Gooey Caramel Pecan Cupcakes

It never rains in Arizona, ever. Those of us living in the desert pray for rain. We practically shout at the top of our lungs and perform intricate dances to bring forth tiny droplets of heaven to quench our parched landscape. The land dwellers of the southwest must have been extra good this year because it has been raining consistently for the last 4 days in our arid state. What is a bike riding girl to do? I could go outside and get soaked to the bone or stay inside bake up some delicious cupcakes and curl up to a great book. Since I finished all 1000 plus pages of "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace I really only had one thing I could do, bake more cupcakes! I used the Basic Chocolate Cupcake recipe from VCTOTW with the exception of adding an avocado and omitting the canola oil and I also cut the sugar by 1/4 a cup and ended with a rich chocolaty but not overly sweet cake. It was delicious! I used a chocolate butter cream frosting and drizzled caramel sauce on top. The caramel sauce recipe I got from veganicecream.blogspot. It is quite tasty but a bit too sweet for my tastes; I think next time I will make the caramel sauce with agave nectar. Also I used a coconut milk from So Delicious in both the cake recipe and the caramel sauce and the flavors were complex and rich. All and all I ended up with a fluffy, moist and sinful cake. I am definitely going to bake these again, and I will not be waiting for another rainy day to do so.

Chocolate G'Morning Muffins

Yesterday afternoon Tim and I attended a New Year's Day brunch hosted by our dear friends Bonnie and Tim. It was a pot-luck brunch and since the vegan waffles were taken care of by the wonderful Alison and the soy chorizo provided for I opted for bringing homemade bagels and muffins. The bagels were extremely fun to make and seeing how it was my first time ever making a bagel I was overly pleased with the end results. Now, I did use a recipe on this first bagel attempt and it has opened the door for more vegan bagel recipes to follow. The recipe I used was from my new favorite book 500 Vegan Recipes. The recipe was for pumpkin bagels and a stated in a previous post, I love pumpkin, so naturally this was a recipe I could not resist. I did add organic cranberries to the bagels and I thought they turned out marvelous, as did many of the brunch attendees.

The muffins were a last minute addition when I realized there were not nearly enough bagels to feed the large amount of friends Bonnie and Tim have. I wanted a healthy and light muffin that still tasted fattening. The end result was my Chocolate G'Morning Muffins



Chocolate G'Morning Muffins

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 cup rice milk
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 T. canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Topping
2 T. oats
2 T. turbinado sugar

Pre-heat over to 350 degrees

Combine flour, oats, cocoa powder,baking soda, baking powder and salt. In separate bowl mix rice milk, applesauce, sugar, canola oil, vanilla extract and almond extract. Add dry ingredients to wet and combine until thick mixture forms. Pour into a 12 count greased or paper lined muffin pan. Sprinkle topping on each muffin and bake 20-25 minutes.


Pumpkin Cranberry Bagels

bagel dough


boiling dough



pre-oven


toasted and ready to eat

Focaccia Bread

Oh, the perils of cooking a Christmas meal, so much to do, so many pallets to appeal to and so much to clean up after! I was on the verge of skipping the Christmas meal altogether until on Christmas Eve my sister said she would like to eat a vegan meal instead of the traditional turkey and ham my grandparents cook. She is new to the realm of vegetarianism and veganism and has really been rethinking her eating habits. Since I am always overly pleased to feed people vegan food and watch as their pre-conceived notions of the vegan diet melt away with their first delicious bite, I agreed to host dinner at my place. The only problem with whipping together a last minute Christmas meal was we had not gone grocery shopping and nothing was open!

After pacing around the house and wearing a circle shaped hole into my floor's carpet, I had exactly one idea. We need bread! Everyone eats bread on holidays, right? I don't know if that is necessarily true, but for the sake my sanity, I decided it was so. I felt very lucky that just five minutes beforehand I had unwrapped my present from Tim and had received the Chicago Diner Cookbook, and right in the first few pages was an easy and tasty focaccia bread recipe. I was all over that recipe in a heartbeat.





The rest of the meal came easy after that, chickpea cutlets from the Veganomicon, some delicious colorful chard, curried peas and carrots, rosemary mashed potatoes and gravy and an easy mousse for dinner. My sister was pleased, I was pleased and most of all we were stuffed! Although I am a ridiculously obsessive planner, I do enjoy the occasional last-minute meal.


Chocolate Peppermint Mousse on top of White Chocolate Macadamia Pudding