veganmofo.2.1: My Favourite Green Smoothie

Back home, I used to make overly-complicated smoothies. Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink smoothies. I think my usual was something like: 1 banana, 1/2 avocado, a huge handful of kale (sometimes some sprouts as well), some blueberries, some almond butter or tahini, ground flax, some hemp protein powder, and enough almond milk to make it smoothie-consistency.

Here, I can't be so elaborate with my smoothie, having so little space and all. At the most basic, it consists of a handful of spinach, 1 or 2 bananas, and water. That is the bare-bones minimum though. I have a smoothie most mornings for/with breakfast, and it satisfies the old sugar monkey quite nicely.

One morning this past weekend, my friend who lives down the hall had a nasty hangover and wanted a healthy, light breakfast, so I made an extra smoothie and gave it to her. This is the evidence mid-smoothie-making (I usually do blender stuff on the floor because the power cord for it is too short for my desk/counter):

And here is the finished smoothie, just before taking it over to my friend:

Ingredients: 1 handful of spinach, 1 1/2 banana, a couple of cubes of frozen mango, a big tablespoon of hemp seeds, and a mix of soymilk and water to make it smoothie-consistency.

Christmas Buns

I’ve been cooking and baking up a storm since the winter break started, but a bit lazy on the posting part. But there’s more to come, I assure you! I few days before Christmas, I woke up craving cinnamon buns for breakfast (hey, it’s the holidays!). Fortunately I found Mihl’s recipe featuring (as you must already know, my favourite spice) cardamom! They were quick (apart from the rising time) easy to make, and delicious. After eating and sharing that batch of the little goodies, I decided to play around with the recipe and make another batch for my friend whom I was to see on Christmas eve. Here’s my modified version, which is lovely (if I do say so myself) but be sure to try the original recipe too!

Christmas Buns

Dough:

1 ½ cups flour

¼ cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup almond meal

1 teaspoon cardamom

1/3 cup margarine

½ cup almond milk

½ package active dry yeast

zest of 2 clementines or mandarins

Filling:

2 tablespoons margarine

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon cardamom

¼ cup dried cranberries

Melt the margarine in a small saucepan, add the almond milk, then remove from heat and allow to cool. Meanwhile, combine flours, almond meal and cardamom in a bowl. Add yeast to the still-slightly-warm saucepan mixture and let sit for 5 minutes. Then add the clementine zest and combine with the dry ingredients. Knead dough for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a bowl, cover and let rise for at least half an hour.

When dough is risen, mix all of the filling ingredients together, except the cranberries. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and oil a baking sheet. Roll the dough into a rectangle (the bigger the better, but this stuff isn’t easy to roll out). Spread filling on top, then sprinkle with cranberries. Now roll into a log and cut into 10 pieces. Place rolls on the baking sheet and let rise for another half hour. Pop it into the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!

Olive Biscuits

I've been busy these past couple of weeks, finishing up my summer job, doing teaching assistant work, and getting ready to go back to school. I really really hope I can manage to keep up this blog during the school year!

I've also been experimenting with making savoury baked goods, inspired by recipes like these. I figure they're a good way to satisfy my baking monkey and make good and healthy snacks and additions to bagged lunches. So far all of my attempts at savoury muffins have failed miserably, but I'm still working on it. And then I decided to try savoury biscuits and came up with these, based on this recipe. They were a great success!

Olive Biscuits

2 - 2 ½ cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons flax meal mixed with 6 tablespoons water
1 ¼ cups soy yogurt + extra for brushing on the tops of the biscuits
¾ cup olive oil
1 cup kalamata olives, chopped
5 stalks green onion, thinly sliced
1 handful fresh mint, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray one large baking sheet or two smaller ones, and set aside. In a large bowl, sift together the flours (starting with 2 cups white) and baking powder. Make a well in the middle and add all remaining ingredients. Mix and then knead the dough until it is soft and workable, adding up to ½ cup flour to get the right consistency. Shape into small balls (about ¼ cup’s worth of dough), place on the baking sheet, brush with yogurt, and bake for about 30 minutes, until golden on top.

