A post long over due: food porn backlog!

I had a lot going on in the past couple of weeks, like planning stuff for the summer and undergoing dental surgery, but it seems like things are finally looking up and all of the stress is slowly subsiding - phew! Sorry for keeping you waiting, guys. :)

[Some of the photos were taken on my phone, so the quality may not be the best. Whoops~]

Pasta in cream sauce with lemony asparagus.

Mitarashi dango!

It was my second time making dango and it actually turned out okay this time. The sauce was really nice, savoury yet sweet - mhmm! You can read more about dango and all the different variations of it here on the good ol' Wikipedia.

Donuts! And Strawberries, too.. But the donuts are clearly the star here :D

Oh how I wish one of the local bakeries would offer vegan donuts, sadly that's not the case - perhaps someday? This recipe from Cooking Vegan Food Up North was easy to make and it provided me with a generous amount of delicious fresh donuts - highly recommended.

Sesame & Spring Onion Ramen

A plate full of tofu scramble & veggie goodness.

If only I could eat this everyday. Simple pan fried tofu scramble with steamed asparagus, avocado and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

Jam & vegan cream cheese sandwiches, a banana, strawberries and raw almond butter.

Onde Onde

Onde Onde are chewy fried rice cakes rolled in sesame seeds and filled with a sweet mung bean paste. I was so surprised to spot these at a local Asian grocery shop, because it's really hard to find freshly made Asian desserts, snacks and bakery style~ goodies for sale here in Germany. Small unexpected finds like this are just the best!

A breakfast food you can't go wrong with: Pancakes!

These came out just perfect. Slightly crispy on the top with just the right amount of fluffy pancake-y goodness on the inside. Topped with a little margarine and golden syrup. Unfortunately I can't remember what recipe I used, possibly one from Vegan Brunch?

Breakfast: Peach green tea and grapefruit.

I wish I had taken a better photo of this because the flesh of the grapefruit had such a nice shade of red, but I forgot to take one with my DSRL. Ah well~, another time.

Rice paper rolls filled with letuce, vegan bulgogi and OJ.

The recipe for the bulgogi can be found on Vegan8Korean. They have three different recipes: Gochujang Bulgogi (hot & spicy), Tempeh Bulgogi and Bulgogi Style Seitan. I have tried the first two and they're both immensely tasty. :)

Vanilla-Pudding & Chocolate Cake

Fluffy vanilla cake, a layer of vanilla pudding and a layer of chocolate ganache. The ganache looked a little funky after it had hardened, but it didn't harm the taste at all. I am not ashamed to say that I ate the entire pan in two days... ^^;

Raw zucchini pasta in cheese sauce with crumbled burger patty leftovers.

Homemade kimchi.

As usual I used Maangchi's recipe: Easy Kimchi (Mak Kimchi)
You can replace the fish sauce with some soy sauce and leave out the squid, no problem! Or you could use this completely vegan recipe by Vegan8Korean, yum!

Well, that's it for now! I hope you're all enjoying summer. Talk to you soon ♥

Coconut-Green Tea (Matcha) Ice Cream

Back in April Germany was blessed with sudden bursts of warmth and sunshine and, naturally, I immediately started to long for ice cream in all variations and flavours. Most of the vegan ice cream flavours that can be found at the shops here in Germany are very simple: chocolate, vanilla and various fruit-sorbets. I love chocolate ice cream and will pick it over vanilla eeevery time, but sometimes it's just nice to branch out a little and to try something unusual or new. I wanted to make my own ice cream as soon as possible, but I also wanted to keep the process relatively simple so I choose coconut milk as my base and matcha powder for an intense flavour. Mhmmm... Shall we get started? :)

Coconut - Green Tea (Matcha) Ice Cream
1 can thick coconut milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbs matcha powder
1 tbs powdered vegan lecithin

1) Put all ingredients into a blender and blend on high for about a minute (the sugar needs to be dissolved completely).
2) Pour the mixture into a plastic container, then close the lid and move the container to the freezer. Use a container that is not too small as you will have to stir the mixture later on.
3) Use a strong fork to stir the mixture every hour or so until it's ready for serving.
[You can skip step 2-3 and use an ice cream maker instead, if you own one... Lucky you!^^]


Notes:
• Lecithin works as an emulsifier and stabilizer and thus it helps to freeze the ice cream mixture evenly. I used sunflower lecithin that I bought from eBay, but I think soy derived lecithin should work equally well and it is more easily accessible.
• Matcha can be found in most well stocked asian grocery shops.
• While this ice cream is easily made without an ice cream maker, it will unfortunately harden quite a bit the longer it sits in the freezer. An easy solution would be to use ice lolly/popsicle moulds, this way you don't have to worry about the scooping issue, but you still get to enjoy a creamy iced treat. Another possibility is to prepare the ice cream in the morning so that it'll be ready for immediate consumption at dinner time.

A short update

Ah... Time has flown by and somehow I haven't updated since April. Today I'm just letting you all know that I'll be posting a simple recipe this weekend and some food porn from the last couple of weeks next week!

I hope you are all enjoying summer and I'll talk to you soon! ♥

Daily Eats: Green Tea Chocolate Cookies & Almond Milk

Green tea chocolate filled cookies & almond milk.

Inspired by AliensDayOut's most recent cookie adventure. Like Mipa, I started off with the 'Minono' recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, an extra tablespoon or two of flour was enough to make the dough work-able and the cookies kept their shape very well. I left out the orange zest because I wasn't sure if the flavour of oranges would work with green tea, but vanilla made a lovely replacement. The filling is made of white chocolate and green tea (matcha) powder and the tiniest bit of vegetable oil - it's incredibly delicious!

