Altered Plates

As I've said many times, one of my favorite cookbooks is Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. My copy is well worn, especially on pages I've used to make Altered Plates versions of dishes. I've also started to write my alterations on the pages because the slips of paper with my notes sometimes slip out or I make additional changes later.

In the photo above, you can see the outcome of my tinkering with Isa's Fig Not-ins. In my youth, I ate my share of Fig Newtons. These were quite different from the dense cookie of my past. My agave-nectar sweetened cookies were light and fluffy, more cakey than cookie, but lovely.

Because my version uses agave nectar, I was very careful about not letting them brown too much. I'm going to continue to noodle with these a bit because I read on Isa's blog that you could use the dough to make Hamantaschen. My dough was way too wet for that, and I'd like to use coconut oil instead of the shortening to achieve a more butter-like result (however coconutty it may taste).

The cookies have a definite vanilla flavor, but the filling is king. The cherries add a great fruity flavor, while the figs and dates pull it down to earth. These cookies make an excellent light dessert for a big meal or a nice snack on their own.

The upskirt view (can you use that on other descriptions than pizza?) shows how light and cakey this bar cookie is.

Here's a really nice shot of the filling. I used organic Turkish figs and organic Medjool dates from the co-op combined with my favorite dark sweet cherries from Trader Joe's, and omitted the lemon zest. I also used considerably less sweetener overall because the fruit was sweet enough. The most important step here is the blending. I added this because the filling was way too chunky otherwise. As you can see from the photo, I didn't quite divide my dough evenly between the top and bottom, so you might want to do this better than I did (although it didn't affect how tasty these were at all).

Another cookie I used to enjoy as a kid was raisin bars. My mom would by these flat packages of cellophane wrapped bars with a wavy score between each cookie (making them about 3 in. long once separated from their brothers). I'd like to try to replicate those, and will work on that over the summer.

Here is the recipe as I made it, greatly inspired by the Fig Not-ins recipe on page 202 of Vegan with a Vengeance.

Cherry Fig Not-ins
Yield: 24 big cookies or 36 small cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup dried sweet cherries (unsweetened), chopped
1/2 cup Medjool dates, pitted and chopped
3/4 cup dried Turkish figs, chopped
1 cup filtered water
2 tablespoons agave nectar

1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated shortening
1/2 cup agave nectar
2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
1/4 cup almond milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose or whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
1. Combine the first 5 ingredients in a medium saucepan and stir while you heat it to medium.
2. When it starts to bubble, turn off the heat and either use an immersion blender (my choice, but be careful!) or a regular blender to blend all the big chunks out of the mixture. Set the filling aside to cool.
3. With a mixer in a large bowl, whip the fats with the agave nectar for at least 3 minutes, until they are well combined.
4. Mix in the arrowroot, almond milk, and vanilla until well combined. It will look a bit curdle-y, but that's alright.
5. In a separate bowl or a large measuring cup, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt until all are incorporated.
6. Add the dry ingredients to wet mixture to form a light dough.
7. With well-floured hands on a well-floured surface, form the dough into a ball and split it into two. Wrap each dough ball in plastic and let it rest and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
8. When the dough has cooled, take it out of the fridge and its wrapping, and flour a large piece of parchment paper, your hands, and your rolling pin. Take one of the dough halves and roll it until it is about 9 x 15 inches. You can leave this on the parchment paper because it will be your bottom layer. Place this layer on a cookie sheet (I used a pan with 1 in. sides just in case the filling oozed, which it didn't). Roll out your top layer the same way, but set it aside for a moment.
9. Spread the filling thickly, but evenly on top of the bottom layer in the pan.
10. Here's the tricky part, take your top layer, still on the parchment paper, and turn it paper side up on top of the filling layer. Then, gently peel the paper off the top layer.
11. With a pizza cutter, or a sharp, long knife, cut the cookies into the size bars you wish. Do not separate them now. It just makes them super-easy to cut once they are baked.
12. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F. When the oven is at temperature, bake the cookies for approximately 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
13. Let them cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then using the edges of the parchment paper, lift the entire batch out of the pan and onto a wire rack to cool for an hour before cutting along the same lines you made earlier. Separate the cookies, then let them cool completely.
14. Enjoy!

28 February 2010

Purim!

