Beverly Hills in the Morning

"Chancho. When you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room. It's for fun." Fun indeed. I may not be a "man", but I do greatly enjoy wearing stretchy pants in my room. It is fun. Another thing that is fun? Going down to Beverly Hills early in the morning and sitting outside of M Cafe de Chaya, eating amazing raw vegan salads with some organic coffee, sweetened with maple crystals and soy. Could that have been more of a picturesque moment? Minus the blister that arrived shortly after walking around in my new heels. As mush as I would like to be, I am not a huge girlie girl that can wear heels all day, everyday. I wish I did though!
Ok, so back to M Cafe. I was there for a job interview and it turned into a small smorgasbord of amazing little treats. The manager was so sweet, and brought me a delicious little cup of coffee and a plate of their daily salads. I didn't want to come off too weird and obsessive, hence only one small photo of the coffee that I tried to take all nonchalantly on my iPhone.

The first dish was a quinoa and beet salad. A perfect shade of purpley red with little bits of semi-pickled beets diced up in the cold quinoa. The next serving consisted of capers, olive oil, kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, green & red peppers, and onions. Toss in a bit of salt and pepper and we have ourselves another tasty healthy treat winner. I could already feel the raw food energies going through me! The cabbage salad was then accompanied by a navy bean, corn, and edamame dish that was semi-sweetened. Yumminess all around. I would come here ever day of the week if one dish wasn't a minimum of $10.

Okay, enough of the healthy crap. I needed some good ol' eye candy and since cupcakes delight both the eyes and the soul, Beverly Hills had 2 options just around the corner. Crumbs Bakery and Sprinkles Cupcakes. I have already been to Sprinkles (due to my obsession with Bridget from the Girls Next Door) so I thought I should check out Crumbs. Wait..did I just die? Am I in some kind of cupcake heaven here? Oh yes, I think so. This little shop was so cute! There was a young guy sweeping the front and was quite amused by my excitement to take photos of these little Louvre worthy pieces. I chose to get the Cotton Candy since it was the most outrageously colored one in the case and the Boston Creme ( I still want to live in Boston). After shelling out eight bucks for these "perfectly formed, lovely to look at, delicious to eat" treats I wanted to frame and keep them in a case forever, rather than eat them. When I picked up the Boston Creme Pie, it weighed about 5lbs. No joke. I have never picked up a cupcake that weighed as much as a small child. I knew it would take a couple of days for us to finish these bad boys and I was right. They are still semi-intact in their special case in the fridge. I just like to open up that door and smile in at them.

After I got home I was looking at the photos and I realized that there was an "Elvis" cupcake! How could I not get that?! How did I not see that?! I must have been blindsided by the overwhelming glory of the cakes. I looked up to see what could make a cupcake "Elvis" worthy, and I am going back to Crumbs tomorrow. "Crumbs used a rich swirl of--oh my God--pan fried peanut butter in today's special treat. Mixed in with peanut butter and banana frosting atop a banana flavored yellow cake filled with banana cream..." I am salivating on the keyboard now. I should go before it short circuits...

Locali

This week is the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale week, however, thanks to the lovely Siren that is Starbucks, I am working during the exact hours that all of these little sales are going on. Over at Locali on Franklin, last Sunday and this coming Sunday, Bake Me Up! LA is going to be selling everything that is sweet and delicious to help raise money for local animal shelters here in LA. Since I cannot make it in person, I am sending Brandon down there to grab a goodie bag full of happiness for me :) Oh how I love having another half of me to live more hours in the day!
(http://greenlagirl.com/locali-hollywoods-new-green-convenience-store)

So now that we're speaking of Locali, I just made it down there yesterday for the first time (after attempting to go to the Farmers Market at City Hall...parking?HA!) and I am not in LOVE with this store! My first "heaven" moment was when I saw the vegan marshmallows. I am the worlds biggest goober when it comes to making rice crispy treats. I love these little childhood favorites, yet knowing what's in those little morsels of cloudy puffs sends me running for the hills instead of the campfires.

This little, and I do mean LITTLE convenience store carried so many vegan treats and options, I could have stayed in there for days just reading labels and admiring the clever packaging. Want a Pineapple Spritzer? They've got it. Want a Kale Roll up? Check. Strawberry flavored vegan condoms? Check again, and while we're at hit lets through in the washable diapers and a giant earth happy chocolate chip cookie! Other than the spritzer I didn't buy any of the other "goodies" I listed. I did indulge in a homemade tofu-egg salad sandwich that only a post match Luchador could finish in one sitting. It was ginormous and delectable. They do serve some non-animal friendly sandwiches, but that can easily be fixed for an extra 50 cents for a mock meat. I will definitely be making many trips to this little outlet.

