Crépes at the Food Court?

In my post about Bangkok’s Crépes & Co, I mentioned that there was a place for crépes at the food court in the Fashion Square Mall. Well, yesterday Hao and I went to La Creperia Café for a late breakfast.

I hadn’t been to the Fashion Square Mall in at least half a year, so it was interesting alone to be at there. We went up to the second level, where the food court and movie theatre was, and we scanned the food court shops for La Creperia. Hao spotted it, and, upon seeing the sign unlit and the menus lacking the hyper-illumination of most food court menus, I was dismayed. “Aw, it’s closed!”

“No, it isn’t,” Hao walked briskly towards the stand. “Look, there’s someone behind the counter.”

Sure enough, the place was open after all, but the design for the store seemed a bit out-of-step with the florescent glow all the other stalls were emitting. If it were a regular stand-alone café, though, it would be fine. We approach the stall, hunger mingled with excitement of new possibilities. I seize a menu lying on the counter, and my eyes widen with crépe possibilities.

In the end, Hao and I both opted for sweet crépes. I bullied him out of getting the Romeo y Julieta crépe with Nutella, bananas and strawberries, because that’s what I wanted, so he opted for the Evita, which consisted of dolci di lecce (or dolce de leche) and bananas. The two gentleman behind the counter, who were very helpful, made the crepes in a quick fashion, having the crépe skins already premade, which sped up the process to merely involve the preparation of the insides.

I watched the older man smear the dolci di lecce from a can onto the crépe for Hao’s Evita, and it struck me that the can could’ve been heated just a wee bit for easier spreading, as the consistency was akin to peanut butter you pulled out of a very cold fridge. Once it was finally spread around, he peeled an banana and plopped it whole onto the crepe, cut it into small pieces, then pushed the banana bits around to make it even across the crépe work area. He then folded it neatly into a sort of diamond, then flipped it over to cook a bit on the folded side. Transferring the crépe to a plate, the whole look was completed with some caramel syrup, powdered sugar and whipped cream.

Oh boy!

Mine had been already made, so I took the two crépes out into the sea of mostly empty chairs in the food court. It had shocked me at how empty the mall was in general, considering it was a Saturday afternoon. Hao was waiting for his coffee to cool, which didn’t really get cool enough to drink until after we had eaten, whereupon he found it a little bitter, like it had been sitting for a while.

The crépes themselves were fabulous, but the frustrating thing was that they were so hard to cut intowith the plastic utensils requisite for mall food. I was afraid I’d break my dinky plastic fork as I attempted to pierce the crépe exterior in order to get to its sweet deliciousness. And, oh, was it sweet. The Romeo y Julieta was decadent; I wound up not being able to finish all of it. Hao said his Evita was on the sweet side, too, but he was able to clean his plate.

I think the final verdict was that La Creperia made some pretty awesome crépes, but it’s probably best just to get them in a to-go package and take them home with you, unless you’re really into food court scenery. That way, you can use real dining utensils, as opposed to plastic, and your eating won’t be periodically interrupted by a blood-curdling shriek from a 4 year-old on the other side of the mall. La Creperia has savoury food as well, and I’d love to try one of those next. Early on, we were warned by one of the employees that the menu was going to be changed up, and that the prices on their website aren’t exactly the same as at the location in the food court, but if you’re in the area and in the mood for a crépe to take out, look at their menu, although the PDF file also mentions pasta, which may not be at their little location in Orlando, but more than likely at their bigger location in the Tampa area.

Peanut Butter Cuppage

Over the weekend I made these dead-easy peanut butter cups from a recipe out of my new copy of Everyday Food, a publication from Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Although “Martha Stewart Omnimedia” sounds creepy ominous, Everyday Food is a great little mag, and I’ve been a subscriber for a year now, and recipes like Easy Peanut Butter Cups really make it pay off. If you want to attempt the recipe, keep about four extra ounces of chocolate on hand; I had trouble with the chocolate sticking to the microwavable bowls I was using, and so I wound up nuking up more chocolate to melt in order to scoop ‘em over the peanut butter. Also, my cups wound up a little mottled, but I liked the look a bit better than that of the conventional Reese’s cup. I skipped the peanuts on top, too.

PS: I went onto MarthaStewart.com to look for the chocolate peanut butter cup recipe above, and the front page had this little feature on cupcakes… and the photo/decoration of the cupcakes make them look like breasts with nipples! Okay, the big red dot is a little off in colour, but I guess you can be the judge. In any case, I have a new idea for decorating cupcakes.

