Pumpkin Spice Muffins with Cream Cheese Filling

A bakery in my hometown serves a version of this muffin that is my father’s all-time favorite, so I made a gf/vegan adaptation. I envision them being served warm with a cup of coffee on a brisk fall morning. I usually start by making the filling first and letting it chill while I mix up the batter.

Cream Cheese Filling:

1 12-oz container extra firm silken tofu
1 8-oz containers vegan cream cheese
¼ tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 c powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
*If you’re feeling daring, you can make a Lemon-Ginger filling by replacing the 2 tsp of vanilla with 2 tsp of ginger and adding another tbsp of lemon juice.

1. Drain as much water as possible off of the tofu.
2. In a blender or food processor, cream all ingredients together until smooth.
3. Put in refrigerator to chill and thicken.

Muffins:

1 15-oz can of packed pumpkin
½ c canola oil
1 c brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
½ tsp clove
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp flax seed meal in 1/3 c warm soymilk
1 c rice flour
½ c sorghum flour
1 tsp xantham gum
1 tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder

4. Mix pumpkin, oil, brown sugar, and spices until blended.
5. Warm 1/3 c soymilk and allow 2 tbsp to dissolved in it for several minutes. Whisk with a fork and combine with other wet ingredients.
6. In a separate bowl, mix flours, salt and xantham gum.
7. Slowly mix dry ingredients in with wet.
8. Grease and flour a muffin pan or line with paper liners.
9. Pre-heat oven to 375°F.

10. Fill each muffin cup half-way trying to make something of hole in the middle with higher sides toward the edges. Drop a good-sized dollop of the cream cheese filling in the center, trying to keep it from touching the sides of the pan. Cover with batter so that muffin cups are about 2/3 full.
11. Bake at 375°F for 17 minutes. Test for doneness with a knife or toothpick, bake a few minutes longer, if necessary.

Old-Fashioned Pear Apple Pie

This wonderful twist on an autumn classic is perfect for the upcoming holidays. It includes detailed instructions for a delicious and multi-purpose gluten-free vegan pie crust. The crust takes a little work, as does any pie crust made from scratch, but it was quite rewarding to serve it recently and have a friend as “Really? That is gluten-free?” You can start by preparing the dough and then make the filling while it is chilling.

Crust:
1 c rice flour
½ c sorghum flour
¼ c potato starch/flour
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
½ c vegan shortening
3 tbsp vegan margarine
1 tsp xantham gum
1 tbsp white vinegar
½ - ⅔ c cold water
Saran Wrap and Wax Paper

The easiest way to make this dough is in a food processor with a dough blade, but it can also be done by hand.

1. Mix the 3 flours, xantham gum, salt and sugar in a separate bowl.

2. Prepare a glass of ice water for later. Place in fridge or freezer in the meantime.

3. Cut vegan shortening and margarine into flour until it looks like coarse meal. You can do this using a pastry cutter or two knives if you’re working by hand, or if you have a food processor, simply blend with a dough blade until you see the desired consistency.

4. Now slowly add water and vinegar. You may not need a full ⅔ c water. As you add more water, the dough will begin to stick together in larger and larger clumps. When the dough has formed into one large ball, stop and remove it from the food processor. If you are working by hand, mix dough with your fingertips while gradually adding water. Again, the dough should be wet enough to be incorporated into one large ball, but not so sticky that it clings to the sides of the bowl.

5. For best results, divide dough into two balls, press down until flatter and an inch thick, wrap tightly in Saran Wrap and chill in the fridge for an hour or two.

