Banana apple pecan muffins

Jacqui had been asking to make muffins for the past few weekends, but we just haven't had the time to. I promised her last night that we would make muffins this morning for breakfast. We are lacking in fruit and veggies at the apt right now, so I looked around and decided to make banana and apple muffins. The muffins were soft and delicious, a perfect breakfast. And the girls loved actually making the batter and the muffins. Feels like a long time since we've done that together. 

Ingredients 

2 large ripe bananas 

3/4 large golden delicious apple, finely chopped 

1/4 cup applesauce 

1/4 cup organic canola oil 

1/4 cup blackstrap molasses 

1/3 cup vegan sugar 

1 cup all purpose unbleached flour 

1/2 cup spelt flour 

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour 

3/4 tsp baking powder 

1/2 tsp sea salt 

1/2 cup chopped pecans 

What to do 

Preheat oven to 350. Gather ingredients and children. Have girls peel bananas into a large bowl. Given the forks and show them how to mash the bananas. Mash. Add the applesauce, oil, and molasses and mix well. Then add the sugar, flours, baking powder, and salt, and mix well. Mom or dad may have to help with this mixing to get everything combined. Add the chopped apples and chopped pecans. Have the girls put the liners in the muffin pan. Spoon the batter (after the girls have tasted it, of course) into the muffin pan. Bake for 20-22 minutes. Enjoy!

Lavender Pancakes

I found a recipe for lavender pancakes earlier this week. The girls and I had bought a bag of baking and tea-making lavender from Lavender By The Bay, a farm out on Long Island that sells on Saturdays at our farmers market. It's been sitting in our kitchen, waiting for something wonderful to make. I decided that this morning was the morning to try the lavender pancakes for breakfast.


I made some adjustments to the original recipe. My sister and niece had gone through a gluten-free (GF) phase. When it ended, I inherited their leftovers, including a HUGE bag of GF all-purpose flour. I didn't have any wheat all-purpose flour, so I used the GF AP flour.

Probably because of the GF AP flour, I found that I needed to add quite a bit more milk, and the batter still wasn't as runny as I expected it to be. When I spooned the batter onto the pan, I had to spread it out to make the pancakes. The batter was too viscous to go anywhere on its own. You can see in the photo above the results of not immediately spreading the batter as I spooned it onto the pan...the center circles are the plops of batter, the rest is the result of my expert spreading. :).

Still, the pancakes were yummy, if a little stretchy (again, I think a result of the GF AP flour). The lavender flowers added a subtle flavor when the pancakes were eaten right after cooking. The flavor was much stronger and more pronounced at lunchtime/dinnertime when Jacqui and I finished off the remaining three pancakes that weren't devoured by us and Dave at breakfast.

Here's my version of Vegan Guinea Pig's lavender pancakes.

Ingredients
1 ¼ cup gluten-free all purpose flour
2 T dark brown sugar
1 T lavender flowers
¼ tsp fine sea salt
4 tsp baking powder
¼ cup plain soy yogurt
¼ cup strawberry applesauce
1 ½ cup vanilla hemp milk
¼ cup organic canola oil

What to do
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. (I had to smash up the brown sugar by hand because it had started to gel into balls, probably from the humidity in NYC.)
In a separate bowl, whisk the well ingredients together well.
Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, mixing well until you have a smooth batter.
Heat your pancake pan over medium heat. Using a ¼ cup, spoon the batter onto the pan. I had to then spread the batter out with the back of a spoon to make pancakes. (Otherwise, these would have been more like drop biscuits or scones.) Cook until the top is all bubbly and starting to dry, then flip over. The bottom should be a lovely golden brown. If it's still pale, then let it cook a little longer on that side before flipping.
Serve the pancakes with maple syrup for dipping or all alone.

The recipe made 15 4-in diameter pancakes for me, all of which were promptly eaten, leaving none to freeze for another day.

Smoothies and Farmers Market Lunch

Saturday is my day with the girls. Dave was out at kung fu all day long.

Breakfast
For breakfast, we made strawberry banana smoothies. Jacqui has been asking for smoothies for breakfast every day lately. I think it's the heat. We had been making banana smoothies with whatever type of juice we had around for a few days because we didn't have any other frozen fruit. But Friday, we made a special trip to the store to pick up some frozen strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so yesterday we were prepared for yummy smoothie goodness.

Ingredients
5 pieces (1/2 banana each) frozen banana
1 cup oatmilk
1 cup orange-pineapple juice
two heaping scoops soy protein
3/4 avocado
1 1/2 cup frozen strawberries

What to do
Place the milk and juice in the blender first, then the remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth and serve in glasses (plastic for the little girls). Enjoy!