Plum Pear Cardamom Crisp

Perhaps not the most summery thing to make, but I was up early on a Sunday morning listening to Joanna Newsom, and I happened to have some plums and lots of pears (but alas, no peaches), and then this was invented, based on the Apple Cherry Crisp recipe from The Everyday Vegan by Dreena Burton. Enjoy!

Plum Pear Cardamom Crisp

Fruit mixture:
5 pears, sliced
2 plums, sliced
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
seeds of half a vanilla bean (or maybe 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1 teaspoon cardamom
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 dash nutmeg
1 dash salt

Crisp topping:
1 cup rolled oats
¼ cup hazelnuts
1 teaspoon cardamom
seeds of half a vanilla bean (or maybe 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1 dash salt
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all fruit mixture ingredients in a lightly oiled baking dish, mix well and set aside (you could do it in another bowl first, but I’m lazy and this way works). Now grind the hazelnuts in a food processor. Add the oats, cardamom, vanilla seeds and salt and process until the oats are mostly ground. Now mix the maple syrup and oil in with your fingers. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the fruit mixture, lightly pat it down, and put the dish in the oven. Bake for about 35 minutes, until bubbling around the edges and lightly browned. Serve with some yogurt or ice cream.

Roasted Potatoes with Pumpkin Seed-Arugula Pesto and Peas

Ok, I'll admit that I'm not actually that original - I tried yummy roasted pesto-potatoes at this restaurant in Victoria, and I thought to myself, "I could do this at home pretty easily," and then I did. And I got the idea for making arugula pesto from this recipe - I love basil pesto as much as the next person, but I can't grow basil in my garden and it's kind of expensive to buy. But the rest is all me.

This is great pretty much any time of day - as a breakfast side dish, a dinner side dish, or a snack. And the pesto on its own makes a yummy sandwich spread.


Roasted Potatoes with Pumpkin Seed-Arugula Pesto and Peas

The Pesto part:

½ cup raw pumpkin seeds
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste)
¼ cup nutritional yeast
3 cloves garlic, sliced
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 large bunch of arugula

Toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry skillet for a couple of minutes (until they start to color), then grind them in a food processor. Add all the other ingredients except arugula and blend until very smooth, then add the arugula and blend again.

The Potato and Pea part:

1 1/2 - 2 lbs potatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks (I used halved baby potatoes)
1/2 cup pumpkin seed-arugula pesto
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste (depends on the saltiness of the pesto)
freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 cup fresh or frozen peas

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Toss the potatoes, the 3 tablespoons pumpkin seed-arugula pesto, olive oil, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Spread on a lightly oiled baking dish and bake for 30 minutes, tossing every 10-15 minutes. Add the peas, toss, and bake for another 15-20 minutes, until golden and tender.

Pestotatoes, anyone?

Spiced Rhubarb-Apple-Almond Bread Pudding

If you’ve found yourself with some slightly stale bread and don’t want to just throw it out, take a cue from Laura Matthias (author of Extraveganza, one of my favourite cookbooks) and make bread pudding! All you have to do is cube the bread and leave it out in the open air to dry out (if it’s not in the open air then it might mold, and no one wants that). Once you’ve collected enough dried bread, you can make a bread pudding with it. This is one that I made recently:

Spiced Rhubarb-Apple-Almond Bread Pudding

5 cups cubed, stale bread
1 ½ cups rhubarb, chopped
2 apples, chopped (I didn’t bother peeling them, but you could if you wanted to)
¾ cup demerara sugar
½ cup water
2 – 2 ½ cups almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 good pinch each of allspice, cloves and nutmeg
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
1 tablespoon arrowroot
1 apple, sliced (for topping)
1 cup almond slivers or chopped almonds (for topping)

Place the bread in a casserole baking dish and set aside. Combine the rhubarb, apples, sugar and water in a saucepan. Simmer for 10 or so minutes, until the rhubarb and apples can be mashed easily. Place the saucepan ingredients in a blender and add everything except the bread and topping ingredients, blending until smooth (or you can put them in a bowl and blend with a hand-held blender, like I did). Pour this mixture over the bread and allow to sit for 30-45 minutes, preheating the oven to 350 degrees toward the end of that time. If all the liquid seems to have been absorbed by then, add some more almond milk and stir gently. Now sprinkle the top with ¾ of the almonds, arrange the apple slices on top of the almonds, and finish by sprinkling on the remainder of the almonds. Bake for about an hour.


