Cozy Cauldron

  • Halloween Treats 2023

    With less than a month to Halloween I decided I wanted to do a promotion shoot with a little bit of everything my home bakery offers. It was such a challenge but worth every minute.

    🍪 Chocolate Chip Cookies 😱
    These chocolate chip cookies have a flavor that is absolutely to die for! With hand crafted faces carved from baker’s chocolate, these cookies are sweet and buttery and just a tad bit salty giving them a wonderfully balanced flavor.

    🍎 Candy Apple Cookies 🍬
    Warm and delicious apple cookies topped with a reduced caramel sauce and served on a stick. Made with granny Smith apples for that tart apple flavor you know and love.

    🎃 Pumpkin Snickerdoodle 🎃
    Made with my home mixed pumpkin spice and pumpkin puree, these Snickerdoodles have a soft and pillowy texture.

    👻 Sugar Cookie Ghosts and Skulls 💀

    🎃 Pumpkin Pie Cupcake: A pumpkin spice flavor cupcake topped with pumpkin puree buttercream and filled with a sugary pumpkin compote

    🍬 The Candy Corn cupcake is a vanilla and marshmallow flavored cupcake and frosting. The frosting tastes exactly like biting into a candy corn.

    🗡️ “Bloody” Red Velvet cupcake is our classic red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, topped with an edible sugar glass and bloody simple syrup

    Regardless of how much energy this took I honestly cant wait to do more of it! Working with a theme allowed me to be creative and focus that energy into something fun. I still don’t know where my culinary adventure will take me but I want themed events to be a part of it for sure!

  • Smores Cake

    This Smores Cake was a lot of fun to make and even better to taste. Rich layers of chocolate cake, topped with marshmallow flavored buttercream, and big chunks of graham crackers for an added texture.

    This was one of the first fuller cakes I’ve made. I love the flavors in smores and I love cakes, so pairing the two together at the beginning of my cake journey only came naturally. The only thing that this cake was missing was that fire char and smoky flavor you get from a campfire. Next time I make this cake I’ll be sure to incorporate some vegan marshmallows for texture and flavor.

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  • My first okay tart!

    I was so proud of this tart it made its debuted in my schools pastry club! The post read as follows

    Hello! I’m a long time lurker of the group but I finally made something I want to share! I’ve been trying to make a decent vegan fruit tart for a few years and I finally got it with the help of a tart pan and some patience! Fruit tarts (or any fruit pastry for that matter) are my Achilles heel, I once bought and ate a whole fruit tart from La Madeline’s by myself for three days in a row. Now that I can make it myself AND make it stomach friendly there’s no stopping me lol.

    I would love to see other peoples FRUIT BASED baked goods in the thread!

    And a big shout out to Vegan on Board for providing the recipe that helped me make this (https://veganonboard.com/vegan-fruit-tarts)

    This was not my first tart, but it was the first tart that looked good enough to post. Before this tart I tried to make one in a sheet pan and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to blend the fruit into small chunks. So of course that tart came out like a goopy, funfetti custard nightmare.

    Having a tart pan and the patience to cut the fruit by hand really does make all the difference.

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  • Summer’s Almost Denouement

    Denoument // noun // the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

    I chose the word denouement to make a play on words and acronyms. I’ve noticed its already that time of the year for me. The big S.A.D or Seasonal Depressive Disorder. I might be the only one in Texas that prefers the scorching hot 100 degree weather over our comparatively mild Winter, but that is because I rely on the sunshine. In the winter when the sun goes down at 5pm it becomes disorienting, I go to bed early and sleep in late, like a baby bear trying to hibernate. Unfortunately our world is not set up in a way that allows us to just relax. Even as a stay at home spouse I feel like I’m failing when I take it too easy in the winter. On top of that this marks the third year I’ve gone unemployed, and while I feel that my best efforts go into helping maintain the household, not bringing in any money in late capitalism has a way of making you feel like a bum, no matter how hard you’re working.

    Last year I was self aware enough to finally name the dread I had been experiencing year after year. This year I am even more prepared, I learned about lamps that simulate the sunlight, to keep my sleep schedule in order and maybe trick my brain into thinking the sun is out. Obviously I will still be depressed, but maybe this year I’ll swim a little instead of just float.

    Because summer is almost over it is time for a bit of reflection. I know I didn’t do as much as I wanted to in the summer. I had it in my had I was going to be able to do a lot of gardening – but then once the preheat was over I realized it was 100 degrees outside and not worth the pain. I still did try to garden, all summer long- and I killed every. single. plant. Maybe I’ll have better luck next year. I was however able to do some experimentation in the kitchen.

    I wanted to share a project I attempted, and in my opinion failed. It’s a recipe that ill return to again once Texas starts to preheat its oven. Sea Salt Ice-cream but make it Plat Based! I was super excited to try this after starting Kingdom Hearts 3 for the second time around. The first place I shared it was on my Schools Alumni page the article is as follows

    My First Attempt at Sea Salt Ice-cream
    I have been in my nostalgia playing the most recent releases of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, KH3 and Melody of Memories. Every single time I saw the sea salt ice cream I have wanted to try it so I finally made my dream come true.

