So, as an appropriate follow-up to my “sugar is bad” post, here are some hibiscus sugar cookies!

Good for the soul, right?

A coworker just came back from Egypt, and brought with him a large amount of hibiscus.   Of course, my first reaction was, “Will this be good in cookies?”  Short answer?  Yes.   Yes, it was.

Tastes of Egypt.

I did a bit of research, and it turns out that hibiscus is some sort of magical flower.

“A 2008 USDA study shows consuming hibiscus tea lowers blood pressure in a group of pre-hypertensive and mildly hypertensive adults. Three cups of tea daily resulted in an average drop of 8.1 point in their systolic blood pressure, compared to a 1.3 point drop in the volunteers who drank the placebo beverage. Study participants with higher blood pressure readings (129 or above) had a greater response to hibiscus tea: their systolic blood pressure went down by 13.2 points. These data support the idea that drinking hibiscus tea in an amount readily incorporated into the diet may play a role in controlling blood pressure, although more research is required.”

Cool, right?  Not to mention:

A report by Medical News Today states that one of the benefits of hibiscus is its capacity to control cholesterol. It references a study by the Chung Shan Medical University, Taiwan, which found that it contains antioxidants that have the capacity to lower the buildup of fatty acids and lower levels of cholesterol in the body.

In addition, it is loaded with Vitamin C.  Also:

Hibiscus is also the source of the hydroxycitric acid (HCA, or hydroxycut) used in many diet formulas. This compound has been long used to fight obesity. Scientific studies with lab animals find that it stops the conversion of carbs in food to body fat. It fights appetite and encourages weight loss not by increasing energy expenditure but by encouraging the “wasting” of carbohydrates.

Seriously, you could write a book about all the properties of hibiscus tea.  I also read that it’s used in traditional Eastern medicines to prevent hair loss and to treat cramps.

But me?  I went ahead and made cookies and probably more than negated the good aspects of the flower.  But it was worth it because it tasted awesome.   Super delicious.

Blood Pressure Cookies?

So, what I did was mix together some cookie dough, roll it into tubes, and cut off neat little round slices of cookies.   These were just as good a week later, so you know it’s good stuff.

I ate like 6.

Here is the recipe, yo!

Hibiscus Tea Cookies

• 3/4 cup Earth Balance, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup soymilk
• 2 tablespoons hibiscus tea
• 1/4 teaspoon rose water
• 2-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Pink Sugar (Optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Boil 2 tablespoons of hibiscus tea in 3/4 cup soymilk until it is a deep red.
3. Cream together Earth Balance and sugar.  Mix in tea and rose water (The kind in the baking section. Not the perfume kind).
4. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.   Fold into the tea and Earth balance mixture.
5. Refrigerate dough for 2 hours.  Divide in half and roll into logs/tubes.   Roll in pink sugar and slice off little cookie rounds.
6. Bake cookies 8-10 minutes, or until golden on the bottom.

Notes: I started with whole hibiscus petals, so it expanded when boiled in the soymilk, and possibly helped absorb more flour.  If starting with ground up petals, keep an eye on how moist the cookies are and adjust as needed.

Looking for something to do with your leftover matzoh?

Matzoh Magic!

I meant to post this recipe early last week, but I started baking and candy making for Easter, and I spent so much time just making things that I didn’t have time to post any of them.   Also I would have posted it Monday or Tuesday, but I had given up TV for lent so I spent all day Monday and Tuesday watching TV.   I have more than made up for my 40 tv-free days and nights.   In other news, I discovered that I really enjoy spending my time doing more productive things, so now that my TV binge is over, it’s going back on a restricted basis.

Let’s get back to the candy.

God, I love chocolate.

Oh  you know, just some ridiculous candy bar I got it into my head to make.  No biggy.   Just candied matzoh, flavored with rum, layered with peanut butter mousse, and covered in dark chocolate.  No big deal.

It all started in such a simple innocent way.  That’s always how these stories go, isn’t it?  I’m incapable of leaving things simple in the kitchen.

Anyway, I was inspired by Little Debbie’s Nutty Bars.  I used to love love these things when i was kid.   Lance, the East Coast vending machine snack king, made a version of these without Little Debbie’s annoying egg whites.  Seriously!  Why does that dumb company but egg whites in EVERYTHING?   Lance makes most of the same products, but without the eggs.   So, I used to get these out of the vending machines and the day that I learned they had whey in them was a sad sad day.   I was 10 or 11 and trying to figure out what I could or couldn’t eat as a new vegan.   I remember reading the ingredients to the Nutty Bars over and over again and thinking they were OK.   A few weeks later someone told me that whey came from milk.   Zut!   Bah humbug!   Oh Nutty Bars!  How I miss you.

