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I know; nothing is as awesome as George Clooney. (Well, at least according to George Clooney). But this is still one heck of a stud muffin, nonetheless! (*groan*).
So, are you ready for the Oscars?!
As I’ve been remarking on twitter, I’m not sure why I’m so geared up to watch the glitz-and-glamor, botox-and-restalyn, glistening parade of sartorial faux-pas yet again this year, considering (a) I’ve seen but one of the movies; (b) the hosts, while both appealing in their own ways, are really a generation removed from most of the viewing audience; (c) this year’s show, with its surfeit of charity-ops for camera-hungry celebs and its plethora of cause-specific ribbons, promises to offer a massive ego-massage positively onanistic in its over-the-top, only-as-they-can-do-it-in-Hollywood, self-indulgence.
But hey–I might see George Clooney! And Meryl will be there! And maybe even Oprah! And gowns! And a dance number! And Joan Rivers–!!
Oops, no Joan Rivers this year (at least, not in Toronto). Boo hoo! To me, her biting commentary and snarky asides were mostly what made watching the Oscars worthwhile (that, and the squirm-inducing speeches, of course). Well, at least I saw La Joan the other night at her live performance. (For those of you who asked, she was tremendous. Hilarious. Gut-splittingly funny. A force of nature, indeed! And the worst gutter mouth of anyone I’ve ever heard, regardless of age. Nice to know some things don’t change as you get older!)
I’ve always wanted to have one of those Oscar-night parties with friends, at which you all eat themed foods and drink themed alcoholic beverages. Instead, tonight I’ll be watching the show while continuing to work on my puzzle, with the HH gleefully adding his ascerbic commentary from the sidelines. Not a fan of the whole Hollywood-worship vibe, the HH would rather read a book on nuclear physics. For real.
Still, gotta give the guy credit for staying in the same room and keeping me company. And who says couples can’t have different interests? When we were first together, I might have wished that my honey and I would do everything together, but I’ve since realized it’s no fun, for instance, sitting in a movie theater watching The Notebook and bawling your eyes out while your partner silently mocks you for your melodrama. Much better to go with a girlfriend, and let her silently mock you.
And so, in the spirit of each doing her or his own thing, I bring you these Awesomeness Muffins, made especially for the HH to enjoy on his own. Since he’s not on the ACD, and since I would much rather he bring a homemade muffin than a Tim Horton’s muffin to work for breakfast each day, I was happy to do so. And they’ll make a great snack for the guy while he reads that physics text.
The recipe is adapted from the talented Kris Holechek’s 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. The original muffins, called “Leslie’s Awesomeness Muffins” (see? some things really are better with your girlfriends) featured a combination of banana, dates, and nuts. I took the mix a step further–perhaps feeling a bit of the over-the-top Hollywood influence this weekend–and added butterscotch chips, which I sourced from a local supermarket and have been dying to use. The result was a moist, light muffin packed with a health-promoting punch and just a smidge of decadence. Somehow, I don’t think the Oscars will offer the same restraint this evening.
Awesomeness Muffins (ACD maintenance only)
adapted from 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes
Light, moist, and with very little added sweetener. You can certainly substitute chocolate for the butterscotch, but the butterscotch chips add a lovely aroma and richness to the muffins.
2 medium bananas, mashed (about 1 cup/240 ml)
1/2 cup (120 ml) plain or vanilla soy, almond or hemp milk
1/4 cup (60 ml) sunflower or other light-tasting oil, preferably organic
2 Tbsp (30 ml) blackstrap molasses
2 Tbsp (30 ml) maple syrup or agave nectar
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) apple cider vinegar
1 cup (100 g) old-fashioned whole rolled oats (not instant)
2/3 cup (95 g) chopped dried dates
1/3 cup (65 g) dairy-free butterscotch or chocolate chips
1/2 cup (55 g) walnut pieces, lightly toasted
1 cup (140 g) light spelt flour
1/3 cup (45 g) whole spelt flour
2 tsp (10 ml) baking powder
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) baking soda
1/2 tsp (2. 5 ml) cinnamon
1/8 tsp (.5 ml) fine sea salt
Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners, or spray with nonstick spray.
In a medium bowl, combine the bananas, soymilk, oil, molasses, maple syrup and apple cider vinegar; stir until well mixed. Add the oats, dates, chips and nuts and stir to coat. Set aside.
In a large bowl, sift together the light spelt flour, whole spelt flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir just until combined. Using a large ice cream scoop or 1/4 cup (60 ml) measure, scoop the batter into the prepared tins, dividing evenly. Bake in preheated oven 15-20 minutes, until a tester inserted in a center muffin comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes before turning onto a rack to cool completely. May be frozen.