Back in May 2007, when the Holiday post beow originally ran, this blog was new to the world and I was new to making Hamantaschen with agave nectar. What I learned was that too much coconut flour (used as a way of dealing with too much liquid in a recipe) can make a dough go very stiff. But when life hands me challenges like the one shown in the little movies below, I just make star cookies.

Note to vegans: While looking into veganizing this recipe, I found a very helpful posting at the Post Punk Kitchen that says you can use the dough for their Fig Not-Ins (from Vegan With a Vengeance) as a base instead. However, that uses regular sugar instead of agave nectar. It will require some food science to nail this one down, but I'm up for the challenge! It just might take place after graduation in May.

(By the way, whenever I see these old videos, I laugh at two things -- my wacky presentation style and my old kitchen. I really need to film the next Altered Plates blog post and bring my filmmaking into the next decade!)

Here's hoping you have a wonderful holiday and enjoy this original post from May 28, 2007:

The Hamantaschen That Became Stars

Here's a 15-minute short film in three parts on my experience re-doing hamantaschen from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. The dough didn't turn out to be pliable to fold into the traditional shapes, so I made cut cookies instead. Regardless, they were a huge hit.

15 November 2009

Sometimes You Win, Sometimes Your Cookies Spread Too Much

I wish I could be posting about the wonderful new recipe I'm working out for some highly seasonal, cranberry walnut oatmeal cookies. But I can't. Well, technically, that is what I'm doing, albeit not in the originally intended way.

Normally, you'd see a photo up here showing the results of some new kitchen surprise I've reworked from someone's fine recipe to accommodate agave nectar and/or veganizing, but not today. Today, I'm writing about what happens when you bake in a hurry. A hurry necessitated by too long a list of to-dos and too short a time for doing them. Yes, I know. Join the club.

All that to say, a very kind fellow from Princeton sent me a bunch of marvelous recipes, one of which I made earlier on a break between reading for tomorrow's classes and working on an extensive (read: way too long, yet pretty darn useful) annotated bibliography for my independent study work.

Because I noodled with the recipe while my mind was elsewhere, I neglected to take some needed precautions (chill the dough for 2 hours prior to baking -- my direction, not his). The resulting cookies spread so much that they became very thin, very large facsimiles of oatmeal cookies. On the other hand, they are very tasty. The combination of fresh cranberries with crunchy walnuts and rich oats is right on the money. I also used coconut oil instead of butter (you know I have mixed feeling about the stuff -- scary that it's so solid at room temperature), but the next time I rework these, I will use less. They don't end up tasting coconutty at all. Just buttery.

Oh well. Only a few more weeks left in the semester and many decisions about what to make for Thanksgiving at Mom's. My intention is to perfect a vegan version of these cookies as my contribution, but they will definitely take more noodling before they are ready for prime time.

One thing I may do next year, if I have time, is work on an agave-sweetened cranberry sauce. I've thought about it a lot over the years and just haven't gotten to it yet. There might be agar involved (to get the right "straight out of the can" rigidity to appeal to the kids who don't like the more authentic stuff), and I need more practice with that.

In the meantime, I encourage you to get some of the fantastic fresh cranberries from New Jersey. The crop I sampled is amazing.

::Continuing to chant "I love a challenge. I love a challenge. I love a challenge."::

28 October 2009

Ah, the Miracle of Coconut Oil -- Veganized Anzac Biscuits

From October 2009 Photos

I'm very fond of many of my cookbooks, but few are written with such care as The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. It's really a great book for beginners because it explains so much of the food chemistry that goes into baking. It's even better for those of us a bit more practiced who like to tinker with recipes.

One of the recipes in the Cookie Companion that I've had tagged for a few years without trying is "Anzac Biscuits." Traditional Australian cookies, crisp and buttery, these yummy bits are usually made with golden syrup and sugar. I knew they would be a challenge, and not quite authentic made with agave nectar, but I pushed forward. The big issue is that agave nectar just doesn't crystalize. Add in coconut oil instead of butter, and you get a cookie that's moist, not crispy.

From October 2009 Photos

All that aside, these are really great, habit-forming cookies. Even though the recipe calls for no spices or flavorings, these still have plenty of flavor from the caramelized agave nectar, the oats, and all that coconut.

