Cocoa Cranberry Oatmeal Muffins

Oatmeal in the morning on a cool day is an awesome thing, right? But sometimes you don’t make enough, and other times (especially when you set it up in your slow cooker and then people rush out the door without breakfast anyway) there is tooooo much oatmeal. You don’t want to throw it out, but if you save it, do people really eat the leftovers? They will if you turn them into muffins! Say, Cocoa Cranberry Oatmeal Muffins?

I’m not sure that I got a photo of these muffins, but they were really tasty and they’re pretty healthy – I substituted nonfat yogurt for some of the butter and reduced the sugar, used whole wheat flour, and of course, they’ve got the healthy power of oatmeal in there, too! I was surprised at how light and fluffy these came out. I’ll definitely make them again when we have oatmeal leftovers, and if you don’t have cranberries, throw in raisins or chocolate chips or nuts or anything else you can think of!

The basis of this recipe originates here, which was a great help since I wasn’t quite sure how my oatmeal leftovers were going to factor in.

Ingedients

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup nonfat greek yogurt
4 medium eggs (or 3 large)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups leftover cooked oatmeal (our leftovers were steel cut oats)
1 cup cranberries, sliced

Directions

In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, cinnamon, ginger, brown sugar, baking powder and baking soda.

In another bowl, mix together melted butter, eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, cranberries, and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. The batter will seem thick, but don’t worry. Adding more liquid may make the muffins too crumbly.

Spoon batter into 24 greased muffin cups.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18 minutes, or until the muffin centers are slightly firm.

Earl Grey Tea Cakes

(Shh, they’re vegan!)

I have just realized the tragedy that has occurred. These cakes never got posted. I made them ages ago!

I’d made Casey’s Chai Cake when we had company because I thought it would be more popular than the slightly odder sounding Earl Grey cakes, but we have a fabulously fragrant Earl Grey that I’ve been dying to bake with. After I made the Chai cake, I knew I had to do it, pronto!

I made these in a new (to me) silicone baking pan my mom gave me since she never uses it. I’ve never used silicone pans before, and it was a muffin tin that was very deep. I’ve been very skeptical about silicone before, but they popped right out and looked adorable! I’m very happy to add this to my collection and I’m sure I’ll use it often.

I had some soymilk to use up, so I took the opportunity to make these vegan, and Charlie had no idea until I told him. Be sure that if you’re going to glaze these, you use the Earl Grey infused soymilk as the liquid for the frosting, otherwise, the somewhat subtle taste of the tea will be lost underneath the sweetness of the plain glaze! Be careful about your tea selection – you want an Earl Grey that has a lot of bergamot in it.

Love how the blueberries got the glaze all pink!

Ingredients

Cakes
1/2 cup Earth Balance
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2-3 tablespoons natural sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup Earl Grey Soymilk* (I used vanilla soymilk as a base – you may want to add 1 tsp vanilla if you’re using plain milk or plain soymilk)
1 tablespoon commercial egg replacer (or milled flax + 2 tablespoons warm water)
1 teaspoon Earl Grey loose leaf tea leaves, finely ground with mortar & pestle
dash of lemon juice

*To make Earl Grey Soymilk, heat 1 3/4 cups milk in a saucepan on low-medium heat. When bubbles form around the edge of the pot, add about 9 grams of loose leaf tea (about 3 teaspoons) in a filter or 3-4 tea bags. Let steep for 5 minutes. Cool.

Glaze
1/4 cup Earl Grey Soymilk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice (or to taste)
1 cup confectioners sugar (or to desired consistency)
1/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (optional, for decoration)

Directions

Cream the Earth Balance and natural sugar together in a medium or large bowl. Since the ratio wasn’t totally even, it won’t come out perfectly creamed, so just give it a good mix. In a separate small bowl, mix the milled flax and warm water together until it gets gooey, then add that to the sugar mixture. Add the dash of lemon juice.

