Pumpkin Cheesecake with Whipped Coconut Topping

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday yesterday, filled with family and friends, and of course lots of delicious food. Based on my own experience, I suspect that you stuffed yourselves, although hopefully not as much as I did! But, however full I felt last night (and still this morning!), I always enjoy looking at more food, so here is a sample of what I made and ate last night.

For our feast, I made a Pumpkin Cheesecake and topped it with a rich Whipped Coconut Creme. It tasted quite delicious, although definitely more like a pumpkin pie than a cheesecake. I think if I had used a Vitamix or a more powerful food processor, I could have gotten the filling to have a more even consistency (like the one in the original recipe’s picture, here), but nonetheless it tasted great. It had a wonderful pumpkin taste, and the pecans in the crust complemented the fall flavors very nicely. We had a little bit of extra crust dough that I baked separately, and it ended up thick and tasty as a simple shortbread-like cookie on it’s own. The coconut creme was from a recipe in Sweet Freedom, for a sugar-free, gluten-free, soy-free vegan whipped cream. Dolloped on top of the pie, it was rich, sweet, and certainly very creamy, but not as light and fluffy as whipped cream should be. Our consensus was that it would have been very good as a fruit tart filling, and next time I make one I will definitely use this recipe!

Cornmeal Muffins

In my Kindergarten student teaching placement, we have been studying corn as a way to address the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. It is a complicated issue to talk about in a classroom, as there are clearly multiple perspectives to cover and so many politics to maneuver. The inaccurate mythology and historical omissions can be confusing and damaging to teach, especially when you get into the denser and more confrontational issues surrounding genocide and land theft. As an educator working for social justice, how do you make sure you cover the valuable positive and big ideas of gratitude, fairness, equality, resistance, and liberation without miscommunicating the true facts? I’ve always felt trapped in how I would like to cover this material – and have often found that it is much easier to just avoid talking about it altogether in the classroom. However, Kindergartners get so excited about holidays that you have to incorporate it somehow into the curriculum.

I really like the critical way my cooperating teacher thinks about these issues, and her solution this year has been to teach the students all about corn. She can teach them about the Native Americans’ history growing and eating corn in different forms, and about how the Pilgrims interacted with the Native Americans and their land when they arrived in the “new world”. We have had class discussions about how the Native Americans lived and how that contrasted with the lifestyle that the Pilgrims were used to, and how both were very different from how our students live today. We have talked about what it would feel like if someone moved into your backyard, and had the kids think about how they would react to this. We shared about the communities and customs that both groups of people had, and the reasons why the Pilgrims were leaving Europe. We framed these conversations around the kinds of foods the two groups of people were used to eating, tying in our larger theme of corn. My cooperating teacher has brought in many different examples of corn for the students to study as Scientists with huge magnifying glasses – we’ve looked at dried “Indian Corn” in beautiful shades of purple, yellow, and red; baby corns in a jar; dried corn kernels; cornmeal; canned corn; and hominy. We’ve had them taste different kinds of corn-foods, like corn chips, corn nuts, popcorn, and even candy made with corn syrup. Yesterday, I woke up obscenely early for no good reason, and decided what would make me feel better about this lack of sleep was to bake something for my class. So, out came the baking pans and on went the oven (a perfect way to warm up my chilly house!). I quickly whipped up a batch of Cornmeal Muffins that I could give the students, who would then get to taste the corn in a new way.

I brought the muffins in to the classroom, and while they were not overwhelmingly popular with the five year olds, they received good reviews from the adults who tried them before and after the sharing event. I wasn’t sure what reaction to expect from my students, since kids these days eat lots of sugar and Cornmeal Muffins aren’t particularly sweet, but I really wanted them to be able to feel the slightly crunchy texture of the cornmeal in the muffin and the softer sweeter fresh kernels of corn mixed in. In the end, some of the children devoured the muffins, some did not, and I of course felt okay about that. I think this recipe is quite delicious, but perhaps not the most kid-friendly one that I could have picked! Perhaps they would have enjoyed them more with jam spread on top, or with more sugar added to the batter. The muffins were moist and heavy, as a cornmeal muffin should be. The top was crispy and the color was a natural bright yellow from all the corn. I recommend it, even if my students did not!

