Wheat-Free, Sugar-Free Vegan Carob Muffins

Note: these are tagged gluten-free but are not actually gluten-free, as they contain spelt. To make them gluten-free, substituting an equivalent amount of gluten-free all-purpose flour would likely suffice.

Don't you just loved fresh baked goods in the morning? Lately, every day's begun with the same protein smoothie, but today, my body hit a wall and demanded something more. It could be the tremendous amount of work I'm doing; last night I stayed up until one thirty working on an illustration for a magazine (!!) that I have to put the finishing touches on today. This morning, I woke up at eight to finish a paper and brainstorm ideas for my next 3D project (we're fusing organic forms with things traditionally worn on the head or neck, and we have to make it out of paper!). Plus, I have a giant, elaborate drawing to do and a short story to write -- all of which need to be finished by early next week! (Except the paper and the magazine drawing; those are due today.) I think muffins entered the scene because I either need the extra fuel, or I need the extra feeling of reward. Either way, I thought they were so worth it that forty minutes of my morning have already disappeared. Yikes!

So, I won't proceed with over-adulating descriptions of what they taste like or how to serve them because I really need to work! Plus, they're just carob muffins. They're high-fiber, and they're sweetened with stevia. There's not much more I can say. HOWEVER, I did design the recipe to be sort of single-serving - as in, it only makes four. If you want more, double or triple the recipe, but for me, four is plenty because I don't want to eat carob muffins clear through next week. (Of course I - or you - could always freeze any extras...) If you're a wizard in the kitchen, I think hiding nut butter in the middle of these - especially peanut or cashew-macademia butter - would be sublime. Anyway, give these a whirl one morning when you need that extra "oompf" in your gut to get you through the day.

WHEAT FREE, SUGAR FREE VEGAN CAROB MUFFINS
+ 1/2 c spelt
+ 1/4 c oat bran
+ 1/8 c carob powder
+ 1 1/2 t baking powder
+ 1/2 t powdered stevia*
+ dash of salt
+ 1 t vanilla
+ 3 T oil (coconut would be amazing!)
+ 1/2 c water

* If you want to use sugar, 1/4 - 1/3 c would probably suffice.

01. Preheat the oven to 350º. Throw the dry ingredients in a bowl, and give them a quick stir with a fork so they're evenly distributed and well combined.

02. Add the wet. Stir! Stir! (With your fork - to prevent lumps. Stop stirring when there are no lumps. Remember, spelt is a cousin of flour, so gluten can still form from over-stirring. These aren't light muffins by any stretch, so don't add to that with vigorous shoulder work.)

03. Grease up or line four of the cups in a muffin tin, then fill them three-quarters of the way full. Shove the muffin tin in the oven and wait 25 - 30 minutes before pulling the muffins, cooling them, and EATING THEM!!!

04. Yes, it's just that simple.



Again - this recipe makes four servings.

Guerrilla Cooking Presents Mega-Healthy Chocolate Muffins

This is a very attractive montage of me eating these muffins with a pureed frozen banana in the middle. I stuck it in the freezer for a little bit, then savored it like an ice cream sandwich. Exquisite.

Holy cannoli, two posts in two days? I know, I can hardly believe it myself! One of them was drawn from the bank of posts I've started so I can withdraw content on a moment's notice. (What a planner I'm becoming, right?) However, I came up with this recipe that I was so excited about, I just couldn't resist a second post.

You may be wondering why recipes have been a little few and far between lately. (I think I saw a few tumble weeds roll past the food tags a couple days ago...) If you recall, I was having a bit of a dry spell over the summer. School keeps me busy, too, but I never mentioned that, yes, I chose to be on the meal plan. So basically, I haven't been cooking much of anything that's new or interesting for the last six months, which leaves me with a whole lot less food to write about. That said, I'm living in an apartment-style dorm, so I still have a kitchen. And the meal plan kind of sucks, so what I like to do is squirrel away food from the cafeteria and make it into better food when I get home. It's kind of loads of fun (though the results are never quite good enough to brag about on here), and it challenges me to get really creative. I call it guerrilla cooking, and it's how I came up with these muffins.