Nutty Bars

So, I’ve had Nutty Bars on the mind recently, and was seriously considering buying some wafer sheets to make my own.   I would just make my own wafers as well, but it seems you need some fancy equipment to do that, and I am but a lone little lady with a minimalist apartment kitchen.   However, while I was staring longingly at the wafer sheetrs on Amazon.com, I suddenly realized that I could make the nutty bars using matzo!  And they’d be an awesome passover treat, right?

So that’s what I did.   And I did it two ways.  The first way was as simple as could be.  I took the sheets of matzo straight from the box, cut them into strips using a hot sharp knife, spread them with all natural peanut butter, layered them, and covered them with chocolate.

Matzoh!

This version was all sorts of crispy, rich, and not very sweet.

Crisp!

So, of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone.  My next thought was, why don’t I candy the matzo à la chocolate covered toffee matzoh?  And in the candy-toffee mixture, why don’t I throw in a couple tablespoons of rum?   Then, because that’s not ridiculous enough, why don’t I make some peanut butter mousse to fill the matzoh bars?   And yeah, why don’t I use some ridiculously expensive guittard chocolate to top the whole thing off?

I am a ridiculous human being.   That’s all I can say.

Candy Candy Candy

This was hella good , if not exactly what I was expecting.   The peanut butter mousse made the matzoh softer and not at all crisp.   I’m not sure if this would have been the case if I hadn’t left the matzoh-mousse layers sitting in the fridge for two days before covering them in chocolate.  In any case, soft or not, it was good.    It may not have been a Nutty Bar, but it was full of some really amazing flavors and it was extremely rich.  I cut the bars into small pieces so the bars wouldn’t be too overwhelming for my friends.

Matzoh Candy Bar

To candy the Matzo:

• 1/2 lb matzos
• 1/2 cup Earth Balance
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1 Tablespoon rum

Directions:

1. Line a cookie sheet with foil and lay matzo on pan.
2. Melt brown sugar with butter in saucepan; boil until mixture coats a spoon.
3. Brush matzo with brown sugar mixture.
4. Bake in 350 degree oven for 3-4 minutes until it starts to bubble.  Don’t let it burn!
5. Cut the matzo into strips.  Don’t worry if it breaks a bit.  The peanut butter will hold it together in the end.

Peanut butter mousse:

• 12 oz. Extra-Firm Silken Tofu (like Mori-Nu)
• 1 cup all-natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons soymilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Place ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.  Add more soymilk if necessary to thin the mixture out.   It’s important to use the all natural peanut butter without added ingredients, or your mousse might be too sweet.   Taste and adjust.

Assembly Directions:

1. Spread mousse on matzoh and layer slices of matzo / mousse.   Freeze.
2. Melt 2 cups chocolate wafers or chips in a double boiler, and cover bars in chocolate.
3. BAM.   Matzo Candy Bars!   Win.

If you’re vegan, you probably see waffles and immediately think, “Eggs and milk,” and then perhaps sigh a bit to yourself while munching sadly on a lone apple slice.

*sigh* waffles

If you’re on a gluten-free diet, you might stare longingly at the waffles and think, “Wheat, gluten, poison!” None for you.  And none for the vegans.  Let’s just keep working on that fruit plate.    *sigh*

But they look so good!

If you’re keeping kosher for passover, you probably saw these pictures and hated me for a minute.   “Dina, don’t you know I can only eat matzo for the next week?   Away with ye, evil temptress!”

Ah, but I have a surprise for you, ladies and gentle-diet-restricted-folk.

These waffles are made with almond flour.  They are vegan.  They are gluten free.   And by many accounts, they are kosher for passover.

Yay Waffles!

Wait a second… come again?   Vegan, gluten-free, and OK for passover?   And they were even GOOD.   How is that even possible?

Magic, science, and a good look at the traditional definition of “chametz” makes it possible.   The only questionable ingredient in these waffles is baking soda, and according to the New York Times, and several other articles I’ve read, baking soda AND baking powder  can be totally legit for passover.

Lise Stern, author of “How to Keep Kosher” (Morrow, 2004), said: “Chometz, which means sharp or sour, denotes bread that has a sourness to it caused by fermentation, occurring when liquid is added to any of the five grains mentioned in the Torah. This refers to yeast, not baking powder or baking soda.”

Rabbi Soloveichik said: “They’re just minerals. What do we care about minerals?”

