Kat Cornetta

Sports writer - Grant writer

Category: Super Bowl

Throwing a Super Bowl Party – Vegan-Style

4 February, 2016 /

Two years ago, the New England Patriots were not in the Super Bowl, and thus, I did not have to work on Super Bowl Sunday. So my husband invited a few of his friends over for a Super Bowl Party, and I was placed in charge of cooking. (I dislike cooking, so I don’t know why I was placed in charge of this. But I was.)

The challenge: two of the five attendees were vegan.

That meant I had to cut my standby football food recipes of Hasenauer family pizza and taco salad (both of which I shared with SBNation a few years back) out of the lineup real quick. Instead, I turned to Pinterest and tried to find vegan football food. I had to MacGyver* a few recipes and cross my fingers that they would work, but wouldn’t you know – they did!

After a brief post last Super Bowl season about the vegan cupcakes from that party, I figured I would share all of my vegan Super Bowl party recipes this year. Below is the Pinterest board where I have collected all of the recipes and added my notes. These all taste good enough to please non-vegans, so no need to make two sets of food.

If anything, make the cupcakes. They are now my go-to cupcake in any situation, vegan attendees or not.

 

Follow Kat’s board Super Bowl Sunday – Vegan Style on Pinterest.

*I use MacGyver as a verb often, and find myself needing to explain it because the 20-somethings and college students I work among aren’t familiar with the show. In my eyes, “to MacGyver” something is to fix a major problem with something as small as a paper clip, making you look like a genius. In reality, you’re just doing something instead of nothing and crossing your fingers.

My Big Fat Vegan Super Bowl Cupcakes

1 February, 2015 /

It’s the of the Big Game (the Large Challenge, if you’re definitely trying to avoid copyright infringement) and if you’re like me, you’ve been invited to a party but haven’t had a minute this week to think about what you’re bringing. But you don’t want to show up with a box of cookies from a nearby supermarket because then you look like you make poor choices managing life priorities. (Isn’t your friend worth something handmade?)

And to throw another twist into this situation, the host of your Super Bowl party is vegan. And so will be a few other attendees.

Well, darn this all to get out. No, don’t darn it all, because guess what? There is a quick solution you can still pull off.

Here are My Big Fat Vegan Super Bowl Cupcakes, adapted from this recipe last year when I had three vegans over to my apartment for the Super Bowl. They have now become my go-to cupcake.

1) Go over to Wegmans, Tops, or one of those Massachusetts grocery stores that continue to make me hang my head in disgust and say, “Boston, you deserve better grocery wise.” Buy Duncan Hines’ Devils Food cake mix. Even better, if you’re at Wegmans, Whole Foods or a store with an organic section, go to the organic baking section and buy the Madhava chocolate cake mix. Pick up cupcake liners (preferably football ones), Earth Balance butter, a jar of organic peanut butter, almond milk (smallest container of it you can find), a can of Whole Foods or Maine Root root beer (or in a pinch, plain old Coca-Cola will work) and head home.

2) Get home. Get out a medium sized mixing bowl, a mixing spoon, your cupcake pan, and your cupcake liners. Drop the cupcake liners in your pan, and preheat the oven to whatever temperature the cake mix box says to.

3) Pour your cake mix into the mixing bowl. Add your can of root beer/Coca-Cola and stir. Voila! Your cake batter.

4) Pour your cake batter into the cupcake liners. When I use the Madhava, it makes 18 big cupcakes. It doesn’t grow as much as regular batter, so keep that in mind as you fill the liners.

5) Bake for the amount of time provided on the cake mix box. Check on them five minutes prior to the finish time – sometimes they’ll bake faster than anticipated.

6) While your cupcakes are baking, whip up the vegan peanut butter frosting. I modified the peanut butter frosting recipe provided on the blog LunchBoxBunch. I use 1/3 cup organic creamy peanut butter, 1/3 cup Earth Balance, three drops vanilla extract, three tablespoons almond milk, and 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Mix it together and let it sit in your fridge until the cupcakes are done baking and cool.

7) Once your cupcakes are finished baking, out of the oven and cooled, frost them with the peanut butter frosting. Is it going to be as pretty as your fad-influenced local cupcake shop (who is probably closing its doors and becoming a juice bar as we speak, because that’s what is happening to all the ones in Boston)? No. Is it going to taste good? Yes. So suck it up that you aren’t going to win Cupcake Wars with this and just frost those cupcakes.

There you go. You made vegan chocolate peanut butter cupcakes in less than 45 minutes and can show up to your Super Bowl party looking all thoughtful and such.

Super Bowl Sunday: Please Don’t Riot. Please. Don’t.

5 February, 2012 /

Over the past eight years of working in higher education in Boston (yes friends, my full time job is not in sports), I have worked my fair share of university-sponsored viewing parties for the World Series, ALCS and Super Bowl. Part of working these parties is convincing students to attend them and imploring them to lay off the rioting in the streets (part of the reason why we hold them.) Achieving both goals can be hard. Most times schools decide to share “Please Don’t Riot” messages via an all-university email, and over the past few years I’ve had to review or help write a number of them.

If the email is too lengthy, students read two lines in, realize it resembles a novella, and immediately strike the delete option. If the email sounds to harsh or overbearing, students reading it hear the Peanuts teacher voice in their head and tune out. If the email is too brief, then you risk not getting all of the points you need to across.

On top of all of that, universities are asked to include certain messages by the Boston Police and Mayor’s Office. The two entities produced a PDF called, “Play It Safe,” with tips they wanted to provide to Super Bowl revelers. The PDF was available for forwarding via email or posting to school websites. In giant institutional email systems with limited mailbox sizes, it is far easier to post the PDF online and incorporate the tips into university-wide emails.

Here’s a quick look at Massachusetts area colleges and how they tried to get the “please behave on Super Bowl Sunday” message out to their students:

• I’m biased, but my boss at Boston University wrote a great one this year – one that struck the perfect balance between length and importance. You can see it here. He also wrote a blog post.

• Our neighbor on the other side of the Fenway, Northeastern University, struck a different tone, with several different messages going out to students from various entities (individual resident directors as well as an all-University one.) One of those messages was subsequently called out by Boston Police for misrepresenting their policies. BostInnovation’s Laura Landry was on top of the story during the week. (If you don’t read her education writing on a regular basis, you’re missing out.)

• The UMass Amherst campus has had problems with sports-related rioting on their Western Massachusetts campus in years past. To get out the “behave or else” message this year, they chose to make videos with alums Victor Cruz of the New York Giants and James Ihedigbo of the New England Patriots addressing the student body. You can see Cruz’s video over at Gahden Gremlins.

• Suffolk University also sent out an email to their student body on Friday. According to the Suffolk Voice, the email focused on the precautions the BPD will be taking around the city during the Super Bowl.

Is there any perfect way to give students the “Please Don’t Riot” message, or will a select few always misbehave when the opportunity presents itself? Do you have examples of what your school sent out that you’d like to share?

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