Girlfriend in a sugar coma.

I love brownies. Specifically, fudgy brownies, because if you want them to be cakey, then why not just have cake? In my opinion, Vegan Treats are the holy grail of brownies, so long as you ignore the hydrogenated oils that they are full of. Now, as I'm not in New York City any more, nor anywhere else that sells Vegan Treats, I have to make my own. I've made so many batches over the past few months, trying to get that perfect texture, but without much success. However, this past week, I've made some real progress with perfecting my personal (top secret!) recipe that I can be proud of. I've baked so many batches of brownies that you'd think I'd be sick of them by now. NOT SO. Tonight, I made coffee flavoured brownies, hi-lar-iously positioned in tribute to me having finally decided on which name to use for my bakery: Rise Above Bakery. It's one I picked a year or two back, and toyed with the idea of changing it to something else, but I think I'm going to stick to this one from now on.


Mocha brownies.

And for shits and giggles, here is a photo of the first batch of fudgy brownies, which, err, turned out to be way more like actual fudge than anything else. I thought I broke a tooth on one of the edge pieces, but luckily it was a false alarm.


Failure fudgy brownies.

Some photos of the bread I made today. Recipes will be in the zine I'm making!



We're just waiting for them to cool properly before tasting them. Mmmm, crusty...

So, the collective in which I'm living is putting on its first show in Braddock. It's all ages, and no drugs or alcohol permitted - but plenty of sugar, with vegan baked goods provided by yours truly! artnoose will also be tabling there with some beautifully made zines. If you live in or around Pittsburgh, it'd be great to see you. Let us know if you're coming via the wonders of Facebook!

Happy Love Day, everyone! Usually I ignore V-Day, but when your friends are cooking vegan waffles along with ice cream, whipped cream, maple syrup, chocolate syrup and strawberries, how can you say no?



( Breakfast... with sexy results! )

I was very excited for Phil to come and stay with us for a couple of days, but even more so when he decided that we should make an over the top cake of death. We toyed with the idea of a chocolate/coffee or chocolate/mint combination, but neither of those would have gone down too well with the other housemates, so we decided on a banana split cake. The mission was to make it as decadent as we could manage without veering too far from the theme, and I think we did ourselves pretty proud! We didn't finish until around 2am last night, so we're yet to try it. I think it'll be our breakfast.



( And a step by step guide to each layer. )


There was supposed to be a bag of Dandies incorporated into it as well, but I think we got a bad bag because they were grainy and really dense, so not up to standard. They'll see out their days in a hot chocolate, no doubt.

There will most likely be another cakeshake later on as well. OH THAT'S RIGHT.