Last Year at this Time: Grain Free Lemony Almond Pancakes
Two Years Ago: Week at Warp Speed and Easy Dinner (Lentil-Tomato Spaghetti Sauce and Avocado Pesto Salad Dressing)
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about the trio of chocolate desserts I’d created for Valentine’s Day, each with at least one “secret” ingredient that conferred extra health benefits. I promised to post the recipes for each one, starting with the Gluten-Free Brownie and followed by the Vegan Molten Chocolate Cakes. Since I’ve already posted the first two recipes of
****BULLETIN****BULLETIN****BULLETIN*****
We interrupt this blogcast to bring you this breaking news that Ricki’s recipe for Vegan Molten Chocolate Cakes has been voted the winner of the Vegetable Love contest over at Susan’s Fat Free Vegan Kitchen ! (Well, okay, maybe it was by a very small margin, but we’re not complaining). The contest asked participants to submit recipes for romantic, vegan, low-fat dishes that contained vegetables. Skip on over and take a look at all the fabulous entries!
I have to admit that I was completely taken by surprise (thanks, Veggie Girl, for the heads up via your comment!) and absolutely thrilled. Baking, like writing, is something I love doing so much that I’d still do it even if I weren’t being paid for it (hey! wait a second. . . I am doing it and I’m not being. . . ). But it’s so great to have the positive feedback on this blog (Your comments are great! Keep ‘em coming!!) and to know that people out there enjoy the recipes.
So thank you all for voting, thank you for reading, and a big thank you for encouraging me to keep on doing something I adore. (Now, if only I could figure out how to put that cute little heart-beet icon on my blog page. . . ).
****WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INTERRUPTION. AND NOW, BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG ENTRY, ALREADY IN PROGRESS.****
the trio, I thought today, Valentine’s Day, would be the perfect time to post the final recipe. These aren’t exactly what I’d call “romantic” cookies (at least, not in the same way that an oozing, gooey, warm molten center might be), but they are definitely a heartfelt offering of love.
Pairing eggplant puree with chocolate and peanut butter, these cookies provide some heart-healthy fats (monounsaturated in the peanuts) and great antioxidant benefits (the anthocyanins in the eggplant, flavonoids in cocoa), plus great fiber. They’ve also been kid-tested and approved by several of my friends’ and colleagues’ children, and I am happy to report that absolutely NO eggplant was detectable in the fudgy, peanutty, chocolatey treats.
Finally, I’m going to beg solicit plead implore ask you once again if you’ve got any neat ideas for a Valentine’s Day dinner that my HH and I will share on Saturday (we’re deferring the Big Day by two days, so you still have time!!). Since you’ll all be done with your own dinners by then, how about telling me what YOU all had? Then I can copy plagiarize reproduce honor your great dishes by trying some of them out at our own dinner.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Hope it’s both sweet and loving.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudgies
These cookies present the ultimate mixture of chocolate and peanut butter, with a base that’s crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle. No one will ever guess that they’re housing some hidden eggplant in the batter!
1/2 cup natural crunchy peanut butter
2/3 cup Sucanat or other unrefined evaporated cane juice
1/4 cup sunflower oil or other light-tasting oil
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup pureed cooked eggplant (you may substitute another moisture-rich vegetable, such as cooked zucchini, or use unsweetened applesauce)
1-1/2 cups light spelt flour
1/3 cup dark cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. fine sea salt
Preheat oven to 375 F. Lightly spray two cookie sheets with nonstick coating, or line with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, cream the peanut butter with the Sucanat and oil. Add the maple syrup, vanilla, vinegar, and eggplant and mix to combine well.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Pour the wet mixture over the dry and stir to mix well. You should have a slightly sticky dough, but one that still holds its shape.
Using a tablespoon or small ice cream scoop, place mounds of dough on the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Wet your hands and flatten the cookies slightly (to about 1/4 inch thickness) with your palms, or use the bottom of a glass dipped in water.
Bake in preheated oven about 12 minutes, rotating pans halfway, until cookies are puffed and cracked on top. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before removing from the sheets (they will firm up as they cool).
Makes about 30 cookies. These may be frozen.
[This recipe will also appear in my upcoming cookbook, Sweet Freedom, along with more than 100 others, most of which are not featured on this blog. For more information, check the "Cookbook" button at right, or visit the cookbook blog.]
Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve had an ongoing love affair with the antipodes. Well, come to think of it, that would be a one-sided love affair, since I’ve never actually been there. But hey, that’s okay. I’m accustomed to those; my entire adolescence was flush with unrequited love.