From October 2009 Photos

The interesting step of mixing a slurry of baking soda and boiling water with the agave nectar and coconut oil does something fizzy and magical to the cookies. It makes them light and indescribably snackable. I couldn't keep my mitts off them. Luckily, I brought the majority of the batch to Mom and Dave as well as some friends on Monday night. They were quite the success. No one thought they weren't made with butter. And, that my friends, is the miracle of coconut oil. Solid at room temperature, the stuff frightens me with all its saturated fat. However, it's supposed to be good fat, so I'm not going to worry (OK, I worry a little and only eat two cookies -- please send me links to research that will set my mind at ease!) too much.

All that to say, I'm happy to be able to veganize classic recipes and make them agave nectar friendly. One last thing -- when I make these again, I'm adding vanilla and ginger. Mom thought they would be excellent as well (and we know that she knows what she's talking about). Here's the recipe as I made it.

Anzac Biscuits (greatly inspired by the recipe of the same name on page 83 of The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion)

Yields 3 dozen cookies.

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon coconut flour (sifted)
3/4 cup unsweetened shredded dried coconut
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup coconut oil (measured solid)
2/3 cup agave nectar (you'll want amber for this)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons boiling water

Directions:

1. Mix together the oats, flours, coconut, and salt in a large bowl until well combined. Set aside.
2. In a small saucepan, melt the coconut oil in the agave nectar over low heat. This will take about 10 minutes of stirring often. If you need to turn up the heat a little, you'll need to keep a close eye on it. Just make sure it doesn't boil.
3. While the oil is melting, boil the water and make the baking soda slurry. Add the boiling water to the baking soda and stir well.
4. Take the oil/agave nectar mixture off the heat and stir in the baking soda slurry. This will foam up in a lovely caramel color. It won't foam over, so don't worry about that.
5. Gently mix the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients until everything is well combined. Let rest.
6. Heat the oven to 325 degrees F and prepare three baking sheets with parchment paper liners.
7. Using a medium cookie scoop (or two spoons), scoop the dough in even measures with lots of spreading room (because these guys spread a LOT) onto the cookie sheets.
8. Bake for a total of 12 minutes, turning and switching the positions of the sheets at 6 minutes.
9. Let the cookies sit on their sheets for 10 minutes before delicately moving them to racks to cool completely. They crisp up a bit, but will always have a nice moistness to them.
10. Enjoy!

01 September 2009

Making Over Martha Month Begins!

From September 2009 photos

And, what a beginning it is! To kick off Making Over Martha Month here on Altered Plates, I've veganized and spiced up Martha's Oatmeal-Raisin Bars. The original version was printed on page 103 of Everyday Food, Issue 53, June 2008. I made a boatload of changes to this recipe, i.e., it's a actually a new recipe at this point. Some of the highlights include agave nectar (of course!) for granulated sugar, olive oil for butter, whole wheat pastry flour for AP flour, Pensey's Baking Spice for half the amount of cinnamon, and the wonderful addition of walnuts. How she could have made oatmeal raisin cookies without walnuts is beyond me... but I've corrected that here.

The thing about Baking Spice is that it imbues everything with a wonderful anise, cinnamon, and cardamom mix of flavors. And, in this case, it works marvelously with the Fiore di Sicilia, which is itself a magical ingredient. If I ever decide to make a fruitcake, I would definitely use Baking Spice and Fiore di Sicilia in it.

From September 2009 photos

This rather in-your-face close-up of a bar slice shows the texture of this fragrant treat. Mine was a tiny bit dry because I did not let it cool completely in the pan. (That's a lesson for you -- leave it alone!) My pal Teresa suggested that it would make an excellent crumble over ice cream. We each had a bar with some vegan coconut milk ice cream on top. It was a highly satisfying dessert.