Now, if you've been following this blog for a while, you know - KNOW - that I love to bake. Specifically, I love to bake sweets. Obviously, I'm vegan, I'm straight edge, and I like to work out; so as far as "negative" lifestyle choices go, this one's pretty tame. And yet, it irks me. For one thing, I've struggled with my weight since I was a little, little kid - something I still struggle to accept/maintain, and sweets definitely complicate this. For another, an excess of sweets have ill implications comparable to a lot of vices, so it bothers me that I can feel so strong in the face of some things yet so weak in the face of this one. I've tried to figure out ways to manage this little vice of mine. I've tried the extreme approach, swearing off refined flour, turning my nose at table sugar, dusting my hands of HFCS (actually, I pretty much don't eat that); somehow, complete abstinence always fails in this department. Moderation works pretty alright, but even then, sometimes I go a little overboard. (Oh god, brownies, you will be the death of me..!) The trick, I've always suspected, is striking a strong balance between decadence and nutrition, but the how of it has always eluded me. I've dabbled in gluten- and sugar-free baking, but it's always tended a little further towards the sweets side than I was hoping. At least, that was the case... until now!!

I'll admit it: these taste "healthy." They're rich, they're moist, they're chocolate-y - but you're not going to bring these to a potluck and pass them off as your average chocolate muffin (which I think most people call a "cupcake"...). No, these are the kind of muffins you enjoy with adventurous connoisseurs and people passionate about nutrition. Because seriously, they pack a hell of a nutritional punch, and you can eat several without anticipating any sugar crash. Most importantly, though, they honestly taste GOOD, and any lingering "health food" flavor is easily supplanted by what a literal treat this is for your body. (Seriously, eat one, and your body will say, "Wee! Vitamins!") Over the course of the day, I ate five because they were so sweet and tasty, I couldn't help myself. Eating that much of any fresh-baked treat is not uncommon for me, but I didn't feel as bad about it as I normally would because I got almost 40% of my RDA of calcium and just 300 calories. Plus, I actually felt satiated afterward, and my energy levels didn't spiral from all the sugar. (Duh, because there isn't any.) I'm proud of this recipe and have high hopes for future baking of the sugar-free variety...


For the record, these actually have more vitamins and minerals than this indicates because my nutrition calculator doesn't account for the vitamins and minerals in whole wheat flour.

MEGA-HEALTHY CHOCOLATE MUFFINS
+ 1 c whole wheat flour
+ 1/4 c cocoa powder*
+ 1 T baking powder
+ 1/4 t salt
+ 1/4 - 1/2 t stevia (OPTIONAL)

+ 1/2 c raisins
+ 1.5 c water
+ 1/2 c sliced beets, boiled or canned
+ 1/2 c unsweetened apple sauce
+ 1/2 t apple cider vinegar
+ 1 t vanilla*

* I'm sure this would work with carob, too.
** Almond extract would work well, too, and in fact might be better. Almond pairs well with chocolate, making chocolate's flavor bolder and deeper - never a bad thing when you're trying to make "health food" seem decadent.


01. Preheat the oven to 350. Place the raisins in the water, and let soak for 2 - 3 hours or overnight.

02. In a bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flour through salt/stevia). Place the wet ingredients (beets through vanilla) in a blender or food processor and puree. Add the raisins and their water, and continue to process.

03. Gently combine the wet with the dry. The batter will be a little thicker than what you might expect - i.e. not that "thin but viscous" texture typical of muffin batter, more full-bodied and scoopable. Don't worry about it.

04. Fill a well-greased or paper-lined muffin tin all the way to the top with batter, smoothing out any little dips or swirls in your muffins. Then put the tray in the oven and bake for 20 - 25 minutes, or until done.

