Vegan Lemon Cupcakes

We are cruising past May with jest speed, last weekend was my birthday and Mother's day. We had a fun weekend getaway to Connecticut and a beautiful Mother's day party at a dear friend's house. Hope you guys had a good Mother's day. But make sure to appreciate your mom not just on her special day, but every day of the week -- she deserves it :-)

I made these cute little mini lemon cupcakes for Mother's day last weekend. It is a variation of the basic vegan vanilla cupcake recipe, but instead of vanilla flavored with lemon zest and pure lemon extract.

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Italian Piadina Sandwich with Roasted Vegetables

Blogging Marathon# 64: Week 2/ Day 3
Theme: Cook from 1 European Cuisine -- Italian

Dish: Italian Piadina Sandwich

After posting 2 well known Italian dishes (Risotto & Pizza), today's Italian dish is not very popular outside of Italy. It is a thin flatbread called Piada or Piadina and is typically made in the Romagna region. The flatbreads are then filled variety of cheeses, meats, vegetables and also with sweet fillings like bananas and Nutella. These are sold as soon as they are made in specialized kiosks called piadineri.

Traditional piada are made with white flour, lard or olive oil, salt and water. I subbed some of the white flour with wholewheat flour and the lard with vegetable shortening. These piada are very much like our kulchas and are leavened with baking powder. These are rolled out very thin unlike the kulchas that are a bit thicker.

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Easy to make Pizza Dough with Italian Vegetarian toppings

Blogging Marathon# 64: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Cook from 1 European Cuisine -- Italian

Dish: Pizza Dough with Italian Vegetarian toppings

Pizza is probably the most popular Italian dish all over the world. Each country conveniently customized the toppings to appeal to the local tastes -- like the spicy toppings in India and the extra cheesy toppings in America. But from what I heard, Italian pizzas are not overloaded with cheese or toppings and are usually made with light and refreshing tomato sauce instead of a slow simmered heavy tomato sauce that the American pizzas tend to use.

I've a few pizza recipes on the blog already, but wanted to try a new pizza crust recipe from King Arthur flour. They say this is the 'easiest pizza you will ever make'. After making it I can assure you that it is in fact very easy to make this pizza.

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Afghan Cookies for #Food of the World

It seems like Super Tuesday today with 3 posts back to back. It's time for Food of the World monthly event and we are exploring the beautiful island country of New Zealand this month. I really had no clue what the food in New Zealand looks like. Even though it is one of the countries that I think I was very familiar -- blame it on the cricket matches I used to watch as a kid (they were quite a tough team to beat at the time).

So I googled and found out that New Zealand cuisine is largely based on local ingredients. Similar to it's neighboring country Australia, New Zealand cuisine is a diverse British based cuisine. Historical influences came from Maori culture, the indigenous polynesian people of NZ.

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