Here's the recipe as I made it:

Spiced Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Bars
Yield: 16 bars

Ingredients:

1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon olive oil
3/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 teaspoon Fiore di Sicilia (if you don't have it, just use vanilla)
1 teaspoon Pensey's Baking Spice (if you don't have it, make a mixture of cinnamon, mace, anise, and cardamom -- 1/4 teaspoon each)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Directions:
1. Beat the oil with the agave nectar and Fiore di Sicilia until very well blended.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients except for the raisins and walnuts, until very well combined. Add in the raisins and walnuts and mix with a big spoon until well combined.
3. Give the wet ingredients one more beating, then add in the dry ingredients. Mix until just moistened.
4. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F, and line an 8 in. square baking dish with two lengths (horizontal and vertical) of parchment paper.
5. Spread the batter into the dish and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until a bamboo tester comes out with a few moist crumbs.
6. Let cool completely in the dish, on top of a wire rack, then slice into bars.
7. These will keep in an airtight container for about 5 days, but they certainly won't last that long. They smell and taste terrific!

Overall, this was probably the most fun I've had veganizing a recipe of Martha's. I didn't veganize the other Making Over Martha Month Recipes for September, but if you take the plunge to veganize them, please let me know how it goes. Thanks! Hope you enjoy this recipe.

23 August 2009

A Vacation to Recover from a Vacation

I hope you all are doing very well and enjoying the remains of the summer. Here in Central Jersey, it's hot and HUMID. Well, it's actually wet. I'm sure that's affected some of my baking results, but the new AC has been helping.

Speaking of baking, I'm gearing up for September's Making Over Martha Month. Tanya helped with one recipe, and 2 days ago, Dawn (my Tennessee pal) helped me make another. Because I'm also gearing up for the fall semester, I'll try to get two more done before the end of the month to blog about in September, but it might be a bit of a squeeze.

We dropped Dawn off at the airport at 4 am this morning for her return flight to Nashville, after a week of fun. Well, not all of it was fun. The day she arrived, we had to drive the 5 hrs to the northern tip of Lake George to attend a funeral service for her recently departed Aunt Joy. The lake was lovely, as were the homes of her brothers on the lake. If you go to Lake George, stay in Ticonderoga and eat breakfast at the Hot Biscuit. The biscuits are HUGE. Easily the size of both my fists together. I recommend not eating the night before in order to finish one of them. Excellent with agave nectar.

All that to say, we had a very full week, and now I have a long to-do list to accomplish before settling down with a routine for school. However, I will be back in September, blogging away for Making Over Martha Month. Enjoy your week!

19 July 2009

Book Review: The 30-Minute Vegan

Yay! Another great resource for vegans, vegetarians, and the folks who love them. Usually 30-minute recipe books tend to be on the slim side, but The 30-Minute Vegan by Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray is a hefty volume, packed with a wide range of recipes that don't require a lot of special ingredients that vegans will find tough to locate in their local health food store. While there aren't that many desserts included in the book, I was able to select a very tasty one to try out for you using agave nectar here on Altered Plates.

For my trial recipe, I selected Macadamia Nut-Chocolate Chip Cookies (although I made mine into carob chip cookies). They are a snap to make, and I could easily substitute agave nectar for the maple syrup (although I'm sure they would be just as good with the syrup). Because I used agave nectar, I had to drop the temperature down to 325 degrees F, and that increased the baking time by a few minutes.

Even though they look a little on the light side, trust me, these cookies are done. I tried one about 20 minutes after they had finished cooling and was very pleased with the result. The carob chips make a nice foil for the sweet cookie and rich macadamias. They don't spread, so you can easily make nearly 40 cookies using a tablespoon scoop on three cookie sheets (just stagger your rows). Overall, they remind me of what great chocolate chip cookies should taste like without the 1/2 pound of butter, brown sugar, and bendable chewiness. Best of all, they were a hit with the folks at the museum, when I brought in a bag of them yesterday.

I'm not sure I'd be able to make these in 30 minutes, even if I wasn't trying out the recipe for the first time, but they definitely can be done and on your cooling racks in under an hour. Getting all the ingredients together and preparing the cookies took longer than 15 minutes (chopping the nuts, measuring, etc.), and I just don't like rushing when I'm baking. That's when things tend to go wrong for me. Terribly wrong.

However, most of the recipes in the book are for beverages, meals, and snacks that are very time-friendly. I'm looking forward to making my way through all the recipes that I've already tagged with post-it tags.

And now, here's the recipe. Excerpted from the book The 30-Minute Vegan by Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray published by Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2009. www.dacapopresscookbooks.com

My changes are in bold.

