Dark chocolate strawberry banana bread muffins

Arguments about whether a plant is a fruit or a vegetable (or legume or whatever) are largely akin to arguments about whether or not something is actually ironic: most of the parties involved come across as pretentious know-it-all assholes, and no one really knows what they’re talking about.

Don't stop, Mr. Oatmeal. source

Sweet curry pancakes with mango chutney

Did you read that title up there? Did you do a double take, blink several times, and squint at the screen in bemused befuddlement?

Vegan peanut butter and jelly sugar cookie sandwiches

Recently, I’ve begun to feel that yes, I have had a dream like that.

Vegan pumpkin spice latte muffins with cashew cream cheese filling and espresso glaze

There is only one thing that’s more important in food blogging than good food, and that thing is good pictures. Obviously. A lot of food blogging seems to be centered around fancy cameras and heavily edited pictures, which is partly why I was so hesitant to start my own food blog. I had convinced myself that if I couldn’t take pictures for shit, I would never amount to anything. No one would read my blog, no matter how hard I worked or how much I wrote or how delicious my recipes were. It would be a very sad affair, overall.

Momofuku-inspired vegan birthday cake funfetti pancakes

I’m sure you—all three of you!—were all a bit befuddled by my last post. And that’s totally okay. It was a pleasure to write. And bake. Holy fuck that stuff was delicious. You couldn’t even taste the individual components (which I listed so helpfully in the title); it was more akin to an oversized Oreo bar covered in sticky caramel goo than…well, you know. A salted dark chocolate Oreo-stuffed white chocolate chip cookie bar with walnuts streusel, coconut red velvet cheesecake swirls and salty caramelized drizzle sauce, plus sprinkles!

Yeah. About that.

Let me just stay by saying that yes, it was satire (albeit pretty shitty satire). And no, it doesn’t mean I hate everyone. I’m just a bitch, that’s all.

There is a somewhat long and very pointless story behind that post; and as there is a pointless story behind most everything you probably don’t want or need to hear it. I don’t want to alienate more people than I already have.

You know... source

However, I will say that you don’t have to fear that I am launching smear campaigns against all the bloggers in an attempt to make my way up the food blogging hierarchy—no, that was mostly all fun and games and friendly bullying and I mean—what? Just…don’t take it personally. 

Please? With sprinkles on top?

Vegan pannukakku (Finnish baked pancakes) with blueberry chia compote

As I write this, millions of Americans are attending Memorial Day parades and visiting the gravestones of fallen soldiers and remembering in their hearts the valiant efforts of our armed forces to protect our nation. For one day, millions will put aside their differences—whether political, religious, or otherwise—and acknowledge our bravest citizens with heartwarming songs and belly-aching barbecues. Every hot dog eaten symbolizes the freedom we share and the blood put forth to preserve it. A noble tradition, it is, to have a day set aside for these patriotic exercises.

Washington dreamed of a nation where all men could freely enjoy hot dogs. source

Dark chocolate cookie crisp with cinnamon and cloves

Hello fellow food lover and blog reader! I’m just gonna get this little tidbit of blatant self-promotion out of the way and say that yes, I have signed up for all the social media in the past few weeks, so I’ll summarize where Baby June can be found on the interwebz. I have a Twitter account, which was formerly a parody account of what I thought a pastry chef / professional baker would be like and has now segued into pure blog-related shit. More blog-related shit can be found on Bloglovin, where I obsessively follow about five hundred blogs and counting. Not only that, but I have finally signed up for Pinterest, the pin-acle (bahahahahahaha funny pun June) of social media in the food blogosphere at this moment in Internet time—and, as Internet time tends to dictate, it will probably fall out of fashion next week and everyone will be hopping onto the next big thing. But whatever. Too late now, I already have an account. 

Visit June Baby's profile on Pinterest.

Thin mint cake

I’m sure you’re all still reeling from last post’s brutal honesty and uncalled-for editorializing. But I know who isn’t—Google already knew all of that shit about me.

And the NSA. Obviously. They hunter2-ed me a long time ago. source

French fry pizza

Once again, there shall be no cake.

It's monsoon season. source

But today I have something equally succulent and inviting, something just as rich, if not more.

This, my friends, is the pinnacle of ‘Murican food. This is pizza. With French fries. And bacon. And ranch dressing.

TASTE MY FREEDOM source

Bacon polenta pancakes with peanut butter caramel

Bacon. Bacon bacon bacon. A love that never ends.

Probably the most monotonous and predictable thing about the internet is its love of bacon. It is literally a salt-cured piece of fat that works well in both sweet and savory contexts and possesses the most satisfying crispiness, thus fitting the basic criteria for deliciousness (as demonstrated in Salt Sugar Fat, which I found is basically a guidebook for making addictive food in the comfort of your own home)—so the fact that millions of people feel the need to worship this meat product both online and IRL is quite unsurprising. I am always shocked when someone says they don’t like bacon. Like my mom. My mom doesn’t like bacon. 

God, what a hipster. source

And, as expected, the most common rebuttal to a vegan or vegetarian diet is simply that. Bacon. Who can live without it? How can you stand to exist without consuming this one godly food?

Fortunately, bacon is probably one of the easiest foods to replicate. As I said, it is, to an untrained palate (like mine), a mass of salt and fat with a smoky flavor and pleasant crunch. Well damn if I can find something that is not dead animal flesh and possesses one of those attributes. 

Damn! source

The art of frosting a cupcake

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of sick of cupcakes.

There are plenty of Wall Street analyses of the gourmet cupcake business out there on the interwebs.  The details vary, but essence of the story seems to begin with Magnolia Bakery, the rise of gourmet cupcake businesses and chains across the country, and a mad dash for buttercream, followed by declining popularity over time as people start to realize that cupcakes, frankly, are rather overrated.

