Jamaican coffee chocolate brownies

I know, I know. A month is too much time, even for me. This year I will try to be a better blogger. I promise! I have already written it at the top of my "good intentions for this year" list. I also expect (and hope) that I won't have so much work. If someone tells you someday that working and studying at the same time does not leave you shattered....he or she is lying. It's exhausting.  I think I have never slept so little in my life (and that is to say a lot).

I wanted to post today's recipe for a month, because after the first bite I knew that I had to share it. American desserts are not very popular here: not because they are not tasty, but because they are difficult to find. It's almost impossible to find a bagel and brownies are only sold in Starbucks. I have never tried them because I know they are not vegan, and very expensive anyway. Solution? Bake them yourself: it's cheaper, tastier and healthier.

It's funny because when I found this recipe with Jamaican coffee, it brought me some memories back. Blue Mountain is considered the best coffee in the world, although I didn't  notice a substantial difference between this and any other fairly good one. It's a pity that the service was awful. I did not use Blue Mountain coffee this time (actually, I have never seen it for sale) but they turned out amazing anyway. After all, this kind of coffee costs an arm and a leg; even if I had some at home, I would prefer drinking it.

Last day I was reading a A-K post about birthday cakes and how what for some people is sad for others is fun (for instance, doing your own cake). I have been cooking all the birthday cakes of my family (including my own) since I became vegan, and I don't think it's something sad at all. The same happens with "veganising" your recipes; "Poor! She can't eat eat eggs and milk", they will think (by the way, I hate when people say that I can't eat this or that. I suppose that they don't understand that it's not an obligation for me, but a choice). Most of people would consider it a pain; I see it like an opportunity for being creative. What can I use this time: apple sauce, mashed banana, tofu, flaxseeds? And what if I substitue that huge amount of butter with olive oil? Of course, it can turn out like a disaster; actually, many of my baked good turn out like a disaster (althoug every time less often) but I am lucky because my family is not fussy at all about it: they will eat any of my creations, including the ones I would label as a categorical failure. Luckily, this was not one of these times :)

Jamaican coffee chocolate brownies Makes one 33 cm x 23cm pan (13x9x2-inch) Inspired in this recipe form Epicurious. You don't need to use Blue Mountain coffee for this recipe; any coffee will be OK. If you can, use it freshly (and finely) ground. It will add some texture to the brownies, but you won't have the feeling that you're chewing coffee. The original recipe called for cocoa powder, but I run out of it, so I used authentic chocolate instead. Now I think that maybe I should never have cocoa powder at home: (real) chocolate and coffee: can you think about a better combination? I have also omitted the nuts, the chocolate icing and reduced the amount of margarine and sugar. Some people like their brownies fluffy, other almost like a cookie. This one is something in between: dense and hearty, but still very moist and tender. It would do a nice Valentine treat (maybe using a heart shaped tin) Nonstick vegetable oil spray 1 cup sugar 10 tablespoons margarine 40 g chocolate (52%) 3 tablespoons finely ground Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 mashed banana 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine sugar, margarine, chocolate (broken in pieces), ground coffee, and salt in large metal bowl or a small saucepan. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk until margarine and chocolate melts and ingredients are blended (texture will be grainy). Remove bowl from over water. Mash the banana and add it to the mix. Sift flour over and fold in. Mix in some nuts (the original recipe called for pecans) if desired.  Spread batter in prepared pan. Bake brownies until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool brownies in pan.

 

Orange Garam Masala Bundt cake and Moscow parks

I think I deserve applause: I have survived my first week of school! After three month of doing nothing (reading doesn’t count as work for me), I assure you that it was not easy. This week has been very different from my usual summer weeks:  very little cooking, very little Internet (and no TV, but I don’t watch it in summer either. Does anybody else think that TV is unnecessary when you have a computer?), no photographing, no running or cycling. Hat kind of life is that?

Instead, I have spend half of my time  in front of the laptop, writing my research project about Russia and the Soviet Union — and I only wrote less than ten pages — and the other half at school lessons (many of which are tedious, boring and endless). I like studying (well, I like studying some things), but I am fed up with studying the varieties of the Spanish for four years in a row. I want to go to the university. Now.

Somo shots from the museum-park-sanatorium. More photos of Moscow parks at the end of the post.

 Luckily, this morning I went running. Otherwise I would have gone mad. I have the feeling that I have a creative crisis. Those of you who are bloggers: which is your everyday inspiration that helps you to go on with your project? The other day I was reading Lara Ferroni’s post, who said that sometimes she must remind herself why she is doing that, why exactly is she blogging. That sometimes she just doesn’t find that spark she needs to sit down and write. And I felt much identified.

