Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

Vegan Chocolate Mousse - with what I call "midnight snack" lighting... ^_^



One of my favourite time wasters fillers is to browse through TasteSpotting, 'starring' recipes that I want to adapt or try to make. Recently, there was a yummy-looking post for chocolate mousse made with silken tofu. Despite an interest in vegan cooking, I'd never really used silken tofu in desserts before. I usually use firm tofu in stir fries, and once used silken tofu in place of paneer in a curry, but never as a dairy alternative in desserts...

The recipe looked easy, was described as decadent and 'you would never know there's tofu in it', and would meet my recent craving for dessert, but with fewer unnecessary calories... However, it must be warned that this is not for the mild sweet tooth - this is probably the richest chocolate mousse I have ever had in the sense of chocolatey sweetness. You could tone it down a notch by leaving out some of the additional cocoa and sugar, and I don't think it would suffer for it. I served mine with banana, which actually cut through the sweetness!

The recipe I was following is here. I made a few minor adaptations to the recipe to suit what I had on hand, and translated to metric. Here's my version:



Spoon full of chocolate...



Vegan Dark Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients

300g silken tofu
100g dark chocolate (I used 80% - check chocolate is dairy free)
1/4 c cocoa powder
1/4 c water
1 Tbsp rice milk (or other non dairy milk)
2 Tbsp butterscotch schnapps*
1/2 c sugar


* actually I assume this is vegan! The prenzel website doesn't say (link). I used this instead of port or brandy, so use whatever you are comfortable with.


Instructions

Blend silken tofu in a food processor or blender until completely smooth.

In a bowl on top of a pot of barely simmering water, mix chocolate, cocoa, water, milk, and schnapps, and stir until the chocolate has completely melted.

Remove from heat and add the sugar. Mix until smooth and sugar has dissolved.

Pour or spoon into serving bowls, and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Serve with your choice of chopped fruit, vegan cream, as is, or whatever tickles your fancy.

Try not to fall into a sugar coma :)

Winter Smoothie

This is not so much a recipe as an idea I had that I thought might be crazy until I tried it. While I like smoothies for a quick weekend breakfast, on some of these cold winter days they don't really do much to warm me up.

I thought to myself - why can't I make a hot smoothie? There's no reason banana shouldn't be warm, or chocolate, or milk... so why not try?

Try it I did:

Ingredients
1 cup rice milk
2 bananas
1 tablespoon mexican hot chocolate mix

Directions
Heat rice milk for 2 minutes in microwave.
Place bananas and chocolate in blender.
Add heated rice ilk to blender.
Blend.
Drink while warm.

The result was a warm (but not hot) smoothie. Just enough that it felt warm to my mouth and hands, though the bit at the bottom of the class was cool (I hadn't preheated the glass). The smoothie had a bit more foam at the top than is usual for rice milk and banana. The chilli in the chocolate added some extra heat of another kind.

Caution: Use your own discretion on how much to heat the milk! I'm sure there's a warning on my blender somewhere that says "do not blend hot liquid", but I'm a rebel like that. My blender's glass and fairly sturdy, but I take no responsibility for exploding blenders or whatever may happen if you tried to blend boiling liquid!

Cookbook Case Study - Cardamom mushrooms and pot-roast rice - Quick and Easy

Here's what my version of the cookbook looks like!:


Quick & Easy: Vegetarian recipes from around the world for Western Kitchens


I decided this time to make two recipes from the book at one time, mostly because neither would do alone as a main dish. I made the mushrooms with cardamom, and com chien (pot roasted rice). Both recipes were also vegan!

The mushrooms are chopped up and mixed with cardamom, ginger, and lemon. These were really simple to make (especially with an assistant!), and were so tempting to snack on while they sat in their bowl waiting for their time.

This is what the mushrooms and cardamom looked like before I put them on to cook:


Very exciting photo of chopped mushroom and spices!


As the mushrooms went on to cook, I started the rice. Basically, the rice is fried in peanut oil before boiling water is added and the rice is steamed. Simple! However, reading the instruction "pour in the hot water, which will immediately boil" should have hinted that perhaps I should be somewhat cautious during this step...

Here's a picture of the mushroom cooking. If you look closely, you may see rice scattered around on the bench, that was not there in the previous photo. This is evidence of the rice leaping out of the saucepan to burn me! Evil rice.


Mushroom cooking; and spilt rice of treachery


Basically, I must have had the heat too high. Pouring the recently boiled water into the rice which had been fried in peanut oil for some time, there was an almost explosion of oil, water, rice, and steam. Pulling my hand away, not even having finished pouring all the water in, the dish started to boil so vigourously that the rice and water formed a series of geyser-like spouts that reached over twice the height of the top of the saucepan itself. It was seriously scary - and due to our slow to change temperature stovetop, I had to be brave enough to pull it from the heat to stop it all ending up on the bench.

