Sage & Butternut Squash Lasagna

This recipe was born for two reasons, the first one being that I love butternut squash (any squash, really!). The other is that one person in my family isn’t supposed to eat a lot of tomatoes, so I was trying to make a delicious lasagna dish that was tomato-less. This dish is great for the holidays, and although it’s got some rich ingredients, it’s also got a healthy balance with whole wheat pasta and some veggies (which you can always add more of).

Make sure you use fresh sage in this one – it’s such an important ingredient that it really needs to shine.

Ingredients

1 box of whole wheat lasagna noodles, prepared according to package directions
1/2 large butternut squash, peeled and sliced into circles (use the top part only and save the bottom part where the seeds are for another recipe)
2-3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
2-3 cups of fresh spinach
1 .75oz package of sage, divided (if you’ve grown your own, grab a big handful)
1 32oz tub of ricotta (I used part skim)
up to 3/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, depending on your taste

For the white sauce:
1 1/2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons flour (I used whole wheat)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons of your sage, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, minced (optional)
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Begin by making the white sauce. In a small saucepan on medium heat, melt the butter. If you are using garlic, cook it briefly in the butter (2-3 minutes). Next, add the flour to the butter and whisk it together until smooth. Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring regularly. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly, making sure that the flour/butter mixture incorporates with the milk. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until the sauce is thick and creamy. Don’t forget to stir frequently. Add the sage and the parmesan cheese about 1-2 minutes before removing the sauce from the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Mix the nutmeg into the ricotta cheese.

Assembly!

Now you should be ready to assemble. Spread a layer of white sauce or ricotta in the bottom of your lasagna pan. Drop the circles of butternut squash down in the pan side by side – you should be able to get at least nine in there depending on the size of your squash and the size of your pan. Layer the noodles, spinach, mozzarella cheese, remaining sage, butternut squash, white sauce, and ricotta until you run out or fill the pan. Be sure to save some mozzarella cheese for the very top to lock in some of the moisture.

Bake in a 400˚ oven for 40-60 minutes or until the slices of squash are soft. You may want to cover the pan with aluminum foil until the last 10-15 minutes to prevent it from over browning.

Annnd lasagna is not the prettiest thing to photograph, especially during dinner rush with the family, but here’s a picture of the finished product.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies with Coffee Frosting

One of the symptoms of fibromyalgia is that a person has sleep disturbances, and boy, do I ever. Just last night I had trouble sleeping, and many, many nights of the last 10 years or so, I’ve had trouble sleeping. Some nights, I toss and turn in bed. Other nights, I do odd things, like climb out of bed and bake cookies.

This recipe has been sitting in queue to be posted since May, but I’m pretty sure that the morning that I made these, I’d been up most of the night, and I decided on a whim that it was time to bake. Charlie eventually woke up and found me frosting these beauties. Perhaps the next time I bake in the early morning, I should make something like muffins or cinnamon rolls!

I adapted this recipe from Bakingdom, who had the brilliant idea to ice oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with coffee frosting, but I made a few changes, like using half whole wheat flour, adding a bit of molasses, bumping up the cinnamon, and adding some other spices. Also, for the frosting, I don’t keep instant coffee in the house, so instead I invested in a coffee flavored extract recently, so I swapped that out.

Note: I divided the batch and made some without frosting and just with raisins, which is a great way to get the sophisticated, frosted coffee cookies and something simpler that kids will enjoy out of one batch.

Just two days left to win a gift certificate to my new Etsy shop!

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch of cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups quick oats

1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup raisins

Frosting:
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup confectioners’ sugar (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon coffee flavored extract (or 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee or finely ground espresso powder)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt; set aside

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a standing mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the molasses, brown sugar, and white sugar and beat until well combined. Beat in the egg until just combined, then stir in the vanilla. Scrape the bowl. Add the flour mixture in a few batches, mixing well between each one. Scrape the bowl, then stir in the oatmeal until well combined. Divide the batter if desired. Stir the chocolate chips into one bowl and the raisins into another.

Place level one tablespoon mounds of dough on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges turn golden brown. Transfer to a wire cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting… If using instant coffee, heat the milk until hot (microwave is easiest, but it can be done on the stovetop as well), add the coffee and steep for 5 to 10 minutes. Filter the coffee if there are any grounds left. Chill until at least room temperature (about 15 minutes). If using the coffee flavored extract, do not heat the milk – simply combine the coffee extract and the milk.