Lunch
After breakfast, we took our regular Saturday trip to the market. (When I ask Jacqui where we should bike to, the market is always her first-choice destination, every day of the week. Too bad our market is only on Saturdays.) The organic woman-run farm we love (Evolutionary Organics) had the cutest selection of fresh, small zucchini and summer squash. I made the mistake of letting the girls pick some, and ended up spending $10 on squash. We also picked up a napa cabbage head and some vitamin greens. At another farmer's stand, we got lots of fresh berries (raspberries and blackberries) -- on special for 4 boxes for $10. Adrianna and Jacqui stuffed their faces with the berries before we even bought any. For the rest of our trip around the market, Adrianna's face was stained black and red (as were her hands) from all the berry goodness.
After purchasing the delicious berries, we went to play in the park for a bit. And eat more berries. And play. After playing for a while, we walked back through the market, picking up two humongous heads of white cauliflower (they barely fit in the fridge last night), a peach for lunch, two greenhouse tomatoes, and a large bunch of fresh basil. Homeward!


Farmers Market Lunch
Ingredients
4-5 small summer squash, sliced into rounds
1 large fresh tomato, chopped
1 T extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
black pepper
1 small red spicy pepper (from our window garden!)
1 cup cooked garbanzos

What to do
heat the oil and then saute the sliced squash. Add the red pepper, tomato, salt, and black pepper. Then add the garbanzos. Saute and cook until the squash is soft. Serve!

It's so easy and Jacqui and Adrianna loved it! So much fun picking your own lunch at the market and helping mom make it up.

Vegan Cranberry Orange Scones

I made scones yesterday for breakfast with Jacqui's help. Just a few ingredients (that you probably already have in your kitchen) mixed together and baked at 425F for 12 minutes. Jacqui ate the batter, Dave ate two, and even our visiting (non-vegan) friend ate two and liked them! :)

Ingredients
Dry
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole spelt flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp orange zest
2/3 cup chopped pecans and walnuts
2/3 cup dried cranberries
Wet
1/2 cup maple syrup
6 T sunflower oil
3/4 cup orange juice (I juiced our remaining orange for ~ 1/2 cup and then filled it up with orange-mango juice)

What to do
Preheat the oven to 425F.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Total flour should be 3 cups. I broke it out into 1/1/1 because I wanted to use spelt flour, I wanted to use whole wheat flour, and I had 1 cup of all-purpose flour remaining in my bag. I think that, to keep the scones from becoming too heavy, you'll not want to use more than 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, but it might work with 2 cups. Chop the nuts (I used 1/2 cup chopped pecans and 1/6 cup chopped walnuts for two reasons: 1. I only had 1/2 cup pecans and 2. I am allergic to walnuts, but can generally handle them in small quantities). Stir in the cranberries and chopped nuts.
Juice orange or measure out the boxed orange juice. Mix (whisk) the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl.
Add the dry to the wet and stir to combine. Jacqui did this step mostly by herself. I had to mix in the bottom/last flour myself, but she was able to do this really well herself.
Place parchment paper on your baking sheet. Using one or two spoons, spoon the mixture and drop it onto the paper. Put 6 - 8 dropped scones on the sheet, then bake for 10-12 minutes (12 minutes did it for me, but I checked at 10 just to be sure). Drop 6 - 8 scones on the sheet again, and bake for 12 minutes, this time setting off one of the alarms in the apt and waking anyone still sleeping. (But really, who is still sleeping at 8-something in the morning on a beautiful Sunday???) Place on a cooling rack and let them cool for a few minutes before devouring.
Serve plain, or with some vegan butter or jelly or maple syrup.

We enjoyed these plain. They are just sweet enough to not need anything else. Jacqui had filled up on the uncooked dough/batter and didn't eat much of her baked scone, but Dave, Ryan, and I ate two each. Yum yum yum.

Nut Butter Sauce with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Squash

Last night I ate the remaining Mushroom Risotto, topped with nutritional yeast, and roasted some root veggies and mixed up a quick nut butter sauce for J to eat today.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Squash
1 medium organic jeweled yam
1 large organic sweet potato
1 small organic sweet pumpkin squash
Wash and peel sweet potatoes and squash. Cut into small pieces. Place in brownie pan (my "roasting" pan) with a little bit of water; cover with aluminum foil. Put oven on at 365F and place pan on top rack. (Don't wait for the oven to heat.) Roast for 25 minutes, then remove from oven. When cooled, remove from pan and place in a container for the fridge, where they will sit until lunchtime when D breaks them out for J. And I break them out for A at dinnertime.

Nut Butter Sauce
Based on a peanut sauce from fatfreevegan
1/3 cup freshly ground almond butter
1/2 cup water
2 T Braggs liquid aminos
1 flower cube of frozen lime juice (that I prepared last week)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated
Mix everything together in a container with a small whisk. Place in fridge for D to use on pasta and/or roasted veggies (above) for J's lunch.