Well said.  And Rabbi Lerner seems to agree:

Historically, one could use seltzer as well to make matzah balls to rise, but one needed a hechshar for the seltzer as according to some opinions certain brands used carbon dioxide derived from factories making beer, hence derived from hametz. Today, I believe that carbon dioxide is made chemically if only for purposes of efficiency and cost.

The only issue that some rabbis seem to have with baking powder is that it is often made with corn starch.  However, I have seen several little cans of “Kosher for Passover” baking powder at the supermarket, so if you’re worried about corn, then just use that!

Anyway, enough talking.  Here is the recipe!

Almond Waffles (makes 2)

• 3/4 cups almond flour (aka almond meal)
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 tablespoons flax meal
• 2 tablespoons potato starch
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar

Directions:

1. Preheat waffle iron.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine almond flour, salt, and baking soda.   In a smaller bowl, combine flax meal, potato starch, water, oil, vanilla, and agave.  Stir to help the potato starch dissolve into the water and let it sit for a minute to allow the flax to thicken.   Combine wet and dry ingredients… there is no gluten so feel free to stir all you want!
3. Make waffles in waffle iron according to manufacturers instructions.
4. EAT.

And… that’s it guys. Fricken easy.  Fricken good.  It only makes two waffles, but they’re like 100% nuts so they’re very filling and I myself was only able to eat one waffle.  But feel free to double or triple the recipe if you see fit.   Or make lots of  little tiny waffles.  That’d be super cute, too.

A note on almond flour: It’s possible to make your own almond flour by first blanching the almonds and then grinding them in a food processor until smooth, but before becoming almond butter.  However, that’s time consuming and I just went and bought myself a bag of Bob’s Red Mill certified gluten-free almond meal.

What a fast, delicious, and protein-filled breakfast!   Win.

I love sweet potatoes so much.  It’s an obsession that may border on unhealthy.  Any time I see or hear of a recipe involving boring regular potatoes, I immediately want to re-do it with sweet potatoes.  They’re not only delicious, they also have more fiber, protein, vitamin C, and beta-carotene than the average white potato.   Sounds like some good reasons to eat sweet potatoes to me!   Plus, need I remind you, they’re delicious?

So, when Isa Chandra Moskowitz posted this recipe for pierogies recently, my mission was clear.  Sweet potato pierogies.  Done and done.

Sweet potato pierogies

Wanna take a look inside?

YUM.

This might look like normal potato to you, but don’t be fooled.  It’s golden sweet potato from a market in Santa Cruz… and it’s so good.   Packing all the complexity and sweetness of the average orangey sweet potato, this golden variety is just as good, if not better.  It’s super moist and wonderful, and I find that I can eat it straight out of the oven, without salt or fake butter or anything.  It’s that good.

And of course, since I’m me, I had to make the dough whole wheat.   That’s the way I roll, yo.

And on the side, we have a nice heap of sweet subtle caramelized onions.

Onions onions onions

Good stuff.

I’m sleepy so I’ll get right to the recipe!   I cut down Isa’s recipe by a lot.  I certainly didn’t need to make 3 dozen pierogies for just me and my sister!

Dough:

Filling:

For instructions regarding the dough and the onions,  I suggest referring to the Isa recipe.

As for the potato filling though?   Don’t waste your time peeling and chopping potatoes.  What I do is wrap them in tin foil, stick them in the oven at 450-500, and bake them until they’re soft.  Then I open them up, and the insides literally just slide ride out of the skins.  Use a fork though because it’s HOT hot hot.   Then mash it up and season it.  Bam!   Potato filling.   Simple as pie.   Actually, quite a bit simpler than pie!

I was riding my bike home and stumbled upon a health food store last Saturday.    It was as big as a Whole Foods, and the sign said “Sprouts: Farmer’s Market.”  It looked promising to say the least.  And oh boy, did it live up to that promise.  Whereas Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s have aisles and aisles and rows and rows of prepared, boxed, bagged foods, Sprouts was big and open and airy, full of produce, and-to my pleasant surprise- an incredible, large, comprehensive bulk section.  Bins after bins after bins of every sort of grain, bean, nut, dried fruit, or chocolate covered goody that I could possibly want.   I went a little wild in that bulk section.  I bought tiny bags of an absurd amount of fun looking ingredients.  Yes, I’ll have one scoop of this … and one scoop of that… and one scoop of that…   Ah, what  a wonderful world.   Now I have all sorts of fun ingredients and a notion to do a lot of baking!

