I was craving chocolate chip cookies, so I made up a small batch of whole wheat cookie dough and popped it in the GT Xpress. I probably should have used a recipe rather than just winging it because these turned out a little dry. I will try this again soon. They looked totally perfect though! 
French bread french toast seemed like an obvious way to go in the GT Xpress. For one thing the bread is already semicircular (is that cheating?) I wanted to step up the french toast a little and make monte cristo sammies, as Rachael Ray would say. She is actually where I learned about monte cristos and I’ve been craving one ever since I saw her fry up those crispy sammiches in a pound of butter.
I was feeling something more sweet than savory so I made one peanut butter banana sandwich and another with peanut butter and apricot jam. I dipped them in the Vegan with a Vengeance amazing “Fronch Toast” batter of chickpea flour, cornstarch and soymilk and squished them into the wells of the Xpress.
Obviously this was totally amazing. How could it not be, right? I’ll have to make some savory monte cristos soon.
These cooked up quickly and browned perfectly on both sides.
Great job, GT!
I ate a lot of dessert and junk food this weekend, so I decided to make up for it by making some healthy and semicircular!
I knew I definitely wanted to make some sort of quinoa patty with beans, but I didn’t really know how I would hold it all together, so I went to the store and walked around and saw a bin of sweet potatoes. Quinoa, sweet potatoes and black beans sounded like an awesome combo, so I cooked up a sweet potato with onion, garlic and cumin, mashed it and mixed it up with some cooked quinoa and cumin spiced black beans and packed the mixture into the wells of the GT Xpress.
I thought this would be good, but sort of bland and mushy, but it ended up not being bland at all and had some great textures. The quinoa was still a tiny bit “al dente”, the potatoes were mushy and the beans had a tiny bit of bite to them.
I should have eaten this with a green vegetable, but I had a serious pile of laundry waiting for me, so I skipped the leafy greens today.
This ended up falling apart a bit when I took it out, but I think if I had waited 10 more minutes it would have cooled down enough to stay together.
I’m going to experiment next time with actually cooking quinoa right in the wells. I think it could work.
Happy New Year everyone!
I got kind of bogged down with the holidays, but I really missed blogging and cooking oddly shaped foods, so I got back into the swing of things full force with this Broccoli Quiche.
This quiche is tofu based and I sort of winged it with the crust because I didn’t have Veganomicon with me. I used 1/4 of a recipe for single crust per well and then filled each well to a little over the top with quiche filling.
The result was an ultra creamy, savoury quiche with a flakey crust. I really couldn’t have asked for anything more in a vegan quiche. When I was a kid, I LOOOVED onion quiche from a french bakery we would have brunch at. I will probably caramelize me some onions soon and make these.
The individual portion was perfect for dinner or brunch as it was intended (this is a tester recipe for a forthcoming brunch book by Isa) and is totally hand-holdable when cooled. These would be great on a picnic!
maybe in the summer I’ll make an entire semi-circular picnic. Pies, Quiches, Cakes, Sandwiches…
GT Xpress + Quiche = <3
I feel really bad about not blogging at all this week. The holidays make everything kind of crazy. So I will give you some awesome things that are happening in the world of GT Xpress blogging.
My blog is being blogged about!
Infomercial-Hell and GT Xpress Recipes both blogged about my blog! (that’s so meta)
Check them out for awesomeness in the world of infomercials and Cathy Mitchell.
And especially check out the post where Cathy Mitchell responds! Holy moly!
Also, I’ve inspired another blogger to buy and blog about the GT Xpress!
Check out awesome Bunniee’s blog. Those cheesy corndogs look super awesome!
One of the best (by best I mean grossest) recipes in the GT Xpress cookbook is for Asparagus and Beef Rollups. It’s just something about the word rollups and also something about a hunk of meat wrapped around a sad, mushy vegetable that makes this recipe horrible and fascinating. Here it is as written:
2 (4-ounce) thinly sliced top round sandwich steaks, pounded
2 slice swiss cheese
4 asparagus spears, trimmed
hollandaise sauce
place one piece of cheese on each piece of pounded beef. Add 2 asparagus spears to each. Roll up jellyroll fashion. Place the rolls seam side down into the wells. Cook 7 minutes until well browned. Serve with hollandaise sauce or your favorite sauce. Serves 2.
So, I took this idea and decided that chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon would be perfect. They can be rolled out pretty flat, like a piece of pounded beef (ew?) And have a great meaty texture.
The asparagus at my store was old and wilted looking, so I decided to roll up some spinach in the cutlets instead. Also, I didn’t use any cheeze. Does this even count as a veganized recipe? Sure, why not!
The cookbook also says you can make baked potatoes so I cut up some red new potatoes and coated them in a little oil, salt and pepper and put those in beside the “rollup.”
The results: These came out just OK. I would say this is my first sort of failure in the cooker. I had to cook the cutlet and the potatoes for about 35 minutes and while the potatoes were perfectly done, the cutlet did not fully cook in the center. It might have been because it sort of steamed itself in there with the spinach. The outside was nice and chewy, but the inner parts of the cutlet were mushy. I guess trying to veganize an all beef recipe just didn’t work. I feel like I need to mention here that these chickpea cutlets are an amazing recipe when pan fried or baked! This only gets 2.5 our of 5 semicircles for not really working and not really being semicircular! I feel sort of good about a recipe not working. Things were going a little too well!
