NYC Food Twitter Round-up

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Kiesha

I spent a good part of today following new mobile food vendors on Twitter. I even made a list of all the New York area food vendors that I follow. I thought people might be interested, so here’s the list of people I follow:

Wafels & Dinges, my personal favorite. A beautiful yellowy truck that delivers Belgian waffles and a variety of toppings, including the addictive graham cracker-y spekuloos spread. They are Twitter addicts, so you’ll never have to wonder where the truck is parked, and they always offer a free dinges for answering a question or performing a task that they assign. Today for instance: “Tell us how many more Mel Gibson rant tapes will come out.”

The Treats Truck, mobile bake sale, stocking classic cookies and brownies. I haven’t had the pleasure of trying this place, but I am now following them so I can see where they park and remedy this situation.

Cupcake Stop, a cupcake truck. I haven’t stopped here yet, but I’ve noticed that they are pretty close to my work on some days, so I may hit them up soon.

The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, mobile ice cream. This one is elusive! I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve heard a lot about it.

Rickshaw Truck, specializing in dumplings. I’ve only caught a few fleeting glimpses of this beauty, but now I’m following them, and as soon as they get close enough to my work or home, I’m going to attack.

The following Twitterers are stationary, and definitely worth a visit:

Baby Cakes, probably the most famous vegan bakery in New York City. They have a cookbook. And they have tons of loyal customers, including celebrities like Jason Schwartzman. They update their Twitter account every day with the various goodies they’ve got in stock for the day.

Sweet Melissa Patisserie, Park Slope location, an amazing bakery on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. Twitter updates are infrequent, but often awesome. They haven’t done this since February, but for a while they were offering cookies or cupcakes with a drink purchase if you had the code word from Twitter.

The current issue of New York magazine (the ‘Cheap Eats’ edition) features a two-page spread with adorable cartoon versions of many of NYC’s mobile food vendors. You can see the images and information here, but that spread is amazing. I want a print to frame and hang in my kitchen. Here’s the Wafels & Dinges truck:

Oh, I’m on Twitter too. You can follow me here if you’d like.

The Brooklyn Baker Bakes! Fourth of July Desserts

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Kiesha

Long weekends mean baking for me. I’ve had the desire to bake a ton of stuff for a while now, but I haven’t had the time. My weekends have been so full lately that the only time I spend in my apartment is to sleep.

So with the Fourth of July approaching, I started thinking about what I could bake. My husband’s aunt and uncle invited me, my husband, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend over to their house in New Jersey for a little barbecue, so I knew I had to bake something.

I settled on two things; an apple pie and vegan cupcakes.

The apple pie would be easy enough to make. I’ve made several of them throughout my baking career. But I didn’t want it to be the same old, same old pie, so I started looking through various recipes to find something that was a little different.

The winning idea came from “Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook”. In it, she features a blueberry pie with a top crust made up of stars cut out of pie dough. I was really craving an apple pie, so I decided to use Martha’s apple pie recipe and put it in the star pie crust.

I followed the pie recipe pretty closely, although I added ginger and cloves to Martha’s somewhat paltry cinnamon and nutmeg spiciness. The pie turned out great.

Continue reading →

The Brooklyn Baker Bakes! Vegan Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemony Buttercream Frosting

Posted on July 3, 2010 by Kiesha

My sister-in-law recently started living la vida vegan. Being a baker and having vegans in your life means you need to have some vegan dessert recipes under your belt so that your non-animal-product-eating friends don’t get left out of the goodies.

I’ve fiddled with vegan recipes in the past and had success with a few, but I’ve got to step up my game. So on Father’s Day, when my father-in-law, sister-in-law and her boyfriend all came over to our apartment for dinner and dessert, I pulled my copy of “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World” off the shelf.

My sister-in-law is the one who actually gave me this book as a Christmas present last year. Talk about a return on your investment!

I selected the Gingerbread Cupcake mostly because I love gingerbread and this recipe did not require the purchase of too many ingredients that I wouldn’t normally use (soy milk being one of them).

The batter was ridiculously gingery and I thought it was going to be too much, but the flavor mellowed out substantially upon baking, leaving behind that wonderful warm feeling that ginger provides. The ‘butter’cream frosting was actually a combination of shortening, margarine, powdered sugar and lemon juice and zest. It came out very well, although I always find recipes that substitute shortening for butter to be lacking just a bit. But that’s just me. I love butter.

My sister-in-law enjoyed her tailor-made dessert, and I think the other diners that night did as well.

(Because this is a long weekend, and because my husband’s aunt and uncle are hosting a family barbecue this afternoon, I’ve been crazy-busy baking. I’ll post my exploits over the next week, including another vegan cupcake.)

Skull Cake from Threadcakes

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Kiesha

If you haven’t bought a T-shirt from Threadless yet, what are you waiting for? Threadless is a website that allows people to submit ideas for T-shirts and then invites other people to vote on them. Those shirt designs that receive the most votes get printed. The designs can be really intricate and cool, or as simple as a milk carton and a chocolate chip cookie professing their love for one another (I have owned that shirt at one point in my life).

In 2007, a guy named Chris Cardinal decided it would be fun to run a contest that asked people to recreate their favorite Threadless design in cake. And thus, Threadcakes was born.

I haven’t paid much attention to this website in the past, but after seeing a cake today that Boing Boing (you should be reading this blog as well) posted today, I think I’m going to be all over this website.

This is the original design, called “Bitter Teeth::

And this is the cake that Chloe Bird created, using a scientific skull model, food-grade silicon, dental tools and milk chocolate:

It never fails to amaze me what people can create. This is amazing.

You can read about how Chloe made this cake here.