Vegan Snickerdoodles

I have to be honest.

I’m not totally sure where the word snickerdoodle came from or what it means. I just know that to me it means “delectable little cookie all covered in cinnamon and sugar.”

Demi-Brooke is a lovely girl who takes beautiful photographs.
When she posted photos of her vegan cookies the other day, and one of them happened to be vegan snickerdoodles, my mouth began to water.

Me and snickerdoodles have always had a thing for each other. After all, what isn’t good all rolled in cinnamon?

I remembered that I saw a great recipe for vegan snickerdoodles from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur posted just a week ago and knew it was time to give it ago… after I kept getting asked when I would bring some more treats in from people at work, and I can’t very well let them down, now can I?

They turned out perfect!

A crispy, cinnamon-y outside with a tasty, crumbly interior.

Here is the fantastic recipe which I highly reccomend…

Vegan Snickerdoodles

(From Vegan Cookie Connoissuer)
Makes about 3-4 dozen

3/4 cup margarine
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup soy milk
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 325°F.
Cream together the margarine and sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla, soy milk, and cornstarch and mix until incorporated.

Sift in the flour, baking powder, salt, cornstarch, and cinnamon. Stir. If the dough is too dry and crumbly, add a splash of soy milk. It shouldn’t be sticky though.

Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Form the dough into 1 1/2″ balls and roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Bake for about 12 minutes until golden around the edges, but still soft on top, then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

Brunch Time

The one thing I love about the holidays is the chance to get together with old friends and current friends who have just been too busy the rest of the year to see. Everyone slows down for a week or two at the end of December and just takes a short break from the hecticness of life. It was great to get together with some of my favorite girls and do a “girls brunnch”.

From Top: Whole Wheat Pancakes, Pillsbury spinach and cheese savorlings, Phyllo Quiches and “simple” Croissants

For the whole wheat pancakes I used the recipe from Whisk Kid but simply replaced the flour with whole-wheat as well as replaced the butter with vegetable oil. Unfortunantly, I forgot to bring along my almond extract to my friends house where the brunch was being held. They were still delicious but they are even better with almond extract – this recipe has become my new pancake go-to recipe!

I found the little Pillsbury “savorlings” in my freezer that morning and they were a great throw-in-at-the-last-minute sort of thing – tasty too!

For th Phyllo Quiches I loosely based my recipe off of this recipe from Planning with Kids. I emprovised with phyllo of course and threw in some parsley and pepper. They turned out great. The only thing I’d do dfferently would be to load up on more spices. Even with the addition of parsley and pepper they still lacked the strong sort of taste that I prefer, but were still very good.

As for the Croissants, I must admit, I was a little nervous. I’ve never made croissants before and was so afraid of messing up and not having them for the brunch (and afterall, what is a brunch without croissants?). But I followed this great recipe from Snippets and they turned out lovely. Not as flakey as some people like, but certainly buttery and soft!

the true breakfast of champions

Last night I had to make my way to good ol’ downtown Vineland to pick up some things at the only sewing store basically within an hour of here to finish a project. While I don’t usually get down that way very often I’m always excited to because it means one thing to me….a stop at The Sweet Life! You may (or maybe not…) remember my rantings about them here.

It’s always great to stop in. For one thing, I hate supporting Starbucks, or any other monster chain that kills adorable little businesses, but I won’t lie that I always end up going there anyway just because theres one right next to where I work and go to school. Besides that, the coolest people own it and an incredibly talented future famous artist who I’ve had class with this semester also works there. oh yeah, and did I forget to mention everything they make is amazing. No, I’m not exaggerating – everything.

So Jill (one of the owners, and a pretty kick-butt cake baker and decorator) talked me into one of their little apricot triangle pastry things (yes, I am very knowledgable, I know) and ended up getting a few of those and a few other things to bring home to the family. While I could go on for a million years about everything there, I must adress these apricot triangle thingies. not suprisingly, AMAZING. the perfect pre-work snack and had me wanting to eat them all in one sitting, but I respect their delicious pastries too much to ruin them by doing so.

This morning started out so lovely with having one of those fantastic soft and just perfectly sweet enough little creations and a little bit of chocolate Chai. Maybe it was these delightful little things that helped me to stay happy even through a crazy day of rifling through clay pots and sculptures to find mine, and hours at work with severe christmas madness going on and then push through to finish both my wearable art project and my sculpture for the art show this weekend. So thank you, delicious little pastry, and thank you Sweet Life.

SNACK ATTACK! Cinnamon Raisin Bars

I’ve been a big fan of Quakers Chewy snack bars for a few years now, always tossing one in my bag for a afternoon snack when I’m at school or work or wherever I find myself. But I have to admit….there’s a few ingredients on the back of those wrappers that I am just not sure what they are. In addition, I’m fairly certain they are made with either butter in making them and like I said in my last post, I’m trying to stay away from dairy as best as I can.

