July 14, 2013 – Color

Saturday, July 14th.
VBC Meeting #5: Color

Host of the month: Billy

For the fifth Vegan Bake Club meeting, we investigated color. It is hard to avoid color. I mean, even if you don’t think about color, your food has a color. Anyway, it allowed us to be as creative or uncreative as we could manage. For our activity of the day, Megan showed us how to make a chocolate beet cake. The batter was rather red, but the cake post-bake was pretty normal chocolate color. Well, that’s color for you. We also had an impromptu arts and crafts time where we spent about ten minutes all sitting at a table “designing” potential Vegan Bake Club logos. My favorite is Ramon’s Face with VBC Teardrop. I’m not sure if as reporter on these meetings I am supposed to name favorites, but go ahead and mutiny.

This is what we made:

Ramon: Mexican “Hot” Snickerdoodles with Chocolate Chips
I can’t remember remember the exact experience I had eating these cookies, but I remember thinking this is what Billy’s cookies should have aspired to be when we had that secret ingredient Vegan Bake Club meeting where his cookies tasted like spicy hot gross. Ramon’s cookies were good, VBC teardrop good.

Lauren: Savory Polenta with guacamole, black beans, and fajita veggies
Sweet Polenta with mango puree, strawberries, and coconut whipped cream
Unfortunately the picture doesn’t show the colorful sides that were prepared to go with the somewhat f’ed up looking polenta.

Billy: Daifuku filled with Red Bean. He made a variety of flavors:
– Green Tea
– Aborted Butternut Squash
– Beet
The butternut squash came from Billy’s garden.

Trista: Blueberry-Died White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
Like Megan’s beet cake, the use of blueberry didn’t show through in the finished baked product. However, on an interesting color note: if you burn white chocolate chips enough, they look like normal chocolate chips. Oh well, the cookies still tasted good. 😉

John: Orange Strawberry Blueberry Muffins
John made two different batches. One he added pureed blueberries to the batter, and in the other he put pureed strawberries. As they also had his signature orange in them, they all tasted like happy.

Slynn: Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Pie
You may not be able to hear it, but this picture is whispering to you about the deliciousness of the strawberry and rhubarb filling.

Michelle: Blue Twice-Baked Potatoes with Beet Chutney
The natural colors of the vegetables, so vibrant, win the Best in Theme award. Of course I have no authority to grant such an award, and the award doesn’t exist. Nice looking papas though!

Megan: Chocolate Beet Cake
I was so excited that my vegan sis Megan was in town from Hong Kong for a Vegan Bake Club meeting. It made it extra special to watch her make a cake. <3 [caption id="attachment_273" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Megan making beet cake.[/caption]