Daily Eats: Green Tea Swirl Bread

Homemade green tea (matcha) swirl bread.

RECIPE: Milk bread & variations (via Une-deux senses)

Great, great recipe! You can leave out the egg to make it vegan, it's no problem at all, though you might want to add a little more water or else your dough could be too dry. The left over tangzhong / water-roux can be diluted with water and be used as a vegan 'egg' wash. My bread making skills aren't very good, but I have used the water-roux method used in this recipe before for making bread and it honestly never disappoints. If you've been shying away from making bread at home I suggest you give this recipe a try, it's worth the work. :)

Daily Eats: Crêpes

Crêpes with blueberry filling.

I decided to spoil myself a little today and made some delicious crêpes in the afternoon and filled them with with a blueberry pie style filling, which was my favourite crêpe filling as a child and probably still is (though I do love maple syrup too mhmmm~).

Daily Eats: Breakfast

Bread roll with sweet sugar beet syrup and black coffee.

Daily Eats: Raw Cheesecake with Strawberries

Raw cheesecake with strawberries.

Daily Eats: Veggie Paella

Dinner: Veggie paella with arugula. Jello fruit cup for dessert.

Daily Eats: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookie dough.

Daily Eats: Waffle Iron Baked French Toast

Save some time when making French toast by using a waffle iron! Crispy French toast (or maybe waffle toast would be the more appropriate term :)) in no time. My waffle iron can make two waffles at a time so this worked perfectly and it gave me some time to clean last nights dishes while the toast was baking - perfect!

French toast with banana, strawberry jam & vanilla cream + cup of camomile tea.

Daily Eats: Bami Goreng

Bami goreng / Indonesian fried noodles.

Daily Eats: Sweet Azuki Milkshake & Lunch

Lunch: Yubu chobap, steamed sweet potato & a banana.

Sweet azuki shake.

When I made steamed buns on Friday I filled half of the dough with mock meat and the other half with sweetened red bean (azuki) paste. BUT, as it always happens, I made waaay to much of both fillings so I decided to use some of the sweet bean paste to make myself a tasty tasty milkshake: almond milk, some silken tofu, sweetened red bean paste, half a banana and a few ice cubes. Yum!

Brown Short Grain Rice

Brown short grain rice.

Woah, I finally found a shop that sells brown short grain rice in bulk! My rice-consumption has really risen in the past year or so and I've been meaning to try brown rice for a while, but it seemed impossible to find a good (reasonably priced) source here. I'm excited to cook with it in the future to see how it compares to white rice. If anyone has any tips on how to cook brown rice in a rice cooker, send 'em my way, please! :)

Daily Eats: Steamed Buns

Working that dough~

Mock meat filling.

Ready for steaming.

Daily Eats: Afternoon Snack

Toast with margarine & strawberry marmalade, fresh strawberries and a glass of almond milk.

Lemon Cake

Lemon Cake

Since the weather has been so lovely lately and the flowers are slooowly starting to bloom, I thought now would be the perfect time to share the link to my favourite vegan lemon cake recipe with you. I took the photo two years ago, soon after I discovered the recipe on the internet, but have since made this cake countless times and it's still my absolute favourite cake, lemon or otherwise. The recipe is simple, no fancy ingredients or baking techniques, but the outcome is perfect. Moist and delicate and full of flavour - everything you could dream of, so to speak. :)

LINK: Vegan Lemon Cake (via boredbutbusy.com)


On an unrelated note: Previously, you had to log in with google/blogger or other social media networking sites to leave a comment on my blog. This is something I wasn't even aware of this until today (thanks for e-mailing me Julia!)... I changed the settings this afternoon, so you no longer need to register/log in with any services to leave a comment. I'm sorry if this has been an inconvenience to anybody.

Daily Eats: Lunch | Nubian Heritage Soap

Nubian Heritage Coconut & Papaya Soap || Lunch was ramen, kimchi and a can of coke.

The soap was on my iHerb wishlist for a couple of months and I'm really happy I decided to add it to the cart on my latest order because the smell of this soap is out of this world! I can't wait to use this!

Daily Eats: Iced Latte

Iced vanilla latte.

Double shot of espresso, almond milk, a handful of ice cubes and vanilla protein powder (adds flavour, some sweetness and it works as a thickener to make a creamy drink :)).

A Small Challange

I'm challenging myself to post at least a photo per day for an entire month (March 20 - April 20). I've really been slacking with this blog and it's weird, because I actually do have a lot of things and recipes I want to blog about and I did quite well during vegan MoFo in November... But for whatever reason I can't seem to get anything done and I don't want this to be just another failed project in the never ending universe of the interwebz~.. Boo. So I'm putting a tiny bit of pressure on myself with this challenge and hopefully I'll get my groove back. This isn't exactly like Vegan MoFo since my only goal is to post a picture a day of something I cooked, baked or ate that day. Should be doable right? Y'all can come kick my cyber-butt if I miss a day! (keep the different time zones in mind though, I'm not taking a beating just because the day's over in your neck of the woods ;))

Anyways, if any of you bloggers out there would like to join me in this challenge leave me a comment so I can stalk you see what you're up to!

Oh and btw! By the request of a horde of people single lady (yo Allysia!) I will be posting the recipe for savoury oatmeal soon. I meant to post it last week (there we go again..) but it's just that lately I haven't been in the mood to eat savoury oatmeal myself so there wasn't an opportunity. :)

Fudgy brownie with real cocoa nibs.

These were a disaster, extra fudgy brownies ruined by evil cocoa nibs. I thought the nibs would add a nice crunch to the brownies, but they tasted rubbery (perhaps dues to the heat from the baking process?).