Berry Mini Donuts!

I love Lolo's mini donut recipe over at veganyumyum! I've altered it in so many ways and its always a great recipe for using up leftover sweets. This time I had a bunch of berries and some prepared flax egg that needed to be used, and so this happened. I think next time I have leftover canned pumpkin I might throw some in and frost them with chocolate. Seriously, I've subbed in spelt, whole wheat pastry and even gluten free flours seamlessly with this recipe. Other subs I've done include banana, agave, erythritol, and flax. One thing I wouldn't risk altering though is the copious amount of butter.



Mmm butter.

Granny Cookies

I've been delaying doing another post until I can get a camera that suits my standards, but in the spirit of chronicling my mouth adventures I figure I should lower the bar.

A couple nights ago I seriously botched a batch of lemon bars. Lesson learned: agar agar flakes do not directly translate in proportion to powdered agar agar. I ended up with a solid, rubbery lemon jelly worthy of a petri dish (but not too gross for the guys I live with). If you're a baker you know the sad feeling you get when you muff up a whole batch of ingredients. So I waited a few days to recover from my failure and got right back to the baking pan. I was determined to make something grandma worthy.

One of the most under-appreciated sweeteners in my pantry is black strap molasses. It was only recently, in fact, that it was moved from the medicine and tea cabinet to the food pantry. I used to take it to supplement iron, calcium, and other various nutrients. Actually, my grandma is the one who recommended it to me. I've never been keen on molasses cookies, but I thought I could find a tasty recipe - and sure enough there's a simple, yummy, and easy recipe over at Hell Yeah It's Vegan! And here's my crappy photographic documentation:



These cookies were delicious, hands down. I didn't have any crystallized ginger but was pretty liberal on the spices listed. The cookies were perfectly soft right out of the oven. My only complaint is that they became crispy and snappy the very next morning. I have no qualms with crunchy cookies, especially ones that taste like ginger snaps, but compared to the warm out-of-the-oven fresh taste the day-old cookies were not as good.

Update: Sustained Energy Squares

As I mentioned in the previous post, the No-Bake Clif Bar recipe that was posted is extremely versatile. I just made a delicious new batch and I thought I'd share.

-1 & 1/4 C "nutty rice" cereal. Probably in the bulk or gluten-free section of the grocers
-1 C uncooked whole oats
-3 T freshly ground golden flaxseed
-1/4 C finely chopped raisins
-1/4 C finely chopped almonds
-1/4 C brown rice syrup
-2 T honey
-2 T dark brown sugar
-1/3 C freshly roasted and ground cashew butter
-1 t vanilla extract
-1 t green tea solid extract
-1 T green energy drink powder
-3 t cinnamon

Combine the cereal and oats in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. Crumble the raisins into the mix, stirring around the little raisony blobs to coat them with grains and keep them from getting stuck together. Stir in the flax and nuts.

Line an 8x8in baking pan with wax paper so that you can pull the bar out when it has cooled. Heat the syrup and the sugar together on the stove, melting the sugar and constantly stirring. Turn the heat down and add the green energy powder. Work in the nut butter, green tea and vanilla extracts. When that's all combined, stir in cinnamon.

Pour the sweet stuff over the dry. Its easier to work with when its warm, so don't let it sit for long. Stir together with wooden spoon until incorporated. Spread the mix around in the lined pan, pressing and evening with your hands. To press, use a jar or similar object, and pound the mix down, make sure and get the sides and corners!

Cool completely - at least an hour. Make sure the bars are hard and solid. Remove from pan and cut into bars.

Brown Rice Syrup: Sustained Energy

One ingredient that I recently added to my collection this year that has become an instant favorite is Brown Rice Syrup. I'd been snacking on Cliff and Luna bars all year and noticed that the ingredients are quite simple, the main one being brown rice syrup. I decided to make my own for a camping trip, so I found this super easy Homemade Cliff Bar recipe from Enlightened Cooking. They were so easy and tasty that I told myself I'd never buy a Cliff bar again, but I haven't really kept up with that promise because it's so darn easy to keep buying individually wrapped Cliff bars. I'd recommend that if you make these you make several batches and just store them in the fridge or freezer.

Here's one of my favorite edits of this recipe:

-1 & 1/4 C puffed millet cereal, unsweetened (Lots of protein, they made the bars a bit chewier than crunchy)
-1 C uncooked quick-cooking oats
-3 T freshly ground flaxseed (don't bother buying flax meal, fresh flax is tastier and you can get a fine powder from a spice or coffee grinder - much better for baking)
-1/4 C finely chopped raisins
-1/4 C finely chopped walnuts
-1/4 C brown rice syrup
-2 T evaporated cane juice (or sucanat might be yummy)
-1/3 C freshly roasted and ground almond butter (Really much cheaper and delicious this way. Roast raw almonds on 350 F for about 8 minutes, cool then blend in food processor adding oil [flax is great if you're not cooking the butter] and salt to taste.)
-1 t vanilla extract
-1 t green tea solid extract (I just added this for the caffeine. Instant coffee might taste good here)
-2 T green energy drink powder (I chose to add some drink powder with spirulina to the mix because it is a complete protein, contains all of the essential amino acids, and lots of fatty acids and vitamins. This made the bars great for camping and hiking.)
-1/4 C dark chocolate chips

First combine the cereal, oats, ground flax,raisins and nuts in a large bowl. Then over low heat combine the syrup and sugar until dissolved. Then mix in the energy drink powder, followed by the nut butter, extracts, and drink powder. Once your adhesive sugar is mixed well, slightly cool it and poor it over the dry ingredients. Begin mixing immediately because it only gets tougher as it cools. Fold in the chocolate chips last and be gentle - unless you want them to melt and incorporate. Dump the mix into a pan (I was using 8X8 square pans per batch) and press down tightly.The harder you press the better these bars will hold together. Let them cool for about 20 minutes and then cut the bars and wrap them with plastic wrap or wax paper. I put mine in the freezer to make them last longer and to solidify the chocolate.