I have had a lack of creativity lately. Like a mental block. I want to write, but every time I try to begin with a new post, the words don’t flow. I write, delete, write and delete again. And then I ask myself if what I am writing will interest someone. I am talking enough about food? Or maybe too much?  An excessive amount of photos?   

At the beginning, I didn’t think about posting this recipe. I thought it was something too common for the blog. But when I tried it, I immediately knew that I had to share this. And the praises of my family confirmed it.  I use bananas in my baked goods as a blinder quiet often. A part from blinding them, bananas give them extra flavor and moistness. But it also makes them heavier and denser. This bund cake is moist and spongy and light at the same time. I loved the cake, but I am not sure about the icing. The original recipe called for cashews, but I didn’t have so I used pumpkin and sunflower seeds.  It was OK, but I think that cashews would have worked better. You can try with an easy orange icing  instead. As regards the original recipe, I changed a few things. First of all, this was a Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake, and it used lemon zest and juice.  I have also used a combination of sunflower and olive oil, and substituted the agave with honey and sugar. And of course, the spicy touch of the garam masala** (see below). By the way, I must thank Renae for her fantastic present: a box full of spices and some other yummy things (the espresso beans have already disappeared, he he). You are a darling! The garam masala spices mix I used in this recipe is the one you sent me.  Orange Garam Masala Bundt cake Inspired by this recipe from Bitter Sweet. 1 cup soymilk Zest of one orange ½ cup orange juice ½ cup honey (or agave if you don’t eat it) ¾ cups sugar ¼ cup sunflower oil ¼ cup olive oil 3 ½ cups wheat flour 1 ½ tsp baking powder ¾ tsp baking soda ¾ tsp salt 1 tbsp flaxseeds 2 tsp garam masala Icing 1 cup sunflower or pumpkin seeds (I used a mix) 1/4 cup honey ¼ cup soymilk (begin with less, and add as needed) 1 tsp vanilla extract Preheat the oven at 175ºC (or 350ºF) Mix the soymilk, the zest and the juice and leave it to stand for five minutes. Add the honey (or agave), the oil and mix. Now combine the dry ingredients: the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and garam masala. Grind the flaxseeds and add them too. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Combine it well, but do not over mix it. Pour the dough in your bund cake pan. Bake for about one hour. Let it cool. For the icing, just combine all the ingredients and blend until completely smooth. Blend it during several minutes if needed. Pour it over the cooled cake. ** From Wikipedia:  “Garam masala, from Hindi garam, "Hot" and masala "mixture", is a basic blend of ground spices common in Indian and other South Asian cuisines.[1] It is used alone or with other seasonings.[..] The composition of garam masala differs regionally, with wide variety across India. Some common ingredients are black & white peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, long pepper (also known as pippali), black cumin (known as shahi jeera), cumin seeds, cinnamon; black, brown, & green cardamom, nutmeg, mace, star anise and coriander seeds

As I promised, here is more photos from Russia. This time, the theme is Moscow parks. It there is something I like about Russia is its parks. Some of them are as big as forests, with tall trees and lots of vegetation. And the best is that some of them are almost in the center of the city, so you always have a park not very far away from home. I’d give my right arm to have one of those parks near home here, in Spain. While I was in Moscow, I went running a couple of times to the closest park (called “Neskuchniy sad”, or “non-boring garden”) and it really like running in a forest. A  forest in the middle of the city. There are also parks outside the city or in the outskirts, which are at the same time museum, like Tsaritsino park or the Arkhangelsk museum-park-sanatorium.

Orange glazed plum cake

I feel guilty. If there is a word that can describe me, it is perfectionist. Not because I want to be the best in front of the others, but because I think I always must do my best for me, to feel well with myself. And these last days I have not been exactly working and doing by best. Actually, I have not done anything related to school in the whole week (and believe me, I have a lot to do).

Instead, I have been playing with my camera. As my parents must have suspected, I didn’t have enough with the camera alone, and I demanded too all kind of accessories. Of course, they didn’t buy me an objective for macro shots (which is understandable, because it costs more than 200€), but they agreed to buy a tripod, large cards of all colors (for backgrounds), including a couple of silver cards that I use as reflectors, and my father managed to repair a spotlight (with 500-watt lights!). So for the last three days I have been mainly shooting. Yeah, I am a spoilt child =P

But don’t worry; I have a recipe for you this time. After all, I need to cook if I want to shoot something interesting! I have discovered that reflectors really make all the difference. A softened light makes the food look much better (I did all the shots of the today’s orange glazed plum cake with reflectors and tripod). And you don’t need to waste money! You can use a silver card as I did (which by the way, cost only 0,50€), or paste some aluminum foil on the card and….volià!

