A few more festive dishes from Christmas 2011

Before we get too far into the new year, I wanted to post a few more of the fun and festive dishes we made over the holidays.

Yule Log Cake

My sister and I wanted to make a traditional British Christmas dessert and had hoped to make Christmas pudding, but we didn't have the proper culinary paraphernalia to steam the pudding.  So, we opted for a Yule Log cake instead.  We used the recipe found here from Veganfamily.co.uk .  The chocolate cake was delicious!!!  I loved the inclusion of the orange juice (very subtle flavor when cooked but still detectable and delectable!) and the frosting was also super yummy and indulgent.  Ours ended up looking nothing like a yule log, but oh well.  It was fun and probably one of my favorite vegan cakes yet! :->

"Egg" Nog

Usually, I love the recipes Isa comes up with on Post Punk Vegan Kitchen (and in her books) and I had high hopes for her egg nog, despite how odd the ingredients sounded to me (coconut milk and avocado!!??!!).  I am not a fan of the store-bought "veg nog" and this recipe got great reviews.  My sister and I tried it hopefully, especially since the avocado made it seem like it had a bit of redeeming value, but we were disappointed.  The taste was just really odd, not bad, exactly, but not at all like egg nog and not really something we wanted to drink much of considering the calorie load.  Oh well, we'll try something else next year!

German Red Cabbage

 This was for my husband.  He remembers his German grandmother making this and he loved it.  My friend Jeannette again came through with a helpful recipe.  Basically, you take a red cabbage head, medium yellow onion, and two apples, shred them and cook them down in a bit of water, butter (in my case, margarine), with sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper, cloves and a bay leaf.  The recipe was a bit vague on how much of the sugar, etc. to add so we just kind of guessed at it.  The result was fairly tasty (I don't know that I'm a huge red cabbage fan, myself) and my husband liked it but said it wasn't quite like his grandma's.   This is probably because we did not use butter (or, gasp!, lard as the recipe said) and the spices, etc. were so variable.  But, it was a good attempt and he quite enjoyed it!