It's All About the Food

No longer do people avoiding eggs and dairy have to accept second-string (or third-string, or ...) cupcakes, thanks to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I'd bought this to bake birthday cupcakes for a toddler with severe and extensive food allergies: no one realized they were egg- and dairy-free. This is a great book for anyone baking for vegans, those with food allergies, or anyone who likes cupcakes.

At first, I was hesitant to commit to a full vegan cookbook and tried the sample chocolate cupcake recipe. It wowed everyone, I bought the book, and baked over a gross (a dozen dozen) of vegan cupcakes this summer.

So far I've made the chocolate (with chocolate, mint and coconut icings), lemon-lemon, vanilla, and carrot cake (with cream cheese) cupcakes. All were yummy. The carrot cake is the leading favorite: a few bites of intense, carrot-cakey goodness, perhaps even better than Dorie Greenspan's carrot cake. I am determined to make the green tea cupcakes before winter. Additionally, there are low-fat and gluten-free versions of the basic vanilla and chocolate cupcakes.

Complaints are few: I upped the cocoa content from 1/3 to 1/2 cup in the chocolate cupcake recipe; Republicans will want to skip the sections where the authors write about "cruelty-free" baking.

Because the recipes usually use oil (rather than margarine) as the fat, each cupcake recipe is super-easy, requiring only two mixing bowls and a whisk. (Icings usually require a mixer to beat the margarine.) Soy cream cheese is the most exotic vegan ingredient I've used so far (green matcha tea the most exotic non-vegan ingredient). If you aren't baking for vegans or the dairy-averse, I see no reason not to use dairy ingredients in the recipes. Plus — import for the parents of toddlers — without raw eggs in the batter, small children can lick beaters and bowls without anyone fretting over salmonella. (I eat raw batter, but certain short household members will need to be much older.)

One important thing: if you are baking for someone who doesn't eat dairy, check your margarine: most margarine contains milk products like whey or casein. Makes sense to me too. You may need to find the vegan section or or make a special trip to the vegan grocery store.

Will I bake from it again? Yes!

Posted by SusieJ at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This vacation, I'm planning a party for my fortieth birthday (and gardening). This means web surfing to sites for rent ($300 during the week, $1450 Friday night, $2000 Saturday or Sunday) and caterers.

Most of the caterers I've looked at have hired a professional design team. This is good in theory, but in practice it's like eating larks' tounges — novelty for novelty's sake.

So, caterers, from a professional web programmer and a potential customer, don't do this:

• Flash intro: I could not care less how much you paid the design firm for your site; I just want to find what you serve and what you charge.
• Flash or Java or JavaScript site: Bye-bye! There's too many other caterers for me to slog through some crappy custom interface.
• Links to links to links: If I click "photos," most likely I want to see photos of your work, not read three paragraphs telling me to click a link that will take me to your mac.com home page. I won't.
• Generic domain name: Searching for Ryan Rogan Catering and finding only links to "bestcateringexample.com" and bridal sites means I'll think you don't have a web site, even if you shelled out a lot of money for bestcateringexample.com. Spring for ryanrogancatering.com (or .info, or .net or whatever).
• Generic contact e-mail: Info@mycatering.com is one thing, info@partyspace.com is useless.

It would be really nice if you:

• Included sample menus: I don't care that everyone on staff has the same last name; what do you make?
• Listed prices: I love my family, but I'm not paying as much for my birthday as I did for my wedding. Let's not waste each other's time.
• Listed facilities you are on the allowed list of caterers (and facilities, it would be nice if you listed allowed caterers, plus links to their web sites) and their charges.

Posted by SusieJ at 10:10 PM | Permalink

It wasn't supposed to be another foodie weekend in New York, really. The plan was for the boys to see the Phillies trounce the Mets, and for Anne and I to visit the Neue Gallerie and its cafe. But we'd spent a couple hours at Dean and DeLuca, Sur la Table, and H&M, and a Steuben Day parade in Central Park had the Gallerie's Austrian cafe backed up to a 40-minute wait for a table at 2 p.m., so we turned back to Demarchelier just a block away at 50 E. 86th St.

Generally, I don't eat French because I can't afford it (I'm more the hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurant kind), can't pronounce it and don't have the patience to cook it. I may need to change this policy.

We wanted to try as much as possible, and didn't want to spend $20 (each) on a lunch entree, so we each had two appetizers. Anne began with a salad of field greens, and I had the country pate. This was followed by steak tartare (Anne) and a salad of endive, apples and roquefort (myself). To drink, Anne had Bass (one of three beers on tap) and I had a glass of chablis, at our waiter's suggestion after throwing myself on his mercy. We skipped dessert but had Earl Grey (Anne) and coffee.

With tax and tip it was a whopping $75. It was a lovely, leisurely treat, and quite a wonderful find. And we had the pleasure of helping the nice Spanish couple at the next table find a hotel. It was the first time a cell phone was ever justified at the table.

Will I go back? Probably not, but mostly because I live in Philadelphia, not Manhattan.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:53 PM | Permalink