Cornmeal Muffins – lightly adapted from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Ingredients:
1/2 cup coarse yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. salt, divided
1 cup almond milk
1 1/2 tsp. Ener-G Egg Replacer (equivalent of 1 egg – you can also use 1 Tblsp. ground flax seed)
1 Tblsp. warm water (+ 1 more Tblsp. of water if you use flax seeds…)
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar + some for sprinkling on top
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/3 cup Earth Balance or other non-dairy margarine, melted and cooled
1 cup canned whole corn kernels

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease or line your muffin tins.
Soak the cornmeal and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt in the milk for about 15 minutes, while you prepare your other ingredients.
Meanwhile, whip the egg replacer (or flax seed) with the water in the blender, until thick and creamy.
In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
In a small bowl, stir together the almond milk/cornmeal mixture, melted margarine, and egg replacer mixture until combined. Add to the dry ingredients, and stir just until blended. Add the corn kernels and stir to combine. Do not overmix.
Let the batter sit for 10 minutes before spooning into the prepared muffin tins, filling each cup about 3/4 full.
Sprinkle a pinch of sugar on top of each muffin (this will give it a nice crispy top, and add a little touch of sweetness).
Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then remove to cool on a wire rack.

Gluten-Free, Refined-Sugar-Free, Vegan and Delicious Pumpkin Scones

Yes, believe what the title says. It is definitely possible to make delicious vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free desserts. I’m slowly converting everyone I know, and I hope to convert you too, at least to the idea that this is a possible baking feat. I’m so used to adapting regular recipes, and have figured out good proportions of animal-friendly (as well as gluten-free and sugar-free) ingredients to make yummy veganized versions, but this time I found a recipe online that was already perfect and fit all my dietary requirements. Plus, it was already tested and blogged about, and even photographed so I could see evidence that this recipe actually worked. You can find all of that proof, plus the recipe, right here. I followed the recipe to a T, with a tiny addition of half a cup of chopped pecans mixed into the batter and sprinkled on the top before baking. I have to admit – these scones are a little bit muffin-like in consistency (they had a fluffier and a little more cake-like texture than most scones do), but they are so delicious you won’t care at all. You’ll eat tons of them. Especially because they are pumpkin (my favorite flavor), have no gluten, no refined sugar, no dairy and no eggs. So they practically don’t exist or have calories or anything, right?

Autumn Crunch

Fall is in the air – even here, in California, we have beautiful autumn leaves drifting down from the trees and blanketing our yards. They are definitely lots of fun to jump on and scrunch beneath your feet! However, not all the aspects of Fall are that alluring. With the school-based schedule crunch of final papers and projects looming over my head, and as the shorter, colder, darker days continue, I knew I needed something to look forward to and entice me out of bed with…So, using my dried persimmons and all the sweet warm spices I could think of, I created an autumnal breakfast treat to look forward to when I wake up.

This Persimmon Granola is perfect paired with almond milk for a yummy breakfast, but it also is tasty plain as a snack, and I’m sure it would be good with vanilla ice cream as a crunchy topping.

You can make this granola with any mix of nuts, spices, and dried fruits that you have on hand. I think the persimmons give it a wonderful Fall flavor and color, but raisins or dates would be delicious as well. You can add brown sugar, agave, or honey if you want added sweetness, but I am enjoying the subtle sweetness of the brown rice syrup on it’s own; it really makes the persimmon’s natural sweet taste stand out. And the spices of course are flexible – add whatever you like best. My house was filled with great smells after baking this!

Ingredients:

5 cups oats
2 cups raw almonds, coarsely chopped
1 cup raw walnuts, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup shredded & unsweetened dried coconut
1 Tblsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. cardamom
1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup brown rice syrup
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 Tblsp. vegetable oil

2 cups chopped dried persimmons (it is easy to cut them with scissors into bite-sized pieces).