I used rye bread for the pudding, which I think made it especially flavourful. While it can be eaten by itself, in my opinion it tastes best with either warmed almond milk or some vegan custard or vanilla sauce – delicious!

(Why is my custard sauce so yellow? I don't know)

A note on the sauce:

Not that you need a recipe for making custard sauce, but here’s what I do:

I heat about 2/3 of a cup of almond milk in a small saucepan until almost boiling. Meanwhile, I whisk 2 teaspoons of vegan custard powder and 1 teaspoon of cane sugar with a couple of tablespoons of almond milk in a small bowl until very smooth. Then I whisk the custard mixture into the saucepan and continue to whisk for a couple of minutes (or else it lumps up) and then I take it off the heat and stir in a couple of crops of almond or vanilla extract (and pour some of it over my bread pudding – there’s lots extra, of course)

Before I had custard powder, I made vanilla sauce – I basically did the same thing as above, only instead of custard powder I added 2 teaspoons of arrowroot. I also added probably twice as much sugar and a full ½ teaspoon of vanilla, and a small pinch of salt as well.

Collard Chips, and Sprouts in a Smoothie

So much green stuff, it's not even funny (or maybe it is, I don't know). I went to the farmer's market on the weekend and got a little over-excited about all the new and beautiful greens available; I bought myself one large bunch of collards, a bag of mixed baby greens, a big bag of baby kale, one bunch of dinosaur kale, and one bunch of arugula (I'm sure the farmer thought I was feeding a small family, but it was all for myself). Add to that the fact that I almost always have a jar of sprouts growing in my kitchen (and sometimes forget about them), and that is a lot of green stuff to go through in one week! So, I've been looking for alternative ways to use these things up, and here's what I've come up with lately:


I've known about kale chips for a while, but I never tried them before. Collards seemed like they could work too, and they definitely did - crispy, salty, and papery-thin (not good for dipping, but great on their own). I won't pretend that this is a very original recipe, but here it is:

Collard Chips

1 large bunch collard leaves, stems removed and cut into 3-inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ -1/2 teaspoon salt (depends how salty you want them)
freshly-ground pepper to taste
2 teaspoons nutritional yeast

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Toss all ingredients in a large bowl until oil and seasonings are evenly distributed amongst the greens, and then spread out on 1 or 2 cookie sheets, making sure no leaves overlap. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until dry and crispy.

I tried to make a green smoothie with sprouts in it a couple of times, and it took some experimenting to come up with something that has enough sweetness and creaminess to somewhat mask the fact that there's sprouts in there. This may be a creamier smoothie than some people are used to, but honestly, it's one of the best I've ever had.


Green Smoothie with Sprouts and Kale

3 baby kale leaves
1/4 cup sprouts (I had a mixture of mung beans, azuki beans, chickpeas, red radish seeds and fenugreek, but that's just what I happened to have in my fridge)
1/2 cup mango nectar (any kind of fruit juice would probably work)
1 frozen banana
1/2 an avocado
1 teaspoon flax oil
1 tablespoon mint leaves (optional)
enough almond milk to thin it out, probably 1/4 - 1/2 cup

Blend the kale, sprouts and nectar/juice in a very good blender or a food processor for a couple of minutes, until it looks a uniform green. Then add the rest of the ingredients and blend again. Then fill your favourite glass (oh yeah, and it has to have a mustache on it or it doesn't count) and raise it up!

Danish Braid v.2 – Rhubarb-Coconut-Pistachio and Almond

I still had the rest of that Danish dough in the freezer from the end of April, and I knew I had to use it soon. I was planning on making a nut-cream filling, but then I went to the farmer’s market and picked up some rhubarb, and it was practically hollering at me to use it in the Danish braid. And when rhubarb hollers at you, you gotta do what it says.

So I made two smaller braids with the rest of my dough, one was the (maybe) more-traditional almond cream with tosca-style almond topping, and the other was rhubarb-coconut (with a hint of orange) and pistachio topping.

