Happy Birthday To You!

Our friend Mary is 22. And so we made her a paper crown and had a little surprise party to celebrate her recent birthday. She was very surprised.



For her birthday dinner we made delicious pasta with a heavy duty, super tasty vegan pasta sauce. And of course you need a cake, and of course I want to have my cake and eat it too. Jackie + Casey found an amazing recipe for a simple vegan yellow cake. Vegan cakes sometimes have the tendency to be really dense and heavy and sweet in a weird way. This cake was actually relatively light with just the perfect amount of richness and subtle fruity sweetness. I had like four pieces, and I do not regret it. And of course, the recipes are easy, inexpensive, and not very time consuming. We are a lazy hungry bunch.

Happy Birthday Mary Pasta

I have made this pasta several times, because it tastes really great and is also filling. From start to finish it takes about 30 minutes to prepare. You can add any number of vegetables or seasonings into the mix to suit your tastes.



Ingredients

•16 oz pasta, any shape or size or color.
•16 oz broccoli, fresh or frozen
•16 oz (1 can) black olives
•½ sliced onion
•Mushrooms (as many or as a little as you want).
•1 box Fantastic Foods Nature’s Burger Mix (for meatballs! They taste so good and add a bit of protein an otherwise starchy meal. You can buy the mix at Market Street or Alternative Food Company on 27th + Boston for about $2 a box).
•1 cup vegetable oil
•Sauce. You can either buy a can of pre-made pasta sauce, or make your own from scratch. We used several cans of tomato sauce, 1 can of tomato paste, garlic, onion, parsley, basil, “italian seasoning,” salt, pepper, and a teeny bit of olive oil in this version.


Directions

PASTA

•Boil a large pot of water with 1 tsp vegetable oil and 1/8 tsp salt.
•Add pasta to boiling water and cook until soft (or until it sticks to your wall when you throw it!)

SAUCE

•Mix the Nature’s Burger stuff in a bowl with 1 ½ bowling water.
•Season to taste (optional). I like to add a little bit of salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder.
•Cover bowl and set to the side.
•Pour sauce in to a medium size pan on low heat.
•Slice olives, mushrooms, onions, and cooked broccoli.
•Add vegetables into sauce, and stir occasionally.
•In a large sautee pan, add ½ inch of vegetable oil on medium-high heat.
•Take the cooled Nature’s Burger mix and roll into 1 inch balls.
•Add the meatballs to the oil and sautee until they are firm and brown on the outside (about 5 minutes)
•Remove meatballs from pan and add to the sauce.
Voila! Vegan pasta and meatballs!

Happy Birthday Mary Cake
We initially got this recipe here, but we changed a few things (to work with what ingredients we already had and what flavors we liked) so here’s our version (it turned out so pretty!):



Ingredients

•2 cups all purpose flour
•2 tsp corn starch
•2½ tsp baking powder
•¾ cup vegan margarine or spread (earth balance vegan spread is around 2.50$ for a tub at market street and alternative food company. You can also use Blue Bonnet Light, which is technically vegan but does have hydrogenated oils and a lot of processed chemicals).
•1 cup of sugar
•¾ cup of mango puree
•1 ½ cup soy milk or any milk alternative
•¼ cup Marachino Cherrys
•¼ cup chopped walnuts
•frosting
•1 cup pineapple chunks (for topping)

Directions

•Preheat oven to 350°F.
•Sift flour, corn starch and baking powder and mix together.
•Blend margarine, sugar and mango puree together and add the dry mix in 2 parts.
•Pour in the soy milk and blend together thoroughly.
•Fold in the nuts and the marachino cherries. The mix should be quite thick.
•Grease two 8in cake pans and pour in the cake mixture.
•Bake for approx 30-40 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
•Let cool completely before garnishing or it will ruin the cake.
•Add frosting, pineapples, and whatever else you want on top of your cake.