.
4. Whilst the chocolate is melting boil 1 ½ cups of water to make your coffee, I used instant, but if you have an espresso machine or even just a plunger that would be much better!
5. Don’t forget to keep checking on the chocolate!
6. Once coffee is made add the sugar and stir to dissolve.
7. Whisk together the egg replacer and water and add it and the vanilla to the coffee mix. Mix together well.
8. In a large mixing bowl sift the flour and cocoa together.
9. Add the coffee and chocolate mixtures, combine thoroughly.
10. Grease/line a 20 cm round cake tin, pour in the mixture and bake for 1 ½ hours.
11. Allow to cool as well as you can be patient for! Cooling completely would be best though, then you can decorate. I only dusted mine with pure icing sugar, but you could make a chocolate glaze, if you feel you can handle more chocolate that is!

Enjoy!