In a separate bowl, mix the whole wheat pastry flour, the baking powder, and the salt together. Slowly add a bit of this dry mixture to the creamed mixture, stirring constantly or mixing with the paddle attachment of your stand mixer. Alternate from time to time with some of the 1 1/4 cups of Earl Grey soymilk. Add a little of each until they are all mixed in. Stir in the Earl Grey tea leaves.

Pour into the silicone baking pans. You can use prepared cupcake pans with liners or that have been greased if you don’t have silicone pans.

Bake at 375*F for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let the cakes cool for several minutes before removing them from the silicone molds.

Meanwhile, make the glaze. Add the remaining Earl Grey soymilk, lemon juice, and confectioner’s sugar until you reach the desired consistency. Making the glaze too thick with confectioner’s sugar may take away from the Earl Grey flavor. If you desire a super thick glaze, you may want to consider using bergamot extract.

Dip the tops of the cakes into the bowl of glaze and garnish with blueberries if desired.

Cooperative Apple Muffins

This is another recipe from the archives. In fact, it dates all the way back to 2008! Sorry I don’t have a photo of these. I’ll have to make them again some time as they are way delicious. Grating the apples is key.

Here’s the original text from before I even had a blog. They were the first ones to introduce me to the concept of a co-op or a CSA or a farm share.

My friends Anne and Neil get fruits and vegetables from a co-op each week. It’s extremely locally grown and delicious food! The best (and sometimes worst) part is that you never know what you’re going to get… When you show up to pick up your food, they say, “Ok, take one bucket of cherries and four handfuls of spinach and three cucumbers,” or whatever the foods of the week are.

I’ve been lucky not only to eat dinner at their house on nights that the co-op has been picked up, but also to receive cast-offs like cucumbers, which they don’t like, or, in this case, apples, which they received another 4lbs of before they could eat the previous week’s. So, I had a bunch of what I think were Cortland apples to cook in a hurry.

Since we’re going to PA to campaign for Obama this weekend, I didn’t want to bake a pie… it’s not as transportable as some food items. Instead, I baked Apple Muffins with Crumb Topping. The great part about this experiment was that the recipe called for grated apples, not chunks. Sometimes if a fruit is too moist, it leaves that sort of really squishy bit of cake/muffin/bread around it, which also makes it fall apart easier. Grating the apples, however, made them cook up without that squish but with the same fresh fruit taste.

Since Milo’s coming with us, this is a vegan recipe, but you can hardly tell. These are whole-wheat and not very sugary, but they have a lovely texture.

The original recipe is here, but I had to make some changes based on ingredients I had in the house, as well as the fact that the recipe calls for honey, which is in fact not vegan by most people’s standards.

Ingredients

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
2-3 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger (optional)
1 tsp nutmeg (optional)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 cups grated apple (I probably went a bit over on this as I was using up the apples I had from Anne)
1/2 cup oil (could use sunflower, olive… I used canola)
1/2 cup apple cider
a large splash of vanilla
a large splash of vinegar (apple cider is preferable, but I didn’t have any so I used rice vinegar)
1 cup almond milk (you could use real milk or soy milk here)
Splash of lemon juice

Crumb topping:

a bit of flour (perhaps 4 tablespoons)
a bit of brown sugar (about the same)
about 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
two teaspoons of Jungle Shortening (you can use earth balance or soy butter or real butter)

Directions

While grating apples, add a splash of lemon to the bowl to keep from browning. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, brown sugar, and grated apple together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the oil, apple cider, almond milk, vinegar, and vanilla together.

Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Put into greased muffin tins.

Prepare crumb topping by running a fork through the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and shortening until crumbs form. Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins. Cook at about 350 for about 15 minutes for mini muffins and about 20-25 minutes for full sized muffins.