And that’s how I found myself in possession of a bag of dried tart cherries.  Instantly my brain started racing.   What should I do with them?  What does a girl do with dried cherries anyway?  Granola? Muffins?  Cookies?   Hrmmm… What goes well with cherries?    Duh.    Almonds!  Chocolate?   Yes.  Hrm…. How about some oatmeal, too?   How about…. Almond Cherry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies?   Woah.  I’m a genius!    And I’m calling them Choc-A-Cherry Oatmeal Cookies!  *satisfied pat on the back*

Cookie? Yes, please.

So after some tinkering in the kitchen, I concocted an original recipe for Choc-A-Cherry Oatmeal Cookies, using 100% whole grains.  Whole wheat, whole oats… this cookie was no joke.   Now, just a warning– I threw in some unsweetened baking chocolate (the really expensive Scharffen Berger kind), because I love the stuff.   I love having that kick of dark bitter chocolate, sweetened by the surrounding pillow of golden brown sugary goodness, rounded out by a tart cherry and carried home with chewy oatmeal.

Whole wheat, whole oats, chocolate, cherries, almonds, flax... just so good.

My sister loved them.  She said they were her favorite thing I’ve made so far.   With all the whole grains and the unsweetened chocolate and nuts and cherries and all, I thought this made a really good breakfast cookie.

Breakfast of champions.

However, I also wanted to bring some cookies into work, and I realize not everyone is into super healthy whole wheat cookies.  So I went back into the kitchen and mixed up some slightly naughtier Choc-A-Cherry Oatmeal Cookies, this time using mostly unbleached all purpose flour and a whole cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of the unsweetened baking chocolate.

Chewy and beautiful.

Before I give you the recipe, I think we should take a few more looks at the cookies.  Don’t you agree?

Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool.

Mmmmmmmm.

Little beauties, all stacked up and ready to go.

I packed them into an old shortening tub to bring to work.  Aren’t I nice?  The whole wheat ones are going into my cookie jar and will be eaten for breakfast and snacks and treats.

One more look:

Love at first sight.

Ok, I’ll give you the recipe now!

Choc-A-Cherry Oatmeal Cookies (Breakfast version)

• 3/4 cup Earth Balance, softened.
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons flax meal
• 1/3 cup soymilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups rolled oats (not instant)
• 3/4 cup dried tart cherries
• 1/2 cup roasted almonds, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup unsweetened chocolate chunks (or more semisweet chocolate)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350˙F.
2. Cream together Earth Balance and sugar.  Mix in flax, soymilk, vanilla extract, and almond extract.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and oats.   Fold into wet mixture.  The dough will be stiff.  –At this point I ditched my spoon and used my hands to mix it together. — Carefully mix in cherries, almonds, chocolate chips, and chocolate chunks.
4. Roll into balls and press flat on ungreased baking sheet, 2″ apart.   Bake 8-12 minutes.
5. Try not to eat the whole tray.  I mean, seriously guys.   These are really good cookies.   My sister said they’re her favorite thing I’ve made.   Success!

Notes: I started with raw almonds, so I roasted them in the oven as it was preheating.  Then I threw them in food processor and gave it a few pulses.  Don’t process for too long because you don’t want your almonds to become almond meal;  if there are a few whole almonds left in the processor, that’s fine.  Also, you don’t need to go out and buy those silly bags of chocolate chunks. I just coarsely chopped up a couple ounces of my baking bar and threw the resulting chunks into the cookies.

And here is the recipe for the slightly less healthy version:

Choc-A-Cherry Oatmeal Cookies (naughty version)

• 3/4 cup Earth Balance, softened.
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup soy yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups rolled oats (not instant)
• 3/4 cup dried tart cherries
• 1/2 cup roasted almonds, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

As you can see, they’re not really too different…. but they’re delicious and wonderful and I love them. Follow the same instructions as the other recipe.

I hope you like them as much as I do!

I really need to work on my food naming skills.   Triple-C Cake?  Citrus Surprise Crumb Cake?   CranCitrus Crumb Cake?  I kind of like the last one.

Holey Cake!

Sometimes I start baking and I get a little carried away.   This cake was inspired by a combination of the Post Punk Kitchen’s latest drool-worthy crumb cake post and the fact that I walked into the café at work the other day and discovered whole wheat vegan cranberry crumb cake.  *happy sigh*   I still get a little giddy when I think about that cake.  It was sooo good!   So I knew that I, too, had to make a whole wheat cranberry crumb cake.   But I wanted to make it jam-swirl style, so whole cranberries were out, and cranberry sauce was in!

Cranberry Sauce Swirls

I made the cranberry sauce a million years ago for Thanksgiving, but it had the exact consistency of jam and, like jam, refused to go bad.   So I used it!   I’m sure the cake would also be good with a handful of whole cranberries instead, if that’s what you have on hand.  I wouldn’t recommend making cranberry sauce just so you can make cute little swirls in your cake.   But um, it’s totally delicious, so maybe you should?

