Celine Steen's Blog, page 5

Vegan Protein on its merry way, plus a giveaway.

It’s been so long that I can barely remember how this whole blogging thing works. Let’s do this right, starting with a giveaway!

The latest book I wrote with Tami Noyes, The Great Vegan Protein Book, will be released in January. Its purpose is to showcase how us vegans get our protein (spoiler alert: it really isn’t hard), how much of it we really need, which sources are complete, etc.

We didn’t want to keep you guessing, so every (delicious) recipe indicates the protein content for each servin...

Passion Fruit Curd (and Coconut Butter)

I was experimenting with the brioche dough a while back already and come bearing good news: you can replace the vegan butter with 1/4 cup of coconut butter (measured and used at room temperature, see how to prepare it below) in the mini brioches and waffles. I haven’t tried it with the other brioche shapes yet, but I’m fairly confident it will work too.

The results are 100% the same, or perhaps even better, which is a plus for people who can’t find good vegan butter, and for those who don’t ca...

Cashew + Coconut Creamer

This creamer recipe is quite simple, and the recipient of mucho praise from our team of testers for the upcoming companion volume to Veg Subs. I never used to add anything to my own coffee, but I found myself missing it when I ran out.

Lots of ifs ahead:

• If you have efficient blending equipment (I sure don’t), you shouldn’t have to strain the cashews; they are so creamy after being soaked for so long.

• If your blender fails you and you feel the creamer is slightly gritty, it’s preferable to s...

And now, a sneak peek at Joni Newman & Gerrie Adams’ Going Vegan

With Tropical Fruit Cobblers, Sweet & Smoky Tempeh Strips, Loaded Oatmeal, Gerrie’s Veggie Burger (my jaw is fine, thank you very much), Make-a-Salad-a-Meal (a plan to get the most out of your plateful of salad), Breakfast Tacos, (random B-sprouts shot!), and Pineapple Mango Coconut Chia Seed Puddings representing but a few of the many recipes you’ll find in the book, you know you just have to pre-order yourself a copy of Going Vegan ASAP.

Favorite recipe that I tested? Don’t make me pick one...

Sneak peek at Cara Reed’s Decadent Gluten-Free Vegan Baking

I recently had the privilege of shooting a few pictures for Cara Reed’s upcoming baking book, which you can pre-order here. I’m adding links to the pictured recipes that are available on her site, although you should note that they might have been slightly tweaked for the book.

Pic # 1: Brownies

Pic # 2: Flour Blend

Pic # 4: Cheez-Its (So good!)

Pic # 5: Gingerbread Men

Pic # 8: Chocolate Chip Cookies

I really love her flour blend, and have had great success making a few of my own baked goods with...

Let your fingers do the walking

Vegan Finger Foods will be out very, very shortly! Tami and I received our advance copies a few weeks ago. I’m quite pleased with the outcome, and impatient for you to see it soon too; it looks beautiful with its glossy pages and cool design. Not to mention, over one hundred to-die-for recipes…like the Hot Pepper Toastwiches up there.

In order to share the excitement, here’s a gift for you: The first 100 people (within the US and Canada only, so sorry) who email us at veganfingerfoods@gmail.co...

Put a cork in it

I was on the hunt for mini glass jars with cork tops for some photo project, and these turned out to be even prettier than I imagined, so I spent too much time taking pictures of them when I could have done something constructive instead.

No idea what I will use them for now, but it’s not like I can’t make room for something this tiny (1 1/2″ tall x 3/4″ diameter) until I finally figure out what to do with them. Maybe somewhere to stash catnip so that the cats can’t get to it? Although knowin...

Kale Me Now

Figured it was time to switch to something greener than the coated sugar that adorned the main page for too long now. Hi. Happy New Year to you and yours! Hope your hair doesn’t hurt too much today.

It’s been a weird end of year here, with the news that the bookstore Chaz worked at for over a decade will be closing its doors for good by the end of January. And another one bites the dust.

Not all bad stuff though, lots of good (like writing a new book with Tami), can’t complain.

About the images:...

Coating the Sugar

Two posts in one day? It probably hasn’t happened since the first year I started blogging. Anyway, I had a little bit of fun after shooting some naturally-dyed sugar crystals and turning them into pretty sprinkles for a cool baker‘s upcoming book project. They remind me of the sparkly plastic toy jewelry I used to play with as a kid. Easier to chew on, too.

The bunch of crystals on the first picture are shaped vaguely like Switzerland. Or maybe I’m homesick, on a sugar high, and mostly just im...

Purr-o (A Cuppa Review)

I’ve tried to fight the coffee feeling many times in my decades as a breakfast eater/drinker, but it never really caught for good. So, might as well make it worthwhile by consuming quality coffee that doesn’t taste like sad, sad burn. Or lighter fluid.

No names.

Enter Puro, a brand created in 2005 from a company called Miko which has been roasting coffee in Belgium for 212 (!) years now. They sent me three bags of their coffee to try, which you could win too during the monthly competition on th...