The yield on the recipe I glanced at before starting says 18 smallish muffins, but I ended up with 12 smallish muffins, 24 mini muffins, and a small loaf pan, so that’s a bit different…

Casey’s Chai Cake with Honey Ginger Glaze

I made Chai Cake the same weekend I made Beer Pie, which was a weekend that some of our close friends were coming to visit. Luka and Clara were coming down from Massachusetts, just for funzies, and Micah and Casey were coming out from Brooklyn, since Casey and I had some work to do to prepare a proposal for a workshop we’re submitting for an upcoming conference.

We had some hanging out in the kitchen time as I threw this together and we all made a big kitchen mess, and Luka drank chai. Casey ended up loving this cake so hard, though, so I’m calling it Casey’s Chai Cake, and the next time I make it, I’ll invite her over. <3

I've been meaning to experiment with tea in cake for a while, and I've had several reminders lately. There will probably be more, too, since we just ran out of tea, so I put in a new order of loose leaf from The Tea Table, including for some Lavender Butterfly Tea, which I can’t wait to play with. A really good cup of tea is one of my favorite things in the world. A recipe for Earl Grey Tea Cakes is soon to come…

Ingredients

Cake:

1 and 1/3 cups of milk
6 chai tea bags, without added sweetner (I used a mix Twinings Chai and Twinings Pumpkin Chai, though I have some loose chai coming, too, for next time)
4 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1 and 3/4 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon white sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tablespoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons of ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 sticks butter

Glaze:

3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
milk to desired consistency (I probably used 1/4 cup)
pinch of salt (to cut the sweetness a bit)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 Degrees F. Grease and lightly flour a 10 cup bundt pan.

In a small saucepan, bring the milk to a simmer over low-medium heat. Remove from heat. Add the tea bags and allow to steep for 5-6 minutes. Remove the tea bags and cool the milk completely.

Meanwhile, cream the butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and honey until light and fluffy, in a stand mixer or a large bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the remaining dry cake ingredients. Stir together the all purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, salt, cinnamon, and cardamom.

Add the milk and the dry mixture to the creamed mixture, mixing them together, alternating between milk and dry mixture until they are completely combined.

Pour into the prepared bundt pan. Bake on the bottom rack at 325 for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Meanwhile, make the glaze. Mix the ginger, salt, and the confectioner’s sugar together. Add the honey and a tiny bit of milk, stirring until all the sugar is absorbed, adding more milk as needed.

Apply glaze while the cake is warm. The glaze will soak into the cake a bit and leave a shiny sweetness on the crunchy peaks.

Super Moist Pumpkin Coconut Bread

My partner had surgery recently, so I haven’t done any cooking at all in the past three weeks. My mom made us some meals, I made a lasagna and froze it in portions before the surgery, our friends have ordered us takeout, and so on. So, I thought I’d post some of my archived recipes that I’ve been meaning to move over here anyway.

I’m shocked and dismayed to see that I never put a pumpkin bread recipe up here in the fall. This vegan pumpkin bread recipe that calls for coconut milk to keep it super moist is one of my favorites. As with any pumpkin bread I make, I sometimes improvise, throwing in raisins, seeds, nuts, currants, or whatever else I have on hand, either in the loaf or on top, but it’s also delicious just as is.

Just a note, this recipe is enough for two loaf pans, so you’ll either need two, or you’ll need to spend a lot of time as you cool one, pop it out of the pan, and start again. You could also probably put it in a 10 cup bundt pan, but don’t quote me on that… I haven’t tested it yet.

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 15oz can of pumpkin puree
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup coconut milk
2/3 cup flaked coconut

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8″ x 4″ loaf pans.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Add the pumpkin puree, oil, and coconut milk, and mix until all of the flour is absorbed. Fold in the flaked coconut or reserve to sprinkle on top. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.

Bake for 50-60 minutes in the preheated oven or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven, and cover loaves tightly with foil. Allow to steam for 10 minutes. Remove foil, and turn out onto a cooling rack. Tent loosely with the foil, and allow to cool completely.

