Vegan Waffles Easier said than done

After a year of debating and deciding and hesitating and changing our minds, Husband and I have finally decided that we are going to do our first home improvement on our vintage, as-is 1969 home.  It came to a head when I noticed that one of the sinks wasnt working properly so I took a wrench to it and discovered some rusty bits of crud blocking the filter which allows the water to come through.  We have known that it needed to be done, but those of you who have ever taken on home improvement know this - once you start, you cannot stop.  Beginning this process is like opening of floodgate of things we are going to have to fix.  New pipes.  New kitchen.  New bathrooms.  New carpeting.  Removing popcorn from ceiling.  Repainting interior and exterior. New windows.  New. New. New.  Replace. Replace.  Fix. Fix. Fix.  We were both reluctant to start the process, but start it we have, because of our urgency to get new pipes.  (The water pressure in this house is so poor, you would not believe.)

This evening I began the process of looking for the RIGHT plumber to do the job.  Unfortunately, due to the internet, a simple "find a plumber in the yellow pages" has turned into "Scour every single name on yelp and on Angies list until you go blind."  After 2 hours of trying to find someone, I gave up.  I cant do it.  The process overwhelms me and gives me the willies.  Too many choices, too many reviews, too many things to consider.  Ive been asking friends for recommendations and now, Im through.  Im not sure I have it in me to attack any level or any bit of this home renovation/fix-up/repair process because I cant stand the thought of choosing the wrong person or getting a bad deal (this second part is really Husband.)

Easier said than done.  Ive been waiting for the green light from Husband for a year, and now that I have it, I cant execute.  I cant act.  I cant take charge.  My head hurts from scrolling down all these different reviews, and I still dont have a SINGLE name Im interested in seeing for an estimate.  Easier said than done.

About 2 years ago, once Son became more cognizant about what our food was compared to what HIS food was, I put away the waffle iron.  I tried a couple of times to create a waffle that he would be able to eat, but failed a miserable several times.  Therefore, I tucked my favorite waffle iron way back in the pantry.  And left it there.  It was in Sons search for a missing lego piece last week (in our pantry - dont ask) that he discovered the iron and asked, "What is this mom?"

"Its a waffle iron honey."

"Waffles?  Whats that?"

"Kind of like a pancake.  You get to dip it in syrup."

"I want a waffle.  Can you make me a waffle mom?"

I looked at him and thought, yeah right.  Easier said than done.  After all, I had TRIED it already several times and they didnt come out right.  But he looked so excited about the waffle, I thought to myself, I could TRY again.  After all, my vegan pancakes are really good, so how much harder could creating a better waffle be?

I made them both on Saturday and Sunday.  I experimented with using some whole wheat flour mixed in with the white flour (wasnt thrilled with the whole wheat) and came up with this version. Children have asked for them for breakfast AGAIN tomorrow, so theyll be making an appearance for the THIRD day. This ended up being easier DONE than said. (Try saying "Vegan Waffle" 10 times really fast.  Wegan Vaffle comes out at some point.)

Just so you know - if you make the other waffles on my blog (here), these are different.  Eggs add a bit of tender chewiness that is missing in the vegan version.  I tried to combat it unsuccessfully with bananas the last time I tried, and this time, I went with the vegan pancake method of simply leaving out any sort of egg substitute.  This is also a method Ive used with vegan cupcakes, so it seemed as if it would make sense.  These have a crispier, almost cracker like quality, with a bit of moist fluffiness in the middle.  Ive also shredded ham and sprinkled it on top of the waffle right before pressing down the top (which eliminates the vegan factor I know) and it was a bit of salty tender chewiness on top of crispy crunchy waffle dipped in gooey sweet maple syrup.  If youre curious about that one, Ill try to post more details (with photos) later.

Vegan Waffles
Makes 4 to 6 waffles, depending on your iron

Ingredients
3 cups all purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

2 ½ cups coconut milk (Trader Joe’s brand or So Delicious Brand in the carton) (almond or soy is also fine)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Method
Preheat waffle iron. Allow it to get super hot.

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. To the dry mix, add coconut milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract. Using a wooden spoon or spatula (not a whisk) carefully mix together, trying NOT to create too many bubbles. Go gently and slowly until mixture is nice and smooth and uniform in texture.

