Showing posts with label vegan muffins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegan muffins. Show all posts

Monday, June 02, 2008

Fire.

I don’t have a coherent post today. FINE! I don’t have a coherent post ANY day, but I have a lot of things running through my mind so, in brief…possibly. I don’t know how brief…

-I made some chocolate pumpkin muffins to eat for breakfast this week. They are indeed vegan and I adapted them a little but from here. I don’t much care for ginger, so I left that out. I added some vanilla and some flax seeds too. I had one for breakfast this morning. I had it in the car with me and the smell was killing me! I couldn’t eat until I was out of woogy traffic but the intense chocolate scent filled my car and made me a little crazy. When I finally was able to eat I thought “Oh…eh. These are ok, but a little bland.” But then, by the time I got to work I was longing for another and now I am sitting here typing and thinking “Awwww yeah, I am having a chocolate pumpkin muffin for breakfast tomorrow and it’s gonna be…sooo…..goooooood!” So…is that weird? That’s how addiction works, right? You are kind of like, oh I don’t really care and then the next thing you know you are sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by empty muffin wrappers and you can’t remember the last twenty minutes. Anyway. I think I like these muffins but I also think that if I made them again, I’d leave out the cinnamon, add some chocolate extract and some more cocoa. But oh, they are so velvety…

-The weekend was particularly cruel to my sinuses. Apparently, whatever was in the air is what I am allergic to (well, besides the pot smoke, I mean.) and I found myself sitting at my desk on Saturday, working away, tears streaming down my face. Ugh. Sunday did not get better however. The smell of burning monkey was so overpowering that we ended up closing all the windows and turning on all the air filters. Damn monkey.

-I finally finished watching the second season of Torchwood and came to the realization that I am just watching it out of crossover duty. I will watch the next season to see how they fix what was broken at the end of last season but…really not all that into it. Love Jack, love Gwen, love Capt. John but not thrilling to the stories.

-Watched Tristram Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story, which kind of left me…confused. I confess that I have never read the book but I was intrigued by the film since it had so many actors that I like in it. But I found the story telling to be muddled and self congratulatory…which is how I think I was supposed to feel. So…well done? I don’t know.

-I ordered some local organic fruit and veg through a delivery company. The delivery was free but I did have an added carbon offset charge. Which was still cheaper than the pizza delivery charge at pretty much every place. I don’t mind paying a little extra for cleaner air, that’s fine. Look how earth friendly I am! Actually, I was thinking about this the other day. Around earth day when everyone was all “Rah-rah! Look what you can do to save the environment!” I kept quiet because I was feeling like, wow, I just don’t do enough. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized, I do a fair amount but it doesn’t seem like it because I’ve always done it. Or I’ve been doing it for a long time , anyway. I have my own shopping bags and I have for many years now. I still sometimes get the clerk that tells me that they don’t know the price on these bags because there is no tag. Um…yeah. I brought those. I generally make my own cleaning supplies. Have done for quite a while now. I don’t drive a hybrid but I did pay extra so my car would be a ULEV. So, you know, that’s not too bad. Well…it’s better than nothing. So, if you need to charge me an extra buck or two for my carbon footprint then go ahead, I am trying to fill smaller shoes anyway.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Recently.

Watch reruns, they replay your memories.

Chocolate is a valentine you give yourself.

Oh Dove. Fine, it may not be the greatest chocolate in the world but I have decided that I like it. I think because it tastes like brownie batter to me. But brownie batter with a snap when you bite into it. And I can buy it in little pieces and one piece is good. So there. But they really need to not print things inside the wrappers because that might be enough to make me hate them. Chocolate IS a Valentine you give yourself…when you are pathetic. And while I do, on occasion watch reruns…nevermind. I just don’t like what they write on the wrappers. Nuff said.

While there has not been much blogging around here, there has been a fair amount of cooking going on over the weekends. For the Oscars there were chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting and vanilla cupcakes with caramel buttercream. And if you cook but you haven’t make a cooked buttercream before, give it a try. It’s not that hard and the difference between a cooked buttercream (a Swiss meringue buttercream) and a “quick” buttercream is pretty significant in terms of texture and, for me, taste. Silky is the only way to describe it. The closest vegan counterpart I have tried is the “Velvet” frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the world and that one darn good too, so you know, you aren’t missing out on much if you don’t do the eggs/butter thing. Either way, a cooked buttercream (style) icing is, as Martha would say, a good thing. A very good thing. A really very good thing. Seriously.

And last night, well, there was cooking but no cupcakes. I just really wanted a veggie burger with mashed avacado, tomoatoes, green onions and lettuce and oven fries. I never crave any thing that specific. In fact, I rarely have much opionion on what’s for dinner other than “not that” or “this is what I defrosted”. But last night, nothing else would do. And man was it good and satisfying and…good.

Oh and there were some breakfast muffins made too..cocoa-banana-almond (vegan). Last night I thought they were just ok but this morning it made an excellent breakfast. I guess sometimes a day (well, half a day) makes all the difference.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Muffin.