First off, I tripled this recipe for camping and got about 20 bars out of it. These are super easy to make, but there are a few things to keep in mind. There are two main parts to the bar - the crunchy texture part, and the gooey adhesive part. Adding these in the proper order ensures that your bar will become a bar and not a granola. Also the pressing of the bars is probably the most important step, otherwise these may also turn into granola. I ended up pressing these as tightly as I could with some wax paper on top and they held together well after freezing.

The sweet and sticky

I have been a sugar addict my whole life. From the age of three I was licking bowls of batter clean and eating the frosted tops off of cupcakes. I grew up craving things like cream soda, fudge rounds, milky ways and twizzlers (only the pull-and-peels). I'm 23 and I still hardly ever get tired of sugar. One thing that has changed though are what kind of sugars I eat. As I grew up I became more aware of diet and health, both internally in my body and externally in the environment my food comes from (and eventually travels back to).

Let me digress briefly for a food rant. I gave up HFCS a few years ago for a couple of reasons. This country has too much corn, our bodies weren't made to process such refined high-glycemic sugar, and large soda corporations like Pepsi and Coke are rotting this entire world (among a zillion other corporations of course). There's a lot wrong with the "food system" in this country, and if you want a better understanding of how you should read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I've also stopped using white sugar or sucrose in my baking since it's just as bad for blood sugar levels and it tastes bad anyway.

There are a lot of alternative options for sweetness, and my goal is to try every single one of them. I beleive that there is a perfect sweetness for every sweet, and that there are tons of sweetness options that don't have to be horrible for you or your environment. I think my exploration of sweetness will turn up some tasty recipes, and I can't wait to share them.

Figments of the Oven Part 2

So the fig cookies were great, but they "taste like Christmas" is what I kept hearing. So how could I take the cheer out of these babies and replace it with true satisfaction? What's better than Christmas and you can celebrate it every day? Breakfast. Breakfast, meet cake. I believe you to have met through dual acquaintance to coffee. I love all of the crazy coffee cake and fruit combinations there are. So many seasonal possibilities!

I already had a basic coffee cake recipe from *kvr* on flickr. This is seriously the most versatile coffee cake recipe I've ever used. Lots of the ingredients can be changed around to fit your tastes. You can even make these babies gluten free, like I did (I added some flax to help hold it together). Here's my take on the recipe:


-1 C almond milk
-1 T apple cider vinegar
-2 T water + 2 t baking powder (mix this together, this serves as an egg replacer)
-2 1/4 C Bob's AP Gluten-Free flour
-1 1/4 C evaporated cane sugar
-3 t cinnamon
-1 1/2 t ground ginger (or freshly grated ginger)
-1/2 t salt
-3/4 C canola oil
-2 t baking powder (yes, more baking powder)
-1 flax "egg" (mix 1 T freshly and finely ground flax with 3 T boiling water)*
-2/3 C finely chopped almonds**

* I mixed the flax egg in last, after both wet and dry ingredients were combined.
**I folded about 1/2 C of the almonds in with the topping and the rest into the batter

To fill them, I used the fig filling from the cookies and placed it on top of the cupcake before coating them with the topping. These were minis so it was pretty time consuming but well worth it. I also made an 8x8 cake with the same batter, and swirled the figs on top and it came out just as great.


Mmm you know you want to let a little fig into your cupcake hole. Chopped nuts really give these cakes a sweet crunch.

Figments of the Oven Part 1

I had never met a fig that wasn't processed and pressed into a flat cookie before. Growing up in Florida had only exposed me to oranges and kumquats growing from trees, so when I saw my first pallet of figs at the grocery store, I was intrigued, disgusted, and had to have them.



First I put one small shrivelly tree-testicle in my mouth. Not much flavor on the rind, so I bit in. A sticky, mellow sweetness pervaded my taste buds. Good, but I thought there must be a way to bake and combine it with spices to bring out the true tone of it's mellowness.

My first try was a fig-thumbprint cookie. I thought having a plop of fig on top of a buttery cookie might highlight it's nature. I found a great recipe from Baking With Dynamite that was easily veganized. The butter cookie recipe was perfect and came out delicious. I unfortunately did not have enough honey and so my fig filling looked a little more like this:

-4 oz fresh finely chopped adriatic figs
-1/4 cup brown rice syrup
-2 T honey
-1/8 tsp ground cloves
-1/8 tsp cinnamon
-1 Tbsp lemon juice

The filling was perfect! The cloves did a wonder at bringing out the sweetness of the figs, and the brown rice syrup and honey held it all together. The soft buttery cookie provided a great base, and I'll probably use that recipe next time I want a basic buttery sugar cookie. The cookies looked a little bit like gaping wounds, but that's never stopped me from snacking before...


Stay tuned for more fun with figs!