Holiday Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

This entry was made the day before Thanksgiving. The rolls ended up being left in the oven too long because someone besides me was responsible for them, but I’d make them again – aside from being too hard from being in too long, they were good.

“I hope they’re good,” I said, referencing these rolls that I had rising in the fridge. Charlie’s sister has instructions to put them in the oven when she wakes up in the morning, earlier than the rest of us, since her friend needs a ride so she can catch a flight.

“I hope they don’t eat them all before we wake up,” Charlie said woefully.

This recipe is based on the one that’s on the King Arthur Flour website , except that I’ve made a lot of changes. Some of them were because I just didn’t have some of their products that they sell, like their Easy-Roll Dough Improver, and some of the changes were for reasons such as, I think it’s blasphemous to not include cinnamon in the filling inside of sticky buns.

Either way, those are the origins, and I’m quite happy to have the inspiration. Charlie, his sister, and the other people sleeping at our house tonight were quite happy for me to have it, too.

(Don’t let these spend too long in the oven! I made the mistake of letting someone else mind them, and they were in too long and got a bit dried out.)

Ingredients

Dough
3 1/4 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons natural sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups pumpkin
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1/4 cup bread flour
3 tablespoons unsalted butter

Filling
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons maple sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon natural sugar
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Glaze
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 brown sugar
4 tablespoons cane syrup, golden syrup, or light corn syrup
2 tablespoons cinnamon (or, to taste)

Directions:

Combine all dough ingredients and mix them in a stand mixer or by hand until a smooth, soft dough is formed. Add a bit of water if the dough is too dry. Spray a non-metal bowl with oil and flip the dough once to coat. Cover with a damp cloth and allow to rise in a warm place for about one hour (the dough will not necessarily double in size).

Combine the filling ingredients and stir well. Deflate the dough and roll it out onto a floured surface into about a 12×16 rectangle. Spread the filling over the sheet of dough, then, starting with a long edge, roll the dough into a log, pinch the edge to seal it, and slice it into 16 1-inch pieces.

To make the glaze, melt the butter, then stir in the sugar, syrup, cinnamon, and walnuts. Pour some on the bottom of the pans, and drizzle the rest on top.

Bake the buns in a preheated 350°F oven for 25 minutes for 2 round pans, or 35 to 40 minutes in the sticky bun pan, or until they’re golden brown and you see the glaze bubbling.

Remove the buns from the oven, and immediately turn them out of the pan(s) onto a serving plate to cool.

Sneaky Apple Pancakes

This morning I woke up before Charlie did, so I snuck out of bed (not an easy feat, since I sleep on the inside next to a wall) and got to the kitchen. I haven’t been able to do a lot of independent cooking and baking lately because my arthritis in my hands has been flaring and I’ve actually had worse pain since getting some epidurals for my herniated discs this week. I loathe relying too heavily on others, despite the fact that Charlie is wonderful and helps me out immensely when I need it. In spite of my reluctance, I have actually decided to ask some friends to help me out with some things from now on.

But, since I wasn’t feeling awful this morning, and since I managed to sneak out of bed without waking him, I decided to get some pancakes going before he woke up. We had the first round of apples in our farm share this week. A few of them have been munched through already, but we had a few left standing for pancakes. I made the batter in my new KitchenAid Mixer, had a cup of coffee, woke up Charlie, and he made the pancakes.

These pancakes are sneaky not only because I had to sneak out of bed to make them, but also because the apples are grated and aren’t in huge chunks, so they’re a bit of a delicious surprise.

*Note: If you’d like to make these pancakes vegan, simply substitute 1 tablespoon flax seed + 3 tablespoons warm water, mixed well, for the egg, and your preferred unsweetened non-dairy milk.

Ingredients

1 large apple, peeled and grated
1/2 cup 1% milk, plus a little extra to thin batter if necessary
1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 1/3 cups whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

Combine the wet ingredients in a small bowl. So, toss in your grated apples, your oil, your beaten egg, milk, and applesauce. Give it a good stir.