Ok, here’s a more or less recipe for the banana/strawberry/almond/flaxseed muffins I mentioned. Like I said, I think they are rather good, but we’re talking in a crunchy granola girl kind of way so you know…you can kind of adapt as you see fit. Me, I am big into granola girl hippie chow.

The basis of the recipe comes from Vegan With A Vengenance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I have recommended this book before and I will recommend it again. I AM NOT A VEGAN and I use this book all the time. Will it make me a vegan? Maybe eventually, but it has made me try some new stuff and so far, every recipe I have tried has been pretty damn good. I never liked brussel sprouts until this book. That’s gotta say something (it was the descroption of their “popcorn-y flavor” that lured me in). So credit where credit is due and props to the vegans for the good eats. The original recipe is for Cherry-Almond Muffins but it makes a great base.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (this is much finer than regular whole wheat flour and results in a much softer muffin. If you can only find regular whole wheat flour use 1 cup of whole wheat and 1 cup of white, unless you are a super hippie and can handle the crazy fiber overload)

1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar (The actual recipe calls for 1/3 c. but I have successfully cut it down to 1/4 c. it’s all about you baby, if you need a little extra sweet, then go for it)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup canola oil (I actually use a little less than this depending on how many bananas I have, two bananas=a little less oil, I’d say about a tablespoon less.)

3/4 cups soy milk ( I use low fat or fat free, you could easily replace with rice milk, almond milk or, if you just aren’t quite there yet, go ahead and use the cow milk, but don’t tell the vegan that I said you could)

1 6oz. container of soy yogurt, plain or vanilla. (I have never NOT used soy yogurt in this recipe, I’m guessing you can, if you hate animals or something! Nah, do what you can, regular yogurt should work just fine, but if you can, try the soy, it’s not great on it’s own but it’s just fine in cooking)

bananas (1 or 2, what ever you have on hand, the darker the better and mash ‘em up good)

strawberries (I just used what I had on hand, and they had been in the fridge, sliced up, for a few days, so they were a little dry, which was good for me, I don’t like gooey fruit in my muffins, but again, you gotta go with your gut here, and I’d say not more than about 1/3 cup, chopped small)

about 1/2 cup of chopped almonds

1 tablespoon of flax seeds, ground

vanilla extract (most recipes will call for a teaspoon, I like vanilla so it’s more like a table spoon)

Preheat oven to 400°, Lightly grease a 12 muffin tin or use muffin liners OR (and this is kind of cool, I learned it from Cupcake Bakeshop) there are these fruit and nut cups that you can get at party stores or Smart and Final, they are a little small er than the average muffin but they are strong enough to stand on their own so you can just put them on a cookie sheet and not even bother with the muffin tin.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make a little well in the center and add the oil, soy milk, yogurt, banana, flax seed and vanilla extract. Mix until just combined. Fold in the strawberries and the almonds.

Fill your muffin cups 3/4 of the way and bake for about 20 minutes.

Look, it’s all very sketchy, I just kind of make it up as I go along, but this is a pretty good starting point. Add some chocolate chips, use all white flour, add some peanut butter, whatever makes you happy. But I will say, if you stick with the whole wheat pastry flour, the flax seeds and the almonds, you’re getting some decent nutrition. Use the white flour and the chocolate chips and your getting a pretty tasty dessert. It’s all good.

I hope you like them, if not, send them to me, I’ll eat them!

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Meanwhile...

As requested, I will post that muffin recipe…as soon as I figure out how I bastardized the original recipe. I don’t really cook as much as I fling stuff into a bowl and see what happens. And ingredients are often….ummm…..hey, what’s in the fridge. So let me look at that and see what I can come up with as far as advice on what to fling into your bowl to approximate what I flung into mine. That is, if you don’t mind instructions like “Pour some salt into you palm, like enough to fill that little hollow when you cup your hand, now take a pinch of that, throw it over your shoulder, pour the rest out of your hand over the sink and then brush the grains of salt that stick to your palm into the batter…let’s just call it a “Pinch”.

In the meanwhile here are some lists…incomplete…

Things I like, in no particular order:
Dark chocolate, bats, cats, giraffes, dogs, books (all kinds), comic books (less kinds but right at this moment Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer “The Long Way Home” a.ka. “Season Eight”), baking, cooking in general, tea, sticky notes, Hellboy, Django Reinhardt, the color red, black cotton sweaters, peace signs, driving, butter lettuce, “British Humor”, Doctor Who, daisies, birds, oysters, art, the ocean, cupcakes, some bugs (but not all bugs), shopping, bags (hand and tote), watches, tattoos, picture frames, Batman, Puerto Rico, Miss Marple, Terry Pratchett, Shakespeare, chocolate sprinkles, toast, tofu, broccoli, chaise lounges, poetry, period movies, Jane Austen novels, Icanhascheezburger.com, pants with pockets, cotton socks, warm sheets, blank notebooks, postcards, watercolor paints.

