Category: Baking / Cooking

Cracking The Code: Cooking Vegan Eggs On The Sidewalk

“Hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk” is a common trope, repeated ad nauseam the moment temperatures climb every summer. Back when it was first printed in 1899, it was classic journalistic sensationalism. The world was a whole lot cooler back then, but now, it’s a perfectly reasonable prospect.

While we’ve gotten off easy this summer in Central Texas, bobbing around just under the 100-degree mark most days, I had the foresight to try this classic solar cooking challenge last year. After baking cookies in the car and lasagna in the mailbox, I felt unstoppable.

Cooking An Egg On The Sidewalk: Fact or Fiction?

Science has proven that a chicken egg needs to reach 158° F (70° C) to be considered fully cooked. At that temperature, the proteins inside begin to unfold, then coagulate. For vegan eggs, the same principle is true but different. I used JUST egg (not sponsored) for the sake of simplicity. Mung bean proteins, which are the base ingredient of the blend, reach the apex of this chemical transformation at 176° F (80° C). That means that plant-based eggs need more time in a hotter environment to achieve the same results.

While that may sound discouraging at first, that actually proves it’s possible on some of the hottest days of the year. If the air temperature clocks in at 115° F, you can easily expect the pavement outside to radiate anywhere from 165 – 180° F at midday in direct sun. Like all solar cooking, it will take longer than popping a pan onto the stove, but if you have the will, there is a way.

Tips For Cooking Vegan Eggs Outside

Perish the thought of cooking directly on the sidewalk; I’m not one to waste food like that! Besides, by choosing a more conductive material, we can further amplify the sun’s rays to do our bidding.

  1. Use a cast iron frying pan. The dark surface soaks in heat and holds onto it, retaining heat longer than other materials and distributing it evenly throughout the entire vessel.
  2. Start cooking early. Make the most of the sunlight and plan to get your pan outside and preheating by noon. Allow at least an hour in direct sun before adding any food.
  3. Asphalt is best. The dark blacktop will radiate more heat, but that’s not always an option nearby. Concrete is your next best bet; I tried to boost reflectivity with a metal baking sheet underneath,but I’m not convinced that made a tangible difference.
  4. Keep it covered. Use a glass frying pan lid (mine went with another pot, but fit nicely) both to protect your precious scramble from bugs, and to further concentrate the sun’s rays inside the pan.
  5. Use potholders. The pan and everything around it is HOT! You wouldn’t walk next to it with bare feet; you shouldn’t try to grab the handle with bare hands.
  6. Mind the forecast. Overcast? Under 105° F? Don’t waste your plant-based eggs.

Ready, Set, Slow

As we’ve established, it’s hot enough to cook a vegan eggless scramble outside, but the last missing ingredient is time. It takes a good while to build up enough ambient heat to form curds, meaning you should plan on having breakfast for dinner with this project. It took at least an hour for me to see any progress at all. Bear in mind that every time you uncover the pan and give it a stir, you’re letting all that built up heat to escape, further extending the necessary cooking time.

After two or three hours, I was questioning my sanity. Four to five, still crazy, but determined to see it through. At the six-hour mark, I had achieved a [very] soft scramble, and was ready to call it. Success never tasted so savory!

If you’re bored by the usual 5-minute procedure of making a scramble on the stove top, try 6 or more hours in the sun! Like all summertime solar cooking trials, it’s more about the experience than the results. Entertain the kids, bemuse the neighbors, and prove once and for all that you CAN scramble an egg on the sidewalk! That alone is more satisfying than the average meal.

Hannah (BitterSweet)1 Comment

Viennetta Vendetta

Majestic, mysterious, downright mythical; the legendary Viennetta loaf looms large in my childhood nostalgia.

Hearkening back to my earliest memories of Sunday brunch with my grandparents, there are many sights and sounds that I still hold dear. Without fail, my grandpa would burst through the garage door with great fanfare as we sat around a bowl of mixed nuts, snacking and sharing details of our lives. Brandishing brown paper bags from Gold’s, our old-school traditional deli, we all knew that this was the sign that mingling had concluded, and the meal was about to begin.