05. LET THEM COOL COMPLETELY BEFORE DIGGING IN! Because they're fat free, their texture isn't quite the same as their fat-loaded counterparts. And just as regular muffins (or cookies or any other baked good...) aren't quite "set" when they come out of the oven - well, that's double-y true of these guys. Even though a toothpick will come out clean when they're ready, their texture will still seem a little mush-y. If you let them cool completely, though, you're in a whole new ball game.

07. Enjoy with your best xvx buddies - perhaps with some almond butter and soymilk?









EDITED TO ADD: After re-making these a few times, I've discovered they are not very good the day of. Best to eat them after sitting on the counter overnight or after a few days in the freezer. Something about the flavors marrying or - gosh, I don't know; it just improves the texture and taste. Otherwise, these are a little strange.

Books with Biscotti

Yesterday, I went to my local library's annual book sale. Embarrassingly, I'd never gone before because I'd always figured, some libraries ain't no Barnes and Noble, so if THEY don't want the books anymore, the books can't be all that great. Thankfully, I've matured enough to appreciate being from a city with one of the best libraries in the country. Being the best means constantly having to update and rotate inventory, so I wasn't walking into a refuse pile, I was walking into a GOLDMINE! I was worried that, being the second-to-last day of their week-long sale, all the good books would be gone, but it was half price day, I didn't have any fancy plans, no harm in taking a peek.

Well, I made out like a bandit. I got all of this for under fifteen dollars:

+ Elizabeth Wurtzel, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (self explanatory)
+ Caroline Knapp, Appetites: Why Women Want (anorexia memoir)
+ Tim & Phyllis MikWright, Hey, Girl! (vintage photos; funny captions)
+ Marjane Satrapi, Chicken with Plums (one of my minors is sequential art)
+ Alex & Hilary Heminway, Picnics (xvxparty research)
+ Martha Stewart, Pies and Tarts (BIBLE!)
+ Bon Appetit, Christmas Season (confession: I love Christmas)*
+ My Drinking Life (audio book; alcohol memoir; referenced in current reading: Love on the Rocks)
+ About Schmidt (DVD; Jack Nicholson struggling with aging... again; great scene with Kathy Bates in a hot tub)
+ Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (DVD; catholic school, sequential art, coming of age, tigers)
+ Art School Confidential (DVD; too true art school parody with John Malkovich)
+ TOP SECRET DVD FOR FRIEND!!!!

I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in my pile of fresh acquisitions flitting from book to book and flurrying through pages. I'm especially stoked on my two new cookbooks because, while neither has a single vegan recipe to boast, I think omni cookbooks are just as valid references. Usually, I get flavor combination ideas or tips on assembling stuff from them. I mean, the next pie I make is going to look sick as hell thanks to that corporate-climbing craftster Martha. And hey, my Bon Appetit book inspired me to make cinnamon biscotti with carob ganache.

Cinnamon and carob both have a sweet but earthy quality to them, so I thought they'd make a perfect pair. Plus, I ate a carob-coated rice cream sandwich at the conclusion of finals, which reminded me that carob is awesome and I need to employ it more. For the biscotti, I essentially used the Veganomicon recipe (no vegan biscotti recipe even compares), but for the ganache, I decided to try something I'd just noticed on my cocoa container. Did you know that you can substitute three tablespoons cocoa plus a tablespoon of oil for each ounce of melted chocolate a recipe calls for? HOW HAVE I BEEN LIVING IN THE DARK ON THIS??! It was with this in mind that I attempted my frosting, and oh, my success was sweet:


CINNAMON BISCOTTI WITH CAROB GANACHE
+ 2 T flax seeds
+ 1/3 c non-dairy milk
+ 3/4 c sugar
+ 1/2 c oil
+ 1 t vanilla
+ 1 2/3 c flour
+ 2 T cornstarch
+ 2 t baking powder
+ 1 1/2 t cinnamon
+ 1/2 t salt

