All Rileyed Up

So a while back, I saw the Lego cake mentioned on Beck’s blog, and I knew that I had found the cake for The Boy’s birthday party because I was able to make a cake for everyone. The green one is my favorite as far as looks go. The big yellow cake is a traditional yellow cake. I was a bit disappointed in the icing, which came out more liquidy than it should have and I was kind of in a rush, but it tasted great nonetheless. The two smaller ones are one gluten free, vegan cake split in half. The green icing is made with soy milk and vegan butter and the blue icing is made with hemp milk and coconut butter. The icing was tasty (although the coconut butter makes for a bit gritty a texture) but the cake itself wasn’t so good. Do any of you GF cooks know why it tasted great and bread-like fresh out of the oven, but after a couple hours of sitting around kind of took on a solidification in the middle that made it hard and chewy in a bad way?

(I know this was supposed to be my Wordless Wednesday post, but, what can I say, I’m chatty today. More WW pics here and here.)

I bought a few yams at South Coast Farms and didn’t know what to do with them. We had a bit of a cold front sweep in last weekend, so I made some soup to warm everyone up. Both of the kids enjoyed it too (with some prodding for the initial tasting). Wish I’d thought to take a picture, but really, it’s liquid. How exciting a photo would that be?

You’ll Need This:

1 big yam or two small ones, diced
1 carrot, sliced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cups broth (veggie or chicken as you prefer)

You’ll Do This:

Heat oil and sauté onions and garlic until transparent.
Add carrot and potatoes, cook for another five minutes.
Add brother and bring to a boil.
Cover and set to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Blend contents of saucepan.

Optional steps:
Add to blender two tablespoons of honey or agave nectar.
Serve with dollop of sour cream/tofutti.
Garnish with parsley and toasted walnuts.

Enjoy.

I tried to recreate this recipe with pumpkin in place of yam, and it didn’t turn out quite so good. I guess pumpkins aren’t quite as va-va-va-voom on the taste front as a yam. I am going to try it again with two apples added to the mix. I think that’ll do the trick.

Made some animal friendly, allergen-free-approved sorbet for The Boy and Husband to enjoy.

You’ll Need This:

An ice cream maker.
1 cup fruit juice of your choice (I pureed watermelon, because we had a watermelon that needed to be eaten)
¾ cup sugar
2 lemons, freshly squeezed
2 cups milk substitute (I used hemp milk even though it does kind of make for an unattractive color), the colder the better
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

You’ll Do This:

Mix everything EXCEPT the milk in a blender or food processor.
Done?
NOW you can mix in the milk.
Pour into ice cream maker.
Churn.
Mmmmm…

Here’s an easy vegan, gluten-free, casein-free treat that the kids really enjoyed making.

Ingredients:
1 banana per two people
3 oz. vegan chocolate (not as hard to get as you might think)
Dessert topping of your choice, eg: cookie crumbs, chopped nuts, crushed cereal. As for amount, I just pour out enough to cover a plate:

Step One: Cut a banana in half, impale (stronger word than ’stick’, no?) on a popsicle stick, then freeze:

Step Two: Melt chocolate on the stove top (note my snazzy double boiler). I added a little bit of almond milk because I found the chocolate melted quicker and more smoothly than when I tried it with just chocolate alone. I might have been imagining such things, but that’s nothing new.

Step Three: Dip the bananas in the chocolate until coated on all sides

Step Four: Roll the bananas around in the topping of your choice. I attempted a batch of snowball cookies the other day with corn flour that came out too crumbly, so I crushed them up and used them as the topping (the way I see it, the cookies were telling me they wanted to be crumbs anyway).

(Just know: If you let the kids do it, the bananas come out unattractive, but they have more fun. )

Step Five: Freeze for at least five minutes so the chocolate can harden; ward the kids off from eating the leftover topping; you can continue to freeze the treat as long as you want. We stored ours for a couple days because the kids found they were so rich they only needed a few bites to get full.

Step Six: Enjoy.