Plastic tubs of garlic pickles, both fresh and sour, cold cuts wrapped in butcher’s paper and twine, fluffy Kaiser rolls, showering avalanches of poppy seeds with every movement; these were all the essentials. My grandma would have already cut up vegetable crudités and mashed a vat of egg salad to serve alongside, raw onion still biting our eyes as the volatile oils lingered tenaciously in the air. No, none of it was vegan, but it was a simpler, unenlightened time.

After the sandwiches came my favorite part; the stunning chocolate and vanilla ice cream cake my grandma would keep hidden in the freezer, for just such an occasion. Impossibly thin shards of crisp chocolate layered across a hundred folds of soft vanilla frozen cream, straddling the line between pudding and whipped topping, there was nothing else I had ever experienced like it, and have yet to find a similar dessert.

Only later in life did I discover that the frozen confection of my childhood dreams was called “Viennetta” and lo, it’s still made to this day! After lurking overseas for decades, it was revived for sale in the US in 2020, but there’s nothing to celebrate here. Unsurprisingly, it’s the same dairy-filled gut-bomb that’s largely held together with questionable preservatives.

Recreating a memory is always tricky, but this shockingly simple homemade rendition quickly surpassed my expectations. Though it may not have quite as many paper-thin layers of chocolate, and my grandpa is no longer around to bring home the cold cuts, it reminds me of those sweet, simple days. If he could still join us for brunch, I’d like to think that he’d approve of my version, with a sly wink and a nod, and maybe even consider picking up a package of corned seitan for lunch, too.

Much of this story was cut when Super Vegan Scoops! went to print, so I’m happy to finally share the full piece here, along with the recipe.

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Back To School Lunch

For anyone with an eye on the school calendar, the carefree days of summer vacation are rapidly winding down. As the familiar rhythm of early mornings and packed lunches is about to commence, now is the time to start a new routine. This year, banish the dreaded lunchbox blues with homemade meals and snacks your young scholars will relish even more than recess.


Family-Friendly Lunch Box Pasta Salad

What Makes The Best Back-To-School Foods?

These creations are the secret weapon for conquering the chaos of Fall. They prioritize simplicity, packability, and versatility, making busy days a breeze.

  • Quick prep and assembly is critical for those pre-dawn dashes out the door.
  • No-fuss portability ensures these meals survive the journey in a backpack without getting soggy, crushed, or bruised.
  • Whole, plant-based foods pack in nutrition without a fight, making what’s nutritious truly delicious.
  • Make-ahead, batch cooking potential allows for easy doubling or tripling to fuel after school activities or pack lunches for multiple days.

Lunch and Learn

Start with a free download of my old e-book, Lunchbox Bites, then find fresh inspiration below. Don’t think of this list merely as the kid’s menu. They’re smart selections even if you’ve long since mastered mathematics, and you’re destined for a desk at work, not in the classroom.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)4 Comments

Sweet and Sassy

If you haven’t thought much, or at all, about Sassafras before, you’re not alone. Banished to the darkest depths of the forest after enjoying brief success as a soda shoppe superstar, there’s not a trace of it left on the market today. Where did it all go? Why did the original root of root beer disappear while only chemical imitators remain? The controversial answer is tangled up in politics and bunk science.

Sass Back

Sassafras is a tree grown in the American Southeast, cherished for years by the indigenous peoples for culinary, medicinal and aromatic applications. Sassafras leaves could be enjoyed as a fresh spice, like bay leaves, in soups and stews, or dried and steeped like tea. Spicy and earthy, with hints of vanilla and licorice, it’s what you might expect from root beer soda if it wasn’t so brash and artificial. The roots have the added benefit of thickening liquids, giving them a place of honor in many gumbo recipes instead of or in addition to file powder.

The tea from sassafras leaves is believed to have many curative properties, historically used to treat colds, measles, scarlet fever, indigestion, and heal wounds. Distilled safrole, the primary chemical compound in sassafras, is still used to make perfumes and natural insecticide products overseas. In the US, where this unique ingredient originated, the story is completely different.

The Dose That Makes The Poison

A study was done in the 1970s where a group of rats was fed extreme, excessive amounts of concentrated safrole. Unsurprisingly, they developed cancer and liver damage. The USDA reacted swiftly and blindly, banning the substance indefinitely. Abundant misinformation persists; even otherwise legitimate-looking websites claim that “Consuming 5 mL of sassafras can kill an adult.”

