Dining with Delta, Candy Craziness, Donut Mania, & Testing for Terry Hope Romero!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

While dining in Europe was a dream, there are these little things called plane rides you have to take to get to your destination. In the 2 weeks I traveled, I was on 10 airplanes, which meant I was at the mercy of airplane food more than a few times. Of course, I pack my own snacks, as I know it's unlikely I'll be satisfied or even properly fed while in the air, but I thought you might like to see some of the food given to me. I flew Delta Airlines for all of the following meals & requested the "VGML" or Vegetarian, Non-Dairy meal.

Vegan airplane dinners seem to be pretty standard across the board; a grain of some sort, vegetables in some unidentifiable sauce, an iceberg lettuce salad, & a bread roll. Often you'll be given a "non-dairy margarine" on the side, which has never been vegan in the history of my flights. Delta did a fine job with dinner food, I appreciated the fruit salad one night, & the beans in my entree the next, but they failed when it came to breakfast. Special dietary meals are brought out before the others, so I was handed my breakfast of a pre-packaged croissant with non-vegan margarine, high fructose corn syrup jelly, an unripe banana & juice from concentrate before everyone else. I inquired about the non-dairy status of the croissant & the attendant said it should be vegan, to which I responded, "butter?" & the attendant revoked it's non-dairy status. The rest of the airplane was served the exact same meal & despite mine being labeled VGML, it was very obviously not. The next disappointment came in the form of a sandwich. I unwrapped the plastic wrapped torpedo only to find a thick layer of what could have been butter or "non-dairy margarine" with only tomato & limp lettuce. Vegan or not, no thank you!

So, why am I complaining about this when all airplane food tends to be bad? It's important that airlines know that when they mark something non-dairy, they are expected to provide something suitable for not only vegans, but people with allergies, people with religious affiliations, & others refraining from it. I make sure to write a letter to each & every airline that gives me something in a VGML meal that is not vegetarian non-dairy. I'm diligent enough to check the labels of food they give me, but how many people have trusted them & had milk solids in their salad dressing? What if someone was to get sick? I encourage everyone who runs across similar issues to contact the company, as it benefits everyone.

On a lighter note, Delta's in-flight snack is the best ever! They serve Biscoff cookies, aka Speculoos Caramelized Biscuits. I first found these biscuits in a market in Prague, then the mania swept the PPK & the Speculoos spread was discovered. I can confirm that the spread is crazy good, as a generous friend sent me some it's difficult not to sit & eat it with a spoon. I love these biscuits & I had no problem collecting the un-eaten ones from my fellow flight goers to savor throughout the journey!

I'm sure I've mentioned in my many posts about Europe that I love shopping for food! I went in vegan shops, bio markets, & everything in between in search of exciting treats & boy, was I successful! The photo you see is all the sweets I purchased over the two weeks & brought home. I gave some of it away, but for the most part, we've been eating it & most of it is gone! While Ryan's happily chowing down on gummy cola bottles, for me the highlights include Peppermint Ritter Sport (which are no longer vegan, watch out for butterfat!), Lemon Cream Manner bars, Gelee Bananen, Maple filled Stroopwafel & my absolute favorite, Sonnina Pfefferminz Taler! Seriously, if anyone can find the Sonnina brand, I NEED more of these York Peppermint Patty replicas & will make it worth your while!

Donut Mania is here! Have you noticed? Maybe you've caught the fever as well? It seems Donuts are the new Cupcakes & everywhere you turn a vegan donut company is popping up. I am certainly not one to complain about this trend, as I spent many days sitting on 50lb bags of flour in the back of a donut shop as a child. I've been lucky enough to try most of the options out there, but two remain my top contenders & I just happened to have both of them hand delivered to me in the past few weeks. As I stepped off the plane from Europe, Ryan was coming home from Las Vegas, home of Ronald's Donuts, aka the best vegan donuts on earth. Needless to say, he brought back a dozen of these perfectly raised, doughy gems & I was thrilled. It's hard to say which is my favorite, I do love a basic glazed, or a cinnamon bun, but the apple fritter is pretty stellar as well. These are certainly not health food, they're the corner shop Sunday morning donuts you remember from your childhood!

On the healthier side of donuts are my favorite cake donuts by Mighty O Donuts in Seattle. Once again, a business trip brought Ryan home with an assortment of donuts & there were no complaints here! Everything from French Toast to Nutty Chocolate to Cinnamon Sugar was at my fingertips, but my favorite is the good old Vanilla Cake Glazed, simple & delicious. Not only are these tasty morsels all vegan, they're organic too! If you're in Seattle, don't miss a stop in to their shop or if you have a friend visiting, do as I did & demand some donuts!

