Red, Brown and Blue! How... American...?

Ever since I was young, my dad would go on the ocassional trip into the Canada. Each time he would bring home Canadian candy. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was chocolate covered Smarties. (YUCK!) My favorites are these malted candy bars I can never remember the name of. But they're in French and they're in a big pale yellow package! This time he brought me some Canadian Raisinettes! YUM! =)

On a semi-unrelated topic, I just recently started following Peas and Thank You, a really awesome vegan blog! Now, I'm not a vegan but somehow stumbled across her blog while perusing one day and couldn't stop laughing at her stories about her adorable girls. She had hooked me! I signed up to recieve updates.

Yesterday morning at 4:30, nature woke me up in that unpleasant way it has gotten into the habit of doing. As I stumbled back to my room and flopped back onto my bed, I checked my email. Hooray, an update from P&TY! It was for vegan brownies. "Mmm... brownies..." I muttered into the pillow. Crap, I don't have applesauce. It's ok, I'll use tomato sauce I thought as I drifted back to sleep.

Fast forward 3 hours. Now fully awake, I still want to make these brownies with tomato sauce. So I did! And with honey instead of sugar, cornmeal for some of the flour, I was a substituting maniac!! And you know what?



They were pretty delicious in my opinion. Addictive even. I ate a whole row out of the pan before lunch. An acquired taste, definitely, but so am I.

Tomato Laden Brownies
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup blue cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup canned tomato puree (for more concentrated flavor you could use tomato paste)
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 cup raisinettes (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x8 pan and set aside. In a large bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together tomato, honey and extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring until just combined, then fold in raisinettes. Pour batter into prepared pan, then bake for 20 minutes or until the sides start the pull away from the pan. Cool and enjoy! Or.. eat hot and enjoy!

Marshmallows

I finally did it! Thanks to Smitten Kitchen, I found a recipe for homemade marshmallows that set up the way it was supposed to, just like her recipe claimed it would!

There's also a special thanks that should go out to my mom. I found some unflavored gelatin packets hidden with the Jello when I rummaged through her cabinets yesterday afternoon. Thanks mom!!

Hehe!

The first time I made marshmallows, I ended up with a new dish - tofumallows.



See? Quite disgusting. Those went in the garbage.

I decided to try the one over at SK. Boy was this a completely different experience! I measured out my sugar and was unfortunately 1/4 cup short. No problem! I'll substitute honey! It's ok, it's ok, this turned out much better than the meringues! I was a little frightened there for a while, though. I decided to multitask and look for a baking dish to butter while the syrup was boiling. Well let me just tell you, that syrup did NOT like being ignored! It promptly erupted all over my stovetop! That'll teach me to use a smaller pot instead of just washing the medium one that was dirty. Well actually, it probably won't. In any case, the marshmallows turned out just fine despite the fact that a third of the syrup was residing on my stove.

These tasted pretty yummy, though I advise you to go easy on the extract if you're using hazelnut. They were a bit overpowering for me!



Springy Fluffy Marshmallows (adapted from Smitten Kitchen and halved)
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/4 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water, divided in half
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/8 teaspoon salt (which I forgot DOH!)
1 large egg white
2 teaspoons extract (would reduce this the next time)
Mixture of powdered sugar and cocoa powder, for dusting

Oil a baking dish and coat with powdered sugar mixture, making sure to get the corners and sides.

In the bowl of a mixer, sprinkle gelatin over 1/4 cup of the water. Allow to sit while you boil the syrup.

In a medium pot over medium-low heat, cook sugar, honey, corn syrup, remaining 1/4 cup of water and salt, stirring until all the sugar is dissolved. Once the sugar is dissolved, increase the heat to moderate and boil without stirring for roughly 12 minutes or until a candy thermometer reads 240 degrees. Remove the pot from the heat and pour the syrup over the gelatin, stirring until dissolved. On high speed, beat the mixture until tripled in size and fluffy, about 6-10 minutes.

In a separate bowl with clean beaters, beat egg white until stiff peaks form (whoops I only did soft peaks). Beat egg whites and extract into the fluff until just combined. Scrape the mixture into the oiled baking dish and sprinkle powdered sugar mixture over the top. Refrigerate uncovered overnight. Cut with a pizza cutter and toss in powdered sugar mixture.

A word of advice - don't bring them to your un-airconditioned work and fail to keep them in the fridge. They get all sweaty!