This is, frankly, a lie. Dr. James Duke, author Handbook of Edible Weeds, has written that on the contrary, root beer with safrole was 1/13 as cancer-causing as the alcohol in beer. While yes, safrole can be used in the production of ecstasy (MDMA), let’s not forget that over-the-counter cold medications can be used to make meth, too.

Distilling The Solution

By my estimation, I’ve consumed much more questionable things. That’s why I was overjoyed when I got real sassafras root from Tripp Distillery, creators of unparalleled sassafras liqueur. Not everyone has access like this, but there are some online resources as well. With my prize in hand, I knew what I wanted to make right away: A reverse root beer float. That is, scoops of homemade sassafras ice cream bobbing in a frosty mug of sparkling water. Cool, crisp, and invigorating, with much less cloying sweetness than the original.

What happened when I got home was a bit different than planned. My ice cream maker decided to give up the ghost, paddle immersed in cool custard, never to spin again. With the base already cooked and a heatwave approaching, I grabbed the nearest popsicle mold and started pouring.

Creamsicle Of Dreams

Call it fate, or a happy accident, but I think the results turned out even better this way. Sweet, creamy, and delicately spiced, there’s nothing else quite like it. Perched on wooden sticks, these frozen treats are even better for summer fun on the go, or swirling into a pop-tail, AKA popsicle cocktail. Just add hard seltzer or a shot of your favorite spirits to that sparkling water to get the party started.

If you like root beer, you’ll love sassafras. Ignore the fearmongering and give it a chance. It’s long overdue for a revival, but don’t just save the best for last—eat dessert first!

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Hannah (BitterSweet)1 Comment

Ice Capades

I probably think about ice more than the average person. Yes, ice; that naturally occurring phenomenon of water reaching 32° Fahrenheit (or 0° Celsius) degrees and transforming into a solid state of matter. It’s incredible, if you stop to consider, how humans have managed to harness this power and put it in the hands of anyone with access to electricity. If you have a working freezer, you already have ice, wanted or not, chilling on the shelves. So ubiquitous that it’s not even considered as a component of a recipe, lower on the ingredient hierarchy than the optional salt, it’s an insult that this modern marvel gets such disrespect.

I won’t bore you with a glacially slow history of ice. Rather, I want to highlight how cool ice really is, and how the quality of ice has a huge impact on the overall eating and drinking experience. I may or may not be able to chill out on the puns, but good ice is snow joke!

Quality AND Quantity

Much as been made in recent years about the volume of ice in drinks. Increasingly price-conscious consumers see all that space in their glasses taken up by flavorless frozen water and are crying foul. Where’s the rest of the order that should theoretically occupy that void?

The thing is, that’s not the way an iced beverage works. Ice, by design and by nature, melts. A properly composed drink takes this into account, factoring in the amount of dilution ice will cause and calibrating the concentration of the added liquid accordingly. That’s why a good iced latte is made with strong espresso, while iced coffee should be poured over coffee cubes to maintain the same bold flavor.

Certain cocktails are just a mixture of liquors; without a good measure of ice, that would be straight firewater. In other cases, when a stronger drink is desired or more juices and syrups are involved, that’s where cocktail shakers come in handy, straining out the excess ice to prevent the flavor from changing beyond a certain standard.

The shape and size of the ice makes a big impact on the amount that should be used as well.

Shaping Up Nicely

Being that it’s the frozen state of liquid H2O, ice can be in any shape imaginable. I personally own at least three or four dozen different ice cube trays that range from hearts to skulls and everything in between. In terms of common makes and models, there’s still a dizzying array of ice to cut through. The biggest differences have more to do with the freezing method than the final form.

  • Crescent Ice: These are half-moon cubes that home freezers with built-in ice makers churn out 24/7. I have little opinion about them, personally. They do their job dutifully, unbothered by aesthetics. These will always be cloudy. (More on that later.)
  • Bullet Ice: If you host a lot of parties and need to keep the ice flowing, you probably have a stand-alone ice maker that delivers these cylinder-shaped pieces on demand. They’re formed on metal tubes, with frozen water building up around the sides, creating an indentation in the centers.