    Using this recipe for a plant based sea salt ice cream (https://yestoyolks.com/2015/08/04/sea-salt-coconut-milk-ice-cream/) I dyed it teal and took it to a popsicle mold. This was all on a whim and I learned so much.

    The first lesson is I used way too much food dye, they are too blue in color and need to be just a few shades lighter. The second lesson is I need to curate a different recipe- because this was an ice cream recipe that required a churner, it did not de-mold easily. I think I need a base that’s more juice than sugar and milk.

    Luckily for me there are so many fellow nerds on the internet that have done a rendition of this ice cream, not a lot of them are vegan but I can take what I know about plant based foods, cross reference and rework these until they’re perfect (to me).

    Video games are always my go to form of escapism when the going gets rough and Kingdom Hearts will always have a special place in my heart. It was one of the first stories I was able to immerse myself in fully, from fanart to fanfiction, it was one of the first fandoms that consumed me entirely. I made friends through the fandom and explored so much of my own creativity because of it, so exploring it even further through my new found joy in food was just perfect. I know what I want to do with these the next time around to give them more of a popsicle feel and I cant wait until next summer.

    Until then there are so many things to look forward to. Winter might bring the big bad sad but it also brings the time to enjoy stuff that are otherwise mostly unpleasant in the summer; hot beverages, layered fashion, warm spices and carb heavy foods. A busy kitchen steaming from an afternoon of baking and the warm glow of the crockpot will lend help to our central air. Being a little sad cause the sun is sleeping will be well worth the joy of food.

    Discussion Questions
    Are you going to miss the summer?
    What’s your favorite part of winter?
    Will you help me, one day at a time, pave the path for the generations after us to be able to just relax and maybe hibernate just a little in the winter?

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  • Always a work in progress (An Introduction)

    If you’ve managed to find this particular food blog on the ever expanding world wide web. Hello and welcome! I’m happy for you to join me. My name is Adrienne Alisauski, a home cook, culinary arts student, and an inspiring professional chef. The decision to begin my culinary journey started in March 2020 right before Texas decided to shut down for the pandemic. I had just started learning how to cook for myself and began experimenting with baked goods. The first cookie I was proud enough to show off and still one of my favorite cookies to this day is my Jelly Bean Sugar cookie.

    These are made by taking jelly beans, freezing them, and then putting them through the food processor to get that confetti like flake throughout the sugar cookie. The whole jelly beans are pressed on halfway through baking.

    Every Easter these are one of my favorite comfort cookies, I don’t make them as much anymore since deciding to cut as much animal product out of my life as possible – for me. I chose to do all of my baking plant-based because I’m a member of the sensitive tummy and food allergies club, in fact being lactose intolerant is one of the reason I decided I was gonna learn how to cook and bake. I wanted to be able to eat without pain – and pain was very frequent since I lived right next to a Walmart with a bakery in it that made a decent tres leches. Now the only thing keeping me from achieving a lant based diet is easy proteins in the form of seafood and poultry, they just happen to be the only animal product that doesn’t set my stomach on fire or make me way too stinky (thanks eggs).

    During the pandemic I carried on teaching myself how to cook and bake, for both necessity and and joy. With everything shutting down for safety I was one among the millions that had to relearn the kitchen, and luckily for me this is also where I began to find my peace. If anyone remembers breadtok, I was there for that but my passion didn’t fade away with the trend.

    Getting this far wasn’t always easy. I have many kitchen related traumas – from growing up with a single disabled father (the kitchen was always a nightmare), from a friend who tried to teach me how to cook with best intentions bust made me feel kinda dumb during the process, and countless roommate and/or lovers who left a messy kitchen in their wake (I’m not saying I’m perfect about this by any means, I’m just saying those situations did not help me want to be in a kitchen.)

    Sometimes even now the kitchen is still hard. I believe I am on the autism spectrum, a disability that comes with a handful of sensitivities. The noise, the textures, the clutter and mess that comes with managing a kitchen can be a lot. Standing for along time with chronic pain can be hard. Luckily with a little time and awareness of my mind and body, it all becomes easier.

    After registering my cottage goods business in December 2022 (Yes I’m a business owner! isn’t that crazy?), I finally made the decision to start looking into school. I realized I have no actual idea what it takes to run a business and I wanted to expand my culinary knowledge. So after some research I found Escoffier’s online Plant-Based associates program and I was enrolled in January 2023. It has been so much fun. I didn’t realize just how in love with food I was- how in love with food I AM.

    My goal as a chef is to share tummy friendly food and recipes while doing my best to shop as ethical and eco friendly as possible. I want to keep learning, growing and practicing food as an art and I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

    My goal for this blog is to keep a digital trail of my growth and hopefully find some friends and be a part of a community along the way.
    I am always down to talk food so please don’t hesitate to comment below! We grow better together.

    Conversation Questions:
    Where did your culinary journey start? What types of cuisine are you inspired by?

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