Macadamia Nut-Chocolate (Carob) Chip Cookies

Makes 24 3-in. cookies (My yield was 38, from tablespoon-sized scoops)

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups whole spelt flour (whole wheat pastry flour)
1/4 cup tapioca flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 cup chopped macadamia nuts (mine were salted and roasted)
1 cup vegan chocolate (carob) chips
2/3 cup pure maple syrup (agave nectar)
2/3 cup safflower oil (canola oil, although I'm sure a light olive oil would be fine as well)
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (OK, my oven does not take much time to preheat at all, so I actually don't do this until I begin scooping out the cookies. And, most importantly, my oven is set to 325 degrees F.) Sift the spelt flour, tapioca flour, basking soda, salt, and cinnamon through a fine-mesh strainer or sifter. (I didn't do this; I just whisked my dry ingredients together very well.) Whisk well and add the oats, macadamia nuts, and chocolate chips, stirring again.
2. In a 2 cup measuring cup, combine the maple syrup, safflower oil, water, and vanilla, and whisk together. Add to the flour mixture and stir well.
3. If you aren't using a nonstick cookie sheet or baking tray, you will have to lightly oil the tray or lay down aluminum foil (neither, in my case, I'm a big fan of parchment paper, so I used it). Use a spoon to scoop out your preferred size of cookie, leaving enough space in between them to allow the hot air to circulate and the cookie to spread out (at least 2 inches). It will take at least two trays. Bake them for 10 minutes (mine took about 13), until the bottom edges start to brown; do not over bake. Allow them to cool for a few minutes and transfer to a wire rack.

11 July 2009

Cobbleriffic -- Vegan Blueberry Apricot Cobbler

Oh my friends, if you're a fan of blueberries, you must make this cobbler for yourselves. I was inspired (as always) by Elise's Apricot Berry Cobbler, but wanted to veganize it to bring down the fat and make it healthier. I made a lot of changes from the flour to using apple cider vinegar and almond milk instead of buttermilk, so it's now an entirely different recipe.

This is the most luscious and rich-tasting cobbler you will ever taste (not tooting my own horn, folks -- it was a big surprise to me too). Because I added almond meal to the whole wheat pastry flour, the cobbler topping became cookie/pie crust-like, and less biscuit-like (which was the best part of the surprise). I also wasn't sure if the olive oil would work instead of the butter, but it has now become my fat champion for its performance here. That would be an excellent slogan: "Olive Oil, My Fat Champion."

The filling is a good mix between quartered apricots and blueberries, but I'd bet anything that it would work just as well with raspberries, strawberries and peaches. In fact, I'd venture a guess that cranberries and apples would be winners as well. And, as always, I used agave nectar for the sweetener in the topping as well as the filling, but added a bit more flour to the filling to thicken it up.

As you can see from the photo above, the filling gets very pie-like. It is a dream to scoop up when serving, keeping together very nicely. You might want to keep some vanilla frozen dessert or topping handy. It makes a nice foil for all that blueberry, although I enjoyed it thoroughly with just a cup of my favorite herbal tea.

Finally, before I launch into the recipe, I wanted to share with you a bit of food chemistry fun. If you've been veganizing recipes for a while, you probably already know this, but you can make vegan buttermilk by adding apple cider vinegar to non-dairy milk to get the same effect. Not only does it tenderize dough, it gives it nice rise.

Just an ingredient/direction note -- when I write a recipe, the ingredients are listed in the order in which they are used. It's a pet peeve of mine when folks don't do that, and then I have to scramble to make sense of a recipe. So, if the list below looks a little weird, that's why. It's for your own good. :)

Ok, here's what you've been waiting for...

Vegan Blueberry Apricot Cobbler (inspired by Elise's Apricot Berry Cobbler)

Yields 12 servings (or 10 large servings)

Ingredients

5 cups fresh apricots, pre-pitted and sliced
4 cups fresh blueberries
2/3 cup agave nectar
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup non-dairy milk (I used vanilla unsweetened almond milk for mine)
1/2 cup almond meal
1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg (makes all the difference)
1/2 teaspoon Pensey's baking spice (or cinnamon, if you don't have it, but you might want to consider ordering some because it's really great stuff, and they don't pay me to say that)
3 tablespoons agave nectar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons good, fruity olive oil (or experiment with another good oil you enjoy)