Vegan bakey-bakey

A recent Kitchen Window article from NPR entitled Vegan Valentine has a trio of delicious-looking recipes, with the Chocolate Cake with Chocolate “Butter Cream” looking especially fantastic. Along the same vein, I recently ordered a book through the library, The Joy of Vegan Baking, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, and I’m looking forward to receiving it. The website has a few sample recipes, including another chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Really, you can’t have too much of a good thing.

In any case, I’m excited to get the book, although it might be a while, since I’m ordering it through the library and it could take as long as a month. At least I’ve found some people online who give it the thumbs-up; The Joy of Vegan Baking has been endorsed by Eat Air - A Vegan Food Log, and the photos they have up of their concoctions look yum, especially the cookies shaped like squirrels and acorns. I want squirrel-shaped cookie cutters. It would be even cooler to have squirrel and blue jay cookie cutters, then I can have the cookies fight each other, like I’ve seen them do in real life. Really, I think the two species have arboreal turf wars; I saw a blue jay chase a squirrel away outside my window before.

Anyway, I’m not vegan, but I’m interested in vegan baking because I’ve known a few vegans, and it seems to me that one of the hardest things about being vegan is dealing with baked goods: Does it have eggs? Does it have milk? Honey? Gelatin?

In the past, I’ve done my own vegan experimentations with some successes, like my Cinnamon Vegan Banana-Blueberry Cake, but also some misses. A batch of biscuits I made with vegan butter came out ghastly, which I suspect may have been due to the softness of the vegan spread in comparison to real butter in the same temperature–and the soy flour may have had something to do with it as well. Also, I can’t help but be annoyed with some vegan substitute products which, upon close inspection, hardly seem like suitable substitutes. I was using Tofutti’s Sour Supreme sour cream substitute in the “Cinna-gan-nana-berry Cake” until I read the ingredients, which included partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Apparently, the company now makes a non-hydrogenated version, but good luck finding it at Publix. My question is: Why don’t they just make the regular version non-hydrogenated? Should vegans really have to choose between dairy and trans-fats?

Orlando actually has a couple of vegan-friendly spots with baked goods. Earlier this evening I was at Dandelion, and there were vegan cupcakes in the display case. There is also Ethos, which I have yet to go to, but I’ve heard they have vegan baked goods as well, which their menu confirms.

If you want to try your hand at vegan bakey-bakey, there are quite a few online resources that put me to shame in how little I’ve buggered with egg- and dairy-free baking. The BBC has an article on New ways of baking with, guess what, a recipe for a chocolate cake, although this particular recipe is raising an eyebrow with its “2 tbsp tahini.” Tahini? Moving on, the Post Punk Kitchen has more vegan baking tips and recipes. Chocolate cake? Check. If you’re looking for recipes and baking tips, ChooseVeg.com has some, although one ought to be aware of the graphic photos of animal abuse on its home page (Aaah! The chicken has no eyes!), so if you want to go straight to the recipes, click here. Chocolate cake recipe? Hell, they have a video on making theirs.

Should you be too intimidated to bake from scratch, or if you really want convenience short of a drive to Ethos or Dandelion, Goodbaker and Black Sheep Bakery sell baking mixes on their respective websites, though I can’t attest for how good these are, having not tried them (thoughts, anyone?). You can go a step further and order vegan baked goods online for delivery. Go ahead and Google it or use the Kanye West search engine (I’m serious, it really exists), or go to Etsy and check out their vegan section in “Plants and Edibles.” Some of the Etsy photos for these foodstuffs are nothing short of sexy.

And on Valentine’s Day, who doesn’t want sexy food?

Beer and cupcakes

Last night I went to Redlight Redlight’s Pinklight Bazaar, which was packed with people in “classy & sassy attire” flipping through vendor goods and gnoshing on cupcakes. The vendor area was too packed for me to elbow my way through, and since I was low on the cash anyway, Hao and I eventually planted ourselves at the cupcake corner of the bar.

So, what beer does one drink when eating a lovely coconut-vanilla cupcake? I opted to go light, with one of my most favourite beers, the Hitachino Nest White Ale. The hint of spice and orange peel in this clean, crisp beer was lovely in washing down the cupcake, and I was finished with my glass too soon. Instead of continuing along the line of witbiers, I made the mistake of getting a frambois-type concoction that was too sweet–I ended up not finishing it. A shame.

Judging by the attendance, the event seemed like it was quite a success–there were worries among my crowd of falling through to the bakery downstairs–but like I said earlier, due to the crowd, I didn’t really get to paw through the goods that were featured by the craftswomen for sale. In any case, the cupcakes were lovely.