Some bitter little fuckers feel the need to bash cupcakes with their oh-so-sophisticated hipster sensibilities, but I won’t sink to that level. Now, I am not keen on those cutesy, overpriced buttercream megaliths either. There’s a good reason for that, and it’s not because my precious palate can’t stand a bit of sweetened butter. Mostly because I have shopping guilt. 

I feel like a fucking criminal spending two fifty on a latte, much less fivebucks for a small, crumbly cake covered in oily frosting. source

The vegan Elvis sandwich

Hey folks! All negative four of you! Are you a human being? Have you been reading my shitty little blog? If so, you may have deduced a curious and suspicion-raising pattern—

¡ veganism !

Cue Jaws theme song.

All of the recipes I have posted thus far are completely free of animal products, and as such it is a completely reasonable to make the assumption that I, Baby June, am a vegan myself. If you made that assumption, congratulations. You possess the power of logic.

But that assumption is incorrect.

I am not a vegan.

Cue Jaws theme song, again.

I have, however, made an outright statement that I am underage. Therefore, I am financially dependent on my parents and can’t very well go out and buy myself a hummus wrap—partly due to my lack of money, partly due to that fact that because we are stereotypical suburbanites, it is quite difficult to get to a supermarket without a car. In these exotic parts, driver’s license + money = freedom. Or at least self-sufficiency.

And as such I am forced to depend on my parents for all of my basic needs, from food to shelter to food—and hot damn, my parents do not support veganism one bit. Not even vegetarianism. Admittedly, my mother buys soy milk for the protein content and will occasionally allow me a bag of those magical chia seeds from Trader Joe’s (as she sometimes puts those in her morning oatmeal). But ask for a block of tofu, and I will be on my knees begging before my wish is granted. Let us avoid the subject of nutritional yeast—or *gasp* processed substitutes—in this post so your appetite remains intact. 

Irish cream chocolate cake truffles

We’ve all heard that old saying: when life gives you shitty cake, make cake truffles.

Frosting cake ain't easy. source

No? Well, it’s true. Life itself may not give you cake, crappy or not, (much as I wish it would), but you can certainly make cake truffles whenever you fuck up a recipe and end up with a pile of mushy, crumbly mystery substance on your hands.

Throughout my short baking career, I have successfully fucked up what seems like a thousand recipes. I have filled the entire house with smoke when roasting plums and, after proceeding successfully for the first 99% of the recipe, caused a cake to crumble all over the countertop after removing it from the pan five minutes too early. I have even added four times the amount of butter necessary to a basic chocolate cake recipe when I misread “¼ cup butter” for “2 sticks”.

Pumpkin spice latte cupcakes

Condensed nonfat milk, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, annatto (a coloring agent), natural and artificial flavor, caramel color, salt, potassium sorbate (a preservative).

Brewed fresh with the blood of angry vegans. source

Didn’t recognize those ingredients? Not surprised. Those are the mysterious components of a pumpkin spice syrup sold by Starbucks, the maker of the legendary Pumpkin Spice Latte. Who knows what spices and synthetic chemicals and cocaine extracts fall under the category of “natural and artificial flavors”? What could possibly explain the lack of pumpkin and the presence of “annatto”, an inexpensive, saffron-esque food coloring agent derived from the seeds of the annatto tree, not to mention the enigmatic “caramel color” found on so many food labels?

Well, the question of pumpkin’s absence is an easy one. Anyone who has tried plain pumpkin puree—whether fresh or canned—will know that unaccompanied, the stuff is fucking nasty. It begs to be roasted with olive oil and rosemary, at the very least, or perhaps stirred into a curry. But pumpkins true claim to fame can be found around Thanksgiving and Christmas, when grandmothers and teenage rebels everywhere hit the kitchens to whip up their goddamn definitive pumpkin pie recipes, either dumped from a can into a Pillsbury crust or cooked slowly, from scratch, with the tender care of a pastry chef. Despite pumpkin’s reputation as a pie stable, there is literally no natural sweetness present in the fruit—two measly grams of sugar per cup—so one must dump gallons of sugar into the pie along with butter and eggs and other such things in order for the dessert to be even remotely palatable.

Cookies for breakfast

There is a reason why they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It is, as I have said before, the only meal (besides dessert—which of course is also very important) where it is acceptable to eat cake as the main dish. It is a baffling tradition, but one that we must fulfill nonetheless—and what better way to fulfill it than to eat a bowlful of cookies?

Murica. source

Let’s ignore the fact that, theoretically, this would produce the greatest cereal milk to ever grace this earth.

I myself have never eaten the stuff—my evil parents refused to let my brother and I consume such fare, relegating us to those grossly flavored oatmeal packets since we were tiny, impressionable children.  It’s a tragedy, really. What is childhood without Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms? Frankly, I don’t know shit about those traditional kid foods, but that doesn’t stop me from lusting after sugary cereals every time I tag along my mother to the grocery store. Deprivation, I say. Post traumatic oatmeal disorder.

Just looking at this label makes me throw up a little in my mouth. Oh, the memories. source

Do you like pancakes?

Here’s a culinary mystery if there ever was one: why, exactly, do we eat cake for breakfast?

Not literal cake; just cake-like items, like pancakes (lightly sweetened cakes cooked in a fry pan and then drenched in maple syrup), waffles (similar, but with a higher fat content to ensure crispiness), French toast (batter-coated slices of bread which are fried and, of course, drenched in maple syrup), and more. The sugar isn’t limited to these weekend specialties, either. Breakfast cereals, like cocoa puffs and the legendary Oreo-O’s. 

Okay, that's it. I'm moving to Korea. source