Combine all the dry ingredients in another bowl, in my case, my stand mixer bowl. So, your flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, brown sugar, and baking soda. Mix your dry ingredients well.

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just to moisten.

Lightly grease a non-stick skillet with spray oil and heat griddle on medium heat. Working in batches, spoon 1/4 cup batter onto the grill. If the batter is too thick, add a bit more milk or water to the remaining batter. Cook until golden and bubbling (2 to 3 minutes), then turn and continue to cook 1 minute.

Serve pancakes with the traditional warm maple syrup, or do what I did, and top with warm applesauce, a bit more cinnamon, and sprinkle a few chopped nuts on top. Yum!

Nectarine Crumb Mini-Muffins

As you can see, we stole one to eat while they were still cooling.

This week brought nectarines in the farm share, and since we’re going camping, we need something for easy breakfasts. I figured muffins would be a good start, and nectarine muffins sounded delicious. A month or two ago, I’d seen a peach crumb bread at Wegman’s, and it looked stellar, but since I don’t like really sweet things, store bought sweet-bread never really work out for me.

These are on the moderately healthy side of things, as they’re made with whole wheat flour, have not tooo much sugar or fat in them for the size of the batch, and they can easily be turned into vegan muffins with minor adjustments.

*I wish that they’d had a bit more of a nectarine taste, so if I were to make them again I probably would reduce the milk and increase the nectarine puree, but I used all the nectarines I had in the house!

Ingredients

3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
pinch salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 1/4 cup pureed nectarines (about 5 medium nectarines)
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk (you can use soy or almond milk if you’d like)

Crumb topping:
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter (feel free to sub soy butter)

Directions

I used my new stand mixer for this, but it will work just the same in a bowl.

Combine the oil, vanilla, and the 1/2 cup brown sugar.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, and ground ginger.

Alternate adding the milk and the flour mixture to the oil/sugar mixture until it’s all in the same bowl. Stir it around a bit, scraping the sides if necessary.

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease mini muffin tins. Distribute batter, about 1 tablespoon each, into mini muffin tins (you’ll end up with about 48).

Make crumb topping by combining remaining flour, remaining brown sugar, and cold butter. Cut together with a pastry blender, fork, or two knives until coarse crumbs are formed.

Spoon about 1/2 teaspoon to a teaspoon of crumb topping onto each muffin, then pop those suckers into the oven for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

(Tired of Pie) Peach Blueberry Filo Turnovers

It was peaches again in the farm share this week, and although I love summer fruits, it’s been so hot and humid this week that I’ve been more interested in eating the cool cucumbers and lovely tomatoes they’ve sent along instead.

So now, I have some peaches, and no desperate pie making going on. I thought about making another sorbet, this time with peaches, but Charlie’s got a sort of allergy to hand fruits like apples and peaches especially. When he eats them raw, he gets itchy in his mouth, especially when the fruit is very ripe. If I made a peach sorbet, I’d probably end up eating it all myself, and since we’ve already got a hoenydew sorbet, that would be a bit much.

Charlie’s much better if the fruit has been cooked, so, out of kindness and love for him, I’ll take our remaining peaches and conjure up a recipe that cooks them.

Once upon a time, when I was making an awesome veggie filo recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook at my Brooklyn apartment that I had a few summers ago, and we had some extra filo. I quickly threw together everything that I could find in the house that would make a sweet turnover type of thing. I think it ended up being two plums, a peach, some blackberry applesauce, and some instant vanilla oatmeal. They turned out fabulously.

I was going to make a sort of repeat of this tonight, but sadly, the store seemed to not have a single ripe plum. I remembered that I had most of a carton of blueberries leftover from our brunch the other day, and decided to go with that instead. I had an extremely elegant plan laid out for the peaches and plums, too, but I suppose that will have to wait for another day.