Golden, moist, and citrusy!

So, my next act of ridiculousness was the decision to use an adaptation of my mother’s lemon pound cake recipe for the cake portion.  My favorite version of that cake is the orange pound cake… and oranges and cranberries sound sooo good together.  So I had my mind made up.   But, once I started to make the cake, I discovered that what I thought was a bag of oranges sitting next to the fridge… was a bag of grapefruits!   But I was on a cake mission and nothing could stop me.   Perhaps I couldn’t make it a fully orange cake, so I did a little farewell dance for the orange cake idea, and decided to go with a citrus cake –incorporating the one orange we had, a grapefruit, and some lemon juice.

zomg! CAKE.

My last act of insanity was that, when melting the Earth balance for the crumb topping, I decided to make this a grown-up cake, and browned the Earth Balance.  You just have to love browned butter.  Deep and nutty and all grown up, my crumb cake was ready to jump into a bundt pan and boogy into the oven.

Bundty Crumb Cake

So, I probably should have baked this in a normal square pan and put the crumbs on top … but what I did was instead I crumbled the crumbs into the bottom of a bundt pan, poured half the cake batter in, dolloped and swirled the cranberry sauce, and then poured the rest of the batter in.   The crumbs kind of pressed together in the bottom of the pan so when I inverted it, I had to loosen them up with a fork.   But, it looks beautiful so I’m glad I did it.

CranCitrus Crumb Cake

• 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup grapefruit juice
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons orange rind

• cranberry sauce

Crumb Topping:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup browned butter substitute (Earth Balance)

• Powdered sugar for dusting

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350˙F  and grease & flour either an 8×8 square cake pan or a bundt pan.
2. Prepare crumb topping.   Mix together all the crumb ingredients but the Earth Balance.  Flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Melt 1/2 cup Earth Balance in a small sauce pan.  Let cook until it becomes an amber brown color and has a nutty aroma.  You can find a how-to for browning butter here.   Let the browned butter cool slightly and then mix it into the crumb ingredients.  Mixture should hold together like dough.   Use your hands to crumble the dough into the bottom of the bundt pan.   If you’re baking in a normal square pan, do this step last and put crumbs on top of the cake.  The bundt pan needs it on the bottom since the cake will be inverted at the end.
3. Prepare the cake batter.   Mix together whole wheat flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.   Set aside.   If using fresh oranges and grapefruits, squeeze grapefruit juice into a measuring cup.   Add a tablespoon of lemon juice and 1/3 cup of vegetable oil to the juice mixture.  Zest an orange and a grapefruit to get two tablespoons of fresh rind and add it to the wet ingredients.   Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and fold in the wet ingredients.
4. Pour half the cake batter on top of the crumbs and dot it with heaping spoonfuls of cranberry sauce.  Swirl sauce into the batter and then top it off with the remainder of the cake batter.  (If not using a bundt pan, the cake batter should go on the bottom, then swirl in the cranberry sauce, then more cake batter, and then the crumb topping.)
5. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean.
6. Invert the bundt cake and dust with powdered sugar.

I think it’s super good served on a little bed of cranberry sauce, with a side of fresh grapefruit.  Part of this balanced breakfast!  Hah.   Well, at least I used whole wheat so it’s kind of healthy, right?

I forced my guy friends to come over and eat cake, since I didn’t want to deal with the whole thing by myself.  One boy only could stop for a minute because he was on his way to see his parents.  I sent him away with a whole tupperware full of cake.  Two minutes later I received the text:  ”OMG These aren’t gonna last the drive over…. amazing!”

So the official review is:  Two thumbs up for CranCitrus Crumb Cake!   Om nom nom!

The answer?  Yes.  Duh.

Lettuce be thankful...

I didn’t make these with soy ground beef… for many reasons.  For one, that’d be too easy wouldn’t it?   Secondly, those smart grounds can get pricey.  But most of all, I’ve been feeling off the processed fake meats recently.   So, I borrowed another page from the glorious Ms. Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and used lentils and mushrooms to give my lettuce wraps a hearty meaty feel.

Lettuce be grateful.