Filling:
3 Comice or Bartlett pears
4 Granny Smith Apples
1 c sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cloves
5 tbsp cornstarch
2 rounded scoops of vegan sour cream
½ c raisins

6. Peel and thinly slice apples and pears. (For a more rustic pie, you leave the peel on.)

7. In a large bowl, mix in sugar and spices.

8. Mix in cornstarch until there are no visible clumps.

9. Add sour cream and raisins, and let sit in the refrigerator for and 30 min or an hour.

10. When you remove the dough from the refrigerator, pre-heat the oven to 425°F.

11. When you are ready to roll the dough, tear off 3 pieces of wax paper larger than your pie pan. Place 2 of them in a t-shape like a cross on the counter. Sprinkle them with a bit of sorghum or rice flour and place dough in the middle. Next, sprinkle dough with flour and place the 3rd sheet of wax paper on top of it. Now, use the palm of your hand and a rolling pin to flatten and roll out the dough. The rolled dough should be large enough to cover your pie pan and form a crust and about ⅛ in thick.

12. Slowly peel off the top layer of wax paper. Use the 2 bottom pieces of wax paper to pick up the rolled crust and carefully flip it over into the pie pan. Now peel off the last two pieces of wax paper and press crust into the bottom and sides of the pie pan.

13. Pour filling into crust and repeat step 11 to roll the top crust. Using small cookie cutters or a knife, cut a few slits in the middle of the top crust for vents. Place top crust over filling. (You can also cut strips for the top crust if you prefer a lattice top.)

14. Trim top edges down so that there is approximately the same amount of excess dough (about 1 in) around the entire crust. Tuck under and press down. Now you can pinch the dough between your thumb and forefinger around the pie to make a decorative edge or, if this doesn’t come easily, you can use a fork to make indents.

15. Bake at 425°F for 15 min, then reduce oven temperature to 350°F and bake for another 35 min or until golden brown.

Mexican Wedding Cookies

Today I adapted a recipe for “Mexican Wedding Cookies” (apparently known in some parts as “Russian Tea Cakes” and elsewhere as “Snowman Testicles”) to be gluten-free and vegan. This recipe is simple as there are just a few necessary ingredients. The texture of the cookies shouldn’t be chewy or doughy; it should be something more like shortbread which is a bit tricky to accomplish without butter and without ordinary wheat flour... but, it can be done!

Here’s what you’ll need:
½ c vegan margarine (Earth Balance Original Whipped is my favorite)
2/3 c white sugar
2 tbsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
2 c salted walnuts or pecans finely chopped (almonds or hazelnuts would probably be good, too)
1 c white rice flour
1 c sorghum flour
1 ½ tsp xantham gum
*Optional 2 tbsp flax seed meal in ¼ c warm soymilk (please read below)
2 c powdered sugar

· Preheat oven to 325°F.
· Chop nuts in food processor on pulse if using whole nuts.
· Cream margarine, sugar and vanilla with a mixer or by hand until light and fluffy.
· Combine rice and sorghum flours with salt and xantham gum in a separate bowl.
· Slowly add dry ingredients in wet, blending on low speed.
· Mix in chopped nuts.
· Use a teaspoon to form the dough into balls and place on a cookie sheet.
· Bake at 325°F for about 10 minutes, then remove and turn over the cookies.
· Bake for another 10 minutes.
· Remove from oven. Let cool for 15 minutes or so.
· Drop into powdered sugar while still warm.

*I noticed at this point that my dough felt a little crumbly. I formed a few balls this way and baked them, but added the flax-meal/soy milk mixture to the rest of the dough. The cookies with the flax-meal mixture were cakier, and therefore less like the originals, but they also seemed to hold together better.

Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies

My first recipe post has to be dedicated to Kyle, who set up this blog for me and whose favorite cookie is a warm, chewy ginger molasses...