Despite all the sugary foods, I have been cooking as well. Shocker, right?! I'm a tester for a few cookbooks right now, which is always fun & keeps me from making the same 5 dishes over & over. Terry Hope Romero of Veganomicon & Vegan Cupcake Take Over the World fame is writing a Vegan Latina cookbook & it's already knocking my socks off! The most recent dish I made was the Chipotle Seitan & Potato Tacos. Terry's homemade seitan is marinated in a beer, lime, chipotle mixture, then grilled & piled in to soft corn tortillas with Roasted Potatoes, crunchy veggies, & topped with a Lime Yogurt Crema! I'm not a drinker, but the flavors of everything played so well together, I didn't even notice the beer. Ryan flipped for these! By the way, Terry & Isa have a new book coming out called Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, have you ordered it yet?

Next week, I'm headed out to Chicago to hang with my favorite Baker & Destroyer, plus partake in potluck & Dandies eating with the folks at Chicago Soy Dairy. Any recommendations on things I shouldn't miss are always welcome! I know new businesses have popped up since my last visit, so here's what I saw last time; Part 1 / Part 2. As always, if you're in the area & you want to meet up, just get in touch!

So many treats, so little time..

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

So many treats, so little time..
Originally uploaded by theurbanhousewife.com

Greetings from Stockholm!

My adventures have taken me many places so far, from Berlin to Copenhagen, Malmö & Vienna, & at the moment, snowy Stockholm!

As you can see, I've been hitting the bio markets pretty hard, which has produced LOTS of sweet treats I'll be sharing with you in the near future.

Once I return home, there should be quite a bit of information on vegan travel, so stay tuned to The Urban Housewife!

Making Candy Corn; Tips & Tricks!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this post & more!

As Halloween nears many of you will embark on candy corn making adventures utilizing the recipe I posted. After some feedback from others & a bit of experimenting, I thought I'd extend some tips & tricks so you can successfully make your own candy corn this season!

Boiling temperature & time are very important to this recipe, too much heat & you'll have a rock of hard candy, too low & you'll have a soft candy. If you're right on, the texture of these are perfect.

If your dough is too hard:

• The boiling temperature and/or time may have been off.
• You may have added too many dry ingredients.

Unfortunately, I don't have a temperature to tell you to boil them at, but it's important that these boil for 5 minutes at a medium boil with occasional stirring. Sadly, there’s not much you can do with firm dough, besides try to cut it up & eat it as hard candy. It still tastes pretty good.

Be careful not to add too many dry ingredients. Often times, powdered sugar is compacted in its container, be sure to stir it up before measuring it & use a spoon to scoop it in to your measuring cup, versus pouring. These same guidelines apply to the powdered soy milk, as well as dry ingredients in all baking!

If your dough is too soft:

• The boiling temperature and/or time may have been too low.

You can still make candy corn with soft dough, the color will be easier to knead in & they’ll taste good, but the texture will not be the same. An option with these is to put them in the refrigerator to firm them up, but they’ll have to be eaten cold or shortly after removal from the refrigerator, as they soften as they return to room temperature.

Candy Corn Storage:

To store the candy corn, put them in an airtight container, using plastic wrap to separate the layers, so they don’t stick together. Do not refrigerate or freeze these, as it could change the texture & is unnecessary, keeping them on a counter is ideal. These should keep for quite some time, so feel free to make them in advance for your shindig. Last I checked, my 3-week-old candy corn was perfectly tasty & they’ve been on my counter since being made.

Ingredients + other Tips & Tricks:

If you have an aversion to corn syrup or cannot find organic corn syrup, these can be made with brown rice syrup, although they will not taste the same. They’re close, but the texture as well as the flavor differs from traditional candy corn. Additionally, the dough will not be white for the white tips, so they may be best as pumpkins or “psychedelic candy rice”, like you see in the photos here. Nonetheless, you may be happy with the results!

My powdered soy milk came from my local co-op & was plain, not vanilla. I do think vanilla would be perfectly acceptable & maybe even a tasty addition! Don’t be concerned about good tasting powdered soy milk, I wouldn’t drink mine either! It’s a texture thing, not a taste thing. The recipe has enough sugar to kill any bad tasting powders anyway! If you can’t find a powdered soy milk product at your local grocer or health food store, Better Than Milk can be purchased online at Amazon.

The recipe provided has a very high yield, especially if you cut them as small as standard candy corn. You can easily make 1/4 of what I’ve posted & be perfectly happy.

When kneading the color in, gloves are the best option. Of course, most of us don’t have gloves! Another option I mentioned in the last post was plastic wrap, but another option is putting the dough & color in a plastic sandwich bag to squish & fold it in there, which may be easier & less likely to cause a food coloring stain somewhere undesirable.