Ingredients

1/2 package filo dough, thawed

Filling:

3-4 medium peaches, pitted, peeled, and chopped
about 1 1/2 cups of blueberries
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon maple syrup, depending how sweet you like things (I used Trader Joe’s Grade B Organic)
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Butter mixture:

1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 tablespoons salted butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Egg wash:
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon water

Directions

Remember that if you’re working with genuine filo dough, you’ll need to work quickly and in a draft-free environment. If you’re afraid of that but want to try this recipe anyway, you can cheat and use puff pastry which is easier and less delicate.

Keep a damp towel nearby to cover your filo with that you’re not working with at the time. Be sure that all of your other materials are prepared in advance before you begin working with the filo. Also, some filo comes frozen, so make sure you read the box when you buy it. You’ll be mighty disappointed if the instructions say to thaw it for 2 hours on the counter or 8 hours in the refrigerator and you were planning to pop these in the oven in a few minutes.

Prepare the filling by stirring together the peaches, blueberries, 1 tablespoon maple syrup, brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, prepare the egg wash by mixing the egg and water thoroughly.

In a separate bowl, melt the butter. Mix in the remaining tablespoon of maple syrup and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.

Ready to start with the filo? Are you sure? You’ve got your butter mixture, your egg wash, and your fruit? Good.

Preheat oven to 350.

Take about 5 sheets of filo. Cover the remaining filo with a damp cloth. Fold the 5 sheets of filo so that it forms a square.

Brush a bit of the butter mixture to within about 3/4 inch of the edge. Place a few tablespoons of fruit onto the square. Be sure to fill enough so that the pastry isn’t droopy, but don’t overfill it, either.

Brush the egg wash onto the remaining bare edge. Fold the square over to make a triangle. Press the edges together. Brush the top of the pastry lightly with more egg wash.

Repeat until no filo remains. Place turnovers on parchment on a baking sheet.

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until filo is flaky and golden brown.

Serve for breakfast, or for dessert with vanilla ice cream.

Epic Brunch with Bo and Bendi

Today’s brunch: Cereal Coated French Toast, I-Think-I-Was-Dreaming Sweet Potato Browns, Raspberry Sorbet Bellinis, Vegetarian Bacon.

As I mentioned in my last post, we had Bo and Bendi as visitors last night, and Sunday was to be a day of Epic Brunch and either movies or board games.

Charlie slept very late today, so Bo and I left Bendi to entertain himself and ran around to different stores gathering the ingredients we’d need. Since then, we’ve been cooking and drooling in anticipation of the wonderful creations that are about to happen.

Cereal Coated French Toast

We saw this on a TV program one time on the Food Network. The owner of a cute little restaurant somewhere far away from here made it, and it was far away enough that we would never end up there, so we decided that one day we would have to make it ourselves.

I’m usually not a fan of french toast because most places make it too eggy, and honestly, if I wanted eggs and toast, I would make an omelette with a side of toast. So, if you want your french toast to be eggy, you’ll want to add an extra egg to this recipe.

Ingredients

5 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 loaf thick sliced soft white bread
4 cups quasi-crushed Honey Graham Oh’s
vegetable oil for cooking

Directions

Beat eggs, milk, and vanilla together. Stir in cinnamon.

Heat a pan to medium before adding the fat. This allows the pores of the pan to open up to accept the oil so that things don’t stick. Once the pan is hot, add a little bit of oil, coating the pan.

Dip a slice of bread in the egg mixture, coating thoroughly. Next, dip the bread in the crushed cereal (you may want to use a separate plate for this so the rest of the cereal doesn’t get soggy in the process). Transfer the slice to the pan and cook on each side until brown, probably about 3 minutes per side.

We’re serving with blueberries on top! You may want to serve with whipped cream.

