Meatless Loaf and Pound Cake

First, I finally made the Mini Meatless Loaves from River over at Wing it Vegan. But it almost didn’t happen, because I realized that I had no tomato sauce in the house, right when starting the recipe. However, I did have plenty of tomato paste and half remembered something about using tomato paste thinned with water to make a quick replacement for tomato sauce. So that problem got solved rather easily. The ground seitan worked great as a replacement for the veggie crumbles and I even added some green pepper, just for some extra flavor. Since I had no way of making more of my emergency “tomato sauce” for the topping, I decided to just cook it all up in one loaf and cover the loaf with catsup. Mine doesn’t look as nice as what River or Becks made, but it tasted really quite good. This will make a nice sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

And speaking of lunch, I did remember to take a photo of the wraps today. I kind of borrowed the idea from Isa’s recipe for the Cornmeal Chili Tofu Sandwiches from VCON, by using shredded cabbage as the base for the baked chick-fu. The chick-fu wedges aren’t whole, like in Isa’s recipe, because in this case it seems to be easier to eat if they are in pieces. However, I might have to try just using the wedges as some point, because then the wraps might be easier to roll-up.

I also tried to make the Vanilla Yoghurt Pound Cake from VCON today. It was a partial success. Per advice I got over at PPK forums, it seemed that the best way to replace the pureed tofu was with more yoghurt. Mandy suggested using ½ a cup of yoghurt to directly replace the tofu, but I decided to only use ¾ of a cup total of yoghurt. The batter seemed to be correct and it looked great out of the oven, however as the cake cooled it collapsed in the middle. I cooked it for 58 minutes and the knife did come out clean when inserted, so am not sure if this is a structural problem or if I just didn’t bake it long enough. The ends of the cake came out of the loaf pan rather cleanly, so it doesn’t seem that the cake was under baked. The pound cake is also quite moist. Apparently, this recipe was originally all yoghurt, but was changed to add some tofu. Now I wonder if the tofu helps add some structure. If so, then maybe another egg replacer would be better to use. It does taste quite good, however. And I was able to salvage at least 2/3 of the loaf, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Tomorrow looks like leftovers again, as usual. So I will see you all on Monday.