Pasta salad is a staple food in the summer. This type of dish is easy to make, can always be made ahead and there are an almost infinite number of variations out there for it. It’s great to take to a barbecue or picnic, but because they keep for a couple of days are served cold, they’re also something that you can keep in the fridge at home and have for lunch without much additional fuss.

The salads always start with cooked pasta, to which a variety of veggies and sometimes meats are added. The whole mixture is tossed in a usually mayonnaise-based sauce and chilled before serving. I didn’t want to go with this traditional route for a pasta salad this summer and took inspiration from a pack of Thai rice stick noodles - the same type of noodles used in dishes like pad thai - and made a lovely dressing using some of my favorite asian/Thai flavors.

The dressing for this salad is mostly made with soy sauce and peanut butter, with some honey thrown in to sweeten things up and take a bit of the edge off of all that salt. Creamy and chunky peanut butter both work really well here, although using crunchy will guarantee you a bit of extra texture from chopped peanuts. Supporting flavors are sesame oil, ginger and garlic. I used all kinds of vegetables in here and have also made the salad non-vegetarian by including thin slices of cooked tri-tip steal; the base recipe is vegan. From start to finish, it only took me the time that I needed to boil water and cook the noodles!
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It’s been a while since I baked a batch of cupcakes, but I started to get the itch for some of the miniature cakes this weekend and pulled out my trusty cupcake pan. Some freshly picked oranges - plucked from the tree before the orange-loving squirrels could get to them - were my inspiration to make some orange and chocolate cupcakes.

I used a simple cake recipe that I come back to time and again. I’ve heard it called wacky cake and eggless cake before, but it’s just a good one in my book no matter what name it goes by. The cake uses no eggs and no butter (it’s vegan, actually), and it can be mixed up in just one bowl. Typically, it gets its leavening from a combination of baking soda and vinegar added to the batter and is moistened with vegetable oil. Since orange juice is acidic, I left out the vinegar and introduced a good amount of orange juice to the cake. The resulting cupcakes rose beautifully and had a great texture: soft, but not crumbly, and moist.

Using cocoa powder in the cupcakes gives them a really good, strong chocolate flavor. The orange juice, if used alone, contributes a surprisingly mild flavor that doesn’t stand up to the chocolate that well. I remedied this by adding in the zest of one orange to the cake batter to boost the citrus flavor of the cake and by topping the cupcakes with a zesty orange frosting. The frosting was quite bold and, in the end, everything came together perfectly.

These are tasty and easy to make - especially since you don’t have to wait for butter to soften before you can start mixing. Try to use freshly squeezed orange juice for the best flavor. You’ll need to have fresh oranges on hand for their zest, so you might as well make the most of the fruit in this recipe.
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Granola bars tend fall into two major categories. One type is mostly nuts - chunky and barely held together. The other type is more like a candy bar - sweet and sometimes full of chocolate. Neither is my favorite because I really want a granola bar that is lighter than the nut bar and healthier than the candy bar, so I definitely prefer to make my own granola bars at home. It gives me complete freedom to customize the bar to suit my tastes. Plus, it’s very easy to do and the bars always taste much fresher than the prepackaged kind.

This granola bar recipe starts with a combination of rolled oats and puffed rice cereal. I love the flavor of the oats, but I really enjoy the way that the rice keeps the bar from feeling too heavy or dense. Oats can be filling, but these two components alone are not nearly enough to make a snack that will sustain an appetite for long. I boosted the protein in the bars with ground flaxseed and almond meal. The former is easiest to digest in a ground form and, as for the latter, I just don’t care to have large chunks of nuts in my granola bars (especially because big nuts make the bars harder to cut neatly).

For sweetness, I added in some brown sugar, and got a big boost of flavor from vanilla, shredded coconut and dried cranberries. I think that some sugar is necessary, as I do enjoy some sweetness in granola bars (these certainly aren’t too sweet), but feel free to play around with the amount to target your tastes. Likewise, the cranberries and coconut can be subsituted for similar ingerdients, and you can mix in some spices to give the bars more variety.