  • Nugget Ice: Known by some as “Sonic Ice,” these are the gold standard for chewable ice. Thin sheets of ice are frozen and scraped together repeatedly to form compact, 1-cm bites that have a similar texture to hard shaved ice. Nugget ice machines sit in the upper price range for most consumers, but there’s a very affordable loophole. If you have a Sonic location nearby, you can buy a 10 lb bag of packed ice from the drive-thru for around $3 – 5.
  • Square Ice: These familiar 1-inch cubes are the workhorses of the bar. They chill drinks effectively without melting too quickly, making them ideal for a wide range of cocktails. Larger cubes, about 2 inches square, melt slower than standard cubes, perfect for sipping on neat liquors or spirit-forward cocktails on the rocks without watering them down.

  • Spherical: Seamless round orbs add a touch of sophistication to any drink. Spheres have a smaller surface area compared to their volume, so they melt even slower than large square cubes. Plus, it’s hard to beat that visual appeal.

Clear As Day

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the ice cubes from your home freezer or ice maker are cloudy, whereas they’re perfectly clear in most restaurants and cafes. What gives? For such a simple question, the answer is a bit complicated.

Cloudy ice can contain minerals and trapped air, which can impart unwanted flavors and textures. However, even if you start with purified water, boiled tap water, hot water, or cold water, the very same hazy finish comes to the fore. The issue stems from microscopic air bubbles trying to get out as the water molecules draw tighter and tighter together. Household freezers pump out cold air from all sides to work more efficiently, setting the outer layer of water first, which then traps all the air bubbles in the center. The only way to ensure complete clarity is through directional freezing.

There are gadgets and DIY solutions to make your own directional freezing chamber, but I won’t lie, it takes a lot of patience and freezer real estate to work.The basic idea is that you insulate all but one side of the ice you’re creating so it’s forced to freeze only from the top down. You can then cut off the impurities than end up at the bottom.

I adore clear ice, notice and appraise it every time I order a drink at the bar, but this is too much of a commitment, even for me. Some things are best left to the professionals.

Frozen Assets

This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. We could still talk about crushed ice, luxury ice stamps, hand-carved artisan ice cubes, reusable ice cubes or “whiskey stones,” herbal and floral infused ice cubes, shot glasses made from ice… You see what I mean? Before hell freezes over, I should probably wrap things up.

Does anyone really need to think this much about ice? Maybe not. You don’t need to be an ice fanatic to enjoy it, as all people should be so fortunate on these brutal summer days. Even cloudy crescent ice is still good ice in my book. Just take a closer look next time you pour yourself a drink and appreciate what’s in your glass.

Hannah (BitterSweet)6 Comments

Kiss And Tell

Lemon zest has become my new garlic. By which I mean, there’s no such thing as too much. If a recipe calls for a teaspoon, or pinch, or even just as an optional addition, you’d better believe I’m not going to stop zesting until that whole lemon is bald. Unlike garlic, this applies to everything, both sweet and savory (although truth be told, I have bridged that gap for the former, too.)

While there’s never a bad time for dark chocolate, I’ve been craving something lighter, brighter, and breezier. Lemon-Kissed Raspberry Bark is the answer. Invigorating lemon zest cuts the sweetness of white chocolate alongside tart freeze-dried raspberries, delivering a burst of high-contrast, full spectrum flavor in every bite.

Minimal Effort, Maximum Enjoyment

Like any good bark, be it of dark or white chocolate, half its beauty lies in its simplicity. All you really need are three basic ingredients, plus optional salt and sprinkles, because life is better with both. Then, it’s just one bowl, one spatula, and a microwave that stands between you and your prize. No fancy equipment or complicated steps are involved. Even on a hot summer’s day when the kitchen is a less inviting place, it’s an ideal dessert to either share or hoard.

A Zest For Life

Don’t even think about cutting back on the lemon zest. The only acceptable modification is to swap it with another citrus. Orange or lime zest are equally suitable understudies, but don’t forget more unconventional options like yuzu, buddha’s hand, pomelo, makrut lime, and of course, any combination of the aforementioned fruits, too. The raspberries may seem like the star of the show, but it’s really the zest that makes it a winning production.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)3 Comments