I-Think-I-Was-Dreaming Sweet Potato Browns

These, I think, actually came to me in a dream. Last night, before bed, we’d talked about making the french toast and vegetarian bacon, and sometime in my sleep I came up with the idea of making hash browns, too. Usually Charlie makes some delicious oven potatoes, but in my dream, I imagined sweet potato hash browns, of the shredded variety. When I awoke and proposed my idea, Bo was all about it, and we modified it a bit to include a variety of white potatoes and sweet potatoes, with rosemary and paprika. Instead of frying them, which is higher in fat and usually turns out very messy, we decided to bake them in the oven.

Ingredients

1 large sweet potato, peeled and shredded
1 large russet potato, peeled and shredded
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 egg, beaten
2 teaspoons rosemary, ground with mortar and pestle
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with a sheet of parchment or sprayed lightly with olive oil.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, mixing thoroughly so that the potatoes are coated in the oil and egg. Form patties about 1 1/2 inches across,

The patties will be somewhat loose, but the egg will help bind it together. Transfer it back and forth between your hands a few times to smush it together.

Bake until the edges are brown, flipping once in the middle, possibly adding 2-3 minutes of low broil at the end for extra crispiness.

Makes about 24 patties.

Raspberry Sorbet Bellinis

Ingredients

Extra Dry Champagne
Ciao Bella Raspberry Sorbet, or other premium fruit sorbet of your choice

Directions

Bo likes to stir up the puree and then top it with the champagne, but I like to let the sorbet just melt into my glass, in hopes of getting a mouthful of cool, undissolved refreshment. So for my version, pour a glass of champagne, and top with about a tablespoon of sorbet. Let the sorbet melt into the bubbly for a delightful brunch treat. Fancy glasses optional – we served ours in these glass mugs that we got at a garage sale in Virginia for ten cents each.

Plebeian Peach Walnut Oatmeal

Usually our cooked oats come out in the wintertime and summers are, as might be expected, a time for cold cereals. Last week, however, we got some wonderful peaches in our farmshare and oatmeal sounded like an amazing idea. Charlie got it started while I got ready for work, and I tossed it together on my way out the door. The results were astounding for how easy the recipe was.

Ingredients

Oatmeal… prepare according to package directions, but I’m strongly recommending that you don’t use the bullshit instant kind. Quick oats if you must, old-fashioned if you’ve got a few minutes.
Peaches, one small per serving, washed, pitted, and chopped into bite size
Walnuts, about one small handful
About 2 teaspoons, give or take, brown sugar

Directions

This one’s pretty straightforward. Since you’ve already prepared your oatmeal according to the directions on the package, you’ll just need to mix all this stuff together and enjoy it. Throw a dash of cinnamon in there if you’re feeling wild. Amazing. Definitely one of the best bowls of oatmeal I’ve ever had.

P.S. Don’t judge me about the plastic spoon! We almost never use plastic utensils or paper plates. I was heading into work, and Charlie was heading to the city to help his friend move out of her apartment. I should get one of these to avoid this problem in the future. I can leave it on my keychain. Hehe.

Summer Pumpkin Muffins (with blueberries, coconut, and cashews)

I love baking with pumpkin, but during the summer months, dense pumpkin breads with deep, spicy tastes like cloves and nutmeg can really weigh you down. Many of my recipes originate from having something in the fridge that was about to go off, and in this case, it was blueberries. I thought about mixing pumpkin and blueberries, and then when I was at work, I was snacking on blueberries and cashews together, and I thought that those were lovely together, too. I often throw coconut in with my pumpkin breads, and that seemed like a good idea too. All of a sudden, a jumble of tastes were together. now how to spice it up?

I did use the traditional cinnamon and nutmeg, but I dropped the cloves. I also reduced the nutmeg from what I usually use in a pumpkin bread recipe and added cardamom, which I usually use with citrus items to bring out a really bright flavor.

This is one of my “healthier” recipes… I used whole wheat flour, light coconut milk, cut back the oil and swapped in applesauce, and it’s vegan, so there’s no eggs.