Things I firmly believe (in no particular order): dessert is not dessert unless there is chocolate involved, or at the very least, caramel, being nice is important, manners are what separates us from the beasts, one good turn deserves another, Shakespeare’s plays were written by Shakespeare, babies know more than they are saying, all pants should have pockets, what comes around goes around…or something like that, if you can’t take a joke then fuck you, very few things are better the second day with the possible exception of lasagna, chocolate flavor is not the same as chocolate, some things really are easier said than done, there is a comic book, a beer and a type of whisky for everyone, you just have to try them all until you find the right one.

Things I avoid when at all possible: bell peppers, sharks, cleaning the litter box, frogs, making a left into traffic, colds, high heels, wool sweaters, answering the phone, doctors, dairy, cleaning the toilet, broken nails, cold feet, watery beer, sticky keyboards and steering wheels, magnolia trees, slurping my soup, not having tissues, smeary glasses, chicken thighs, having my picture taken.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Baked.

Sometimes I start baking and I just can’t stop. It’s a sickness really. I had planned on making some vegan cupcakes because I had this container of vegan frosting in the fridge that I really didn’t want to go to waste, so there was that. Then I wanted to make an anniversary present for my parents. Last time I sent my mom cookies she mentioned that she really liked the almond sugar cookies. So there were cookies too. Then I needed to make something for breakfasts and I had some old bananas sitting on the counter. What does one do with old bananas? One makes banana muffins with chocolate chips and almonds (vegan style). But one forgot to use the whole wheat pastry flour and flax seeds that would make such a thing a slightly more nutritious breakfast so one had to make another set of muffins and, one started to feel guilty about including chocolate chips in a breakfast muffin, so one put the last of the strawberries in there instead.

There was much baking this weekend.

But you know, it’s kind of cool. I was not thrilled with the idea of healthy(er) banana strawberry whole wheat muffins with flax seeds and almonds. They just sounded really…healthy. And although I like my breakfasts to be…ok, look, if I had it my way, it would be Oreos for breakfast, but I don’t and it’s not. But, it was with not a little wariness that I bit into that healthy(ish) muffin this morning. And it was…good. Perfect for breakfast. I like when that happens. When I think I am not going to like something and then hey, I do! Yay!

So I added some links if you are interested…except…I did it a few days ago and now I can’t remember which ones are new…I’d start at the bottom of the lists, that’s where I usually put them. Oh and there’s that iLike thing on the sidebar now. See, Brenda was looking for a way to link to snippets of a song and I had seen a few people who were using that thing, and I suggested that she try it. Then I decided that if I suggested it, I had better try it myself. So now you can mock my musical tastes in real time. Yeah, you can just go ahead and email about the weird stuff I listen to. And I will ignore you.

Oh, oh, I watched the first episode of The Tudors…I kind of liked it. I will watch more but…ok, first, I didn’t know that Sean Pertwee was in this show…and then I discovered why I didn’t know. SPOILER…ok, well not if you know history, which apparently I don’t…He dies. Quickly. So much for that. But this show really does say something about my tastes in men. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a young Henry VIII, that’s fine, I like him well enough, he’s been in some movies I liked. Cool. Then there’s a bunch of young guys who get nekkid. Ok, fine. I have no problems with that. BUT OH MY GOSH! Jeremy Northam and Sam Neill are in it as Thomas More and Cardinal Wolsey respectively…so…I’m guessing they aren’t getting nekkid in this series, eh? Oh well.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Agave.

Oh hey, did I mention the agave cupcakes? Because I made agave cupcakes. They were vegan. I didn’t like them much but my husband, who mocks all things not made of meat, did. I thought they were kind of bland and a little too doughy. Chris thought they tasted “planty”, Jason liked them but Jason likes everything. I wouldn’t totally dismiss the recipe though. I actually tested them out for a friend who was looking for no sugar recipes, and hey, if I couldn’t have a sugar cupcake and I was avoiding the chemicals of the sweeteners, then I would definitely eat an agave cupcake. They just aren’t really for me..unless, of course, there is a “cupcake related emergency.”

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

GASP!

So I was walking down the hallway in the office when all of the sudden this dude comes around the corner in full motorcycle regalia, leathers, gloves, helmet, and, in a testament to my nerdiness what was my response?

“*GASP!* ROBOT! NO…ALIEN! NO…DARTH VADER!”

Apparently, I did actually gasp and jump because he just giggled and said “Boo!”.

Honestly, I thought “DARTH VADER!” I am not just making some nerdy joke.

I am so lame.

In my defense, I am very, very tired.

Yeah, I know, that’s no defense. I really am a dork.

OH HAY! I’ve been making vegan muffins again. Last week was cranberry almond and they were good, but last night I was messing around. I wanted mocha chip muffins but I had no chocolate chips and I really need something with more protein and staying power and whathaveyou, so I made the chocolate base with some whole wheat pastry flour mixed with the white, and then I put in some cinnamon because cinnamon is good for you and then I threw in some walnuts and…I was afraid. I don’t actually like cinnamon in my chocolate and I wasn’t feeling the walnuts and I was kind of wondering if they weren’t a little rancid and why oh why didn’t I just wait and put some chocolate chips in there and why didn’t I leave out the coffee and…and…

Man, those are some good muffins! Sometimes it just all comes together.