Breakfast
This morning, J and I had hot cereal (Bob's Red Mill 8 grain) with pecans, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, soymilk, and organic banana. A had rice cereal with breastmilk and a little bit of organic banana mushed in.

Swedish Tea Ring

So, I finally did it. I made Vegan Dad's Swedish Tea Ring. Well, almost.

I changed the filling -- adding two tsps of ground cardamon (because cardamon is the epitome of Swedish spices) along with the pecans, cinnamon, and sugar. I also used Earth balance stick margarine for all the shortening and margarine called for in the recipe (because that's what my mom had in her kitchen). I also used soft vanilla silken tofu (because that's all the Giant by my mom's house sold) and vanilla soy milk (because that's what my mom bought for us).

We're going to have it at brunch at Kerry's house tomorrow. Hopefully it tastes yummy!

I'm also going to try to make up a potato tortilla based on this recipe for brunch tomorrow. Few changes I already know I'm making: no nutritional yeast in my mom's house and none at the stores I got to today, so I'm going to use a combination of curry powder, tumeric, ground cumin, and onion (whatever my mom has around the house) in place of the tofu scrambler mix. Also, I have some Daiya cheeze that I need to use up, so that is going to be added to the tortilla. I haven't decided if I'm making a sauce yet. We'll see how tomorrow morning fares...

Monday Breakfast Smoothie

This morning J and I made smoothies for breakfast.

1 cup soy milk (Greenway brand...organic, not sure where my m-i-l bought it)
1 cup lots-of-pulp orange juice
~2 heaping T ground flax
~1 heaping T ground hemp
2 large spoonfuls freshly ground almond butter (we discovered Fairway last weekend and I ground and bought fresh almond butter and peanut butter!)
3/4 - 1 cup frozen raspberries (the rest of our bag)
1 1/2 frozen bananas
3/4 - 1 cup frozen blueberries (the rest of our bag)
1 frozen kiwi

Blend. Enjoy!

And remember to buy more frozen fruit when the KeyFood has them on sale.

ABP2 Muffins

Last night, I made up some yummy muffins. The recipe I was going to make called for appples and applesauce, but my applesauce had mold growing in it (as I found when I was going to give some to A with her rice cereal -- boo) and I only had one apple. What I did have was: two almost too-ripe pears, one almost too-ripe apple, and two super-ripe bananas. So, I made apple-banana-pear-pecan (ABP²) muffins.

Ingredients
2 T ground flax
6 T water

2 super ripe bananas
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 turbinado sugar
1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups organic all purpose flour
1/2 organic whole wheat flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 T baking powder

1 apple
2 pears
~1 cup pecans (might have been more -- I just used what was left in my jar)

What to do
First, blend the flax and water together until frothy in your blender or food processor.
Then add the other "wet" ingredients (bananas through vanilla) to the blender and blend until creamy.
While blending, before blending, or after blending, mix the dry ingredients in a small/medium bowl with a wooden spoon.
Peal and chop the apple and pears, cutting out any bad spots. Make the pieces small. Chop the pecans.
Pour the creamy blended liquid into a big bowl and add the dry flour mix. Don't over mix to combine, but make sure there aren't any pockets of flour left.
Add the chopped pecans, apples, and pears. Have D fold everything together while I line the muffin pans. Oh! Don't forget to pre-heat the oven! I preheat to 365, because, as we all know, my oven thinks that is 350.
Spoon the batter into the lined muffin tins. This recipe makes 12 big muffins.
I baked my muffins for 27 minutes. The recipe that I based these off said 20 minutes, but my muffins were still sticky in the middle when I poked them with toothpicks. So they kept baking. :) Check your muffins after 20 minutes with a toothpick to see how long they will take.

As you can see from my (sad blackberry) picture, the muffins are very light in color. They are yummy (had one for breakfast this morning with my fruit smoothie) and lent a gentle fall aroma to the apartment as I baked last night. The 20 minutes I had set them for was enough time to eat all the remaining batter (YUM!), clean up and put everything away, and still have time to make and enjoy a cup of tea. :)

French Toast

Can you tell it's a little slow at work for me today? :P

So I've been craving french toast the past week. I looked at a bunch of recipes over the past few days and decided to try my hand at my own. Also, I bought a loaf of whole wheat bread by accident (I meant to buy multi-grain, but picked up the wrong loaf), so I needed to use it up. I got up early enough this morning to try my hand at french toast.

