birthday #4, mystery fruit and mawr vcon

Oh my gosh, it's been a few days, hasn't it? I have been cooking! Notably I made a turtle cake for my friend's 24th. A turtle turtle cake, if you will. He's so cute... swimming in generous puddles of buttery caramel sauce. It was almost a shame to cut into him to get at the deep chocolate innards. Almost.

I started with the Vcon deep chocolate bundt cake, mostly in the interest of conquering the book - in all honesty I don't think the coffee really meshed with the rest of the cake components, but I also oopsed and used my regular crappy brand instead of brewing up my stash of GOOD coffee that I keep around just for cakes. I am d'oh.



Luckily toasted pecans and caramel sauce (ohhhhh that sauce!) go an incredibly long way towards nummifying everything they come into contact with. Generous layer and then onto...






My FAVOURITE icing in the whole world. I got it off vegweb, but I've seen identical versions over the internet, and holy all that is holy, it is good. Think rich, choco-fudgey, creamy, not too sweet. Also low in fat, and not like eating a bowl of shortening (*ahem* buttercream I'm looking at you). Add an extra shake of salt and it's pure heaven.



(especially dolloped all over a pound of strawberries and eaten as dinner which I did not do, gosh no, certainly didn't!)

The finished product? Gooey, addictive, got pretty much destroyed by three people, if that says anything. Also, it had wings and is thus a Koopa Cake for extra nerd points. :)




The other day I found these chayote squashes for 25 cents, can you believe it? And at a mega-supermarket no less (I was making excuses to walk really far 'cause the sun was sooooo beautiful that day, and hey, they have a good selection of extracts in the baking aisle).

Anyway, I had no idea what they were, but I did a brief search-up and they're totally a mexican thing, so I made probably the least-brainer I could have, just tossing them with coarse salt, lime juice, chili powder, cumin and red chile flakes. Lovely refreshing, actually. They taste a little bit like a bland cucumber-melon and I don't think I'd go nuts trying to find them again, but hey, one less mystery on the list.

And more Vcon recipes cause I'm predictable like that. They are both to die for, because the Vcon is predictable like that. This is the pineapple cashew quinoa stirfry, mega yum. If pineapple-y grain-based stir fries had a bare knuckle fight in that square foot of free space in my kitchen I'd probably leave my bets with the pineapple couscous curry I made a while back, but that's not to say they both wouldn't both fight valiantly with their ways of deliciousness and copious use of sweet sweet juice. I'd also even say this tastes better out of the microwave the next day, but I might just be weird like that.

I'm not one for adult food, really. I made the Vcon tomato couscous with capers and rustic white beans and at first didn't really... know what to do with it? But then something happened, something wise in me turned off my computer, headed to the fire escape with a glass of leftover white wine and a trashy novel and all of a sudden I was "some single woman shooing her cat away from the subtle flavas of leek", instead of "some kid blogging, rocking, reading AND playing video games while shovelling back stirfry". I dunno, it's a subtle difference. And I was sad to see the last of it go.