In a medium bowl, beat the butter until smooth and creamy. Add half of the sugar and beat until well combined (the mixture may be a little dry). Stir in the vanilla and half of the coffee milk until combined. Add the remaining sugar, beating the mixture until light and fluffy. Stir in the remaining coffee milk, and beat until thoroughly combined. Add more extract or sugar as necessary.

Carrot Cake with Bourbon Cream Cheese Frosting

Charlie’s birthday was last Sunday, but Sunday, we were at the tail end of a 30+ hour train ride from New Orleans back to New York. Our trip was delayed a bit because of the tornado in Alabama. We actually rode right through Tuscaloosa, AL, and the damage was just incredible. It was super sad and almost unbelievable to just see huge trees absolutely snapped in half. If you’d like to help the folks out in Alabama, one way you can do it is by texting FOOD to 27722 to donate $10 to the West Alabama Food Bank.

Now that we’re back in New York, and I’ve spend the week resting and doing laundry and other mundane stuff, it’s time to catch up on Charlie’s birthday. We had about four pounds of carrots from our last winter CSA delivery, so a carrot cake was certainly in order.

As usual, when making this recipe, I looked at a whole bunch of different carrot cake recipes and then mishmoshed them together, though I’d say the one that was the closest to what I was looking for was over at The Joy of Baking. I still made a bunch of changes, including reducing the amount of raisins and nuts and pineapple and making a spicier cake, since those are things that (if I recall correctly!) I’ve heard Charlie say he prefers in a carrot cake.

Charlie’s mom was around when I was baking this cake, and I let her taste the batter. She made a noise of exclamation. “What did you put in this?” she demanded. “It’s going to smell so good,” she said. She went to the kitchen window and started to open the window, then looked back at me. “That way the neighbors can smell it and be jealous,” she smiled.

Usually when I bake, it’s all about the flavor and nothing about the presentation. Friday night, though, I took a nap while the cake was cooling, then got a second wind and baked a whole second cake! I decided to really spend some time decorating the carrot cake while the chocolate chip cake was in the oven. The decorating didn’t come out perfectly, since it got to be two in the morning, I was getting sleepy, and the sequence that I did certain things in was not necessarily the most efficient, but it came out pretty darn nice.

I almost never write on cakes [the last time I did was probably last year's super silly birthday cake for myself, when I couldn't even find the tip for writing] so I was really, really happy with how the script came out. I took a half dozen semesters of typography in college, so I would have been gutted if my cake lettering was awful.

I think I’m getting the hang of this baking thing. *wink*

Photo of the cake topped with drunk raisins, drunk pineapple, and drunk ginger.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups oil
4 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 pound carrots, shredded (about 3 1/2 cups shredded, or about a dozen small carrots)
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
2 teaspoons chopped candied ginger
2 tablespoons finely chopped pineapple (optional)
a few tablespoons of flavorful bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cardamom

Ingredients: Cream Cheese Frosting
(sorry, I just kind of flung things into the mixer on this one!)

2 bricks of cream cheese
3/4 stick of butter
2 cups (or more, according to taste) confectioners sugar
2 tablespoons bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve)
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
toasted coconut (for garnish)

Directions

Carrot Cake: Several hours before beginning, make the “drunk raisins.” I learned this tip from a new friend when we were out in New Orleans – thanks, Darnell! Place the raisins and ginger (and pineapple, if desired) in a small bowl. Add a small amount of bourbon – enough so that the fruit is covered. Let it soak for at least an hour, preferably more. Reserve a few tablespoons of this mixture for the decorating step.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place rack in center of oven. Spray two 9″ cake pans.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom.

In bowl of a stand mixer mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the eggs until frothy (about 1 minute). Gradually add the sugar and beat until the batter is thick and light colored (about 3 – 4 minutes). Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat just until incorporated. With a large rubber spatula fold in the grated carrots, drunk raisins (don’t forget to reserve some!), and chopped nuts. Evenly divide the batter between the two prepared pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. After about 5 -10 minutes invert the cakes onto the wire rack and then cool completely before frosting.

To assemble: place one cake layer onto your serving plate. Spread with about half the frosting. Sprinkle nuts, ginger and raisins if desired. Gently place the other cake onto the frosting and spread the rest of the frosting over the top of the cake. If desired, garnish with toasted coconut around the sides of the cake. Cover and refrigerate any leftovers.