If desired, grease waffle iron with cooking oil spray. (This is optional, but it does help speed up a golden crust.) Carefully scoop enough mixture (only you know your waffle maker) into your preheated iron and allow to cook until golden brown. My waffle iron beeps a minute too early for my choice of golden waffles. I just watch for a reduction in the steam coming out from the sides of the iron. Lots of steam means it still needs more time.

Serve warm with fresh fruit and lots of wonderful maple syrup.

Printable recipe

My beloved Villaware Waffle Maker isnt being sold anymore, but this one got fantastic reviews and I love the flip action (for more even cooking and spreading.)

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Apricot Almond Shortbread Bars When the now becomes more important than the future

When I normally look at Children, I spend time thinking and planning all the different things Im going to do, say, teach, train them to do so that they can become some sort of figment-of-my-imagination-super human being in some distant future.  I evaluate, plan, and consider old activities, new activities, and still newer challenges and opportunities Id like them to have.  The task and goal is to see their future, and move them onto the path that  they are supposed to be on.

This means that I dont spend a lot of time appreciating where they are, right now, in the moment.  I take a moment to evaluate where they are and then think about where they need to be, but I never see how far theyve come.  I never look back and think about their progress, their growth, or their amazingness right now.

However, over the past 10 days, due to some choices Husband and I have to make about the future, Ive been forced to study, evaluate, and appreciate where Children are right now.  And Im blown away.  This is not about praising Husband and my parenting skills, or what phenomenal programs weve managed to find for Children to make them great.  This is simply about them.  Their character.  Their personality.  Their motivation.  Their resolve.  Their resilience.  Their joy. Their curiosity.  Their intelligence.  Their spark.  Their childhood. 

Its been a bit of a heart wrenching and soul searching time for me trying to make some choices, but its at the same time been a huge blessing to me to think about Children and to thank God for making them who they are.  Special.  Perfect.  Wonderful.  Mine. 

I had all three Children home today, and although there were crazy moments of crankiness, and a moment of extreme frustration as I discovered the stove top was broken, I tried to spend more time appreciating them in the "right now" instead of thinking only of the "what do they have to do."  Together we made some of these yummy simple treats, and Daughters passed them out to their piano teachers.

Apricot Almond Shortbread Bars
(adapted from Ina Garten’s Foolproof)
Makes 9x13 pan, about 16 to 20 bars, depending on how you cut them

Ingredients
2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ? cups flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt
12 to 15 ounces good apricot jam
1 cup sliced almonds

Method
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer with a paddle attachment or in a bowl where you will use your hand mixer.  Mix on medium speed until just combined.  With mixer on low, add vanilla.

Sift flour and salt together and, with the mixer on low, slowly add to the butter mixture, mixing until it almost comes together in a ball.

Lightly pat 2/3 of the dough evenly on the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan (Ina Garten uses a 9 inch square pan)  Spread the jam on top of dough, leaving ¼ inch border.

Mix almonds into remaining dough with your hands.  Crumble and mix together into small bits and distribute on top of jam, covering most of surface.  Bake bars for 45 minutes, or lightly browned.

Cool completely and cut into 16 to 20 bars.

Printable recipe

Another something to savor and appreciate - just the way it is at this moment.

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Glazed Blueberry Lemon Pan Cake More than the loser mom in the snapshot

For all the moms who try to do it all and more...without cracking.  For KY and her encouraging words.

The pressure for moms to be great reaches a feverish pitch at the end of the school year.  With the "wrap up" activities surrounding graduations, promotions, yearbooks, end-of-year parties, boat cruises, end-of-year teachers presents and juggling full time work, husbands, family, and other commitments, the chance to do it all dramatically reduces to a statistical impossibility.  

My solution during this time is to hide in a hole.  Thats actually what Id like to do, but I dont do that.  I did, however, in the midst of a crazy teaching day, have to schedule 3 dental appointments, 3 doctors appointments, and 3 allergist appointments, and I chose to do that by turning on the TV for Children and shutting the door to my office so I could speak, uninterrupted, and try to put 9 different appointments in a two week period into a calendar that threatens to blow up every time I open it up.  Son came in to ask me if he could watch one more show, and I thundered at him, "DO NOT INTERRUPT ME WHEN IM ON THE PHONE" to which he looked abashed and began to cry.  It was not a good moment.