I ran my fingers under the cold tap for as long as I could stand - nowhere near ten minutes, it's impossible to do that! The I put aloe vera gel on the sore bits, to try and cool them down, as per photo:


Burned fingers


You can't really see that they're burned, probably because of the flash, but they were! They were a bit swollen (less wrinkly than normal!), and about two and a half weeks later (yes, it's taken me a while to get around to writing this), I couldn't figure out why my fingers on my left hand were peeling. It wasn't until I started writing this post that I made the connection, and realised they had peeled exactly where I was burnt. I've never had steam burns before, either. Strange!

Anyway, despite the burns, the meal turned out quite tasty. I served the two dishes up with roast parsnip (idea first taken from Veganomicon I think, but I just make them however, now).


Com chien, mushrooms with cardamom, and roast parsnips


The mushrooms were less cardamommy than I expected, but very very tasty. The treacherous rice had a nice and rich, subtle flavour, and good texture because of the oil. I think the rice was even better as leftovers. However, for anyone using this technique, be really careful, and don't use too much heat!

Away message and an unusual smoothie

For the next week I'm going to be post-free, as I'm studying for an exam and making a trip out of town for work. After that ordeal is over I hope to return stress-free and with time to cook something, breaking a reliance on Hell's gluten-free, vegan pizza.

In the meantime, I leave you with this strange smoothie I made myself almost two months ago:


Unusually Thick Smoothie


This smoothie contains banana, kiwi crush, rice milk, and the random experimental ingredient: avocado.

It was very thick and very very smooth. I was almost scared to taste it, but it tasted quite nice. You could taste the avocado, but also the other fruits - I used a quarter of an avocado - may have beena little too much. I drank about half the glass (actually, ate it with a spoon), then wondered if it would perhaps be better as some kind of frozen dessert, so I poured the rest into a small container and left it in the fridge for a couple of hours. I got impatient and ate it before it was fully frozen - but I think there's some potential here!

Vegetable and Ginger Casserole with Herb Dumplings - Cookbook Case Study - Vegetarian Cooking Without

Having never made, or even eating anything with dumplings before, I was intrigued by this recipe and had it bookmarked for two or three weeks before the demon of study released me to make it. After an enthusiastic supermarket visit the day before, I set to preparing vegetables and discovered that 1.1kg of vegetables was much less than I thought it was. That's ok - I just had to make a plan for the other maybe 3 kg of vegetables I bought ;)

I was very surprised that I had to add almost a litre of water to the oven dish. I even considered the possibility that this was an error, if it weren't for the fact that it matched the alternate measurements given. It was right, in the end - but one thing about making unfamiliar recipes (rather than non-recipe standby dishes) is that sometimes I am surprised by just what I'm asked to do.

I had never cooked fennel bulb before, nor used fennel seeds. The only experience I've had with fennel, in fact, being the awful awful tea/drink I made from fennel picked from the garden as a child, in that stage when you are fascinated with the fact that garden weeds can be edible, so you become obsessed with eating them just because you can. (or, was that just me?) I was taken by the flavour of the fennel, cooked until tender, and I'm sure I'll use it again in this style of dish.

The dumplings were almost entirely rice (rice, plus rice flour, processed) - the best ones were those that I did not pack together too hard, leaving them slightly soft rather than thick and gummy.

While the recipe said it served four, the quarter each we had on the first night was too much for one setting (for Neil - I ate his leftovers, but boy did I regret it at 0400 when I woke up with food still in my stomach). I would recommend splitting the recipe into six, but adding a can or two of red kidney beans. The recipe lacks any significant source of protein without, and leaves you not quite satisfied (even if you eat far too much like I did). It seemed to keep okay for leftovers - which are pictures (with beans added as an afterthought).


Vegetable Stew with Herb Dumplings



So, If I make this casserole again, it will either be served on rice, or with more care in making the dumplings to make sure they are soft.

Three Bean Chilli - Cookbook Case Study - Vegetarian Cooking Without

I'd never made a chilli before, so this was an initial exploration into unfamiliar territory. The recipe calls for red kidney beans, azuki beans, and whole red lentils. I had both varieties of beans in my cupboard - the red kidney beans leftover from a not quite successful Gumbo Z'Herbes (which failed to thicken with my gluten-free roux). I suspect I could have found whole red lentils at an Indian grocery store, but I chose instead to substitute with a blend of split red and whole brown lentils, the first of which a pantry staple in my house.

All in all, I found this a very acceptable chilli. I doubled the recipe, and encouraged by the note at the end of the recipe, have a few servings packed away in the freezer for later convenience.

The one difficulty I had in following the recipe stemmed from my total novice status at cooking dried beans (having been vegetarian for over ten years, too!). I had no idea about cooking times, apart from a vague expectation that it would be a long time. However, after simmering the final chilli for two hours (the beans having already cooked for an hour), I was hungry enough to serve it, slight crunch though there was in a bean or two. (The leftovers, having been left in the pot for the rest of the evening, were perfect.)

I look forward to revisiting this recipe later, when I raid the freezer, and comparing to chillis that I hope to make from other books.


Laying out the ingredients (beans already cooked - not shown because they're ugly!)



Vegetables chopped and cooking. I know, a flash may have shown more, but it looks so much yummier without!



The spices, waiting.



Steamy chilli.