So, before I toss a recipe at you, I’m going to tell you something.  Are you paying attention?  Good.  So, I jumped into this project with lots of lentilly experience, but not the right kind of lentilly experience.  I mean, I’ve made an awful lot of dal and stews and lentil burgers, etc, etc.  However, I’d never cooked lentils to just hold their shape and texture… I’ve always been trying to break them down into a goopy delicious mess.  Plus, just coming off of oatmeal joy that morning, I thought, “Oh, why don’t I do one cup of lentils and two cups of water. That shouldn’t get too soupy.”   WRONG.   The lentils ended up being the texture of refried beans…. which is good to know.  If I ever want lentils à la refried beans, I know exactly what to do.  But that wasn’t what I was going for this time.  I wanted lentils cooked a la dente.   But that’s not what I got!    Anyway, what I’m trying to say is…  maybe you should try a 1:1 ratio instead of a 1:2 ratio.. unless you want your filling to be the texture of refried beans… then you know… 1:2 is the way to go.   Whatever floats your boat!

Lentil Lettuce Wraps

• 16 Boston Bibb or butter lettuce leaves (or any big fat lettuce leaves)
• 1 cup lentils
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup diced mushrooms
• vegetable oil
• 1/4 lb diced extra firm tofu (optional)
• pinch of turmeric (for the tofu)
• 1 large onion, chopped (optional)
• 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced (optional)
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• Asian chile pepper sauce (optional)
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce (or to taste)
• 1 carrot
• Hot Mustard sauce!  (optional)

Note: My sister does not eat onions or garlic so… there were none in my lettuce wraps.  I’m just hypothesizing that they’d be crazy delicious.     Also, I added tofu to my wraps because I like tofu and because I needed to add some texture since my lentils got so mushy!

Directions:

1. Rinse lentils.  In a medium sized pot, bring water to a boil and add lentils.  Cook until the lentils are tender and there is no more water in the pot. Set aside.
2. Sautée mushrooms in a small saucepan with just a little splash of vegetable oil. Once they start to get soft, mix them in with the lentils in the pot.   (If you’re adding onions and garlic, too… now would be the time to sautée those and then mix in with the lentils.  And while you’re at it, fry up some tofu with a pinch of turmeric until crispy and throw that in with the lentils, too!)
3. Mix in all the saucey and spicey stuff.  Taste often so you can adjust!  Yum.
4. Wash the lettuce leaves and set aside.
5. Dice or shred carrot.
6. Make mustard sauce!  If you happen to have mustard sauce in your fridge… lucky you!  I don’t have any such luxury, so I mixed together some yellow mustard and chili paste.   Worked like a charm!  Start with 1/3 cup yellow mustard and add hot stuff to it little by little until it’s just as hot as you like it.  Yum.
7. Serve lentil mixture on lettuce leaves, topped with carrot, with mustard sauce on the side!

Lentil Lettuce wraps are badass!

And that, my friends, is a wrap!

My constant obsessive blogging has slowed down since I’ve gotten a job!  Huzzah!   However, I’m not planning on disappearing altogether.   No sirree!  I’ve got lots of cookies and cakes and awesome things to make in my future, and so the blog lives on.

Speaking of cookies, I’ve had some requests for my pumpkin cookie recipe.

Photo by Carrie T

Mmmmm Cookie

Pumpkin cookies with penuche frosting.   Oh man, these cookies are so incredibly good.  Out of all the cookies, cakes, candies, pies, and pastries I make, I think these are the most loved.  They are the express favorites of most of my friends.  They may look a little funny, but trust me… they’re incredible.  Soft and lightly spiced, the cookie portion isn’t overly sweet, but perfectly complemented by the candy shell on top!  Also, I have a weird secret way of doing the penuche frosting that makes these extra good (I think).

Pumpkin Cookies

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vegan white sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/4 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
• 1/4 cup Earth Balance (or other butter substitute)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Optional: 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg and/or cloves and/or ginger

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, cream together sugars, shortening, and earth balance.  Mix in pumpkin and vanilla. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt (and optional spices); mix into the creamed mixture.
3. Drop dough by heaping spoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets.
4. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool on wire racks.

Cookie Notes:  The recipe originally called for 1/2 cup shortening, but it tastes better with Earth Balance… but keeps its shape better with shortening!  So, I do half shortening and half Earth Balance.  However, if you only have one or the other, don’t sweat it.  It’ll still be delicious.  Trust me.

Also, if you want the cookies to taste more like pumpkin pie, you can add the nutmeg, cloves, and ginger (or just use pumpkin pie spice).  I normally use only the cinnamon.

And don’t bother with making them perfect circular cookie shapes.  I think they’re best if they’re just dropped onto the sheet in funny shapes with little bits sticking up here and there.  Those little bits brown nicely and are so satisfying to bite off.

Also, cans of pumpkins have an obnoxious way of being just  like 1/4 a cup too much of pumpkin.  Sometimes I just throw in the extra pumpkin and it’s still good.  If you’re worried about it being too moist, just add a couple tablespoons of flour or something.