And over the weekend, I heard another story from my friend who sheepishly told a group of moms her loser mom moment, when she ignored a series of blaring reminders on email to order yearbooks for the end of the year.  She ignored the emails, forgot to order a yearbook, and on the second to last day of school, her daughter walked in, with a seriously dismayed look on her face, and says, "Mom!  How could you not order me a yearbook?  The teacher gave us 10 minutes in class today to sign other peoples yearbooks and I was the ONLY ONE WITHOUT A YEARBOOK!"  Bear in mind that her daughter is the sweetest, most undemanding child Ive ever met.  (When she was 2.5 years old, if she was tired, she just put on her pjs, walked into her own bedroom, crawled into her own crib, and would go to sleep.  On.  Her.  Own. )  Her daughter finished with, "I never ask you for anything, and there is only one thing I asked for all year long, and that is a YEARBOOK."  My friend called it her loser mom moment.

Just the other day, I had our pastor come to our house, and somehow, in the flurry of emails that were sent between us all, I somehow missed that the Pastor and his family would be eating dinner at our home.  I had a particularly grueling teaching day going on 5 hours, and I managed to get a cake together for the pastors visit, and a simple dinner for the kids of fish sticks and roasted potatoes.  I didnt even really prepare dinner for myself.  What ended up happening will go down as a mildly mortifying moment of my life.  The pastors family hadnt eaten, I dug in my fridge and came up with kale soybean stew, and I offered what I had, a very very simple rice and soup dinner with kimchi.  It was graciously accepted, but inside I was very red in the face.  How did I miss this key fact that I was cooking dinner?

But it was today, as I berated myself for losing my temper during my marathon doctors appointment scheduling fest, my friend gave me some lovely words.  "You are not a snapshot.  You are a sum total of all your actions."  And I realize that oftentimes, moms are judged and judge themselves most harshly for their snapshots rather than the sum total of their actions.  I yelled at my son, but the entire day we had a wonderful time together.  I apologized for yelling at him and he understood.  My friend forgot to buy her daughters yearbook, but has never forgotten to feed her, clothe her, or pick her up from school.  She is more than the mom who forgot the yearbook.  I forgot to feed my pastor.  Im mortified.  But Ive also baked for my church almost every single weekend for the past three months.  I am more than the woman who forgot to feed my pastor.

So I leave you, my fellow overworked, underpaid, over-stressed, under-relaxed, over-committed, under-leisured moms with encouraging words as we finish out a hectic month of the end of the school year.

We are the sum of our actions, not the snapshot. And the sum of the actions of the women and mothers I know is pretty phenomenal.

As a side note, this is the cake that I made on the day I forgot to feed my pastor.  And I think that THIS cake combined with the missing dinner makes me a pretty decent person.  (This is how I justify my actions to myself at night.)  Its light, lemony, simple to make (in a pan) and the light glaze on top is the final simple touch.

Glazed Lemon Blueberry Pan Cake

Makes a 9x13 pan, serving about 12 people

Cake

Ingredients

2 cups regular sugar

2 tablespoon lemon zest

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

4 large eggs (taken out of the fridge the same time as the butter)

1 cup buttermilk

3 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups washed fresh blueberries, picked over

1 tablespoon flour (to sprinkle over blueberries before adding blueberries to batter)

Method

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a 9x13 pan.

In a food processor, pulverize together lemon zest and sugar.  (Doing so releases the lemon oils.)  In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, blend softened butter and lemon sugar until thoroughly combined.  Add eggs, one at a time and beat until well mixed, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is well blended. 

Add half of flour mixture and mix until just combined. and add half of buttermilk and mix until just combined. Scrape down sides of the bowl.  Add remaining half of flour mixture, mix until just combined and then add remaining buttermilk.  Mix until just combined.again.  At this stage, the less you mix the better for your cake.  (too much mixing makes for a tough cake.)  

In a small bowl, toss blueberries with flour.  Once the blueberries are lightly, gently fold them into the cake batter.

Pour batter into greased 9x13 pan.  Bake cake for 45 to 50 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.  Once cake is cool, then make glaze.  (Do not glaze cake until completely cool.)

Lemon Glaze

Ingredients

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

ONLY make glaze once cake is completely cooled.  Mix together powdered sugar and lemon juice.  After mixture fully comes together, pour over cake top and spread with a knife.  Allow sugar coating to settle onto cake, with a bit of a shell.