Note about decorating: If you’re like me, and you prefer a much less sweet frosting, your frosting won’t be as stiff. What I did was frost the cake with the thinner icing, then, for the remaining 1/3 or so of the frosting, I added an extra cup or two of confectioners’ sugar. That way, the frosting was stiff enough to pipe the letters and the edge, but the entire cake wasn’t sickeningly sweet.

Traditional Pumpkin Pie

I should have posted this around Thanksgiving, but of course, it was a busy time. I know that some folks like to have pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, too, so hopefully this will be a handy recipe to have around. It is super easy and really delicious. Not too sweet, as usual, great texture, and lots of flavor. This one is based off the King Arthur Flour Guaranteed Pumpkin Pie recipe with a handful of changes.

Ingredients

1 graham cracker crust (I used the store bought kind)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs, beaten
2 cups (or one 15-ounce can) pumpkin purée.
1 can evaporated milk

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Whisk them together.

In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, pumpkin purée, and evaporated milk.

Slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. (King Arthur actually suggests covering this mixture and refrigerating overnight for better flavor, but I didn’t have time for that.)

Preheat the oven to 400*F.

Pour the mixture into your graham cracker crust.

Bake for 40-50 minutes. Most recipes call for you to take the pie out a bit wobbly in the center, but that has never worked for me. This time, we left it in until it wasn’t wobbly, and it was perfect.

Autumn Bars (with Maple, Pumpkin, & Apple)

Edit: Hi, and welcome to all you folks who found me from the Earth Balance Facebook page or tweet! I try to explain in most of my recipes where substitutions can be made, and I’ve got a bunch of recipes that are simply vegan on their own… click the vegan tag on the right to see more. :) Thanks for stopping by!

I’m trying to go backwards and work forwards with the posts that I “owe,” but this one had to be shared, and as quickly as damn possible.

Last weekend, we were headed up to a potluck in Massachusetts. It was the second annual Friendsgiving – a way to kick off the holiday season with our chosen families. Part of me wanted to make something incredible and savory, and part of me knew that others would be disappointed if I didn’t bring something sweet.

I’ve been wanting for a while to adapt my Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting to be vegan. Yes, there is vegan “cream cheese” and yes, there is vegan “cream cheese frosting,” though I figured I’d take it one step at a time. I’ve made plenty of wonderful vegan pumpkin sweet breads before, since pumpkin is a wonderful component of vegan baking. I wanted to really get more of a cake going, though, something lighter. I knew there would be at least one vegan person at the potluck, if not several more, so this was my chance to develop the vegan pumpkin cake recipe.

But not as cupcakes. No, something far more brilliant. You see, recently, there was a really amazing looking Peaches & Cream Bars recipe from Sydney at The Crepes of Wrath. Sydney was wrapping up summer with a beautiful layered bar of cake, thinly sliced peaches, a bit more cake to hold it all together, but little enough so that the peaches showed through, and it was all topped off with a glaze.

I wanted to make this recipe. I still want to make this recipe. But, in our house, the seasonal food trend has long turned from peaches or nectarines on to apples, so I figured I’d try to make this lovely thing with apples or pears. Then, I had my own stroke of genius, and I decided to keep Sydney’s structure and switch it to a completely fall adaptation: pumpkin cake, sliced apples… and a maple sugar glaze. My friend Katrina helped me with the baking and assembly, and at the last minute, I decided to swirl some Overflow Apple Butter into the cake batter before putting the apple slices down. It was an awesome autumny spice addition.

To answer a few questions I had when I was first gazing at this recipe, mine came out kind of like a cakey brownie consistency… It could have been eaten with a fork, but most certainly was picked up and eaten with fingers, as well! Yum. My brother met us at the potluck, and he loves my pumpkin anything, so he dug in as soon as I opened the container.

Sydney, you wait for it… I may try this again with your cake (no pumpkin), cardamom, cinnamon, and pears.

Ingredients

1/2 cup earth balance
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons natural sugar
3 tablespoons flax + 6 tbsp warm water
1 cup cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
3 small apples, sliced thin
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup apple butter (optional)

Maple Glaze

1 tablespoon earth balance, melted
1/3 cup confectioners sugar, sifted
1/4 cup maple sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

Float your sliced apples in some water & lemon juice while you wait. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13×9 pan with parchment paper (Sydney uses a jelly roll pan/cookie sheet, so hers are a bit thinner).

