The release of the pie book is approaching! I’m giddy with anticipation, and not just because there’s an awkward photo of me in it (I tried to use a photo of Hank instead, but for some reason he had difficulty sitting still in the presence of delicious pie). To tease you all one last time, here are a few more tester photos.

Very berry chocolate chip cobbler

Like comfort in a bowl!

Chocolate raspberry tart

This makes me want to have tea parties.

French toast apple cobbler

Yes, it’s what you think it is. And yes, it’s glorious. Excuse the mess.

So, have you pre-ordered your copy yet?

As those on the other side of the world, frolicking about through sprinklers with delicious coconut milk ice creams, may have forgotten, it’s been winter here. A pretty cold one. The lawn froze, Hank reverted to pooping in the house due to his moral objection to said frozen lawn, and apparently I hibernated for a while. But spring has finally arrived and my fingers have sufficiently thawed enough to be able to type again.

Uni work may have also had something to do with it. As is tradition when faced with an unholy mountain of essay questions, I reverted to one of my more shameful eating habits; a diet comprised approximately 85% of cheese.

No, I didn’t abandon veganism. But I did dive a bit further into the world of vegan cheese (with the expanded waistline to prove the extent of my valiant adventure). Here’s a very small selection of what I’ve been up to:

Mac and cheese

The staple of every student vegan worth their weight in nutritional yeast- mac and cheese. This one is the classic New Farm recipe, or the recipe that I plan to have printed on my tombstone when this dish inevitably kills me. It’s best not to contemplate the fat in this. Every time I make it, I swear it will be the last. It never is.

To my credit, I’ve since discovered Alicia‘s great recipe which doesn’t make me feel as though cardiac arrest is imminent. Progress!

Macadamia brie

Next up, the recipe that was the initial reason I picked up The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions. Vegan fancy cheeses? I couldn’t pass that up. It also gave me a reason to use the cheese knives that I’ve kept around for no apparent reason- until now! I thought this tasted pretty similar to brie, in that it reminded me that I always found brie too sweet and not sharp enough. I guess that’s a success for this recipe? I don’t know. But it sure was fun to make.

Smoky mountain cheese and tomato toasties with creamy tomato soup

Lastly, the smoky mountain cheese from Vegan Diner. I can’t say enough great things about this book- so far it’s probably my favourite new cookbook this year, and this recipe would have to be my favourite in there. There are some really great ones, so that’s a tough call! But this cheese is so easy to make, and unbelievably good in toasted sandwiches. It took me right back to when Chadwiko and I first moved in together and couldn’t afford to eat much more than toasties… only this time we ate them without the crazy mutant cockroaches that used to fly in through the kitchen window in our first apartment.

If I had a time machine (and fingers crossed, one day I will), I would take this post and wave it right in vegetarian, ‘I could never live without cheese!’ me’s face. Because you can. And I sure never had as much fun with cheese as I do now.

We don’t really celebrate Easter in our house. Gorging myself on hot cross buns before they disappear from the shelves is pretty much the extent of it. So as grateful as we are for the extra long weekend, it can get a little boring. To fend off the tedium, I decided to reach for a cookbook I bought a few weeks ago and haven’t had the chance to use yet- Taymer Mason‘s Carribean Vegan. I’d been hearing nothing but wonderful things about the book, but Caribbean food is definitely one of those cuisines that hasn’t quite found its way to our shores yet. This left me a little overwhelmed when it came to choosing somewhere to start.

I settled on the highly-recommended chickpea curry, with spinach rice and roti.

Chickpea curry, spinach rice and roti

This was so much simpler to make than I’d anticipated- I don’t know why I let these recipes scare me for so long. Both the curry and rice were so flavourful, and worked so well together. But the roti here was the standout for me. I used the ‘buss up shut’ roti recipe (that’s Trinidadian dialect for ‘busted up shirt’- the more you know!) and it was so much fun to make. Taymer’s method, involving rolling the dough into cone shapes before letting it rise, is really interesting, not to mention much easier than it seems. I’ll be making this roti for our Caribbean and Indian meals from now on.

The following night, I moved onto something a little more adventurous.

Bajan macaroni pie

Mac and cheese, Barbados style! This has a few elements echoing more traditional mac and cheese recipes, such as a roux base and, of course, nutritional yeast, but with a few surprising ingredients too. The homemade Bajan seasoning sets this apart. Containing spring onions, spices and a respectable amount of chilli (the recipe calls for Scotch bonnet peppers, but they’re like spicy gold around here so red chillis had to suffice), gives this baked pie something unexpected… but definitely welcome! I liked this a lot more than I’d expected, and will definitely be making it again.

Caribbean Vegan gets the thumbs up from us so far! I’m excited to use it more often and push us to try some more unfamiliar dishes and ingredients.

In other news, Vegan Stock Photo, the brand new cruelty-free photo resource launched today! We’ve contributed a few photos so far (one of which has turned up on Quarrygirl already!) and we’re excited to see the steps made towards banishing a few skeletons from the vegan publishing industry’s closet. So have a look, contribute, rate some photos and help to make that difference that everyone’s been calling for.

Go on, get out of here and do it!

Among this week’s pies are my two absolute favourites from testing so far! Try to guess which ones.

Blueberry ginger handpies

Lemon mousse pie

Coconut lime cream pie

Strawberry rhubarb crumb pie

I don’t want this weekend testing to end.