Printable recipe

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Chocolate Brownie Cookies Sharing is more than just caring

Ive noticed a disturbing trend in recent months.  People are reluctant to share and Im not speaking about children; Im speaking about ADULTS.  Fully grown, semi-mature human beings are unwilling to share.  Of course there are things that people share too much about - their lives, their bathroom habits, the ways they like to eat their potato chips, but there are those things that we should share MORE of that people have stopped sharing.

Goodness.

Kindness.

Sound advice.

Good ideas.

I recently received a message from a woman I dont know well who messaged saying she wondered how I could willingly share my curriculum enrichment ideas with everyone on my Facebook instead of saving it for myself.  She thought it odd that Id like to SHARE some new ideas Ive had with other people, which I do in hopes that other people will find it useful.  The messaging conversation ended with her pointing out that I was taking away an "edge" that I could offer my own children in order to help other people.  I think essentially she wanted me to share with HER but not everyone else.  She wanted to pick my brain but not have my brain available to everyone.

The conversation disturbed me for a little bit but then I shrugged it off.  I know for a fact that by sharing interesting math ideas or analogy workbooks with the parents of the friends of my children that I am, in fact, HELPING my own kids.  Id like everyone to have an opportunity to elevate and challenge their thinking about teaching and learning and I know that in doing so, everyone benefits, including my own children, and not to their detriment.  (Currently the math book idea Im sharing is this one,  inexpensive and a fun way to spend time with your kids.)

Sharing IS caring.  Sharing benefits not only the recipient but the giver as well.  Sharing is far more of an exciting trend than "getting the edge" or "keeping a secret" for myself.  So with that - Im sharing this fantastic cookie recipe that has blown the minds of everyone who has eaten it.  Its a recipe that Im happy to say comes from a local SF phenomenal pastry chef, Belinda Leong, who has a stunning patisserie in the city.  The trek is well worth it and the pastries immaculately made and presented.  She shared this recipe to Food and Wine, which I made more than a few times in the past weekend, and now Im sharing it with you.  I could hoard it, keep it to myself, charge people double in order to have the honor to TASTE these babies, but I share it.  So that you can enjoy it at home.  So that you can make it at home and share with others.

These cookies are fudgy, gooey, moist, delicious, and like a brownie but in a cookie.   The major issue is timing as you have to freeze the dough in order for it to be workable in the oven, and it has to rest on cookie sheets before you move them around.  My recipe version has slight adjustments to deal with the home baker, and photos to accompany to help you along your way.

Chocolate Brownie Cookies
adapted from Food and Wine Magazine and Belinda Leong
Makes 3 dozen cookies (recipe easily doubled)

Ingredients
2 ? cups semisweet chocolate chips (or a mix of bittersweet and semisweet) (16 ozs of chocolate chips.  Most bags are 12 oz, so you’ll need a bag and ? cups more.  I use the extra large bag of semisweet from Costco.)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (½ stick of butter)
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 ½  cups sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon espresso powder (optional, but really brings out the chocolate)
¼  teaspoon salt
½  cup all-purpose flour
½  teaspoon baking powder
One 12-ounce bag semisweet chocolate chips (to be folded into the chocolate cookie dough at the end)

Method
In a bowl, place 16 oz (2 ? cups of chocolate chips) and ½ stick of butter in a bowl to be set over boiling water.  Melt chocolate and butter together until smooth and uniform, about 8 minutes.  The mixture will not be runny but more thick and creamy.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder.  Set aside.

In a bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, on medium speed, beat together eggs and sugar until thick and pale, about 5 minutes. Add vanilla extract.  Fold in chocolate mixture.  Add espresso powder.  Carefully fold in flour mixture.  Finally add chocolate chips.  Stir carefully.  Pour mixture into a shallow dish and cover and freeze for about 1 hour. If you’d prefer to bake mixture off another day, then simply cover and place dough in the refrigerator and it will be ready to scoop after it has chilled.

Preheat oven to 350.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.  Scoop 2 tablespoon-sized mounds of dough, placing them 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.  Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, until cookies are dry around the edges and crinkled on top.  Allow cookies to rest in baking pan for 10 minutes before removing them carefully to a cooling rack.

People will be tempted to eat them warm.  Let them.  They also taste amazing fully cooled.  If you happen to have some leftover, let them fully cool and store them in an airtight container.

Printable recipe

a completely shareable treat

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