I’ve dreamt of visiting the Land Down Under since I was about 13. When the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbooks finally made their way across the Atlantic, I was first in line to buy them (favorites include Biscuits and Slices, Vegetarian, and Chocolate titles). I’ve read The Thorn Birds and Oscar and Lucinda; I dutifully watched the Crocodile Dundee movie and delighted over Babe; I was a devoted fan of the Dame Edna show and ran out to buy the first Crowded House CD to hit our airwaves (though I never became a fan of Kylie Minogue). I adore the whole lot of Australian thespians: Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, and of course Nicole Kidman (I mean, how could you not? She’s just so NOT Julia Roberts).
Age and years didn’t dampen my ardor, either. While studying for my PhD, I had a searing crush on a fellow student, Charlie Ferrall (I know! Can you believe his name is a homophone for “feral”??), whose Australian accent, the same one my friend Sterlin and I tried to imitate and had decided was the most incredibly sexy sound on earth, was his natural way of speaking. (Hey, Charlie, if you’re reading, G’day! How ya doin’, mate? Ever get that dissertation finished?).
 Then, several years ago, I managed to arrange a teaching exchange with a college professor in Melbourne. Yippee–an entire year of Living the Dream! The arrangement had us trading jobs while still technically employed by our “home institutions”–perfect for me, considering that the Canadian dollar was worth more than the Australian dollar at the time. We got as far as the final stages of the exchange–down to specific dates, meeting places, and a steamer trunk purchase–before the other woman backed out at the last moment.
“I’m so sorry to do this to you at such a late date,” she wrote in an email. “But we looked into the rentals in Toronto, and simply can’t afford to live there.” Apparently, Toronto has recently been dubbed ”the New York of Canada,” and astronomical rents may be one reason why. In fact, if I remember correctly, that Australian teacher ended up in Manhattan.
In the end, all I had to cling to were my memories of my (one-sided) intercontinental romance, a bad imitation of an Australian accent, and yet another CD to sell on eBay.
Well, I had been disappointed in love before, so I decided to stop whinging about it and just get on with it–no worries! And since I’ve entered the blogging universe, I’ve come across several fabulous Australian-authored blogs, many of which have become bookmarked favorites, so I can at least pursue a vicarious existence across the Pacific. If I couldn’t actually live there, I could cook as if I did. After all, this Sheila can still bake, right? And that made me one happy little Vegemite (though I probably still wouldn’t eat the stuff; sorry).
I’d read about Anzac cookies several times over the years, and always wanted to give them a try. A quick search on the internet turned up some interesting information. Apparently, the original cookies, baked for soldiers abroad during World War One, were created so that something nourishing (they contain whole oats) could be sent to the troops in Gallipoli without spoiling before they got there. In order to accomplish that lofty goal, the biscuits had to be able to withstand a two month-long boat ride without refrigeration. The resulting biscuits were very dry, not very sweet, and baked within an inch of a career as Tony Soprano’s favorite footwear.
Modern Anzac biscuits, I’ve discovered, have a bit more sugar in them than the traditional kind, but are still crispy biscuits made with only a few basic ingredients. Every recipe I’ve seen calls for boiling water mixed with baking soda, which is then poured into the cooked sweeteners. All the cookies contain flour, oats, and coconut, but no eggs (or salt or vanilla), so they’re naturally suited to vegans, too. My HH adores coconut, so it was a fair bet he’d like them.
I decided to play with the traditional recipe somewhat and add the missing salt and vanilla. I also used a combination of brown rice syrup (to duplicate the golden syrup of the original) and Sucanat for a little more sweetness. And, of course, I baked them a little less than the traditional kind, as I am fond of my teeth and would like to keep them. The result was a spiffy little biscuit–and that’s no skite.
Well, enough yabbering. Time for the recipe. You reckon?
(“Mum, you know we love you and everything, but sometimes, you can be such a whacker.”)
Anzac Biscuits (original recipe from Kitchen Classics’ Sweet and Savoury Bites, edited by Jane Price )
[Note: mine really did turn out pretty yellow, though not quite as Day-Glo as in this photo. I think it had something to do with the combination of brown rice syrup and being north of the equator.]
125 g. (1 cup) all purpose flour (I used spelt)
140 g. (2/3 cup) sugar (I used Sucanat)
100 g. (1 cup) rolled oats
90 g. (1 cup) dessicated coconut
125 g. (4-1/2 oz.) unsalted butter (I used coconut butter)
90 g. (1/4 cup) golden syrup or dark corn syrup (I used brown rice syrup)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. boiling water
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, or spray with nonstick spray.
Sift the flour into a large bowl. Add the sugar, oats, and coconut and make a well in the centre. Put the butter and golden syrup in a small saucepan and stir over low hear until the butter has melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat.
Dissolve the soda in the boiling water and add immediately to the butter mixture. It will foam up instantly. Pour into the well int he dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Drop level tablespoons of mixture onto the cookie sheets, allowing room for spreading. Gently flatten each biscuit with your fingertips.
Bake for 20 minutes, or until just browned. Leave on the tray to cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.
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