+ 1 T Earth Balance
+ 3 T carob
+ 1/2 - 1 T sugar
+ 1/4 - 1/2 c non-dairy milk or creamer

01. Preheat your oven to 350˚. Using a blender or coffee grinder, grind your flaxseeds into a fine powder. Transfer your flax to a bowl, and add the "milk." Whisk vigorously until a creamy paste forms (about thirty seconds). (Note: if you used a blender, just leave the flax in there, add the "milk, and blend. The paste will be harder to remove, but it will be REALLY paste-y and make you feel like you didn't get the blender dirty in vain.) Then add your sugar, oil, and vanilla.

02. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Just toss 'em all in there, and stir a few times with a fork. If you've been following this blog, you'll know that this is an important step in evenly distributing flavor and "activating agents," ensuring all your little biscotti get created equal. Slowly add these dry ingredients to your wet ingredients, stirring as you add, and continue stirring until you get a sort of firm, uniform dough.

03. Grease up a baking sheet, and form the dough into a long rectangle - about 12" x 4". I find a few quick, gentle rolls with a rolling pin helps get my biscotti even, but the more you make biscotti, the more you'll develop your own methodology for gettin' 'em purdy. Then pop those suckers in the oven, and bake for twenty-eight minutes. (Yeah, twenty-eight.)

04. When the biscotti are done, remove them from the oven, and let them stand for a minute. Now, here's where I diverge from the Veganomicon recipe. In the V-con recipe (and most biscotti recipes in general), it instructs you to let the biscotti cool completely before cutting them, but I always - ALWAYS - break a bunch of cookies and make a huge mess that way. Instead, I let them cool so they're not hot to the touch (three or five minutes), and then I get a long, heavy-duty, all-purpose kitchen knife (a chef's knife or a big santoku is good) and make quick, even cuts about a half-inch apart from one another down my biscotti log. So essentially, I cut the cookies right then and there, but I'm taking advantage of their softened state. The motion of the knife is really important: the cookies are still soft from the oven, so if you saw them, they'll crumble and break. However, a quick, slicing motion produces clean edges and even cookies; as long as your knife's sharp and your cut's even, there should be no broken, crumble-y cookies but instead beautiful, picturesque ones. Then I let the cookies cool, which takes about half an hour.

05. When you come back to the kitchen, turn your oven up to 375˚. Flip each biscotti on its side, then pop them back in the oven to bake for another twelve to fifteen minutes. After you've made biscotti a few times, you'll get a really good feel for how long they need to be in the oven the second time to achieve your desired crispness. Let the biscotti cool before tackling your ganache.

06. Now, the ganache: put a small sauce pan on medium heat, and throw in all your ingredients. The EB will take a second to melt, but start whisking immediately anyway because you need that carob and sugar properly dissolved in your "milk." (Pro tip: I always use vanilla soymilk when making ganache because it adds depth to the flavor. If you don't have any vanilla "milk," just add a splash of vanilla extract.) Once everything is incorporated, raise the temperature a little until the mixture comes to a boil, then remove it from the heat. Act fast and dip each cooled biscotti in the ganache mixture (or spoon ganache over the top or whatever). The ganache needs to stay fairly warm so it'll set and look all glossy and uniform on your cookies. If it cools too much, it will look grain-y and uneven. Also, supposing you want to do something fancy like dip the tip of your biscotti in ganache rather than the top or you want fancy little ganache drizzles or something - put your biscotti on some wax parchment paper. It makes clean-up easy, and you don't have to worry about your biscotti sticking as the ganache sets. When everything is said and done, grab a cookie, sit back, relax, and enjoy. Might I recommend some good reading and a cup of Early Grey? Early Grey is sort of spicy-sweet and earthy like these biscotti, so it really complements them.




This recipe makes around eighteen delicious little cookie monsters.

* Is it just me, or do I reveal more weird quirks and interests every time I update?