In your stand mixer (or a large bowl with your bad ass muscles), cream together the Earth Balance, brown sugar, and natural sugar until fluffy. In a separate small bowl, combine the milled flax seed and warm water. Stir together until it thickens, then mix into the sugar. Add the vanilla paste and the pumpkin. Stir well.

In a separate bowl, stir the cake flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt together. Add this to the pumpkin mixture, alternating with the soy milk, until both are fully mixed in.

Spread 3/4 of the batters into the prepared pan. Swirl the apple butter into batter.

Drain the apples. If desired, coat with an additional bit of maple sugar. Line up the apples in rows along the top of the batter.

Drop the remaining batter in globs over the apples and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the bars are firm.

Let the bars cool. Stir together the ingredients for the glaze (Earth Balance, confectioners sugar, maple sugar, maple syrup, and cinnamon). Drizzle over the bars and let harden before cutting.

Overflow Apple Butter

It’s the time of year that there is always an overabundance of apples around the house. For us, we get them in our CSA. For others, (ok, for me, too) they go apple picking and get just a little carried away. Or, perhaps, they’re (like me, again) and have a pie eating contest and didn’t estimate the number of apples needed for the apple pies correctly, and had a huge pile of apples left (and no one interested in more pie).

Left with that calamity, I decided to put my slow cooker to use again and make some bangin’ apple butter. I still haven’t learned how to can, so don’t get all worried about how you’re going to deal with that stage. The good news is that apple butter is supposed to freeze pretty well, so even if you don’t know how to can, you can still make this! It also lasts a couple of months in the fridge and makes an awesome gift. Oh, and one more thing – it cooks down a LOT, so don’t worry that you’re going to have four quarts of apple butter to deal with. I ended up with maybe six cups.

I love this recipe because it was super easy and because it made the house smell incredible. This is a lot spicier than many apple butter recipes out there, and it came out awesome!

Ingredients

12 cups apples (or just keep peeling, coring, and dicing apples until your slow cooker is about an inch or two from full)
1 peach (optional)
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste

Directions

Peel, core, and dice those apples as small as you can deal with. Toss them in the slow cooker. I had a rogue peach that was going to go off, so that went in, too, but you can leave that out if you want.

Dump in all the other ingredients, a little at a time if you’re hesitant about the sweetness or the spiciness. Adjust to taste. Give it a good stir.

Cook on low with the lid on for 8 hours or so. Take the lid off and cook on high for 1-2 hours or until the mixture looks a lot less liquidy.

Put through a food processor in batches (or use an immersion blender) to smooth it out. Leave it a little chunky if you like!

Store it in thoroughly washed containers in the freezer. Try it on some homemade muffins. Mmmmm.

Peach Blueberry Granola Crumb Pie

The second annual “All Over Your Face” Pie Eating Contest is coming up soon. We’ve had some roadblocks with scheduling, and we’re not sure if we’ll be able to get all the pies made in time. But, if we do, we’re going to be sick of pie for a while, so I wanted to make one for us to enjoy before we got into that mindset.

We’re having guests for dinner tonight, our old friend Bo, and his friend Gina, who I’ve never met. Dinner is planned (eggplant parm made with eggplant from the garden and heirloom tomatoes from the CSA), but since we’re having a new person at our house, I thought it would be nice to bake something. I had a whole bunch of Starfire Peaches that we’ve been getting in the CSA, as well as some blueberries that I’d frozen when they were at their peak several weeks ago. I cheated a little today and used a pre-fab pie crust instead of making my own – I’m going to be making plenty of my own pie crust in the upcoming weeks.

Ingredients

pastry for double crust pie
egg wash

Filling
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
5-6 large ripe peaches, peeled and sliced
1 cup blueberries

Crumb
1/3 cup butter
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 cup graham crackers
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 cup granola (I used acai berry)

Directions

In a medium bowl, combine the peaches, 1/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar. Stir it up so that the peaches are evenly coated. Add the blueberries and get them coated, too.

Next, in a separate bowl, prepare the crumb topping. With a pastry blender, cut the 1/3 cup butter into the 1 cup graham crackers, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, and 1-2 teaspoons cinnamon. Once it’s all the same texture, add the granola and stir it.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out half the dough and place it into the pie pan. Give the peaches and blueberries another good stir, then dump the mixture into the pie crust, mounding them in the middle if possible.