Almond Cream Filling (only slightly altered from the Macadamia Crème recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance)

½ cup blanched, roasted almonds
scant ¼ cup almond milk
¼ cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
½ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon arrowroot

Grind the almonds in a food processor until as finely ground as possible. Add the almond milk and blend to form a thick paste. Add the sugar and extracts, and blend again. While continuing to blend, add the oil in a thin stream. Then add the arrowroot, and blend again. Transfer to a container and refrigerate until cold.


Rhubarb Coconut Filling

1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped
1/8 cup water
¼ cup cane sugar (or less if you want a more breakfast-like Danish braid)
juice and zest of ½ an orange
1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 teaspoon arrowroot

Combine the rhubarb, water, sugar, and orange in a small saucepan. Simmer for 5-10 minutes, until the rhubarb can easily be mashed with a fork. Mash the rhubarb, add the coconut and cook for a minute or so. Add the arrowroot, mix it all together and remove from heat. Let cool, transfer to a container and then refrigerate until cold.

After letting the dough thaw in the fridge for a couple of days, I rolled it out to ¼ inch thickness and split it into two rectangles. I then followed the rest of my directions for making the Danish braid. The only thing different that I did was to add a topping. I used the Tosca Topping from Tofu for Two’s Tosca Cupcakes (will I ever tire of that blog? not any time soon) for the almond braid, and I followed the same directions, substituting chopped pistachios for the slivered almonds, for the rhubarb-coconut pistachio braid. After rotating the pan in the oven and turning down the oven heat, I pulled the braids out and spooned on the toppings, then put them bake in the oven until they were done (it took about the same length of time as it did for the larger braid). That was it! Not too much work for something so delicious.


Unfortunately the rhubarb-coconut pistachio braid opened up after I put the topping on. Maybe the weight was too much for it to handle? Oh well, it still tasted damn good.

And no, I don’t eat portions the size of the ones you see at the top! I’ve decided to bring half of both of them to the people at work tomorrow, so I won’t eat them all myself (and I’ll freeze some, too).

Happy 1st of June!

Yellow Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

I devised this as a way to help use up a copious amount of berry soy yogurt I had acquired earlier. The flavour reminds me of a blueberry bundt cake that my mom made when I was little. Actually, this batter would probably make a pretty decent bundt cake as well.


Yellow Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

1 cup of spelt flour
½ cup sugar (I used demerara, but cane sugar would probably up the yellow-ness)
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cardamom (optional – I love cardamom and you can’t stop me from adding it to everything)
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup berry soy yogurt
2 tablespoons flax meal
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon canola oil
zest of one lemon
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 tablespoons demerara sugar, for sprinkling on top (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, mixing well. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix, but not too much (to avoid gumminess). Fold in the blueberries. Pour into a sprayed muffin tin, filling ¾ of the way up. Sprinkle tops with demerara sugar. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Makes 9-10 muffins.

Camping + Food

I just got back from camping on Vancouver Island and it was beautiful and fun! But I will bypass the beautiful and the fun part and talk about the food. My camping companions were all non-vegans, so they told me in advance what they had planned to make/eat on the trip and I armed myself so that I wouldn’t feel like I was missing out on any of it. It was agonizing having to decide what to take only because there were so many possibilities! I wish I could make a fire in my backyard and pretend I’m camping just so I can try all the camp foods that I wanted to try. Those people who think vegans have a limited diet, they are crazy.

I went a little overboard with the food-making and ended up with enough to feed four Angelas, but that is okay because now I don’t have to cook for the rest of the week. For pre-made things, I brought vegan marshmallows (which I had ordered online from Pangea and miraculously arrived at the very very last minute, making me appreciate them that much more) and tofurky sausages for roasting over the fire (because I prefer them to veggie dogs any day). For homemade things I brought raw vegetables and almond-red-pepper hummus, potato salad, balsamico roasted vegetables for roasting over the fire, kering tempe, pancake mix, hazelnut fig granola, apples and pears, and Nanaimo bars (because I’m a dork and liked the idea of eating Nanaimo bars in Nanaimo).