Bakin' in LA

When your kitchen is incorporated into a 400 square foot studio, with an oven the size of your childhood Easy-Bake (minus the light), baking does not hold its appeal as it once did. However, being re-inspired by other bakers, such as Bake and Destroy, the fire was lit again inside my ever-growing cupcake hungry soul. I needed to inhale that freshly baked cupcake aroma, the one that I so desperately wish my own skin would naturally emanate.

Since moving across the country in a car the size of a go-kart, I did not have any room to take all of my few, but precious kitchen items. I wanted to see how much baking items I could be able to scrounger up through local thrift stores. I headed over to the north side of Burbank to American Way Thrift since I heard that they had an extra discount for early birds. Not such a good idea. I love a deal, don't get me wrong, I felt that I needed to buy scouring pads to clean my skin and nostrils after being in there for five minutes. I was not impressed. Plus the pans that I did find were the same price as if I went to Target and bought them brand-new. No

thank you.

I knew Target and IKEA were going to have to get me through my first batch of sprinkle filled cupcakes, so I hijacked it out of American Way fast! While heading back towards the foothills I passed Full o' Life, a little store that I had heard about having some fun vegan food items. I quickly pulled in and was instantly greeted by the sweet aroma of some kind of black bean soup.

This grocery store acts as a little cafe, however, the cafe part wasn't quite ready that early in the day. I was able to find some enticing edibles, though.

Back in the den I was eager to feel the whisk work its magic (yeah, no mixer either! oh the dark ages suck). With the oven being so small it takes about half the bake time of a normal oven. Ten minutes later I am greeted by the sweet smell of victory. Mmmm...sprinkles...

Another Fanpire

Last summer my friend Nyla told me about this amazing book that she could not put down. The cover looked intriguing, however, I always saw it in the 'Teen' section at the bookstore. A teeny-bopper book? As if! Why would I waste my time reading something meant for a 13 year old? Well, a year later, another friend told me that I truly MUST read this book. She lent over her prized Twilight book so that I might understand too this phenomenon. Twenty minutes in and I was hooked. I have fully resorted back to my preteen years of being infatuated with the hottie on Tiger Beat .

So what is going on with the female population in America? Does it not matter how old you are? you are still going find the fantasy of an extremely attractive vampire somehow in love with you to be appealing? Sounds good to me. Plus, it just gives more people creative freedom when it comes to decorating the next scrumptious vamp inspired cupcake or cute jewelry that also incorporates a cupcake. Take abilities on Etsy, she created this cute little charm from a scrabble piece. Loving it.



For a less vegany treat to admire, I Heart Cuppycakes created a very nice edible rendition of the Twilight cover. While Annie's Eats whips up a fang-tastic (yeah, I know that was bad) bitten baby cake. Annie said she created these with pure white cake (pale like a vampire, obviously), blood red (cherry) filling, and white chocolate cream cheese frosting -

Mmmm....bite me.

Twilight Cupcakes

Yield: 14 cupcakes

Ingredients:
For the cake:
2 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 large egg whites
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk

For the filling:
1 can cherry pie filling

For the frosting:
7 oz. pure white chocolate, coarsely chopped
6 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature, cut into tablespoon-sized pieces
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into tablespoon-sized pieces

For the rest of the recipe check out Annie's page at : http://annies-eats.com/2009/01/15/twilight-cupcakes/

Moving Out West

The last couple of weeks have been quite crazy in the Ch'en household. Brandon and I decided that it was time to head out west and start anew. We arrived in the LA area the end of last month and were quite eager to check out all of the vegan options that we knew were tucked away in this concrete jungle.

In order to help work up our appetite we decided we needed to see a little 'culture'. So we headed down to Sunnydale, aka, Torrance. Mind you this is not the best neighborhood to be in when you have no idea where you are going. Thankfully it was on a weekday and school was still in session. I tried to make my best Buffy moves, while not giving myself away as a total geek, and Brandon stood to the side to make sure to not be associated with me.

After a little Hellmouth, we made our way towards the final resting spot of Ms. Monroe. Tucked away in between massive office building is the Westwood cemetery. A truly amazing and well kept graveyard that held the late actress' marker. All this morbid tourism definitely helped with our appetites!

One of our first outings was to a little place in NoHo, called Lotus Vegan. It is kind of a hole-in-the-wall place, but everything that they serve is vegan. I had some 'chicken' strips with soup and an awesome brown rice, while B had the Orange Chicken. None of their meals have added sugar and such, so the orange chicken was very maple syrup-y. How can you go wrong though eating a plate of maple syrup?