Social Justice Banana Bread

The UN General Assembly regards February 20 as the World Day of Social Justice. One way to further the cause of social justice is to fuck up Escalades.

I used Isa's banana bread recipe and mixed in 1/4 c. chocolate chips. I only baked it for an hour but might try 50 min. next time. Or just buy a proper bread pan.

Here's a sketch of a derivation of an inductive principle for S5, that if A→□B is a theorem, then ◊A→B is a theorem:

1.  A→□B [hypothesis]

2. □B→B [T axiom]

3. A→B [propositional logic] 

4. A→◊A [T◊ theorem]

5. ◊A→B [propositional logic] 

We can then use this inductive principle — call it IP — to prove that ◊□A→□◊A is a theorem:

1. A→□◊A [B theorem]

2. □(A→□◊A) [rule of necessitation]

3. □(A→□◊A)→(□A→□□◊A) [K axiom] 

4. □A→□□◊A [modus ponens]

5. ◊□A→□◊A [IP]

Vegan Dinner for Two! #1

My friend came over last night to cook bean burgers. She baked some brownies which narrowly missed the vegan mark. Luckily for our sweet teeth, I'd made a chocolate cheezecake using a recipe from a book my parents gave me for Christmas, My Sweet Vegan. I'd put up the recipe, but I'm not feeling motivated right now. I couldn't find vegan graham crackers, so I made my own using this recipe.

I used a little bit of Tofutti, but most of the cream cheeze I made from scratch using this recipe. So much work! It's obscenely rich and chocolate-y.

The burgers were my standard recipe which I'm too lazy to link to. To go with those I baked some rolls using this recipe. Also blended up some cashews, avocado, vegetable broth, and cilantro for a spread. Yum!

The "#1" in the title of this post is a bit of magical thinking. If there's a first, there's gotta be a second. Who else wants to make dinner with me?

Oh yeah, Tiny Mix Tapes is gonna be publishing my comic, A Thousand K.s. Here's "Loneliness."

CORRECTION: Not pictured (because consumed before photo shoot), sweet potato fries.

Really Really Free Market Chocolate Chip Cookies

I baked these this morning to bring to the Really Really Free Market, which was a phenomenal success and the most fun I've had in a long time. Lots of cool people hanging out and giving stuff away and finding beautiful things to take home. The cookies got eaten real quick, and the weird cake I baked a couple nights ago got all eaten up as well!

The recipe is jacked from Isa. I made a few tweaks, one of which is that I doubled the bake time because I don't have magic powers like Isa. Also, I forgot to soak nuts last night so in order to make mylk this morning I blanched the almonds, which resulted in a smoother, more subtle mylk and is something I'm going to take the time to do in the future. Peeling the nuts is annoying, though.

makes approx. 24

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 c. light brown sugar

1/4 c. white sugar

1/3 c. canola oil

1/4 c. almond milk

1 Tbsp. cornstarch

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/4 c. flour

1/4 c. almond pulp

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. canola oil

1/2 c. chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Combine sugars, oil, mylk, cornstarch, and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Whisk with a fork until incorporated and thick (like caramel, says Isa).

3. Mix in 1 c. flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in the almond pulp and oil, then mix in the remaining 1/4 c. flour. Add chips and you're done!

4. Scoop dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper using the Tbsp. It should be lightly coated in canola oil from last use, making it easy to shake the dough out. Close pack 10-12 blobs on the sheet and bake for 12 min.

5. Remove the parchment paper to a table, cool for a minute, then transfer the cookies to a rack or cutting board to finish cooling. Place the parchment paper back on the baking sheet and fill up with remaining dough. Repeat process.

Yum! I'll have to bake something special for my roommate because she was super nice and let us use her car for the whole afternoon to bring stuff to/from AS220 downtown.

 

This girl didn't get to take the wheel home, but I think she might have gotten a cute red hat.

Ignorance Cake Challenge

Last night I decided to bake a cake instead of read for class. This is the second cake I've ever baked, and I did it without a recipe. I had a vague notion that tofu could be used for the "cream cheeze" frosting. Needless to say, this cake is not as good as something you could make from a tested recipe, so I'm not going to bother posting a recipe. Not that I could remember it anyway. There's flour, oil, a batch of chocolate soup, cocoa, sugar, tofu, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, salt, baking powder, cornstarch, almond milk, confectioner's sugar. It's a goddamn mess. It's super dense but not super chocolate-y or super sweet. That's probably a bad thing. But I had a lot of fun! I advocate messing around in the kitchen if you're procrastinating and have a little bit of disposable income.

First layer:

Groundhog Day Chocolate Soup

Did the groundhog see his or her shadow today? I don't know. I don't care. I just want this whole season to go to hell. As if the day weren't soggy enough, I accidentally pushed the lip of the pot under the bowl of cold water while making chocolate mousse. I'd already eyeballed the amount of water, so after my mishap there was WAY TOO MUCH water. So I melted more chocolate and whipped my hand off for 15 min., to no avail. The chocolate and water molecules did their thing, there was just too few of the former. Hence, soup. I didn't actually eat this. Refrigerating it for use tomorrow in a totally improvised, ill-advised experimental cake. That's if it doesn't magically congeal into pudding overnight.

This & Blumethal Chocolate Mousse

I don't think I need to make a joke about what this looks like. It's actually chocolate mousse, as conceived by Hervé This and Heston Blumenthal. My right forearm and hand were killing me after this, I think because I used some fair trade African chocolate which was only 55% cocoa solids rather than 70-80%. But the work was worth it, because this is delectable stuff. 

makes approx. 3 servings 

INGREDIENTS:

6 oz. chocolate chips

<2/3 c. water

1 Tbsp. light brown sugar

DIRECTIONS:

1. Melt the chocolate in the water with the sugar over the stove.

2. Pour the melted chocolate into a bowl which rests in a larger bowl full of cold water.

3. Whisk until your arm falls off. Or until the chocolate thickens. You want it to get fluffy but if you whisk past the point of no return the mousse gets grainy. It's not really a point of no return, though, because you can always melt it again and start over.