Cranberry Muffins!!!

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I’m writing this post in whisper-mode. That has nothing to do with Mr Gnoe sleeping late this Saturday morning. I’m just embarrassed to confess that with the dawn of February, I still had some ‘fresh’ cranberries left over from… Christmas. Oops!

So I felt a jolt when I stumbled upon the cranberry muffins Uniflame had baked. Just perfect! Except.. they weren’t vegan. But now that I’ve been ExtraVeganza for more than a year, it’s about time I took on a challenging recipe to veganize. So I went back to the original Dutch recipe on Yummy in my Tummy and got to work.

What do you know? I was done in a jiffy! :) [drumroll..] Here’s the result!

These muffins are awesome! Light, sweet -but not too much- and with a sour ‘pang’ each time you bite a cranberry. So I’m MEGA proud of myself — and future veganizing projects seem less daunting! #happy :)

Now I’m rather eager to share the recipe with you all!

Vegan cranberry muffins

Makes about 16 cakes.

Ingredients

• 150 gr fresh cranberries (washed)
• 265 gr all purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 160 gr demerara sugar (cane) sugar
• 240 ml (1 cup) vanilla soy milk
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) soy yoghurt
• 85 gr vegan butter or margarine (I use Provamel Bio Soya Cook & Spread)*
• zest of 1 organic orange
• pinch of salt
• optional: powdered (confectioners) sugar

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 200 °C ().
2. Grease a muffin tin or fill either silicon or disposable cupcake liners.
3. In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Whisk well.
4. Add orange zest.
5. Melt the butter.
6. Combine the soy milk and yoghurt in another bowl or measuring cup, add the melted butter and stir well.
7. Add the wet to the dry mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until batter is just mixed.
8. Spoon batter in muffin pan/cupcake liners. (You can also use a piping bag or sturdy plastic bag with a corner cut of but I find this too much trouble.)
9. Bake the muffins about 20 minutes in the oven; they should be golden and when you pierce them with a skewer it should come out dry.
   Mine took 23 minutes but it depends on your oven.
10. Let the cakes cool down in the tin for 5 minutes, then take them out and let cool further on a rack.
11. If you wish you can sprinkle the muffins with powdered sugar after they have cooled down completely. I didn’t find this necessary taste wise.

Enjoy! :)

Can you freeze these muffins?
Although these muffins are best eaten on the same or next day, they stay pretty good for a while longer. It’s just that the top gets a little sticky after two days, but you can hide fix this with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.
After freezing they still taste very good, but again the top gets sticky and the texture less fluffy: a little drier and more compact. So they’re fine, but not their original awesomeness. ;)

With all the exclamation marks in this post I guess I left the quiet-modus very quickly. :) Well, that just shows you my enthusiasm about these muffins! So I hope you’ll be trying them someday too. :)

Now Mr Gnoe has woken up and it’s time to get the day started — maybe do some more baking this weekend? ;)

– – – – –

Part of the February Sweet Luv event on Zesty Palette

& Zesty Palette’s ongoing Bake Fest #4 hosted by Tomato Blues

* I’m not a shareholder of Provamel! ;) I’ve just had great experience with their products. You can use any plant-based butter but if it’s got vitamin D3 added (which it often does), it’s not vegan!

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Belated B-day Bento (#134)

Last week we spent my birthday in the cinema watching Oscar nominated movies all day long. A perfect way of celebrating as far as I’m concerned, but of course it’s fun to have some family over (and get presents!) too. So I had a belated B-day party on Sunday and some leftover yumminess ended up in tomorrow’s (Tuesday) bento.

Right container

• The Adirondack Chick’s ‘Unstuffed Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers‘: brown rice with tomato, green peppers and zucchini (really good recipe!)
• marinated mushrooms (cremini & namelo)
• radish flowers
• parsley olives on a skewer
• garlic olives on a skewer
• lettuce lining
• basil, courgette and carrot details

Front container

• marinated grilled courgette
• raw vegetables: orange pepper, cauliflower, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, corn salad & rocket
• store-bought baba ganoush (really wanted to bring some of my homemade creamy hummus but ran out of it at the last minute)
• fried tofu
• mixed nuts

On the side

• 1/2 apple
• 1/2 Poire Williams

The gorgeous tulips were a present from my mother-in-law. Yep, the in-laws are awesome. :) My sister-in-law gave me my very first vegan cookbook for a present: La Dolce Vegan! by Sarah Kramer. And she didn’t even know I was looking for a cookery book to suit my new eating habits! She’s also the one who gave me the World Food Café cookbook that I recently raved about. So you may expect another review somewhere along the line. ;)

And finally — no birthday without cake! Newbie vegan or not. Here’s what I’ll be treating my colleagues to: vegan Brownies & Spicy Applesauce Cake with Lemon Frosting. YUM!

 

The Last (CSA vegetables week 51, 2010)

Our third season of CSA has come to a closing. Now we’ll need to decide on which veggies to buy all by ourselves again… Not an easy task! #lazybums

• purslane
• leek
• thyme
• red cabbage
• choggia beets
• apples
• variety of onions: shallot, red and white

When I got beets last time I made Nigel Slater’s Beetroot Seeds Cake and it was goooood!

