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.