Midsummer culinary experiences: 5-star vegan cake

I made such a delicious vegan chocolate-strawberry cake for my Midsummer party, that I need to post the recipe here. I think it might be the best cake I've done for a long time and the recipe will be definitely used again. In addition, it was quite easy and, in cake standards, it's almost healthy (only 1.5 dl of sugar, a bit of maple syrup, and 8 table spoons of coconut oil as the only oil used).

Mix the liquids:

1 tsp apple vinegar

6 tbs coconut oil

3 dl water

Mix the following and add to the liquid:

2 dl wheat flour

2 dl almond flour

0.5 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1.5 dl sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Bake in springform cake pan in 180°C for 30 min (use coconut oil for the sides of the pan and baking paper for the bottom).

Half the cake when it's well cooled down.

Make the chocolate filling:

2 ripe avocados

2.5 tbs cocoa powder

2 tbs coconut oil

3-4 tbs maple syrup

(water if necessary to make more fluid)

Spread the well mixed smooth filling on the other half of the cake, add strawberries cut in pieces.

Adjust carefully the other half of the cake on top and decorate with more strawberries and coconut flakes. 

Impress your guests and enjoy!

Coming up: a two-year escape to Brussels...

Oh man, only three blog entries this year! It's not like I haven't had anything to write about, the opposite actually; big and small escapes making it hard to find any time for blogging. 

Dolphin as seen in Naples beach, Florida. Oh, such a great thing to swim close to free dolphins playing wildly in the ocean.

I wanted to write about Myanmar before the big tourist groups enter the country or my recent trip to Washington and Florida;

Painting old chairs for kitchen.

I wanted to expand the content of my blog to interior design issues with the decoration boom I'm having in my new apartment;

The craziness of the amazing Shibuya crossing in Tokyo. What a wonderful and curious city!

I wanted to go through my thoughts about my encounter with the Japanese society; 

Andy Warhol exhibition in Sara Hildén art museum in Tampere was worth seeing -  especially for the photo I took of my parents with the Mao painting...

and I wanted to recommend cultural activities in Helsinki and elsewhere. 

Well, I wasn't able to follow my own guideline in blogging: keep it simple and short. If it's not simple and short, it's inexistent... 

Only two champagne glasses got broken during the housewarming party.

Less than a year ago, I bought this wonderful place in Käpylä (at least this is something I have written about) and in April we had a nice housewarming party with my flatmate. Now, six months later, I'm packing my stuff once again and embracing my new status as a landlady and Brussels resident :)

Enjoying the beginning of the hot summer in Café Esplanadi, Helsinki.

Brussels is calling. For the third time in my life, I'm moving to Brussels. As a consequence, October has been a month of goodbyes and little farewell parties. And today, on the day of departure, I need to wipe some tears.

The idea of leaving Helsinki after a gorgeous summer was a bit of a heartache but as the autumn is growing grey, the idea of being once again in the centre of Europe and living a bit of a cosmopolite life is increasingly appealing. Brussels may not be the coolest city in Europe - for sure, it is not - but it has some good qualities that I will enjoy greatly (hopefully, I will manage to write about them later). And those major disadvantages, like poor public transportation and awful biking opportunities, well, I guess I just need to learn to live with them. 

Autumn is now getting colder and darker, but I managed to enjoy some sunny autumn days in the forest - now, good to go...

Moving, especially moving to another country, can be an excellent place for making other changes in life as well. I'm thinking of new hobbies (argentine tango, painting, salsa?), more time for reading good novels and non-fiction (I still have that Piketty unread), and completely vegan diet (with some mussels, obviously). However, I also hope that I will find a good ashtanga yoga shala in Brussels. Yoga has truly been beneficial for my inner peace, clear mind and good physical health, therefore I would love to keep on practicing with good teachers. 

Getting my yoga mat from our yoga shala here was quite sad. It's been such an important place for me for the past two years. But what I have also recently realized is that I can be happy anywhere if I choose to do so.

Frog buddha in Florida... Don't take life too seriously, I think he says.

Munan korvaajat

I've often used the excuse that baking without eggs and dairy products is so difficult that I can't be a vegan. Well, after a successful vegan cheesecake, vegan biscuits and now vegan cupcakes, I have to admit that life without eggs is possible. Actually, this whole vegan cooking and baking starts to be a nice hobby.

By the way, I love that in my Finnish vegan cook book, there is a section called "munan korvaajat". It means "egg substitutes", but it can also mean "dick substitutes", which always makes a single lady smile... Indeed, what could be a better dick substitute than some delicious cupcakes? :)

I've started reading a vegan blog Chef Chloe by Chloe Coscarelli who won the American reality show Cupcake Wars with her vegan cupcakes. I tried her raspberry tiramisu cupcake recipe with some adjustments. In this recipe she replaces eggs with baking soda and vinegar. The funny thing is that the cupcakes were of very nice texture but actually had an eggy taste. Weird, but the baking soda + vinegar combination worked!

Here's the recipe if you wanna try my version of it.

12 cupcakes:

3 dl flour

2,5 dl cane sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

0,5 teaspoon salt

2 dl almond milk

0,5 dl canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Mix separately dry ingredients and wet ingredients, then pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture. Fill your silicon muffin molds 2/3 full. Bake for about 15-18 minutes in 225°C.

Strawberry sauce (raspberries were expensive):

200 g frozen strawberries 

1,5 dl cane sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

some lemon juice

Mix together in a saucepan and let simmer for some minutes. Let cool. Cut off the tops of the cupcakes, make a little hole with your fingers and pour some sauce into the hole. Place the hat back on top of the cupcake.

Frosting:

some espresso

a bit of almond liquor (if you happen to have some)

50 g vegetable margarine

enough powdered sugar to get the right level of liquidity-solidity

Mix together until smooth. Make the cupcakes pretty.

I enjoyed these cupcakes in a great company of a friend who is moving to New York (very appropriate to eat cupcakes in such an occasion) and naturally with some (might have been a bottle of...) champagne.

Small is beautiful

There has been a long silence in the blog front recently, or more precisely, in my personal presence here. I think I have too big ambitions and not enough time. I see myself as a New Yorker journalist (apologies for all the New Yorker journalists) and then I try to write something here between work and yoga classes. As you might have seen, it's not working. From now on, I will be focusing on small things only, that's it, on small escapes, god dammit! Or they can, and certainly will, be big things, but I will write about them in a smallish way.

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The objective for the new year, in addition to enjoying small things, is to eat more vegan, do more yoga and find my inner Zen. Indeed, it's New Age stuff, baby! Well, to be honest, it's about things that increase my wellbeing - both mental and physical. Very simple (and selfish?). I get angry, upset or annoyed by things that I cannot change or have an impact on. Why bother? Hence, the thing about finding my inner Zen is about priorities of emotions and actions. (Next year, I might write a self-help book - not!)

This means focusing on the first two things on the following list. Number three is a lost case, I'll try not to waste time on those things too much.

1. Things that I can decide upon myself.

2. Things that I have an impact on.

3. Things that I can't influence.

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Small things, like telling about the small beautiful events that made my day. That should be the point of this blog because I don't have (concentration) skills or time or energy for anything else (please, I do research at work, I can't do it in my blog). 

Yesterday, I saw this amazing film "The Beasts of the Southern Wild". A wonderful and truly beautiful film with great music and an incredible young girl, Quevenzhané Wallis, as the main actress. This film really had a huge impact on me. It's a magical film that tells us about the connection between humans and the nature. It was so funny and so sad. It had a grasp of the real world in a fantastical way. It is a film that you need to talk about with a friend afterwards - and those are the best films.