1/3 c canola oil
1 c brown sugar
¼ c molasses
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp ginger
½ tsp ground cloves
1 tsp salt
2 c sorghum flour
1 tsp xantham gum
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp flax seed meal in ¼ c warm soymilk* (see previous post about “eggs”)
1 c crystalized ginger in small chunks

· Preheat oven to 375°F.
· Chop crystalized ginger into small chunks, if necessary.
· Heat ¼ c soymilk for 30-45 sec in microwave. Add 2 tbsp flax-seed meal making sure it is covered by the soymilk. Let sit.
· Blend oil, brown sugar, and molasses with a mixer or by hand until molasses and oil are integrated.
· Whisk the flax-seed mixture a fork until it is free of lumps and has a gelatinous consistency.
· Add flax-seed meal mixture and spices to oil and sugar.
· Combine flour with salt, baking soda and xantham gum in a separate bowl.
· Slowly incorporate dry ingredients into wet, blending on low speed.
· Mix in ginger chunks.
· Use a tbps to roll the dough into balls and place on a cookie sheet.
· Press flat with the palm of your hand or a fork. (This is easiest if your hand or the fork is wet since the molasses tends to be sticky.)
· Bake at 375°F for about 9 minutes. (Longer if you prefer crisp to chewy cookies.)

Eggs, who needs 'em?

Before jumping in and sharing recipes, I thought it might help to give a bit a background information about eggs (rather, the lack of) in gluten-free vegan baking. In learning to bake as a vegan, eggs are probably the most daunting ingredient to try to simulate because they are a key structural component of baked goods. With a few exceptions (sponge cake comes to mind), there is a way to modify any recipe so as not to include eggs. The tricky part is knowing how to go about it. In baked goods, eggs bind, leaven and give fluffiness to cakes and pastries. In gluten-free baking, it is especially common to find eggs on the ingredients list because of the inherent lack of binding in gluten-free flours. Wheat flour alone has some binding power due to the gluten, this is why you can mix flour and water and end up with an elastic dough that can be rolled or stretched. Pizza, pita, or bread doughs with gluten will hold together this way just based on the gluten in the wheat flour. If you try mixing a gluten-free flour with water, however, you will not get this same type of elasticity, so eggs are frequently used in gluten-free recipes to hold the dough together. Gluten-free breads and mixes usually call for eggs. Not so great if you are trying to be vegan and you have to avoid gluten.

To recap, gluten-free vegan baking has a structural double-whammy in holding ingredients together: no eggs and no gluten. It is standard to add a teaspoon or 2 of xantham gum when baking with gluten-free flours to make them hold together more like all-purpose wheat flour would, but this does not solve the egg issue. To a large extent, the egg replacement you choose depends on the type of recipe you’re making. My standard approach is to use a mixture of flax-seed meal dissolved in warm soymilk. To do this, simply heat about a 1/4 c of soymilk in the microwave for 30-45 s, submerge in it 2 tbsp of flax seed meal, let sit for several minutes, and then whisk with a fork. This creates a gelatinous mixture that works well in cookies, cakes, muffins, and breads. The flax-seed meal mixture is only one of several ways to replace eggs in a vegan recipe. In addition to the flax-seed meal mixture, you can experiment with using commercials egg replacers (such as Ener-G), a few tablespoons of applesauce, or mashed banana. If you like to experiment and have time, it is interesting to try the same recipe changing only the type egg replacer. Here are my own observations:

· Flax-seed meal dissolved in soymilk seems the most multi-purpose.
· Applesauce tends to make things cakey which is great for muffins and cakes, but not preferable for cookies.
· Commercial egg replacers like Ener-G are essentially starch (potato starch, usually) and work well for breads, but can make the texture dense and rubbery if too much is used.
· Banana does seem to do the trick of binding and is less cakey than applesauce, but also more noticeable in flavor.
· Apple cider or white vinegar can be mixed with baking soda to “fizz” and leaven cakes, breads and muffins. I haven’t experimented as much with this one.

If you are new to vegan or gluten-free baking, you will surely develop your own tastes, preferences, and techniques as you go along, but hopefully, this gives you good jumping-off point. Now for some recipes!

Hi!

Julia,
You now can fill this up with interesting ways to bake without natures key component, GLUTEN. Lets start with vegan gluten free molasses cookies... yuummm.