Here I must admit that this was definitely car-camping and not back-woods camping. We had running water nearby and there was a truck that came around selling firewood fairly regularly. But it was still fun, and a nice break. My companions even brought a can of whipped cream for putting on their homemade crepes for breakfast on the first morning. I, meanwhile, enjoyed my sunny seedy orange pancakes (I prepared the wet and dry ingredients separately and then combined them along with the OJ right before frying) with chopped strawberries and maple syrup.


Everyone loved the potato salad.


Roasting the vegetables was a fun time. I had prepared them in their marinade and wrapped them in tinfoil and put in ziplock baggies before I left. Once the fire got going and a bed of coals built up, we put the tinfoil bundles on the coals and then put wood on top to seal in the heat (and thus I learned how the first oven originated :P). They took slightly less time to cook than in my home oven.


The Nanaimo bars also went over really well, but sorry, no photos ☹.

Other things we made (everyone) were: fire-roasted baby potatoes, asparagus and zucchini (with simply oil, salt and pepper to season), and banana boats (banana stuffed with marshmallows and chocolate bits). And there were of course roasted plain marshmallows, roasted tofurky sausages, and lots of camp coffee (the first time I’ve had coffee in a long while – a rare indulgence). Mmmm, camp food…

Hazelnut Fig Granola

I adore figs and hazelnuts, and even more in combination. I’ve been dreaming of combining them in granola-form for a while now, and while I was trying to figure out what to take on my recent camping trip, I decided to go for it. Here’s what I came up with, using this recipe as a loose base:

Hazelnut Fig Granola

2 cups rolled oats (although I was thisclose to using barley flakes…maybe next time…)
½ cup flour (I used brown rice flour)
1/3 cup chopped hazelnuts
½ cup flax meal
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons hazelnut butter
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup chopped dried figs (I prefer black mission figs)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil/spray a rimmed baking sheet and set aside. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, hazelnuts, flour, flax, and salt. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the hazelnut butter, oil, molasses and maple syrup until emulsified. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well. Spread out on the baking sheet and bake for approximately 25 minutes, stirring every 5-10 minutes, until lightly browned. Once taken out of the oven, stir in the figs and voila, done!

Banana-Blue-Bread

I had some bananas to use up, and I was inspired by this recipe to make some banana bread with cardamom in it (because cardamom is my favourite spice in the whole world!). I think blueberries go pretty well with cardamom so I added them in, and I made some modifications so I could use maple syrup instead of the sugar (I’m taking a break from any type of cane sugar for the time being). Oh and I used spelt flour too. Here is the adapted version:

Banana-Blue-Bread

¼ cup coconut milk
1/3 cup almond milk
½ cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon coconut oil (or any kind of vegetable oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ripe bananas
2 heaping cups spelt flour
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Oil/spray a loaf pan. Blend together the coconut milk, almond milk, maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla and bananas. In a large bowl, combine the spelt flour, cardamom, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just mixed. Fold in the blueberries. Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Tip: If the top starts to brown up before it’s ready, put a piece of tinfoil over it so it doesn’t brown too much.

Sunny Seedy Orange Pancakes with Maple-Molasses Sauce

Warning: only for adventurous cooks or crazy vegan health nuts.


Ok, maybe this combination is just bizarre and I’ve gone too far in combining weird-vegan-health-food ingredients (do you ever get confused and think that what’s good for you tastes good just because you know that it’s good for you? Am I the only one?), but I thought it was pretty tasty.

See, I had Sweet Potato with Cinnamon Drizzle for breakfast yesterday, and I was thinking about how using all-molasses for the drizzle made the flavour a tad strong, and it was also a bit thicker than I would have liked (not to dis the recipe – it was overall pretty yummy). However, I like molasses quite a bit and think that, with all its calcium and iron, I should include it in my diet more often.

Then I woke up this morning craving pancakes. But I also wanted something that would sustain me for a while. I find that plain vegan pancakes (as much as I love them) tend to make me feel heavy and sleepy - not exactly an energizing breakfast.