“pounded” cutlet ready to roll up
rolled up, pre-cooking
in the wells with potatoes
finished product with some more Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk gravy.
More dessert! This time in the form of chocolate cake. The GT Xpress cookbook calls these “chocolate souffle,” but really it’s just chocolate cake with a candy bar stuck in the center. On the infomercial they stick some halloween bite-size candy bars in the middle of the batter, but I decided to be a little bit classier and go with a Ritter Sport Marzipan bar.
I halved the recipe for Your Basic Chocolate Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and stuck a few squares of the marzipan bar in the middle.
These only had to bake for 10 minutes and they came out great, once again! Not like souffle, obviously, more like a chocolate cake with chocolate in the middle.
Still totally good and easy and semicircular. Is there anything this machine can’t do?
Cathy Mitchell is sure we will love her leftover makeovers, most of which involve putting some leftovers into a tortilla and making a “grilled stuffed burrito.” Being from San Diego, I’m realllllly picky about Mexican food, so I will most likely not be putting leftovers into a tortilla and making a mock taco bell delicacy. I did, however, make my own leftover makeover. I will call it um…how about Mashed Potato Moons.
I took some leftover mashed potatoes and mixed it up with some leftover sauteed kale and tempeh sausage crumbles from Vegan with a Vengeance and smushed it into the wells of the GT.
Then I baked until they were crispy on the outside and seemed done. I had a bit of a problem getting them out, even using the handy angled spatula that came with the machine, but they were still able to keep their semicircular shape! SCORE!
I ate them with some gravy from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk 2 . They were good! but that seems kind of obvious. Tempeh sausage crumbles, kale and mashed potatoes are always good!
I’m giving this one 5 out of 5 Cathy Mitchells because I’m pretty sure she’d be proud of how easy this was. Of course, she’s probably never heard of tempeh, but maybe she’ll find this blog while googling herself and maybe she’ll become vegan! A girl can dream can’t she?
After eating way too many cheeze semiscuits, I could not wait to bake more savory breads with faux cheeze inside. Inspired by a combination of recipes in the GT Xpress cookbook (including Mashed Potato Hot Dog Bake), I came up with Semipeño (or jalapeño) Cheeze Corndogs.
I used the PPK cornbread recipe and added a small can of diced jalapeños and a few slices of diced Tofutti Cheeze. Then I poured about 2/3 of a cup of batter into the GT Xpress and plopped a veggie dog in the center. I probably should have poured some batter, then put the dog in and then topped it with more batter, but this way worked out ok and I’ll know for next time, and oh yes, there will be a next time.
As these were baking it smelled strongly of ballpark/movie theater nacho cheese, which I used to think was gross when I ate real cheese, but I’ve come to like that fake cheesy-ness since going vegan. It seems like vegan cheeze is best at replicating fake, processed real cheese.
Once again, I was expecting the worst when I opened the machine after about 15 minutes. I always expect to see some horrible gooey mess, but the GT Xpress has not failed me yet, so maybe it’s time I started having a little more faith. These two half circular “nachos with a hot dog in the middle” looked perfect! Brown, crispy, firm to the touch and a toothpick in the center came out perfectly clean. It was almost like a pre-chanukkah semi-miracle.
Not only did these look great, but they tasted great too! The PPK cornbread recipe was perfect for this and the cheese and jalapenos added a lot of awesome flavor. I also had salad with it so I could at least pretend I was having a healthy dinner.
Thank god for corndogs!
This definitely gets 5 out of 5 semi-circles because I was craving another one last night and now I am going to have one for lunch.
Here’s one last shot for your semicircular viewing pleasure.
Cathy Mitchell says: Finally, everyone can be an expert omelet maker because all you have to do is add the ingredients. There’s no turning necessary and omelets will be browned, puffy, and beautiful.
Since pretty much all of the breakfast recipes are egg based, I decided to try and replicate a typically egg recipe. The Vegan with a Vengeance frittata seemed like an ideal choice. I also felt like I wanted to add something a little on the greasy, unhealthy side to the semi-meal for added effect, so cheese biscuits it was!
The frittata is a mixture of tofu, nutritional yeast, spices, sundried tomato and spinach, and it’s majorly delicious! I made it as directed, putting about a cup of the mixture into each well of the GT Xpress and cooking for about 35 minutes. It was a little fall aparty, but was still able to hold its semicircular shape (thank god).
Here it is before cooking. I forgot to take a picture so I had to open it up after a few minutes, which explains why it looks a little bit cooked.
For the semiscuits, or biscuits to you circular folks, I made a basic biscuit recipe that my sister made on thanksgiving and added some diced Follow Your Heart Cheddar, which I’ve grown to like in the past few months (although it does smell pretty nasty when cooking).
Here they are all squished into the cooker! They baked for about 10 minutes, and came out so perfect! I’m seriously impressed. They were super flaky and perfectly browned and puffy, just like Cathy Mitchell sort of promised.
And finally, the finished product. This meal was awesome. Warm, filling and totally hit the spot on a cold-ish day.
I think this also may be a breakthrough in portion control. 2 biscuits and a cup of frittata seems like a lot less food than I would normally eat for dinner.