I was super excited give a go at making my own and was super excited to find a great recipe on One Frugal Foodie (who just happens to be the author of Go Dairy Free) for Banana Oat Snack Bars.

I’m happy to say they are SUPER yummy. They are chewy and perfectly sweet (all without adding any butter or sugar!). I cut them into nice little bars and wrapped em up so they’re all set to be thrown in my bag and chowed down on in the middle of Art History.

They leave me thinking of al the possibilities for these little guys. I will definitely be making more and am already scheming about what kind of flavors I want in the next batch. I’m thinking some pumpkin will be involved and I suppose we’ll see what else!

Union Trust Steakhouse

I was so excited to dig into the list I just put together yesterday so fast! As soon as I discovered this place I’ve been dying to see it and try it and I’m so glad we did. The architecture is lovely and the whole ceiling part of the restaurant is amazing, I especially love the open kitchen and the comfortable seating. It also features three separate levels (although the third is a private-party room that has a large window that looks down over the entire restaurant – oh how I’d die to throw a fabulous party in there). We also had a great waiter, his name was Nick and if you are lucky enough to diner here and get him then you’ll love him, I promise. He was energetic and entertaining but incredibly helpful when it came to navigating the menu.

They also offer a few different types of bread (like every other restaurant, I realize) but they offered something I’ve only seen one other place so far and that is a Philly Pretzel. Since Frank went for a pretzel I tried some of their rosemary french bread which had such a distinct and great flavor. Of course I store a little piece off his pretzel which was soft and delicious like any true Philly pretzel would be.

Frank had a hard time deciding between steaks but decided to try the bone-in Ribeye with Au Poivre sauce after a recommendation from the waiter. He also tried the Potatoes Au Gratin in place of his normal mashed potatoes. Both were great, although he did kind of wish he went with the mashed potatoes, but they were still very good. He said the steak was only second best to Smith & Wollensky (although their au poivre steak was insanely peppery, he loved it though) I did have to argue though that the chicken I had at S&W was bland and dry and I think that a good restaurant shouldn’t put anything on their menu that they don’t really cook well even if it isn’t their specialty.

I almost didn’t get the chicken but decided to go for it at the last minute to compare it against other places as it’s a more typical choice for me.

It was fantastic. So flavorful and not the least bit dry and the sauce was amazing. Easily the best chicken I’ve ever had. Chicken is such a staple everywhere, from restaurants to homes, but it is almost always cooked incorrectly and left to be an insanely boring dish, but this just proves that chicken can rock it just as well as steak. I also had a side of wild mushrooms which were fabulous as well.

oh how I wish I had better pictures of everything, but the lighting is so low in those restaurants it’s hard to find a happy medium between no-flash and super bright flash without bringing my more serious camera equipment with me, which I feel would be weird. Anyhow..

Our waiter thought it was just the funniest and greatest that Frank actually asked for a glass of milk to go with his dessert. It’s one of those things I think most people want, but have too big of an ego to actually ask for at a place like that. I think it was the first time anyone has ever asked that.

Frank got the Chocolate Ending dessert which consisted of a little concoction of an oreo cookie bottom with milk and dark chocolate mousse in the center and covered in chocolate ganache with small little oreo cookie balls decorating the sides with a small fudge brownie and raspberry sorbet. Amazing! I stole a bite of course. It’s a lot of chocolate for someone like me but if you love chocolate than this is for you.

I decided to go with something a little different, Peach Cobbler Cheesecake. It was so unique and so lovely. It didnt have a super strong cheesecake flavor (which I was happy about) and had actual real peaches poling out of one of the layers and was topped with that amazing cobbler topping that is oh-so delicious. It was served with pomegranate seeds and sorbet which was a really great compliment to the cake.

Even though Frank thinks they only have the second best steaks so far, I’m still head over heels for the place.

Definitely somewhere I would recommend.

Positano Coast Revisited

We had every intention of visiting a local restaurant the other, but we just couldn’t help but revisit an old favorite. It was a beautiful day outside and we were sitting in my room trying to decide what to do before we went to dinner when I started complaining about how I missed walking around the city and how nice it is outside. So we decided to scrap our first idea and head up to Philly to enjoy one of the last nice days left and enjoy some dinner at one of our favorite places.

So we parked on 2nd and walked down to south, which was insane as always of course (I’m not a huge fan of south besides visiting Pearl Art’s 3 story store when I do find myself down that way. The walk back was more fun. We found ourselves wandering down some of the mostly residential side streets that have beautiful churches and temples hidden within them. I adore wandering around cities. any city, as long as it’s warm enough too. When me and frank went to Boston I actually snuck out early one morning and just wandered around for a while. I love it.

Franks! some sort of steak, and he had mashed potatoes of course. I did try a bite and it was delicious.

