Caramelized garlic is some kind of magic. Taking a strong taste like garlic and caramelizing until it’s sweet, now that’s incredible! You may think it’s impossible if your following a whole-food plant based diet, but I have just made it POSSIBLE!
My secret to this oil free goodness is Aquafaba! A.K.A. Bean water. The water, or brine, left over after cooking beans, preferably garbanzo or any white bean. It is the best fat replacer I have found yet. You can get the same water from a can of beans. This liquid is even made into french macaroons – I’ve tried that and miserably failed, but others have been gloriously triumphant. Don’t take my word for it, the internet is full of those who have made an art of it.
My experience with aquafaba hasn’t been so artistic, but definitely has brought out some sweetness in garlic. I also use it when roasting veggies, in baked goods, as a base for sauce, the list goes on, here are some of the recipes I’ve used it in.
Peel garlic removing the entire clove.
In a silicone baking pan or glass baking dish cover the cloves in aquafaba. The liquid should be just above the cloves.
Bake at 400 F for approx 45 min, stirring every 15 min. Once the cloves are soft and the top layer is brown it is ready to be made into butter. You can continue to cook if you would like it more caramelized, just keep an eye on it, you want it golden brown, and not burnt.
Take a fork and mash the garlic into the sauce until it has a soft buttery texture. Add a little salt if you like. If your making a big batch you can whip it up with a blender, or hand blender.
Freeze unused portion after 2-3 days. I freeze it in a silicone ice cube tray, then put it in a freezer bag and anytime I need garlic for a recipe I throw in a cube. It thaws well back into “butter”.
Makes a terrific spread hot or cold.
Notes & Tips:
Raw garlic in cold dips like hummus need to be removed in order to not go rancid. When using raw garlic it’s best to blend it with the liquid and then strain out the garlic pieces, or use a cube of caramelized garlic for an extra special garlic flavor and no straining or risk of spoilage.
Cloves can be left whole or blended/mashed. If whole, they will very easily spread, as they are very soft. I like to keep it whole until I am ready to use it, so I know how many cloves I have, one frozen cube of garlic usually contains 1-2 cloves.
Here is a picture of another part of the bathroom when it was done.
And here is a picture of my kitchen that I will work on next, my bathroom grout looked just like this.
A few other simple tricks to making an apartment look nicer:-touch up paint goes a long way! I found the painter for my community working on another unit, he graciously gave me some of the 2 paints they use, all I had to do was give him containers. Hooray for free! A word about color matching: I haven’t found that it works. I brought a piece of my wall (that I repaired) to a paint/hardware store and they got close but couldn’t get the exact color. Thankfully I had a big piece of the wall to test it, so I didn’t end up buying the $15 mismatched paint. I went back later to get something else and saw the paint on the clearance rack for $3. Good to know in case I’m looking for a paint but don’t need an exact color, I’ll just check the clearance rack. I saw $50 gallon paints on clearance for $9 and $7 test sizes for $0.50.Back to touch up paint. In my place they didn’t pay much attention to detail when it came to edges and baseboards. Most are blended colors, it looks like they painted it the same darker color as the wall and then painted over it the right color. The darker color comes right through. When moving into a new rental always try to get touch up paint from the owner or leasing company. If you live in a community like me, try finding the painter. You will be glad you had extra paint when the walls start to get scuffed or your toddler finds a sharpie and gets artistic. Yup that’s happened to me. I not only painted the baseboards and scuff marks, I also painted the grout just below the baseboards. You can see it in my first picture. My front door frame looked so gross inside by the baseboard. Wow a little paint made it look so nice. Another random tip: if your place has vinyl flooring, invest in some rugs. 
In this picture you will see what looks like grey wood flooring in the middle. It’s vinyl! So pretty but so cheap. My sofa and ottoman legs dent and dimple the floor. In one spot it even ripped. I put some plastic bins on the floor for 3 days, full of art supplies so it was a little heavy, and they made dents in the floor.These are big 12 ft wide rolls of flooring, so replacing one mock plank may or may not work. To avoid further damage I investing a whooping $10 in rugs. The grey rug on the left of the pic above was $5 on clearance at Costco, I bought 2. It’s an indoor outdoor rug made of recycled materials that can be cut to any size. I cut one into 3 pieces, each for exactly under each sofa, a desk and some musical instruments. The rug on the right in the pic I got for free from my sister. My ottomans are on this rug. I also bought felt pads, but they aren’t the right size. As seen from this picture.
The felt pads did work perfectly on the legs of my ottoman, although I decided to keep them on the rug just in case.If you have very few windows find a friend or relative doing home improvement to see if u can score some free baseboards to use to frame the wall edge just above the window. You also can use baseboards to decorate a typical apartment ugly bathroom mirror. I’ll save those projects for another day.
Lori Loves Carbs 