Wash your hands, since we usually do this next part with our hands. Carefully pour the crumb topping into the center of the pie crust. Pack the crumb fairly tightly, again, creating a mound in the center of the pie.

Next, roll out the rest of your pie crust. You can make a lattice, or, to do what I did in the photo, take a small cookie cutter and cut out a ton of shapes as close together as possible. You may need to re-roll the dough to get enough shapes. Arrange them in a lattice, or, as I did, in a spiral. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top, especially if you used the cutouts, as the egg wash will not only make it a pretty color, but it will help the shapes stick together.

Bake at 375 for about 40 minutes or until the crust is browning and the filling is bubbling. You may need to cover the edges with aluminum foil for the first 20 minutes to prevent excess browning. Depending on how much filling you have or how picky you are about having a clean oven, you may want to set your pie tin on some aluminum foil or on top of a baking sheet covered in parchment to catch any drips of sticky fruit.

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…

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.

Harvest Fruit Crisp

*Note: I don’t usually consume much of the sweets I’ve made. Mostly, I bake for other people. This crisp, however, is so delicious… well… let’s just say that I won’t have to worry about distributing any at work in order for it all to get eaten. This is another recipe with the sugar cut back, but make sure you taste your apples – if they’re very bland, you may want to add a bit more sugar.

Today was our last farm share delivery of the season, and we got yet another harvest of apples. As I mentioned in this entry, autumn is a great time to take advantage of local harvests. I haven’t done any baking with apples lately, though, so ours were accumulating. I’d meant to make a crisp last week, and this week, I was low on energy after working and picking up the share, but, well, I’d thrown a pot of vegetable stock on to boil, and I had some free time on my hands. And thus, the Harvest Crisp is born.

I was really dying to stir in about a half cup of pumpkin puree with the apples, but I didn’t want to open a whole can when I only have the huge ones.

This recipe is kind of like stone soup. You can substitute what you have and adjust what you don’t. I’m going to throw in some suggestions, but feel free to improvise. I’ve bolded the choices that I made.

Ingredients

5-8 medium apples, preferably of mixed variety, peeled, cored, and sliced
2-3 pears, peeled, cored, and sliced (optional)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
A handful of walnuts or almonds (optional)
A handful of fresh cranberries, dried currants, or raisins (optional)
A handful of sunflower seeds

And, everyone will need:

1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons natural sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup quick cooking oats
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
a bit of lemon juice (to keep the apples from browning)
1 stick unsalted butter or soy butter, cut into chunks

Directions

Toss the fruit in the lemon juice, and, if using, the pumpkin puree.

Arrange the fruit in the bottom of an oven-safe casserole dish or 9×13 baking pan.

In a stand mixer, or, with a pastry blender, cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients (oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, natural sugar, brown sugar, salt). Mix until large crumbs are formed and the mixture has an even texture.

Stir in any miscellaneous ingredients such as, in this case, the cranberries and walnuts. Spread the oat mixture over the fruit evenly so that the fruit is completely covered.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the crisp is brown and the fruit is bubbling. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Last weekend, we went up to Massachusetts to visit a whole mess of our friends, and of course, wherever there is a whole mess of our friends, I try to make baked goods appear. First, we drove up to Vermont to buy some maple sugar, since it’s an ingredient that I’ve been dying for since I saw it on Iron Chef America sometime late in the summer, and I haven’t been able to get it in any store around here. We went to Plummer’s Sugar House, which was down a scenic drive with the start of some lovely fall foliage. Then, we visited with a combination of old friends and new friends, plus we met up with my brother Jon and some of his friends.

In my baking arsenal, I brought a double batch of my trusty Environmentally Friendly Brownies, six of my new Mini Chocolate Chip Ricotta Cakes, and two dozen autumn themed Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting (though we gave one to the nice gent at Plummer’s Sugar House).

Not many people I know bring a whole cooler full of goodies with them on a weekend visit, but no one complained! I also had, defrosting from frozen in the cooler, a mini-loaf that’s a variation on this nectarine muffin recipe and either an apple or a peach pie (they weren’t labeled well in the freezer) from the pie eating contest, both for my brother who also happens to live in Massachusetts.