The result? A very tasty granola bar that is high enough in protein to keep you feeling satisfied for far longer than something candy-ish. That said, you might still have to exercise some self control when eating these. Filling or not, they do taste good and it’s hard to eat just one. Wrap them individually and pack them in lunches, or stick them in the glove compartment of your car for long commutes.
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“Vegan baking” is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of quite a few bakers. Not my heart, of course, but some hearts. This is because successful baking often relies on the properties of butter, milk and eggs to produce a good result - and you can’t use any of these when baking vegan. This doesn’t mean that you can’t make wonderful baked goods without the use of dairy and other animal products, just that you have to think outside the box a bit. The Joy of Vegan Bakingis a cookbook that should demystify vegan baking and practically guarantee mastery of the subject.

The book is almost 300 pages long, with recipes from everything from crepes and cakes to mousses - many of which use eggs as a crucial component in their non-vegan versions. A lot of time is taken to explain the functions of the standard non-vegan ingredients and even more is spent on the how and why certain vegan items are used as substitutions, or how ingredients can be omitted entirely. Following along with the recipes will turn out great results, but reading through the book should give you a good enough idea of how vegan baking works in general to apply the principles on your own, if you want to.

The recipes themselves are straightforward and don’t call for too many specialty or hard-to-find ingredients. In fact, your regular grocery store should have almost everything you need. Serving suggestions and baking tips accompany most of the recipes. You can take a look at some samples from the book here for a bit of a preview.

‘Tis the season for eggnog, that nutmeg-spiced, custardy, boozy beverage that is so popular around the holidays. It tastes delicious and is oh-so-rich. The richness, unfortunately, keeps me and most of my friends from drinking more than a very small serving at a time. To further enjoy that eggnog flavor, I decided to turn the drink into a batch of holiday cupcakes.

My first impulse was to do a regular cupcake recipe, substituting eggnog for milk and adding in nutmeg to punch up the flavor, but in the nick of time, I remembered the great success I had with the Margarita Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the Worldearlier this year and decided to adapt it into eggnog cupcakes. The thing that further influenced my decison was that last year I did a taste testof soy eggnog (a.k.a. “snog”) vs regular eggnog and found that I quite liked the soy versions. The eggnog flavor covers up some the mild flavor commonly associated with soymilk and the drink still has a nice, creamy consistency. My two recommended brands would be Vitasoy Holly Nog and Silk Soy Nog.

The cupcakes turned out beautifully. They were incredbly moist and tender - and because of it, they did the drink justice very nicely. My preference is for rum in eggnog instead of bourbon, so I used quite a bit of rum in both the cakes and the frosting. The rum paired nicely with the nutmeg and the combination of cake, frosting, rum and eggnog was incredibly flavorful.

I want to note that I served these at a party and no one suspected that they might be vegan cupcakes; everyone simply raved about how tasty and eggnoggy they were. I used butter in my frosting (not vegan, obviously), but if you want a vegan version, use a vegan shortening or similar product in its place. If you don’t want to buy the soy nog, or can’t find it in a store near you, this recipe will work with “real” eggnog as well. I recommend opting for a low fat version because it will have a similar consistency to the soy nogs, and while the flavor of the finished cupcake might be slightly different (and not vegan, of course), it will still be delicious.

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 Most of the foods we buy at the grocery store can be made at home, some easily and some with a fair amount of difficulty, but just about everything will transfer over. Foods like bread and cookies are easy targets for home bakers, candies and foods that seem like “specialty” items tend to be labeled as items we’re better off just buying. Candy corn - a fall/Halloween favorite of mine - is one of the items in the latter category. I should have suspected that it can be made at home, since marshmallows can be. Nosh with Me decided to include homemade candy corn in her Halloween celebrations this year. The recipe, which happens to be vegan, was first made by The Urban Housewife and picked up in popularity from there. You’ll need a candy thermometer, but the recipe is actually quite easy. Whether homemade corns are tastier than storebought (or than cookie candy corns) is for you to decide.

And while we’re on the subject of candy, if you have a sweet tooth, you might want to head over at CandyBlog because Cybele is having a Limited Edition Giveway. The prize package includes: Dark Chocolate Flavored Sixlets, Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter & Banana Creme Miniatures, 3 Musketeers Fall Mix (Strawberry, Cappuccino & French Vanilla), Tropical Tootsie Pops, Twix Java, Candy Corn Kisses, Nestle 100 Grand versions (Coconut, Peanuts & Dark Chocolate), Peppermint Peeps, Limited Edition & Seasonal Pop Rocks and more! All you have to do is leave a comment to enter. The deadline is November 15, 2007.