Ingredients
1 cup soy milk (8th Continent vanilla)
2 T nutritional yeast
2 T ground golden flax seeds
2 T garbanzo bean flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

5 slices whole wheat bread

safflower oil for frying

What I did
First, for the dipping mixture I picked a large glass bowl that would fit my bread slices. Then, I added the first five ingredients, with J's help, and whisked them together. I put maybe 1/4-1/2 inch safflower oil in my pan for frying and got it all nice and hot. I dipped my first piece of bread into the bowl and covered both sides with the mixture, then placed it in the hot oil and fried it. One side, then the other. I blotted it on a paper towel when I took it out of the pan, and served it to J with Earth Balance and organic maple syrup. I know something is a hit with her when she eats it all by herself, which she did! :)
Repeat with the remaining pieces of bread.

What I learned was that the other four were much more like the french toast I remember. I think that the mixture sat a little longer and firmed up, so it made those four pieces a little better. Not that J didn't love hers, but the mixture was more watery with the first piece and less so for the remaining. Next time, I will probably let the mixture sit for a few minutes before making the piece.

I ate two pieces of this, which were great. My first was still a little soggy in the middle, so I will fry it a bit longer next time. I used the deeper oil to fry (rather than just a bit to keep it from sticking) for two reasons. First, my pans are really sticky, so everything is sticking. (Note to self, need to research SAFE non-stick alternative). Second, one of the recipes I looked at when making my own was for Indian-style french toast. In addition to the crazy spices (which I might try at some point), the author suggested using more oil for the frying, based on her parents' use of several inches of oil for frying french toast when she was a kid. The extra oil really worked and nothing burnt to my pan and the french toast didn't burn. So, yeah, I probably used more oil than necessary, but I can adjust that as time goes on. The not-sticking was definitely worth it!

Grape Juice Pancakes

Saturday I made grape juice pancakes with J's help. The first one got a little burnt, so I ate it (much to J's upset, who really wanted the first pancake). She got the much tastier and less black but still blue second pancake and ate it all up all by herself. no help requried when breakfast is this yummy! Our toppings are Earth Balance, organic maple syrup (Grade B), and organic powdered sugar. After I made three, I added approximately 1/2 cup frozen blueberries to the remaining batter, which J had been asking for after we used them in our smoothies. She spat out the blueberry blue pancake, so that was not a hit with her. I ate one though, and thought it quite tasty.

Simple recipe
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (Bob's Red Mill)
1 1/2 cup organic unbleached King Arthur's flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups grape juice (you can use any juice; this is what we had in the fridge -- grape juice makes BLUE pancakes, orange juice YELLOW/ORANGE pancakes.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then add the juice and mix together gently (don't overmix). Heat up your skillet/pan and add some sunflower oil. Add batter (between 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup per pancake) and make it as thick or thin as you want. When the top is all bubbly, flip. (Don't forget, as you're making the smoothies, to flip the pancake, or you will end up with a blackened pancake and a beeping smoke detector.) Serve with some Earth Balance and maple syrup. Let J sprinkle a little bit of powdered sugar on top to make the blue pancakes even prettier!
If you want, add in 1/2 cup or 1 cup frozen blueberries to batter.
Makes six pancakes.

Smoothies
1 cup soy milk
1 cup orange juice
4 really ripe bananas, broken in half
1 cup frozen raspberries and strawberries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
2 heaping spoonfuls of ground hemp protein
3 heaping spoonfuls of ground golden flax seeds
1 really ripe avocado

Put everything together in a blender (start with the wet ingredients first). Blend and serve.
Makes 3 servings.
J loves her smoothies. This version used up our really ripe bananas; normally we use frozen bananas, which gives the smoothies a completely different consistency.

Eggless Omelets...attempt 1

I tried making eggless omelets this morning for breakfast. I used the recipe I posted a few days ago, with 1/4 tsp tumeric, and an organic green heirloom tomato and four baby bellas from the farmers' market chopped and added to the batter after it sat for ten minutes. While the omelets were cooking, I added a piece of Tofutti cheese (torn up) to each. I made three instead of the four the recipe said it made.

Everything stuck to my pan...didn't look very pretty...but tasted good and very filling. In color, they looked like the pancakes I make (I'll post the recipe for those another day), but with chunks of tomato and mushroom. J called them pancakes, and ate her half omelet as long as I was feeding it to her (she just spat it out when D gave it to her). She was excited about them though, and happily told D I made pancakes when he took over breakfast feeding duty. D passed on the one I had for him, so I will have it for breakfast tomorrow I guess. I think that the apartment smelled like omelets while I was cooking, so if you like the smell of omelets, this worked for that. The texture wasn't exactly omelet-like, but it wasn't pancake-texture either.

I have another eggless omelet recipe to try out, from Vegan Brunch. I was going to make it this morning, but I didn't realize it called for garbanzo bean flour. I have all the other ingredients (except the black salt, but I'm not a big fan of sulphur smell, so I'm passing on that and going with regular sea salt); once I buy some garbanzo bean flour, I will whip some of those up.