Baking

BRUNCH!   Who doesn't love a good weekend brunch? Well, I definitely do. Growing up, brunch was largely reserved for Sunday mornings. My dad would whip up a batch of his amazing pancakes or waffles and we would all get together and wolf them d own at the kitchen table. There were never enough! Sometimes, if we had sleepovers the night before, our friends would join in on Sunday, drooling over my dad's pancakes and waffles . I still love pancakes and waffles . I don't eat them often but I like to make pancakes once in awhile on weekends for my husband. If you look through my blog pages you will find a few recipes for some theme-pancakes, like my vegan Pear Pie Pancakes . Today's pancake recipe is for my favorite kind of pancake -- straight up plain pancakes -- why mess with a good thing?  Sometimes I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to food. There are many foods in life that are simply unforgettable but also utterly simple. A few of my favorites include: fresh...

My parents spend the holidays with close friends out of town and I wanted to send something along with them for these old family friends. My mom suggested I make them gifts -- ideally something edible and festive. I was inspired by a recent post by Sarah B of My New Roots. Sarah published a post last week about making infused syrups for gifts. I really liked that idea and decided that I would give it a go on Sunday. One of my parents' friends is diabetic so I used the opportunity as a chance to create a maple-syrup-free syrup for him. The syrup came out great and very mapley with no maple in sight. It is sweetened with low-GI sweeteners suitable for diabetics and coconut water (which actually has been shown to improve diabetes). The syrup gets its maple flavor from the strangest place -- FENUGREEK! When steeped, fenugreek pods give a maple like flavor and strong aroma. I thickened the syrup by adding a little tapioca starch which worked like a charm. Once the mixture cooled it was ...

So, as my readers know, I follow a mainly vegan and gluten-free diet. I am not a strict vegan though. I try not to deny myself food if my body is craving something. Being vegan is hard and I respect vegans a great deal. I tried to be strictly vegan most of this year (my exception was for raw honey because of its health benefits) and I stuck it out for a very long stretch uninterrupted. I eventually hit a wall -- it can be really challenging because of my allergies to maintain a balanced vegan diet. I am allergic to nuts, soy, and am quite sensitive to avocado, dairy, beans, pulses and gluten. That means no guacamole, no tofu or tempeh, few to no bean or lentil dishes, no nut based meals, no gluten based meals or seitan-- basically I get my protein from a few seeds like hemp and chia and sesame. It can be really limiting and frustrating and can make dining out a total nightmare. I also seem to have IBS so sometimes I find all the seeds really hard to digest and find myself in a lot of p...

This was an exciting week for my second blog, Our VegiTable . For those of you unfamiliar with this site, it is a vegan and vegetarian recipe sharing site that I curate. Bloggers send me their posts and I share their recipes and information about their blogs with a broader audience in the hopes of finding them new subscribers and helping readers find new blogs to follow and new recipes to try. This week was an exciting week for Our VegiTable as Annie from An Unrefined Vegan (founder of the Virtual Vegan Potluck ) helped me to share some of the 2013 Virtual Vegan Potluck winning recipes . I highly recommend checking out the front page of Our VegiTable this week so you can snag these great recipes. These bloggers competed against hundreds of other bloggers for best recipe in their categories and won. These recipes are all keepers! xo Danielle

Wednesday was my birthday, so this past weekend I used the occassion as an excuse to get as many friends in one room as I could. Oh, and to make cupcakes -- an obscene number of cupcakes. I didn't just make a few -- I made four different kinds of them! There was chocolate-chocolate, very vanilla, lemon-vanilla and chocolate-peppermint.  And yes, they were all really good! The standout cupcake was definitely chocolate-peppermint. Its one of my favourite flavour combinations -- which I'm sure my readers are well aware of since almost all my recent posts have involved these flavours! But hey, its December and the Holiday Season screams for peppermint and chocolate, no? This frosting is not sugar-free but it is pretty healthy for frosting! And it's gluten-free and vegan! It's made mostly from unsweetened rice milk and avocado! Thanks to the addition of agar powder (AKA my new baking best friend) this frosting has an amazing thickness, creaminess and stability. It doesn...