Penuche Frosting

• 1/2 cup Earth Balance
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup soymilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Optional: 1 Tablespoon Dark Rum
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Melt Earth Balance in a sauce pan and mix in brown sugar.  Add soymilk and vanilla, mixing thoroughly, and bring to a boil.  Boil and stir until mixture reaches soft ball stage (if you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can test by dropping little spoonfuls of mixture into cold water and seeing how much they thicken up).
2. Remove mixture from heat and beat in powdered sugar until there are no lumps and smooth consistency.  Spoon frosting while still warm onto the cookies.  If it starts to harden before you’re done frosting the cookies, just return to stovetop and melt it back down.

Penuche Notes: So what I do with penuche that is weird and different, is that I add the powdered sugar before the mixture reaches the soft ball stage and then I boil it a bit until it’s a thick caramel sauce, which I spoon onto the cookies.  The tops of the cookies soak up the sticky delicious sauce and are sooo good.   I normally have about half the mixture left and I cook it longer until it gets to the point where it’ll harden into a shell over the cookies (just like the earlier instructions), and I cover the sticky caramelly pumpkin cookies with the hardening penuche.  So what you end up with is soft cookie, sticky sauce, and hard shell.  So good.   But if I’m in a hurry, I just go straight to the penuche and skip the saucey way.

Also, adding a tablespoon of rum or two adds a really great flavor to the frosting.  Just make sure you boil long enough to get rid of that extra moisture… and to kill the alcohol if you’re worried about that sort of thing.

Tip: Sift your powdered sugar so you don’t end up with dumb lumps like in picture #2.

So, now that I’m over my cold, I’m once again back on the health food train.   As you may remember, I recently made some wheat-free low-sugar chocolate chunk cookies, which with the help of Heather Eats Almond Butter, I’m now calling, ChocoChunk Oaties.  ChocOaties?  ChocoChunkies?  Ok the jury is still out on that one.

Anyway, I wondered what would happen if I made a peanut butter version, and the result was wonderful.

Peanut Butter Oaties!

I’m calling these Peanut Butter Oaties.  The texture was a million times better than the originals and even better than the banana ones!   They held together.  They were chewy.  And they’re peanut butter… Need I say more?

I even made some with the unsweetened chocolate chunks.

Choco Peanut Butter Oaties

So the flavors were pretty good, but what I really wanted was a huge kick of straight up, non-diluted peanut butter flavor.

Problem solved:

Oh Em Gee.. mmm peanut buttery

Topped with a smear of peanut butter, it was hard to imagine how these could get much better.    Hard to imagine, but not impossible.

Chocolate Chickpea Spread

I took the chunk-less peanut butter versions, and smeared some of my chocolate chickpea spread on them.   Mmmm.  So good.

Only one way to make it better.

COOKIE SANDWICH

Organic peanut butter and chocolate chickpea spread, nestled between  two wheat free, low-sugar peanut butter cookies….  It was perfection.   Is there anything better than a cookie sandwich?  Cookiewich!

Peanut Butter Oaties

• 1 3/4 cups oat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt*
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 tablespoon agave
• 1 tablespoon granulated stevia
• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• 1 Tablespoon flax meal
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• (Optional) 2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

*Depending on whether or not you’re using salted peanut butter, you may way to adjust the salt.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F
2. Cream molasses, agave, stevia, peanut butter, flax, water, and vanilla together.
3. Mix together flour, baking soda, and salt.
4. Combine flour mixture and peanut butter mixture.
5. Chop unsweetened chocolate into small chunks.  Add to mixing bowl.
6. Drop batter onto ungreased baking sheet.  Push down to flatten the cookies with fork to make criss-cross design.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes.

So I’ve had a pretty bad cold for the past few days.   I’ve spent most of my days sleeping, blowing my nose, and drinking tea.  *sigh*  Boring!   And since I gave up TV for lent, and my brain did not feel particularly up to processing the French language (the only unread novels I have in the apartment are French), I wasn’t left with much to do.

Also, to make matter worse, when I’m sick I crave junk food.  Like mad.  Actually it’s not all junk… it’s just all carb-centric.  First I’ll crave spaghetti, then pancakes, then cookies, then peanut butter chocolate fudge, and then the next thing you know I’m elbow deep in donuts!

I’m not sure exactly how the craving came upon me… I was cruising the food blogs, staring at heavenly foods, sinful foods, purgatory foods, and all foods in between, when suddenly I wanted to make donuts.

Eep! Donuts!