I have lots of photos of Barcelona (again), but this time of Barcelona at night. We went to the theater (by the way, we loved the play. The actor did an awesome job playing six characters at the same time), and it finished at 10 PM it was already dark. I think next time I will take the tripod with me : )

Orange glazed plum cake From: own creation I baked this cake for my mother’s birthday (although we celebrated it a week later). If regarded as a birthday cake, is not a heavy one. There is no cream (even vegan) or chocolate involved, very common in party cakes. Nevertheless, it is not a very light cake either. The amount of margarine is considerable, as well as the amount of sugar of the icing. If you want a lighter cake, you can omit the icing, but it will lose that sweet touch that combine so well with the sharpness of the plums. You can also play with the amount of fat, trying to substitute it with apple sauce or why not, with homemade plum sauce. I have never seen it and I don’t know if it is available in stores, but I suppose it is possible to make. Just imagine they are apples….but be sure to pit them before ;)   ¼ cup soymilk + 1 Tbspoon sugar 25 g fresh yeast 200 g margarine, softened 150 g sugar 2 Tbspoon corn flour + 4 Tbspoon water Zest 1 lemon 175 g flour ¼ cup soymilk + about 4 teaspoons coffee ¼ cup pumpkin seeds (any other nuts can be used. Walnuts or almonds would work very well too) 5 dates, pitted and chopped 4-5 medium plums, pitted and thinly sliced 2 Tbspoon margarine, melted Orange icing -1 Tbspoon orange juice - 5 Tbspoon confectioner’s sugar + 2 extra Tbspoons -1 tspoon soymilk Heat the ¼ cup of soymilk. It must be warm, but not boiling. Dissolve the sugar and add the fresh yeast. Put it in a bowl, not in a cup, because it will rise a lot. Leave the yeast to stand for about 20 minutes. In another bowl, beat with a mixer the margarine and the sugar, until it becomes fluffy. Add the two tablespoons of corn flour plus the water, the zest and mix. Brew a strong coffee with the ¼ cup of soymilk, and add it (filtered,  of course) to the mixture. Add as well the flour and the yeast mixture. Mix it better with a spoon or a fork, not with a mixer (you could over mix it) Preheat the oven at 170º C (325º F).Leave the mixture to stand for about one hour, in a warm place (I always place the bowl with the dough on the stove, over the heated oven) Once it has risen, flatten the dough and add the nuts (pumpkin seeds in my case) and the dates (if you don’t have dates, try with dried apricots or cranberries). Mix again, and pour it in pan. I used a 22 cm (8 inch) round pie pan made of silicon. Although silicon pans don’t distribute the heat as traditional pans do (you can finish with a charred bottom and an unbaked top), they allow you to remove the cake from the mould without breaking it in two. Line the slices of plums over the cake, overlapping them. I did two rows: near the borders and in the center. Push them slightly into batter. Bake for about 35-40 minutes (depending of the pan you used). Before letting it cool, brush it with the melted margarine. Orange icing Mix all the ingredients except the extra confectioner’s sugar. It will make a quite light icing. Cover all the cake with it. If you want to go creative, leave a little bit of the light icing and mix with the extra two tablespoons of sugar to make a thicker one. I decorated the borders and the center with it.

The theatre was placed in the Raval, the most multicultural are of Barcelona. You can find people of all the nationalities there.

But Raval is one of the poorest areas too. It’s the Barcelona that is not shown in the touristic guides. If you are not used to it, it can be a little bit disturbing walking alone on its streets at night.  Actually, some people that was walking and appeared in my shots (although I was not shooting them, but the street) were upset, and one of them even showed me a very specific finger of the hand =O

The Rambla of Barcelona at almost 11 PM. It’s difficult to believe seeing all this people on the street, isn’t it?

On the top left corner, a view of Catalunya Square and the Corte Inglés which is placed there (El Corte Inglés is one of the biggest departament stores in all the country. Sometimes I go there for a walk, because it is enormous, but I hardly ever buy anything) . On the right corner, Paseo de Gracia and on the bottom the crossing at the beginning of the Rambla, next to Catalunya Square.

On the top, Catalunya Square again. Its fountain is more impressive at night, with all the light, than during the day. I did a shot of it when it was still sunny, but the photo was quite dull. On the bottom, Paseo de Gracia.