Chocolate-Coconut-Oat Bars

I had at least three baking disasters last week. “At least” meaning, that’s all I can remember; there might’ve been more. Oh no. That’s right. It was the thermostat on my car that went bad, then the hot water heater in the house. Plus the three kitchen disasters. I needed something easy and reliable to counteract the losing. So I revisited the Choco-Coco Bar.

The first time I ever made this bar, I used the recipe from The Chicago Diner Cookbook, but the “crust” portion of the bar wasn’t a thriller. It was dry. What luck, though, in making my normal vegan blog rounds, I stumbled upon a very similar recipe at Urban Vegan. Thankfully, within about 20 minutes, my week filled with disasters turned into easy deliciousness. Got to get me more o’ dat!

Chocolate-Coconut-Oat Bars (from the Urban Vegan blog)

Bottom Layer:
1 1/2 cups uncooked oatmeal (instant is fine)
2 T. coconut oil
1/4 cup agave nectar

Top Layer:
1 cup dark chocolate buttons or chips (vegan)
1/2 cup pecans*
1 cup shredded dried coconut
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix “bottom” ingredients and press into oiled 8×8 or 9×9 baking dish. Mix “top” ingredients and spread atop crust. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden. Let cool and cut into squares. Makes 9 large or 18 small bars. Optional: Add 2 Tbsp. dried raisins, cranberries, cherries, or cacao nibs to “top”.

*Urban Vegan calls for walnuts. I’m partial to the pecan.

Roll, roll, roll your dough

Shy away from rolling dough because you hate the idea of throwing flour all over your counter, and you just don’t like messes (me!)? Maybe you like baking all the more when things are made easier (me!). That’s when you use this completely brilliant dough-rolling technique I learned from my cookie testing experiences. This technique is so genius, you’ll never, ever go back to rolling dough any other way. Thanks to Garrick and Kelly for choosing me as a recipe tester and for sharing their complete genius with me. I love y’all for it.

Technique: Place dough in one-gallon zip-top plastic bag. Close top. Begin rolling dough, until bag is full and dough extends to all edges. Push air out through small opening at top of bag. Reclose bag and store in refrigerator or freezer until ready to use. When ready, cut plastic bag away from dough along edges.

Result: Uniformly thick dough in perfect, square shape.

Clean-up: None.

Cream Gravy

By now, you must know the one and only rule of this site: I have to love it before I’ll post about it. It’s not enough to give something a shot, decide it was so-so, then post here about how I gave it a shot, so here’s the not-so-thrilling recipe. But, see, I gave it a shot, so love my blog anyway. Nope, not how it works. So realize my dismay when I had this incredible craving last night for cream gravy and it turned out to be a wreck. A gravy trainwreck.

But you throw it away or feed it to the dogs or put it to compost, then pick right back up and start over again. And, lo and f’in’ behold, it was all worth it. My gravytrain just pulled into the station.

Cream Gravy*

1 T. canola oil
1/4 cup flour
1-1/2 cups unsweetened rice milk** (or other unsweetened dairy alternative)
salt and pepper to taste***
dash of white pepper (optional)

Place iron skillet on medium-high heat for about one minute to heat it up. Add oil and swirl to cover bottom of skillet. Add flour and stir briskly with whisk. While stirring flour, slowly add 1 cup of the rice milk. Stir continuously working lumps to the side and bottom of the skillet until few or no lumps remain and gravy thickens. Add last 1/2 cup rice milk, stirring continuously until thick. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add white pepper for an extra kick.

*Sometimes called Milk Gravy or White Gravy. This gravy is used to top fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and biscuits in Texas and other parts of the deep south.

**I wouldn’t use soy milk.  Even the unsweetened version seems to change properties when heated and gives the gravy a sweet, nutmeg flavor that is simply wrong. Plus, it looked odd. Rice milk makes this gravy taste and look just right.

***I used 10 twists of my salt grinder and enough black pepper to make it “look” right (see pics). White pepper in addition to black pepper adds an extra bit of awesome.

Cream Gravy over seitan

G. G. Stir-fry

I seem to cook what I crave, and I seem to crave two main food categories: Southern and Asian. I know I started this blog to help me deviate from the same ol’, same ol’, but I couldn’t help myself. I had a c(r)aving*.

Last night I made a basic Asian stir-fry with cremini mushrooms, baby broccoli, and sliced seitan. You can make your stir-fry with whatever mixture of vegetables and meat analogs you’d like, but my recommendation is to stick with three or four ingredients, each of a different color. Limiting yourself to three or four not only makes prep easier, but it also prevents flavor mush. You want each ingredient to add, not take away, from the stir-fry you’re making.

Here is my recipe for a basic, delicious brown sauce. It has a lot of garlic and ginger, so KristinAthena nicknamed it G.G. stir-fry.

G.G. Stir-fry Sauce

1 cup vegetable broth
1/8 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp. arrowroot powder or cornstarch
1 packed Tbsp. ginger, peeled and minced or grated
1 Tbsp. (2-4 cloves) garlic, pressed
Red pepper flakes**
Crushed black pepper**

Combine all ingredients in glass measuring cup. Stir before pouring over cooked stir-fry ingredients. Bring to boil, reduce heat, stir occasionally. Ready to serve when thick.

**If you want, instead of mixing the red pepper flakes and crushed black pepper in the sauce, add it to your stir-fry ingredients while they cook and turn brightly colored.

*One of my favorite geographers, Allan Pred, used to write the most beautiful articles/books using words marked with parentheses like that. His work was like poetry.