Before I grovel at your collective feet for forgiveness, please accept this picture of a cupcake I made last week as a peace offering. A token of good will, if you will. Or even if you won’t.

Lemon Glazed Cupper - tangy.

I ate exactly one of those cupcakes. The rest were kindly disposed of (devoured) by The Brit.

Okay, so, I basically sucked at the whole posting every day thing last week. That’s mostly because I don’t think any of the food I’ve been making lately has been particularly interesting (except for the tester recipes, obvs). You see, recently I started logging everything I eat into a food journal. I’m on a quest to become healthier, and hopefully lose a little (lot) of my excess weight in the process. So, while I spend a lot of my day thinking about food, and planning food, and even eating food, I’m afraid it will bore the ever-loving shit out of people if I blog about it, too. Most of it is not what you might call culinarily adventurous.

This week though, I have a plan. I plan to not give a flying toss whether anyone deems my food interesting, and just blog it anyway. Every. Boring. Detail. Get ready people! This might be moderately tolerable!

Breakfast this morning was a smoothie. I love smoothies, but it’s starting to get too cool for them. Soon they’ll have to relinquish their spot among favorite breakfast items to something more befitting cold weather, like oatmeal. Until then though, I’m still enjoying the occasional smoothie when the mood strikes. My favorite combo of late has been strawberries, banana, soy milk (Silk Light) and a tablespoon of Dark Chocolate Dreams.

It wasn't blurry in real life.

A day just isn’t complete without a nice cuppa tea. Of course, if that’s true, I’ve had a lot of incomplete days lately. I’m pretty low on tea right now, but I’m making do with what I have. I actually had two cups today, but they both looked exactly the same so use your imagination, kay?

Lady Grey, if you must know.

Lunch was sandwiches (that’s right, plural! Two sandwiches!). They consisted of some leftover whole wheat buns that need using up, Yves Meatless Salami, Vegenaise and yellow mustard. On the side I had my first ever Honeycrisp apple. It was gigantic and amazing and perfect and I wanted to marry it but I ate it instead (there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere, but I’ll leave that up to you).

With, of course, the ubiquitous big glass of water.

Snack time! Homemade hummus with celery. I’m not usually a big celery eater but I had some leftover and figured I might as well eat it. Don’t you hate that you have to buy a whole mess o’celery when you only need a couple of stalks? Yeah, me too.

Hummus loves anything crunchy. Even celery.

Finally, for dinner, I made a modified version of my Tamarind Orange Tofu. I served it up with some long grain brown rice, steamed carrots and peas. Deeelish!

I got lazy cutting the tofu into little pieces. What?

And since I’m obsessed with nutritional stats, I’ll inflict them on you! You’re welcome! Hey, just count yourself lucky that I decided not to post nutrition for every meal like I was temped to do.

The percentages listed with fat, carbs and protein indicate what percent of total calories came from each. The percentages listed with everything else indicate what percentage of the Recommended Daily Allowance they equal. Saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium should be below 100%. The vitamins, minerals and fiber should meet or exceed 100%.

Daily total:

• Calories: 1455

—

• Carbs: 234g (60%)
• Fat: 37.9g (22%)
• Protein: 70g (18%)

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• Saturated Fat: 4.4g (27%)
• Cholesterol: 0mg (0%)
• Sodium: 1759mg (76%)

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• Fiber: 42g (251%)
• Vitamin A: 2286µg (327%)
• Vitamin C: 134mg (178%)
• Calcium: 1159mg (116%)
• Iron: 20.4mg (113%)

My Chocolate Sour Cream Cake was the first cake recipe I turned from the dark side over to cruelty-free. I think it tastes even better now, but then I am a little partial. There are a few steps, making it a little more involved than some simple chocolate cake recipes out there, but the rich, super-moist result is well worth the effort… if I do say so myself.

It's awesome topped with espresso-flavored icing.

Chocolate ‘Sour Cream’ Cake

• 4oz unsweetened chocolate 
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) Earth Balance or other vegan margarine
• 1 cup hot water 
• 2 cups cake flour (or 1¾ cups all purpose flour plus ¼ cup cornstarch)
• 2 cups sugar
• ¼ tsp salt 
• 8oz tub Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream or other vegan sour cream substitute
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1 ½ tsp baking soda
• 6oz container plain or vanilla soy yogurt

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease two 8” round cake pans, or line two cupcake pans with paper liners.
2. Melt chocolate in the microwave or double boiler until smooth and set aside. Combine margarine and hot water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Immediately remove from heat and whisk in melted chocolate. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar and salt. Pour chocolate mixture into flour mixture all at once, blend well. Mix in vegan sour cream, vanilla and baking soda, stirring well. Add yogurt and mix just until combined. 
4. Pour into pans and bake until toothpick inserted in center of one of the cakes comes out clean. Two 8” cakes will take about 25-30 minutes, cupcakes will take about 20-25 minutes.
5. Let cool for a few minutes in pans, then turn out onto racks and cool completely.

Makes two 8” layers or about 24 standard cupcakes.

I donated two cakes yesterday to the Women Against MS fundraising luncheon – proceeds went to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. 

The first one was four layers of lemon cake, filled with raspberry preserves, iced with lemon vanilla buttercream and topped with fresh raspberries.

The second was four layers of chocolate sour cream cake, filled and iced with espresso buttercream and topped with a chocolate ganache drizzle.

No inside shots, as they were auctioned off and (hopefully) enjoyed by others!