I don’t know what happened!   One moment I was lying on my bed/couch, and the next moment I had my hands full of two different kinds of dough, 4 different toppings, 2 different fillings, and a pan of hot hot oil.

Powdered donuts:

Powdered donuts

Glazed donuts:

Glaaaaaaaze

Cinnamon sugar donuts:

Mmm cinnamon.

Jelly and Chocolate filled donuts:

Umm, I keep trying to take bites of my computer screen...

They were fricken incredible.  I made potato donuts– which may sound weird but are so so so so so good.   My mom used to make them when I was a kid…  and fortuitously, there was a box of instant mashed potatoes in the cupboard that was just dying to become donuts.  Ah, fortune was truly smiling upon me!

I recently learned that potato donuts are actually called “Spudnuts”!  How cute is that?  They’re seriously the best cake donut ever.  I mean, the problem with most cake donuts is that they always seem to be kind of dry or weird inside.  Just, not nearly as exciting as a yeast donut.  But the mashed potatoes in the batter create an amazing, moist center.  And they’re fast!   Because sometimes, you don’t want to wait a million years for your dough to rise.  Sometimes you want donuts NOW.   Spudnuts to the rescue!

Inside a potato donut:

SOOO GOOD

I made sooo many donuts.  And there was NO ONE to eat them!   I was all home alone, my friends were all MIA, and my sister was off galavanting about Berkeley or Marin or something.   I did my best to put a dent in the donut mountain, but I’m only one little girl and I couldn’t handle two dozen sugarry fried pillows of wonderful all by myself.

I was so sad!  I temporarily lost all hope in humanity.   What kind of world is this if I make two dozen AMAZING fresh donuts, and no one comes by to eat them?  And those donuts needed to be eaten right then and there!   In my opinion, donuts are not very good unless eaten immediately.   I was not going to let my friends eat my day old donuts and go “Ho hum.  They were OK for a vegan donut.”

No sirree!  I had a reputation to protect!  Two reputations!  My own reputation as a baker, pastry chef, and creator of all things delightful, and the reputation of veganism at large.  ’Cause, I’m sure you’ve heard it.  ”Oh, I don’t like vegan cookies.  I had one once and it was kind of weird.”    asdfasldkjfa;dlkgj!!!  Rawr!   That sort of thing always gets me all twisted up and huffy puffy and threatening to bake cookies to PROVE THEM WRONG.   I’m sorry if the one cookie you had once was not a good cookie.  But, I promise you, there are lots of amazing, delicious, incredible vegan treats out in the world.  You just have to find someone who can make them well.

Anyway, I had the most massive amount of day old donuts in the morning.   And not much of an idea of what to do with them.   GAH!

Eep! DAY OLD DONUTS.

I couldn’t eat them all by myself… I couldn’t let my friends eat them… I had no desire to freeze and reheat them… what on Earth was I going to do?  I really didn’t want to throw them away… Oh, but I might have to!

Then, it dawned on me!  Duh!

Eureka!

Can you guess what’s happening here?

Donuts in a pan!

Donut bread pudding!  My faith in humanity was restored.  Surely the Universe had engineered the whole unfortunate Donut Debacle just to lead to this very breakthrough.  Donut Bread Pudding.  Donut Pudding?  Yes.  Donut Pudding.     I mean, donuts by themselves are delicious and awesome, obviously.  But donut pudding?  That’s a whole new world.

So I did what any girl would do.  I whipped up the wet custardy part of the pudding, poured it over the donuts, and threw it in the oven.  I called over a few boys and had them watch while I sliced up an apple, sauteed it in some non-hydrogenated buttery margarine, threw in a teaspoon of brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg… and then *glug glug glug* RUM!  Then, I lit it on fire.   I need a cooking show.  Or at least someone to take pictures of me while I do crazy things like light my apples on fire.  Woosh!  Flames!   They were so high!  And awesome.  And my guy friends were completely captivated and impressed.

And, to top the whole thing off?   Caramel Rum Sauce.   I don’t mess around folks.  If I’m going to make an unhealthy fatty sugarry bad-for-you dessert, I go all the way.

My Masterpiece

The non-vegan boys were so knocked out they couldn’t even speak while they ate.  They just kept laughing, shaking their heads in disbelief, taking deep breaths, and staring at me with wide eyes.  Epic Win.

Donut pudding, apples, and rum sauce. Dizamn!

I told them I had considered tossing the whole thing out, and boy #2 told me that would have been a crime against humanity.  Hehe!

I don’t necessarily recommend frying up two dozen donuts from scratch just to make the donut pudding, but if you happen to have a massive load of day old donuts on hand?  Go for it.

Recipes after the jump!

(more…)