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tablespoon milled flax seed
2 tablespoons warm water
1 15oz can of pumpkin puree
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup light coconut milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup cashews, crushed
1 pint blueberries (make sure all the stems are removed)
flaked coconut to sprinkle on top (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two regular sized muffin tins with liners.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom.

In a separate bowl, mix the flax with the warm water and stir until a goopy mixture is created. Add the pumpkin puree, oil, applesauce, and coconut milk, and stir until all wet ingredients are blended.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until all of the flour is absorbed. Fold in the cashews. Gently fold in the blueberries. Scoop into prepared muffin tins, and, if desired, sprinkle coconut on top.

Bake for 18-20 minutes in the preheated oven or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on racks.

Sunday-on-a-Monday Banana Oat Flax Nut Pancakes

Charlie and I work odd hours, and we sometimes have the pleasure of having an extended weekend, like we did today. This was especially nice since we were away at a conference all weekend, so we didn’t get any lazy days with epic breakfasts. Today, we made up for it, and Monday morning sure felt like Sunday with these pancakes I whipped up with some overripe bananas and Charlie’s tofu scramble.

If you’d like to make this recipe vegan, simply convert the milk to soymilk, remove the egg, and double the flax seed and water.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana, about 3 bananas
1/2 cup 1% milk, plus a little extra to thin batter if necessary
1 egg
1 tbsp flax seed
3 tbsp water
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/3 cups whole-wheat flour
1/3 cup quick cooking oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Combine all the dry ingredients EXCEPT FLAX in one bowl, that is, your flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon, and baking soda. Flax gets counted as a wet ingredient because it gets mixed with water before you do anything with it. Mix your dry ingredients well, then put the bowl aside.

In a tiny bowl, activate your flax seed, that is, mix the one tablespoon of dry flax seed with three tablespoons of WARM water. Combine the mashed bananas, 1/2 cup milk, egg, flax mixture, vanilla, and 3 tablespoons oil. Mix well.

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just to moisten. Fold in walnuts.

Lightly grease a non-stick skillet with spray oil and heat griddle on medium heat. Working in batches, spoon 1/4 cup batter onto the grill. If the batter is too thick, add a bit more milk or water to the remaining batter. Cook until golden and bubbling (2 to 3 minutes), then turn and continue to cook 1 minute.

Serve pancakes with warm maple syrup and fruit.

Philadelphia Zucchini Bread

This zucchini bread is called Philadelphia Zucchini Bread not because it’s native to the area, but because we’re bringing it to Philly when we go there next weekend. A guy we know is letting us share his hotel room for the low price of one homebaked zucchini bread. Since I’d never made zucchini bread before, I thought it would only be polite to make a test run before the real thing. (Besides, Charlie looooves zucchini bread, so it would be torture for him to give away all the zucchini bread!)

As usual, I want to make a lovely presentation out of things, so I’ve adapted a two loaf recipe to fit my ten cup Heritage Bundt Pan. I started with this recipe as a guideline, but I made some changes already and will be making more on the next round.

(I can’t wait to make a version for us that really adapts it to be a healthy version using whole wheat flour, milled flax, and reduces the fat.)

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon (I’d say they weren’t quite heaping, but they were generous teaspoons)
3 eggs
5/6 cup vegetable oil (I’d reduce this a bit more, maybe sub in some applesauce… it was a tiny bit too greasy, leaving grease marks on napkins)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar (I used a mixture of light and dark)
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini (I probably used a bit more than this… I had a huge zucchini and used the whole thing!)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Grease and flour one ten cup bundt pan or two 8 x 4 inch loaf pans.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

Mix flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl. You could sift them if you were feeling ambitious, but I never do.

Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake for 40 to 60 minutes (longer for bundt pan), or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 15-20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

It’s awesome! If you’ve never had zucchini bread before, like me and my assistant baker of the day, Mary, it’s sort of like a carrot cake. If you wanted to make it more of a dessert than a breakfast, I bet you could top it with a nice cream cheese frosting or glaze.