Directions

1. Lightly oil a glass 9x13x2 in. baking dish.
2. Gently mix together the fruit, agave nectar, whole wheat pastry flour, and pinch of salt in a large bowl and let rest.
3. In a large glass measuring cup, mix together the apple cider vinegar and non-dairy milk. Let this rest as well.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the almond meal, whole wheat pastry flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and the spices.
5. Retrieve the vinegar/milk mixture and whisk in the remaining agave nectar, vanilla, and olive oil. Give it at least a minute of whisking.
6. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry mixture and combine until just mixed. Do not over-mix this because it won't create a nice topping if you do.
7. Give the fruit filling one more mix before pouring it into the prepared baking dish.
8. Take out your small scoop and scoop the topping on top of the filling. You'll probably need to spread it around a bit.
9. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F while the topping rises. It won't rise a lot, but it will poof up a bit.
10. Bake the cobbler for 40 minutes, then check to see if it isn't getting too brown on top. You're looking for a nice golden brown. The filling should be good and bubbly.
11. Cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes before serving. It's best warm, but just as good from the fridge 4 days later.

The cobbler will keep at room temperature for 3 days. After that, if there is any left, and my guess is that there won't be, keep it refrigerated until it's gone.

04 July 2009

Book Review: Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

These delicious and highly healthy pumpkin bran muffins are an Altered Plates version of Isa's Pumpkin Bran Muffins on page 167 of Vegan Brunch. I made 12 large and 12 mini muffins in my version of her recipe, and will undoubtably make them again with other fun modifications.

First, let me tell you a bit about the book. The photos are lovely, and there are many of them. The layout is very effective in that you don't often need to turn pages during a recipe (one of my major pet peeves in cookbooks). And, most importantly, the recipes are fantastic.

You must get this to add to your collection, even if you aren't vegan (which I'm not anymore, but eat veganly most days anyway). The recipes are easy to make for the most part, and like her other books, don't require a lot of hard-to-find or expensive ingredients.

And, if you are like me and have to noodle around with recipes because you have dietary restrictions, be comforted by the fact that her recipes (as in in her previous books) are so flexible that you can tune them quite easily without losing the integrity of the recipe.

That said, here's the recipe as I made it a few weeks ago (prior to the big fall).

Pumpkin Bran Muffins (greatly inspired by Isa's Pumpkin Bran Muffins on page 167 of Vegan Brunch.

Ingredients:

1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup vanilla flavored, unsweetened non-dairy milk (I used almond)
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil
2/3 cup agave nectar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup wheat bran flakes (you could also use oat bran, and I will next time)
1 1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons coconut flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (I used Pensey's)
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 to 1/2 cup pepitas or shelled pumpkin seeds (depending upon how you decorate)

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, mix all the wet ingredients together until well blended.
2. Add the bran flakes and mix until well blended.
3. In a medium bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients except the walnuts, raisins, and seeds.
4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix by hand for about 30 seconds.
5. Gently fold in the nuts, raisins, and seeds, then mix for another 30 seconds. Let the mixture rest.
6. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. and line 1 standard muffin pan with cupcake cups, and 1 mini muffin pan with mini cupcake cups.
7. Use a standard ice cream scoop to scoop out 12 servings into the lined standard pan, and a mini scoop to scoop out 12 mini servings into the mini muffin pan. Place in the heated oven on different levels.
8. Bake for 12 minutes before turning each pan 180 degrees and switching levels. Bake for another 10 minutes before testing with a bamboo skewer for doneness. When only a few moist crumbs stick to the skewer, take them out of the oven.
9. Let them cool in the pans for 5 minutes before transferring the muffins to wire racks to cool completely.
10. Enjoy!

These will keep for about a week in an airtight container. Since it's been hot out, I've kept mine in the fridge.

19 March 2009

Best Vegan Thumbprint Cookies Ever!

My go-to vegan cookbook for cookies is now Eat, Drink & Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. I've made agave nectar versions of her cookies before with great success, but these are over the top.

Even though they're vegan they taste genuinely buttery. She uses maple syrup and brown rice syrup along with a little bit of sugar in her original recipe, so making the agave leap wasn't a big deal. However, I used a completely different technique to create the cookie.