People have been begging for this recipe ever since I mentioned it, so here it is! In pumpkin recipes, I usually decrease the sugar and increase the spices, so that’s the main difference that you’ll see between my recipe and most that are around the internet. As for the cream cheese frosting, it’s another experiment that I’d never tried out before, and it was awesome! It was a perfect match for the cupcakes. Some internet recipes recommend as much as four times as much confectioner’s sugar in the frosting, but that would make me absolutely ill, so I recommend starting with a minimal amount and increasing it if absolutely necessary.

Ingredients: Pumpkin Cupcakes

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons natural sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree (a 15oz can)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions: Pumpkin Cupcakes

I prepared mine in my stand mixer, but as usual, feel free to use your trusty bowl or hand mixer.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake trays with cupcake liners.

Mix butter, brown sugar, natural sugar, eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin puree.

In a separate bowl, mix your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt).

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing constantly. Alternate adding the milk and the dry ingredients until both are completely added.

Scoop mixture into pre-lined cupcake trays.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Cool completely before frosting.

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Ingredients: Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick unsalted butter
8 oz cream cheese
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup walnuts (optional)
orange sprinkles (optional)

Directions: Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Combine butter, cream cheese, maple syrup, confectioner’s sugar, and cinnamon. Mix with a hand mixer or stand mixer until smooth. If desired, add more confectioner’s sugar 1/4 cup at a time.

Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes prior to frosting.

Top with a few autumn themed sprinkles and a couple of chopped walnuts.

If you’re baking ahead, store the unfrosted cupcakes in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, or freeze if it will be longer than that. The cream cheese frosting should be stored separately in an airtight container in the refrigerator and the cupcakes should be frosted right before serving.

Apple™ Crumb Pie (and Thoughts on Local Food)

Charlie’s been making this pie for a while, and he always gets extremely rave reviews with it. (This photo is from when he and Ben made the pie for me once!)

You may have noticed when I posted the recipes from All Over Your Face, I omitted the apple pie recipe. That’s because when we made our pies, we weren’t happy with the quality of the apples we were able to get during the first week of August. It really wasn’t quite apple season yet. I decided to hold off and post this recipe during peak Granny Smith apple season, since that’s our apple of choice for pie-making. In the New York area, that’s about the third week of September.

Our process with the assembly line pie-making madness for the pie-eating contest was that Charlie would make the dough, I would peel all the fruit, and I would put together the spices and sugars and flavors for the filling. He almost took over on the apple crumb pie, but it ended up being a team effort. I made the filling, and he made the crumb and the dough. Although this is a recipe that he often is wholly responsible for, I’ve taken the liberty, for the purposes of this blog, of making the adjustments that I would make were I making the pie entirely on my own. That is, his version is quite a bit sweeter than mine, but otherwise, it’s essentially the same.

A few more notes on picking your apples… We’re fond of the Granny Smiths because they’re a bit tart and they’re sturdy, so they won’t break down into mush in your pie. You definitely want to avoid Macintosh, as even though those are great for eating, they’re not ideal for baking pies with. Some good options for acquiring your apples are at farmers markets, pick-your-own farms, or leeching off a friend’s CSA. Farmers markets will have a live person to make recommendations about which type of apple from their crop they’d recommend for pie. Pick-your-own farms usually have a map of the orchard with a “Good for eating vs. good for pies” breakdown. Farm shares might have a website or an email that they send out regarding their harvest, or you might just have to guess. In general, you want a firmer, somewhat tart apple.

If you’ve always wanted to try out buying from a farmers market but never did, autumn is the time to do it. Last year I was horribly depressed about our food production situation in this country because I walked into a chain grocery store in September and saw the beautiful displays of apples, of varieties that are local to New York state, but upon closer examination, the apples that were on the shelves were from Washington state, thousands of miles away.

Farmers markets have produce that is local to the area, often organic, and it’s obviously a much closer connection to your food if you’re able to talk to the people who grew it. Although farmers markets sometimes are rumored to have notoriously high prices (these rumors have some truth and some fiction), depending on where you live, apples are often even cheaper at farmers markets than at the grocery store during peak season.

Pick-your-own farms are a really fun alternative to shopping at the grocery store. They’re another way to get fresh, local produce, and have an adventure. This Pick Your Own website can help you find a pick-your-own farm near you. Produce often ends up being super cheap because the farmers don’t have to pay for labor. Some of the farms are quiet, family places, and others are monstrosities with corn mazes and petting zoos and country stores and live music, so you can choose whichever you feel is appropriate for your adventure.

