I’m finding that I schedule too much food in my meal plans, so I’ve decided to make a little more room for left-overs. This is a good thing, really, because I love left-overs! They mean that something is already delicious and tasty and waiting for me to eat it.
Monday : Left-over Eggplant Parmigiana, a test recipe for Celine & Joni that I ended up finally making last night. So yummy. We’ll also be enjoying some roasted butternut squash.
Tuesday : Lemon Herb Coconut Tofu with Udon from 500 Vegan Recipes.
Wednesday : Left-overs.
Thursday : Baked Asparagus with Mushroom sauce (tester), served with a big green salad and veggie patties.
Friday : TBA. Saturday will be Guppy’s big birthday party she’ll be co-hosting with her friend. We’re expecting some 25 kids (because you can’t leave out little brothers and sisters) so I’ll be spending much of the afternoon preparing goodies for the fun. I’m not sure what’s going to happen dinner-wise yet, perhaps take-out?
Cupcake Wednesday mentioned last week was fun and here’s what I baked :
Buttery Vanilla cupcakes with speculoos icing. The buttery flavour comes from the coconut milk I used, and the icing is just speculoos spread melted to liquid, and then the cupcakes are dipped a few times to get a nice, shiny coating. The speculoos spread is a relatively new find, but because it has a lot of oil in it it’s not something I buy very often. I would like to make my own, but I can’t find vegan speculoos cookies in my area.
Speculoos spread + baguette = yummy snack.
When Aparna mentioned she’d make some cupcakes on Twitter not so long ago, I found myself craving some, too. We decided to make cupcakes together on Cupcake Wednesday, just for fun. It worked out just great as I had Guppy and her friends for lunch that day, and wanted to make them something fun for dessert.
So why speculoos icing? Simply put, buttercream frostings, or frostings in general don’t go over very big here in France. Even most children find it too sweet/rich. I would be happy to leave my cupcakes naked, but Guppy just loves sprinkles, and icing is the “glue”, right? This was just perfect because it wasn’t too sweet, just a nice, think icing lending just the right amout of “hey, look at me, I’m frosting” without being too much. The kids just loved them!
Aparna also made some delicious looking cuppers and you should go take a look! I love that Twitter allowed us to “hang out” together making cupcakes, despite the thousands of kilometers that seperate us.
Musings From The Fishbowl 
Vegan after my own heart!!! Can’t get Speculoos spread here in the UK, not easily anyway, so I’ll just thoroughly enjoy looking at your cupcakes whilst crunching on my Lotus bickies (now these I can get in truckloads.) As Bianca of Vegan Crunk posted about a homemade speculoos spread, Might have to do a bit of lurking on her & Mihl’s blogs. I’m no brave vegan, but I do a lot of vegan baking as my 2-yr old has food allergies, eggs included 😦 But who needs eggs anyway? Thanks for sharing your recipes.
Hi! Enjoy those Lotus! They’re what I used to make Mihl’s Speculoos spread & it turned out so well! I hope you try it. I haven’t tried Bianca’s version, yet, but I’m sure I will!
Seriously? Speculoos icing? You’re killing me over here! I wish I could more easily get my hands on that stuff… In bulk… !
Oooh, those cupcakes look delicious! What a great way to use Speculoos spread!
I love the idea of topping cupcakes with speculoos spread, I love that stuff. I have a jar of it in my cupboard that is half full and I totally forgot it was there. I must dig it out.
I’m a leftovers lover too. I always make double quantities of stuff so I don’t have to cook lunch the next day!
I’ve heard about speculoos spread but never seen it in the shops. It looks awesome atop them there cupcakes.
i’m all about leftovers too (especially if was good the first time around)! if i buy groceries for every day of the week, i end up freezing or just trying to make something before the produce goes bad. enjoy the lighter meal plan!
P.S. Totally with you on the icing! When I amde my first buttercream frosting from VCTOTW I was shocked how sweet and rich it was.
Speculoos Ice Cream? You are killing me here! Damn, why did I emty those jars so fast!
P.S. I’m sending your package someday this week, I promise! I just ahve to pick up one more item.
Speculoos frosting?! Oh my! I made some of the homemade spread from Mihl’s blog awhile back because we don’t have the spread available here…but the cookies are sold at Walgreens. I bet that would be awesome atop a cupcake.
I typically eat leftovers three to four nights a week and only cook twice or three times.
Yum, I love speculoos spread! Never had it before I came to Europe. What a great idea for a cupcake topping.
Have fun with the birthday party! Sounds like a wild time! 😛
Totally with you and Céline on the frosting thing: not a fan. But that speculoos icing is pure genius! It must have been yummy!
Good luck with the 25 kids on Friday – you’re a braver woman than I am… 🙂
tu as deja goute des mille-feuilles? pas vegan, bien sur, mais le glacage etait miam. et je suis tout a fait d’acc avec toi, c’est pas la partie preferee des gateaux en europe, le glacage. je suis d’ailleurs toujours pas fana, personellement!
These look gorgeous. Am sure you daughter and friends would have been thrilled with them.
Enjoyed baking together and would love to do this again. 🙂