I’d been eyeing trying the potato gnocchi side the last few times we’d visited so I finally got it along with the Positano salad. The gnocchi was excellent. So insanely delcious, it was love at first bite. The salad was also very good, the vinaigrette they use is fantastic.

When our waiter came back to ask if we even wanted to see the dessert menu we both already had in mind what we wanted. Of course I couldn’t help but get my favorite dessert, which happens to be the only dessert I’ve ever gotten at Positano (which is impressive, since I usually like to try new things) – tiramisu! unfortunately for frank, and the rest of the city, they’ve knixed their chocolate lava cake – GASP. He already had a back up of Nutella and raspberry crepes (when the waiter left we couldn’t help but feeling like dorks for not even needing to see a dessert menu).

You know you’ve gone to a restaurant in the city way too many times when you get a waiter you actually have had before, and we did. Honestly, we’ve probably gone to Positano at least 4 or 5 times this summer. Once you go it’s an addiction, I swear, and thankfully it’s one of the most affodable places in the city too. even with each of us getting an entree, side, dessert it was just barely over $50.

Positano Coast

(photo from Positano Coast’s website)

I’ve held out on reviewing this restaurant, since I know I’d go there again soon and tonight was that night. Follow 2nd street down to walnut and look up. You’ll see a restaurant sitting on the second floor of a small, square building. I first noticed it driving with my sister through the city. It was warm outside and they had all of the windows open and people were sitting on the couches in the lounge looking down on us and talking and enjoying their meals. I instantly texted Frank and described it to him. I mentioned sitting on couches while having dinner and he was all in. Now that I think about it, I think it was really the first place we went to eat together in Philly. We fell in love with it and have continued to go back time and time again, never having a bad meal and always recommending it to friends.

Tuesday is Franks 21st birthday (and no, no alcohol will be present on that day, neither does he have any desire to sit in front of slot machines in a casino that smells of cigarette smoke) so his aunt wanted to take us out to dinner. So her and her husband and me and frank made our way to Postiano coast, my 4th time going, his 3rd time going and their first times going. We asked specifically, as we always do, to sit in the lounge. Positano Coast has both a more formal dining room and a lounge. Both are decorated with blues and whites with lanterns and soft lights all around, creating an incredibly inviting atmosphere. It’s truly tempting to take a nap on one of the couches in the lounge after dinner and tell you server to wake you in 20.

(Photo from Positano Coast’s Website)

They specialize in small plates which is great since it leaves plenty of room to try a few different things and still have dessert. Their prices are very reasonable as well, in my opinion, a great deal for great food right in old city. Another great thing is the dress code. You don’t feel like you have to dress up at all, but you don’t feel weird if you do a little bit either, which is great as I always worry about being over-dressed or under-dressed.

On to the food…

I have yet to try anything I didn’t like there. If you’re picky, you can find something, if you’re looking to try something really new and different, you can find something too. The first trip there was before I began to get a bit more adventurous with my taste buds, so I just went with the Chicken Parmesan which was fantastic, but I have since tried their risotto, white bean gratin, frisee salad, and something from their restaurant week menu, that I do not recall the name of. Like I’ve said, I’ve yet to have a bad meal. Frank has had…yep, you guess it, steak. Our first time around he had one type of steak, which I can’t remember the name of, and was taken off the menu for the changing seasons, but now he is in love with their New York Steak Bolognese with a side of…thats right, mashed potatoes (or rather their “potato puree”) which was also excellent. It”s been great to go with different people with different tastes to get their opinion as well (I went with a large group of friends during restaurant week this past fall and everyone loved it, and Franks uncle tried some of Positano Coasts crudo and other seafood, which neither of us would ever try in a million years, but he said was very good).

I have to make a confession though, even with how much I adore trying new things, I have a dirty little secret. When it comes to dessert at Positano Coast, I absolutely always get the Tirimisu. Tirimisu has been a favorite of mine since I first tried it, and when I had it at Positano Coast for the first time it was love at first bite. You can ask Frank, I rarely scrape my plate clean, but when I’m there I can’t help myself. I find myself occasionally craving it in between visits, which makes it all the more an incredibly special treat for me when I am there. One of Franks favorite is the Kahlua Chocolate Mousse. But to my complete suprise the first time he ordered it, he also loves the Nuttella and Raspberry Crepes (I never would think he would even try something like that – but he’s had it twice now and loves it almost as much as the mousse!). Our first time there he also had a chocolate lava cake which was delicious, unfortunately it left with the season as well.

Positano Coast is one of those few restaurants where I really feel they have everything together. The atmosphere takes you away to southern europe for a great meal where you find yourself completely comfortable and any silences in conversation that may normally feel akward just become natural as ever. To steal my design professor from Drexel’s catch phrase, “It’s lovely.”