I made two different versions of these -- one close to the original, with walnuts and a strawberry all-fruit spread for the middle; and in the other, I used almonds and a lovely plum all-fruit spread. Fantastic! The almond version is what I'm bringing to a St. Joseph's Feast celebration tonight, because traditionally, almond cookies are served (albeit, not ones like these) for dessert along with zeppoles.

The texture of the almond version is not as smooth as the walnut cookie, but slightly crunchy. I love that she uses barley and oat flour for these cookies. You can taste the oats much more in the walnut version than in the almond cookies. I'm definitely going to try these with other flours and nuts. I kept thinking that cashews would make an amazing cookie. With those, I'd probably make some kind of carob-y ganache to use as a filling.

Because I altered the recipe significantly, I'm publishing my version here. However, I strongly urge you to buy a copy of Dreena's wonderful Eat, Drink & Be Vegan for yourself.

The Best Vegan Thumbprint Cookies Ever (inspired by Dreena Burton's Jam-Print Cookies, from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan)

Yield: approx. 32 cookies

Ingredients

2/3 cup rolled oats (not quick oats)
3/4 cup barley flour
1/2 cup walnuts (or almonds, or your choice of nut or seed)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup oil (I used olive)
Just under 1/2 cup agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Your choice of unsweetened fruit spread/jam

Directions

1. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a food processor, grind up the oats until they are almost powder.
3. Add the nuts/seeds to the oats and grind until the mixture resembles crumbs.
3. Add the barley flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, then pulse for a minute until everything is well combined.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the oil, agave nectar, and vanilla until well combined.
5. Add the liquid mixture to the food processor and process until the dough collects itself. This should take a maximum of 40 seconds (and that's long).
6. Using a small cookie scoop, scoop out the cookies, four to a row, evenly spaced, on the sheets. Place one of the sheets in the refrigerator.
7. Add a couple of tablespoons of water to a small bowl. You will use this to dip a small spoon into while you're making the depressions in the cookies for the jam. Dip the spoon into the water, shake off any excess water and use the spoon to gently make a nickle-sized depression (about 1/4 in. deep) into the center of your cookies. Wet the spoon each time. You'll need to do this and it makes it much easier, trust me.
8. Fill each of the depressions with your jam/spread of choice. Put that sheet of cookies into the fridge. Take the other sheet out and repeat step seven on those cookies while you preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
9. Bake the cookies for 7 minutes, then switch the sheets' positions in the oven and bake for another 7 minutes or until lightly golden brown around the edges.
10. Let the cookies cool on their sheets for 5 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely. This is a very important step because the cookies could break if you don't.
11. Enjoy!

10 March 2009

Recycling: Moosey Hamantaschen

This is the first time I've ever recycled a post, but seeing how it's Purim time, I thought those of you who celebrate, might appreciate the blog post below. FYI, I didn't publish the recipe as I made it, but I will be remaking these soon and publishing a full recipe since I anticipate major changes.

I've written and tested hamantaschen recipes before, but had yet to achieve the buttery crispness found in the bakery cookies I ate in my youth. That is, until I tried altering the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant hamantaschen recipe for agave nectar.

The cookies shown above are the result of my efforts. I made these while cooking another recipe, so I didn't make one of my short films about the experience. However, I can tell you that I only used half the recipe and made about 24 tasty cookies.

My alterations to the recipe included 1/2 cup coconut flour for part of the all-purpose flour called, 1 cup of agave for the sugar, 2 teaspoons pineapple juice for the orange juice, and a completely different set of fillings.

For the fillings, I used a base of chopped dried tart cherries and dried apricots. I hydrated these and drained them, then pureed them. I divided the puree in half, then mixed each with a different fruit-sweetened mixed fruit spread, respectively. One was a peach spread, while the other was this amazing concoction from Trader Joe's with pomegranate in it.

Both were wonderful foils for the buttery cookie. However, I plan to try this recipe again, substituting more coconut flour for the ap flour and using a poppyseed filling. I've had a bag of Pensey's poppyseeds in my cabinet for a few months mocking me. So, it's time to use them.

Just a tip for creaming butter with agave, make sure that the butter's softened to almost mush. It incorporates much better that way, and even gets to a nice, fluffy consistency quite easily with the stand mixer.

04 March 2009

Eat Me, Agave Nectar -- Coconut Oatmeal Carob Pecan Squares