An untested idea mentioned to me is adding the food coloring in to the wet ingredients after the boiling process. While it’s not possible to divide the wet mixture in to three & then add the dry, you could make three small batches & add the color in this way. The kneading is tedious & may be more time consuming than making three small batches!

The candy corn will be rugged & not very glossy when cut, to get the proper shape & finish, you’ll have to shape each one yourself! If the ropes of color are well pressed together & even flattened a bit with a rolling pin, they can be easier to shape with a roll between your fingers. Of course they taste perfectly good without any shaping, but I’m an aesthetic eater, so I couldn’t leave them alone!

Please continue to let me know if you're making the recipes posted here & how they're working out for you. I’m expecting reports of fun & successful candy corn making parties in the near future; I love what people have sent me so far! In fact, the awesome crocheted candy corn bear is by none other than "My Sweet Vegan" author Hannah Kaminsky! Isn’t he adorable?!

It's still early, but Happy Halloween everyone!

I’ll be in New York City for the spooktastic day seeing a Martha Stewart show taping! If you’re in the NYC area and would like to grab a bite, dance all night, or just hang out, get in touch, I’ll be around through November 8th!

Homemade Vegan Candy Corn = a Happy Halloween!

Please head over to my new blog at TheUrbanHousewife.com, where you'll find this recipe & more!

October is right around the corner & thoughts have already turned to Halloween! While most are getting creative with costumes, many vegans are figuring out what candies they can eat! Packaged candy corn at your local store typically is packed with animal products like gelatin, egg whites, & beeswax, so members of the PPK were lamenting the lack of the sugary little confection in their lives. Well, lament no more!

The Epicurious Editor's Blog had a recipe for Homemade Candy Corn & I jumped at the chance to try a vegan version. With some easy substitutions, it worked! This recipe is not for the faint at heart, while the dough is easy to make, the production process is time consuming & tedious! I recommend having a candy corn party with friends, so you can all assemble & enjoy these goodies together! I suppose you could also eat them uncolored, but how unfestive is that?! hehe.

Candy Corn
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup corn syrup (preferably organic, avoid high fructose corn syrup!)
5 tablespoons Earth Balance (or other vegan margarine)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup powdered soy milk
a pinch of sea salt
Red & yellow food coloring

Instructions:
In a large saucepan, bring the sugar, corn syrup, Earth Balance, & vanilla to a boil over high heat.

Reduce the heat to medium & boil the mixture for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. After 5 minutes, remove from heat.

Sift the powdered sugar, powdered soy milk, & salt into medium bowl.

Add the powdered sugar mixture to pan & stir to combine.

Let the mixture stand until slightly warm to touch, about 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces.

Consider putting on rubber gloves, so you don't stain your hands. Add several drops of yellow food coloring to one piece of dough & knead food coloring into the dough until smooth and color is even. Repeat using red & yellow food coloring (for orange) with the second piece & leave the last piece white, but knead it until smooth. This isn't an easy task & could take up to 15 minutes!

Roll each piece into ropes of equal length (don't roll too thin or the dough will break) and push the three ropes together to form a long rectangle.

Using sharp knife, cut the ropes into triangles. Some will be white tipped & some will be yellow tipped.

Shape the candy corn as desired! You can even make Mellowcreme Pumpkins!

This yielded 110 candy corn, all larger than the store bought ones you're used to! You could easily half this recipe & have a ton to share with others. I made mine somewhat large, as they're easier to work with, but you could make smaller ones & have a TON!

My Notes:
They taste great, although slightly less sugary than the pre-packaged versions. I find that's the case with most artisan versions of standard junk food, but you'll still enjoy these very much & they'll quell your candy corn craving! I wouldn't add more sugar, as the dough will get too firm to work with. In fact, the dough is pretty firm in the first place & you may find your fingers hurting from kneading. When adding the food coloring, I found it best to keep folding the dough in to itself, then flattening it with my palm. Also, I didn't have gloves, so I kept a layer of plastic wrap over my dough as I was kneading it, which worked fine with minimal staining. The ropes of dough are VERY long, they took up the length of my dining table, so you can consider working in sections. I also used a rolling pin to slightly flatten the tops of the 3 connected ropes, it makes cutting easier & slightly pushes the ropes together. Finally, please be conscious of the corn syrup you use! The widely available Karo is packed with nasty High Fructose Corn Syrup, something you DON'T need in your system. I bought an organic corn syrup, which was pricey, but I found it to be worthwhile.

PLEASE let me know if you take the time to make & enjoy these! I'd love to hear what others think of them. Oh & Happy (very early) Halloween! hehe.

READY TO MAKE THESE?
Check out my Tips & Tricks post!