Vegan Pancake Adventures

Hi everyone :)

I have realized that I haven't had pancakes for like...ages. So, last night I decided to give it a go and try to make some sweet ones and also, since it was dinner time, some savory ones. Since my Mom was at work and I wanted to surprise my Grandma, who's here to visit us from Germany for a while, I consulted the internet for an easy recipe. I found this one immediately: http://www.laubfresser.de/2009/10/vegane-pfannkuchen.html

For the English speakers/non-metric-system-users:

- 2 cups of water (or soy/almond/hemp/rice/rye/hazelnut/walnut/...(you get the point) milk)
- 1 cup of flour (best would of course be not to use wheat flour; I used rye flour)
- a pinch of salt
- 4 tbs of sugar (+ 1 tsp of vanilla sugar/extract) for the sweet kind & 1 and a half tsp of sugar for the savory kind (again, raw cane sugar would be best)


Now, for the sweet kind I also added some cocoa powder, dark chocolate chips & banana slices. For the savory kind I chopped some tomatoes and also put in some basil, salt & pepper.
I'd love to attach a photo of both kinds but the savory pancakes were pretty much inhaled by us and I forgot to take a picture of them. But here are two  of the sweet ones:

While baking...

 They look so dark because of the cocoa powder, not because they're burnt btw ;) 

and...DONE!

This recipe is really easy and quick to try out and you can add whatever you want according to you own likings!

Happy baking :D

Vegan Kaese Spaetzle!

The German version of Mac'n'Cheese?!

Originally it was planned to make enchiladas but we didn't have all the ingredients, so we went for the next best option: Kaese Spaetzle! It's a German specialty consisting of homemade pasta in a thick cheese sauce. Well, traditionally it's obviously supposed to be cow cheese but by now y'all should know that I'm not going to be a dumbass and use cow cheese :)

My Mom started preparing the dough for the pasta (for 4 people) by mixing 700 g (according to my online

Spaetzle maker (Google)

converter that's around 17.5 ounces) of spelt flour, 700 ml (~ 3 cups) of water (it was a little bit too runny so you might want to use a bit less), 2 tablespoons more of spelt flour (you can also use corn starch or any other kind of flour of course), a pinch of salt, pepper and a few tablespoons (just try until it starts to taste a bit like something) of dried vegetable broth. Then moving on to the cheese sauce I poured some rice milk into a frying pan, because...well...because my Mommy told me to do so haha. I was quite skeptic if this was going to turn out anything like it's supposed to, because rice milk has a significantly lower level of fat than cow's milk or even soy milk. Since I didn't have soy milk I just had to use rice milk. You wait until the milk is boiling and then you sprinkle the (vegan) cheese (I used the same kind as I wrote about two posts ago) in the pan. I used about six slices of it and in the beginning it really didn't look too well, because it seemed like it didn't want to melt the way I needed it to. After waiting, stirring and letting it boil a while more it turned out quite gooey and cheesy! While working on the sauce you might want to get the water boiling for the Spaetzle. To make this kind of pasta you actually need a Spaetzle maker, but you can get one of those in pretty much every department store or you just improvise. Glazed onions taste really (and I mean REALLY) great with this meal also, so if you can live with shedding a few tears over this meal you should cut up some onions and

gently fry them in a pan. You place the Spaetzle maker on top of the pot of boiling water and just slice them right in there. Let them cook until they come swimming back on top and then put them in the sauce pan. Stir, season with salt, pepper, the onions & a few cut up tomatoes and TA DAAAAA you have some cheesy, traditional German Kaese Spaetzle with a hint of American Mac'n'Cheese. 

I hope I don't bore you guys with these food posts. If you ever try this recipe I'd love if you would let me know how it went! Or not. That's fine too...
Seriously though, you won't regret trying this out!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you around here again someday!

Katie Lynn :)

PS: This is where we got the idea btw and they have so many more awesome recipes! http://www.veganguerilla.de/kase-spatzle/

Say CHEESE!

Hola my pretty faces :)

I'm back after my Easter break (+ one extra week of just PURE laziness) and I have something super cool (at least in my opinion) to review! A grocery store line close to my home just started carrying ONE brand of vegan cheese. FINALLY! I have been waiting for this for YEARS! I know American vegans have it much easier, because you've already had grocery stores carrying vegan cheeses for quite a while. But I'll give that one to you, because y'all also have so many more yummy non-vegan temptations to withstand (a.k.a. Taco Bell, ...). I could have ordered some cheese through various online shops, but that would be quite expensive and I didn't feel like it would be worth the hassle.


So, the cheese I got at Merkur (the grocery store) is called Wilmersburger Scheibenkäse and it cost 2,79 € per 150 g (that would be around $ 3,70 per 5.21 ounces) if I remember correctly. It’s not cheap, but it’s not something one is supposed to eat on a daily basis anyways so I think it’s alright. Now moving on to taste and texture. The structure is just like cow cheese slices and the color is pretty close to cow cheese as well. The taste is just like what’s known as American cheese or sandwich cheese. That might turn some people off, but I have always liked that sort of cheese and if I’m not completely crazy it tastes EXACTLY like Hochland Scheibenkäse (which I used to love, but we never bought it, ‘cause it was more expensive than other brands). I was pretty surprised at my family’s reaction to the taste as well. I almost expected them to make choking noises and spit it out haha. But they were good sports and confirmed the taste to be like American cheese. (The things written on the package mean: free of lactose, free of milk, purely based on plants and obviously vegan haha)

Of course I wasn’t satisfied with just trying a little piece of it. I made tortilla wraps with rice, guacamole, tomatoes and said cheese. I wasn’t sure if it was going to melt, because apparently some kinds of vegan cheese don’t. This cheese melts really good though! I was so happy when I saw how yummy my wraps looked haha. They tasted great!

 
To sum it up, I am VERY content with taste, texture, color and the ability to melt of this cheese. I’ll definitely buy it on a regular basis and recommend this to you guys as well :). I’ll have to really control myself though, ‘cause I’m typing this right now while eating a tortilla shell stuffed with literally only this cheese. Summer will be here soon, Katie, have some discipline damn it!

Thanks for reading this! Hope to see you again soon :)

Katie Lynn :)


 
PS: I tried making sweet potato fries again while I was at my parent’s house yesterday and they (the fries, not my parents haha) turned out just great! They only took about half an hour and weren’t burnt. So, I’m just going to blame my previous almost-catastrophe with them on the oven in my dorm’s kitchen.

PPS: If you guys can figure out the commenting function on this site (or on Twitter/Tumblr), let me know if you'd be interested in the actual ingredients of the cheese so I can post a picture of them.