Clicking on the picture will bring you to Flickr, where I’ve put up the link to the on-line recipe and some adaptations I made.

Yesterday was another Meatless Monday (Plantaardig Maandag) and supposed to be December’s #twitterfoodparty about squash, so I made a vegan Indian curry with basmati rice and (prefab) mango chutney with last week’s hokkaido pumpkin. The picture didn’t turn out too great but it tasted better than it looks. ;) Anyway, the food party got postponed due to too many ‘twabsentees‘…! If you want to join in, just make something with squash on January 10th, use the hashtag and tweet a picture!

So, no more CSA (b)log posts until the first week of May 2011. Some of you might think that a good thing… But hopefully not all???

October Harvest

These gorgeous chillies did not come from our CSA distributor Amelishof, but I harvested them myself — on our balcony! You might remember I swapped a head of endive for a couple of red hot pepper saplings in May. That was a good deal! I throw these buggers in almost any dish, but they keep on coming. I’m thinking of making sambal… :)

And here’s the picture of this week’s CSA loot.

• red bell pepper
• hokkaido pumpkin
• chicory (curly leaf endive or frisée)
• red leaf lettuce
• carrots
• shallots (yay!)

Menu plan with these (& last week’s) vegetables

• Courgette omelet with fresh basil, pasta salade with pesto and tomatoes
  [Wednesday] New recipe from ‘Vega Gerechten’ cookbook.
• Roasted beet salad, cabbage dish with leek & mustard seeds, potato mash
  Have made these recipes from ‘Vega Gerechten’ cookbook before.
• Chinese take-away [Saturday: read-a-thon]
• Indian night: Gujarati carrot salad with fresh mint, lime and mustard seeds, basmati rice, Diu corn curry
  Trying out new recipes from World Food Café Global Vegetarian Cooking.
• Endive-potato mash with blue cheese & cashews
  Easy all-time favourite.
• Basil spaghetti with sauce of soy cream, mushrooms, leek, sun-dried tomatoes, bell pepper & pinenuts, accompanied by tomato-rocket salad.
  Will just make it up while cooking.
• And… (drum roll) carrot cake!!! I had it for a treat during the read-a-thon and it was Very Good. The recipe came from a magazine cut-out I had been wanting to try — hope to post it soon!

I have nothing planned yet for my pie pumpkin. That’s because I want to make something special out of it for the Kookgrrls’ October theme! During the read-a-thon someone mentioned pumpkin pancakes… Yum! And tanabata from In Spring it is the Dawn was eating pumpkin bagels for breakfast.

I did have a really nice Halloween cookies recipe but strangely enough it has disappeared from earth (& cyberspace). Sigh. Maybe one of the other grrls will put up a pumpkin recipe that I can try! :)

Or do you have a nice suggestion for a veggie pumpkin recipe?

OMG it’s Monday Bento (#47)

’s Maandags valt het niet mee om op te staan en ik had dus niet veel tijd voor mijn bento. Maarrrr ik had er tenminste eentje mee! Met daarin:

• gele kerstomaatjes
• tuinkers en basilicum
• sterretjes van radijs
• geblancheerde haricots verts (onder de sterretjes)
• blokjes Passendale kaas (een restje van de Brideshead Revisited loekavond)
• een citroencakeje (lemon cupcake, ook over van het loekavondje)
• en een appel

Daar kwam ik de dag wel mee door :) Gelukkig maar, want ik fietste na mijn werk nog ‘even’ naar Ughelen voor een van de waypoints van de Apeldoornse Oorlogsmonumenten #2 geocache… En toch was ik op tijd thuis voor de dodenherdenking!

Ik zal het recept voor citroencake(jes) eens posten want het is een van mijn favorieten! En heel eenvoudig :))

Mmmmm matcha cake!

Eindelijk heb ik mijn eerste matcha-experiment uitgevoerd! Ik wilde al heel lang iets bakken met deze groene poederthee (die eigenlijk is bedoeld voor Japanse theeceremonies), maar eerst moest ik het ergens zien te scoren en daarna een goede gelegenheid vinden om ermee aan de slag te gaan. Die deed zich voor bij onze laatste Twin Peaks Marathon sessie! Voor onze eerste bijeenkomst van 2 jaar geleden experimenteerden we met de originele Twin Peaks Cherry Pie waarvoor we Crisco nodig hadden en speciale zure kersen, zodat dit een toepasselijk moment leek voor een cake met bittere groene thee en zoete witte chocolade. Loopt het water u al in de mond? :) De foto bewijst dat het bakexperiment lukte en neem maar van mij aan dat-ie ook lekker was :) Dank dus aan La Tartine Gourmande voor het recept.

Wat zal ik volgende keer eens proberen te maken met mijn groene poederthee? Wie het weet mag het zeggen! En er kan ook worden nagedacht over een nieuw filmproject :)