So I came up with these – the pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and chickpea flour add protein, the flax meal adds omega-3, and the orange juice goes well with the nuttiness and adds some sweetness. And there is no refined flour or sugar, and very little fat (as far as pancakes go). Orange and molasses seemed like a good combination, so I made the sauce, which adds calcium, iron, and more omega-3. So this is something that you can feel good about putting in your body. You may be thinking, ‘this can’t possibly taste remotely good, with all those weird health-food ingredients’ but I assure you that, as long as you don’t mind the idea of some seedy crunch in your pancakes and you like molasses, you will like these. And if you don’t like molasses (wuss!) then use maple syrup, apple butter or whatever else you want instead.

Sunny Seedy Orange Pancakes

¾ cup spelt flour
¼ cup chickpea flour
2 tablespoons flax meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup pumpkin seeds
¼ cup black sesame seeds
½ cup orange juice
1/3 cup non-dairy milk (I used almond)
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 teaspoon maple syrup
cooking spray

Combine the dry ingredients (flour through seeds) in a large bowl, mixing well. Add the orange juice and give a couple of quick stirs. Add the remainder of the wet ingredients and stir as little as possible to combine everything (you don’t want gummy pancakes!).

Preheat a pan lightly coated with cooking spray. Drop ¼ cup batter into the pan for each pancake (mine fit three at a time) spreading out a bit with the back of a spoon. Cook for a couple of minutes, until the edges of the pancake darken a bit, then flip and cook the other side. Spray the pan between batches.

Serve with some orange slices and Maple-Molasses Sauce (unless you’re a wuss). Makes enough for two people (6 little pancakes)

Maple-Molasses Sauce

3 tablespoons maple syrup
3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons hempseed oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and pour over pancakes. Makes enough for two people (6 little pancakes)

I’m happy to report that, having eaten these several hours ago, I didn’t feel heavy at all – these are truly nourishing, tasty pancakes. Happy Sunday!

Naked Man Strawberry Cake with Almond Icing

Back home, when strawberry season lasted for only two or three weeks, my mom would buy me a ton of strawberries and I would get really excited eating them and trying to figure out what else to do with so many strawberries. This recipe (slightly modified over the years) was always made around this time. Now that I’m in Vancouver, I have a feeling I’ll be making this more than once or twice a year – the other day I got 2 lbs of strawberries for three dollars! Crazy!

You may be wondering about the name of the cake. Well, in this song by the Sugarcubes, Bjork is singing about this woman who finds an unhappy naked man in her flat, and he climbs onto the roof, so she pleads, “naked man, naked man, calm down! I-I’ll give you some strawberry cake”.

So if you find any suicidal naked men on your roof, I think this cake would be a pretty good way of enticing them down and giving them some hope. It’s definitely contentment-inducing, and it tastes like summer (to me, at least). It’s pretty healthy, as far as cakes go – not a fancy decadent cake, but it is not the place of every cake to be fancy and decadent. Makes a good afternoon tea cake, or a sweet breakfast. It doesn’t even really need icing – you could just leave it off, or try something like the crumble topping in this recipe, but with almonds instead of cashews.


Naked Man Strawberry Cake

1 ½ cups flour (I did half and half all-purpose and spelt, and it was great – next time I’ll try all spelt and see how that goes, but all-all-purpose works as well)
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2/3 cup cane sugar
¾ cup non-dairy milk (I used almond)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract or amaretto
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons soy yogurt
1 tablespoon flax meal (or other egg replacer to equal 1 egg)
1 ½ cups strawberries, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, stir together the flour(s), baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the milk, vanilla, almond, oil, yogurt and flax, whisking really well (or use a hand blender). Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix gently (don’t over-mix). Fold in the strawberries. Pour batter into a lightly oiled cake pan and bake for about 30 minutes – if a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, it’s done.

Almond Icing

4 tablespoons earth balance margarine
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup almond butter (smooth, not chunky)
3 tablespoons non-dairy milk (I used almond)

Blend all ingredients together. If it looks too thick, add a small amount of milk to thin it out. Spread over the cake once cooled.

This cake is quite excellent with extra fresh strawberries and/or coconut milk ice cream.

Today’s breakfast

Fig anise bread with hazelnut butter, watermelon and some Russian tea I bought over the weekend (isn’t the tin pretty?).

Note to self: hazelnut fig granola. make it.