in the ongoing battle between simplicity and complexity, simplicity won out yesterday in my kitchen...

lemon & bing cherry (vegan, gluten-free) cupcakes vs. fruit smoothie.

i think you can guess which concoction was the winner.

so i'll just tell you.

the smoothie won, with flying colors.

the cupcakes were fantastic until i baked them,

and made the "frosting"...

smoothie ingredients:

pear nectar, almond milk (homemade!), blueberries, strawberries.

simple. easy. delicious.

the cupcakes. from this complicated cookbook.
now, i must say that everything i've ever made that is vegan

has been absolutely delicious...if not better than the non-vegan versions.

so i was quite disappointed.

however, i didn't quite follow directions either...

the recipe calls for

garbanzo-fava bean flour, brown rice flour, potato starch, arrowroot, and xantham gum

among other unusual ingredients.

my co-op had none of the above flours...

so i decided i would just use regular white wheat flour

(thinking my cupcakes would still be vegan, but it was okay they weren't gluten-free).

i thought that white flour would really make them delicious.

nope.

i zested and juiced,

sliced and pitted all afternoon.

the batter was absolutely amazing!!!

but, alas, the baked version was rubbery...

thinking of using them for a power-bar of sorts.

they're edible.

just not for dessert.

i had big plans to make an asparagus pesto dish for dinner...

but after this little failure i decided for simplicity:

i went to the store and bought pesto that was made in san francisco,

sliced up some yummy tomatoes from the farmer's market,

on top of spinach spaghetti

and sprinkled it all with pine nuts.

simple and perfect.

hooray for simplicity!