If you read my post a few months back about St. Augustine you will remember me mentioning Rita’s Italian Ice.   Rita’s now has a location in Hermitage at 4219 Lebanon Pike.  All of the Italian Ices are vegan and delicious.  Mango is the best with Alex’s Lemonade not far behind.  Black Cherry is also a good choice as is Tangerine and Pineapple.  The vanilla is tasty as well.  Ok, ALL of the flavors are great!

I am partial to the beachside location in St. Augustine but it is good to have a location nearby.

Free regular size Italian Ices through next week!  MANGO! MANGO!

My wife has been using her days off to bake up lots of goodies. Her latest creations are Smores and Butterfly Cupcakes. Recipes are from “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World“. I have married a master baker. These things are delicious!

The next day after making these she taught a small class on cupcake decorating, unfortunately all of those cupcakes were made using butter and eggs since someone else bought the supplies.  They were easter cupcakes and looked really cool with green coconut for grass and jellybean “eggs” and a little chick on top.

Christmas is over. I didn’t cook as much as I had planned on, we were going to do cookies, ice cream, and a few other things. At the last minute I decided to make Figgy Pudding. That was all I had time for with a busy day of people coming and going. After hearing “Bring us some figgy pudding.” a few times in the past weeks I decided I wanted to know exactly what it was and if it was really good enough to demand “Bring it right here”.

It is.

As with other British puddings it is actually a cake with a sauce to accompany. Very figgy, very spicy with cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon and I made a brandy sauce (with 1/2 cup of brandy not cooked after adding) that made it very tasty. I didn’t take any pictures for those who have a thing for food images, sorry. I’ll post the recipe in the recipe section of the messageboard. I used a standard dairy filled recipe and adapted it, nowhere could I find a veganized one already. So, there will be one now.

Call it Ice Cream, call it Soy Cream, call it the best stuff ever.

Peppermint Ice Cream

2 cups soy milk
2 cups soy creamer
2 TBS arrowroot
½ cup evaporated cane juice
1 TBS vanilla extract
4-5 peppermint sticks, crushed

Whisk 1/4 cup of the soy milk with the arrowroot. Heat the remaining soy milk and soy creamer to a simmer. Add the evaporated cane juice to the soy mixture and stir until completely dissolved. Add the arrowroot and stir until thickened, about 2 - 3 minutes. You are not looking for a “pudding” consistency, just a light thickening.

Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Add vanilla and cool completely in refrigerator.

Prepare accordingly using your ice cream maker.

When the soy cream reaches the point where it is almost finished add the crushed peppermint and turn the ice cream maker back on/keep cranking/etc for 3 – 4 more minutes.

RELATED:  If you don’t have one of the Cuisinart Ice Cream Makers, then go now and get one.  It makes recipes like these too simple to finish up.

Fresh RumNog Pecan Cookies, I love these things. They were just made today and I have just delivered a few tins, supplemented with fudge, to some of my clients. They were baked fresh this morning and I made certain a few were left over for me to munch on for the next few hours, that’s about all they will last. In fact I have eaten two as I am writing this. We picked up fresh pecans on our way back from Atlanta earlier this week just to make these. I can’t say much more about these except DELICIOUS!