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Wednesday, September 5, 2007

A recipe and some other stuff

I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, especially from my newest cookbook, Vegan with a Vengeance. Yesterday I made pumpkin muffins from this awesome cookbook, but I modified them quite a bit to try to make them slightly healthier - here's my version.


Yummy Pumpkin Muffins

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour *
1 cup sugar *
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup pureed pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
1/2 cup soy (or other non-dairy) milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup applesauce
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

* Next time I'll try replacing 1/4 cup of the all-purpose flour with ground flaxseed and reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a muffin tin.

The usual routine - mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl and the
wet ingredients in another, then combine them and add the cranberries and
walnuts. Fill muffin tins two-thirds full and bake for 18-20 minutes.

Enjoy!



I didn't get a picture of the muffins, but I did take a picture of these yummy chocolate peanut butter bars from Vive le Vegan. So good!



I also made this delicious pumpkin bread, which I enjoyed today for lunch with hummus, avocado, sprouts, and roasted red pepper almond sauce (again from VWAV). The only modification I made to the original recipe was that instead of the 2 cups of bread flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour, I used 2 cups of whole wheat pastry flour and 1 cup of all-purpose unbleached flour. This bread turned out so light and tasty - you really need to try it!



I haven't had time to make much jewelry lately, but I bought jewelry! This fun agate ring from The Carrot Box arrived today in the mail and I absolutely love it!



And last but not least, I reached a milestone yesterday - my 1,000th item sold in my bead shop on Etsy - yay! (Thanks erinelizabeth!)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I *love* pumpkin. I'm going to have to try this recipe out. :)

Anonymous said...

Do you use a bread machine or make your bread the "old-fashioned" way in an oven? Your bread always looks so yummy!

Tamara said...

Hey Jennifer...
I use a combination of both methods - I use the bread machine set on the 'dough' cycle, then put the dough in a bread pan, let it rise (covered with a cloth), and bake it in the oven. I think it makes a much nicer loaf than when I cook it in the bread machine. :-)
T

Vegan Girl (Roni Seabury) said...

Vegan with a Vengence is a great cook book. I have it and love the breakfast recipes!

I can't believe all the jewelry I bought recently that I didn't buy the 1000th piece of jewelry. I'm happy for you! You are so creative.

Vegan_Noodle said...

Hi Tamara! Just made your vesion of the muffins and they were fabulous! Always good to make things a bit healthier :-)

Anonymous said...

you can even up the whole wheat to 3 cups, especially if you use white whole wheat, it turns out perfect too! :D

mmm, pumpkin muffins. I still need to try these bars too, I've been drooling over them since forever.