Classic Vegan Biscuits

I’m back from my mini vacation to Houston/Baton Rouge and in the spirit of all that is wonderfully Southern, I bring you: biscuits. Oh, biscuits. Biscuits, biscuits, biscuits. A reminder of so many fun memories. I usually associate biscuits with my summers spent in North Carolina, specifically with my favorite breakfast ever at summer camp – egg and cheese biscuits. MAN did I love those things.

Over the course of the past month or two, I’ve tried to make biscuits twice and each time they came out terribly. I followed the directions perfectly and used all of the right ingredients yet both times they turned out hard, crunchy and….rock like. In my head I had visions of buttery, pillow like masterpieces, ever so delicately arranged in a gingham lined bread basket for Sunday brunch, but these…..were so, so, SO not that. I knew I had to be doing something wrong, so a few days ago I set out to master, once and for all, the art of biscuit making.

After prowling around the internet long enough, I put together what I thought/hoped/prayed would be a fool-proof biscuit recipe. Lo and behold…I was right! Ladies and gentlemen, this is IT! THE best (and seriously, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to home-made biscuits and what a bad one tastes like) vegan biscuits ever! Fluffy, layered, buttery like you wouldn’t even believe, these are so so so delicious. Layered with blueberry jam they were perfection.

And the best part? Easy to make and only require FIVE ingredients! Make them!

What You Need:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup earth balance
1 cup plain soymilk – plus a splash or two on reserve

What You Do:

Heat oven to 450º.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Add Earth Balance and mix all together, using your fork to break/chop up the butter into little pieces. Once you have a pretty crumbly mixture, add the 1 cup of soymilk in. If the mix is still too dry, add an extra splash. Continue mixing (I used my hands at this point) until everything congeals into one big ball of dough. Time to roll it out.

Flour a countertop, roll out your dough to about an inch thickness, fold it in half, and repeat (roll to an inch thick, fold in half.) Once you have the dough to about an inch think (make sure it’s AT LEAST an inch thick – this is where the problems can begin if the dough is too thinly rolled out!), start cutting the biscuits out with the edge of a glass.

Take the scraps, roll them into another ball, and repeat until all the dough has been cut into circles.

Place the circles onto a greased baking sheet and bake for about 12 or so minutes. Keep your eye on them — you’ll know when they’re done!

Simple French Toast

This was my first attempt at making vegan french toast, and it came out pretty well. There are a few changes I would make for next time (as you’ll see below) but I think that overall, this was a pretty solid take.

What You Need:

2 ripe bananas

3/4 cup soy milk

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pumpkin spice

1 tsp vanilla

8 slices of bread

1 extra banana, sliced

cooking spray

What You Do:

In a food processor, blend everything on the above list (minus the extra banana, bread and spray, obviously). Heat a skillet on low/medium heat and add cooking spray. Dip the pieces of bread into the batter, wipe of excess batter with your finger, and then place them in the skillet. Flip after a minute or two, and make sure that the centers are cooked through. Top with fruit of choice (I used bananas in this case) and….The end!

The way I see it there are four  steps to proper french toast making:

1. The Bread selection/prep. For this iteration, I used pre sliced cinnamon raisin bread from the grocery store. While it came out tasty, next time I’m going to use sourdough bread…definitely something thicker and not so….wimpy. Also, I’ve read that leaving the bread out for a few days and letting it go stale makes for even better french toast. It lets the bread really soak up the batter. To imitate this, I popped the slices of bread into the oven and let them toast for a few minutes on each side. It worked!

2. The Batter. I was DEAD ON with the batter here. For real, if you’re looking for a yummy batter for french toast, look no more! USE THIS.

3. The cooking. I used a skillet and cooking spray. You can also use Earth Balance which I am SURE would taste delicious.

4. THE SYRUP! This one teensy little ingredients makes a huge difference in your final product. All we had on hand was Aunt Jemima stuff, which I’m slooooowly beginning to dislike. It’s pure corn syrup, I tell you! The only catch with the Pure Maple Syrup is that it’s so expensive. Even so, I think it’s something I just might have to splurge on from here on out. It makes everything taste 100x better.

Apple Cinnamon Pancakes

sunday = pancakes around here.

we used a regular recipe for pancakes, and then added a cup of chopped up gala apple (processed in the FP) a ton of cinammon and threw in about a 1/2 cup of walnuts.

we also picked up a jar of pure maple syrup and used them on the pancakes and let me tell you, people, pure maple syrup is NOT the same as the aunt jemima stuff. we looked at the ingredients on the back of aunt jemima syrup and it doesn’t even contain ANY maple syrup! pure corn syrup. ew. the pure stuff is so so much better. not as sweet put still 100x better.

Blueberry Pancakes

this morning was a pancake morning. this is a realllly easy recipe that can be adapted to whatever you’re feeling: apple cinnamon, banana walnut, banana chocolate chip, or in OUR case this morning: blueberry pancakes with sliced bananas on top.

what you need:

1 1/4 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsps canola oil

1/3 cup of water

1 cup of soy milk

2 tbsps maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

cooking spray

what you do:

mix the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. add in oil, water, milk, syrup and vanilla. mix everything together (lumps are okay!) at this point you can go ahead and add in whatever fixins you’re feeling  – in this case we added in about 3/4 a cup of blueberries.

heat a lightly oiled skillet over medium heat, pour batter on and once the pancakes start bubbling a little its time to flip. once both sides are browned, you’re done!

we added on sliced bananas on top, more maple syrup and TADA. breakfast!

Banana Walnut Pancakes

banana walnut pancakes!

these were really easy to make and tasted DELICIOUS. i’m somewhat of a pancake freak, and i do know how to pick em, and i gatta say…. these were really tasty.

Green Smoothie

people of the world, i present to you: my green smoothie this morning.

it was so insanely GOOD.

in it:

banana, spinach, soy milk, small scoop of almond butter, dash of vanilla, cinammon, small scoop of flaxseed, and some crushed ice.

amaze.