Another way to get local food into your pies is if you have a friend who belongs to a farm share, or Community Supported Agriculture organization. They sometimes get more apples than they know what to do with during this time of year. Let them know that you’re planning to bake, and they’ll likely share the bounty with you when they end up with 30lbs of apples over a couple of weeks. We belong to Catalpa Ridge Farm’s CSA and we love it. (I’m pretty sure I’m going to use all my apples, though!)

Onto the recipe…

Ingredients

1 pastry for double-crust pie (I used Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust)

Crumb Topping:
1 sleeve crushed graham crackers (plain is recommended or it will be quite sweet)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter

Filling:
6 to 8 apples, peeled and sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1-2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

While you’re slicing up the apples, keep them floating in some water and the lemon juice so they don’t turn brown. When you’re ready to start, drain off the water. Next, add the cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, and flour, and give it a good stir. If you don’t like things very sweet, add the sugar a little at a time and taste it as you go.

Next, in a separate bowl, prepare the crumb topping. Mix graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar and flour. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or a fork until crumbly. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out half the dough and place it into the pie pan. Give the apples another good stir, then dump the mixture into the pie crust, mounding them in the middle if possible.

Wash your hands, since we usually do this next part with our hands. Carefully pour the crumb topping into the center of the pie crust, leaving about an inch of apples showing around the edge in between the crust and the topping. Pack the crumb fairly tightly, again, creating a mound in the center of the pie.

Next, roll out the rest of your pie crust, making strips to form a lattice top crust. If you need detailed directions on how to make the lattice crust, they’re also in Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust recipe. Optional: For complete irony, cut out an Apple logo and affix it to the center of the pie. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top lattice crust if desired.

Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes or until the crust is browning and the apple filling is bubbling. Depending on how much filling you have or how picky you are about having a clean oven, you may want to set your pie tin on some aluminum foil or on top of a baking sheet covered in parchment to catch any drips of sticky fruit.

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!

Mommy™’s Peach Pie

When I was growing up, my mother would take us peach picking most summers. We went to a place down the shore by my grandmother’s ridiculously large house, and then we’d all go back to the house to make pie. There was a large island in the middle of the kitchen, and many counters surrounding it, and a double oven, and for hours, we would peel peaches, stir them into brown sugar and cinnamon, and pour them into crusts. Sometimes someone couldn’t wait for the pies to come out of the oven and would scoop some of the filling into a mug and put it in the microwave.

My mother never made her own pie crust, but now, I always do. The filling and a few tricks, however, were things I learned from her during those summers growing up. Peach pie is one of those things that I just start making without a recipe, so this one is going to be full of guesstimates!

Ingredients

Pie Crust (either pre-fab like my mom used, or prepare enough of Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust for a double crust)
6-8 large peaches
brown sugar – about 1/2 cup packed, but if your peaches aren’t very sweet or you like a sweeter pie, you can add more
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 dash nutmeg
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

You can peel peaches the same way you can get the skins off of tomatoes. Bring a pot of water to a boil and drop the peaches in for a minute. You’ll see the skins start to split. Pull them out with a slotted spoon, and let them cool for a while, then you can easily peel the skins off with your fingers. This does take quite a bit longer since you have to wait for the peaches to cool down, but it’s easier and wastes less of the fruit than peeling them with a paring knife does. My ideal situation these days is to peel them with my palm peeler, which swivels around things like peaches and apples and peels them in a matter of seconds. If you don’t have one of those, though, you may want to use the boiling water method.

Preheat oven to 375.

Once your peaches are peeled, slice them and mix them in a bowl with the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Taste the mixture to ensure that it’s about what you want. If the mixture is extremely wet, you can add about a tablespoon of flour to the mixture.

Take your pie crust (that you’ve already rolled out) and place it in your pie tin. Heap the peaches into the bottom crust. You want the peaches to mound up and out of the crust, as they’re going to cook down some and you don’t want your pie crust to sink. Once the peaches are in, spread 4-5 thin pats of butter over the top of the mound of peaches. Place the top crust over the mound. Seal the crust at the seam with a fork, then trim away the excess. Brush an egg wash (one beaten egg and one tablespoon water) over the top crust if desired, and cut four vents at least two inches long in the top crust.

Cover the edges of the pie with aluminum foil to prevent the edges of the crust burning. Bake for 45 minutes, removing the foil about 15 minutes before removing the pies from the oven. The pies are done when the filling begins to bubble and the crust becomes flaky and brown.