Preheat your oven to 300F. Cover two jelly-roll pans (cookie sheets with sides) with aluminum foil (this will make clean-up easier).
In a very large bowl, mix together the oats, almonds, walnuts, coconut, spices, and salt.
In a small saucepan, heat the applesauce, brown rice syrup, and oil. Stir constantly, till they are smooth.
Mix the heated liquid mixture into the dry ingredients until thoroughly combined, then divide and spread the mixture evenly on your prepared pans.
Bake the granola for about 40 minutes, stirring every ten minutes, until the granola is a deep golden brown color.
Remove the pans from the oven, and cool completely.
Stir your chopped dried persimmons into the granola after it is cool.
Store the granola in a large, airtight container.

Dried Persimmons

I have a large Fuyu Persimmon tree in my front yard, and the fruits are ripe and ready for picking right now. These are the kind that stay hard and crunchy when ripe. They are delicious and sweet and some young friends of mine told me the “look a lot like little pumpkins.” I agree – except when you slice them through the middle horizontally, then I think they look like flowers. Check it out:

Two years ago when we had our first Persimmon harvest, we had so many. We were eating them with every meal (sliced on top of green salads, mixed into fruit salads, on the side of every dish), and pureeing them and then mixing the mush into all of our baked goods. We ate persimmon cookies, persimmon cake, persimmon bread. You name it, we made it. I think we even tried to make a persimmon pudding, but that’s much better to make with the Hachiya variety of persimmons that get super soft and mushy when ripe. Recently, I’ve been on a sugar-free, gluten-free, vegan diet which, while difficult at first, has gotten a lot easier in the last week or so. I’m pretty comfortable experimenting with my baking, and adapting my recipes to fit any type of dietary restrictions, but honestly I have been baking less since changing my eating habits (also, I’ve had a lot less time to bake because of being in school). So I haven’t yet made any persimmon baked goods. I’ve been eating them raw and whole, like apples. It’s such an easy snack to take to classes with me! But, we have a lot, and I decided to try something new with them.

I started out by drying my persimmons, by slicing them thinly and laying them on metal cooling racks. If you want to do this at home, you can really do it with any type of fruit I think. If you have a dehydrator that would speed up the the process and make it a little easier, but since I don’t have one, I’m using my oven. It just means I can’t bake anything for a few days while the persimmons are drying in there, but somehow I’ll manage.

I put the cooling racks in my oven (on top of the regular oven racks) and left the oven door a tiny tiny crack open so the air could circulate. I didn’t turn the oven on, but the pilot light kept the oven slightly warm and helped dry out the persimmon slices. I left them in for a day and a half, checking periodically and flipping them over to make sure the sides were drying evenly. You can decide when they’re done by checking to see how dry and crunchy they are – you want them pretty dry but still a little chewy. They’re very sweet and tasty for eating as a snack, but I have bigger plans for these babies. I’m posting these pictures as a teaser, so you’ll have to check in later to see the full recipe for what I’m going to make with them!

Pumpkin Mummy-Cakes with Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting

Halloween is quickly approaching – and if you weren’t aware of it, I can help you out. I can tell it’s Halloween time for a few reasons:

1. The weather has gotten crisper and windier, and the red and gold leaves are blowing off the trees into huge piles in my backyard.

2. There are pumpkins everywhere; carved and whole. There are ghosts hanging from trees, and goblins and spiderwebs peeking from behind windows and creeping out on front lawns.

3. I am student teaching in a Kindergarten classroom and the students are excited about Halloween, to say the least. In preparation, we’ve made black paper bats that hang from the windows and pumpkin-shaped paper-chain calendars to countdown till the very day, we’ve measured pumpkins up and down and weighed them and even got to make predictions about what might be inside a pumpkin — and then the kids got to stand on the picnic tables outside and smash them onto the ground to find out! We’ve also been reading Halloween books for weeks. Books about counting and math, about the alphabet, about helping friends, about trick-or-treating, about being kind to each other, about making mistakes, and about making good choices. Besides these good-community-oriented and academic themes, the books involve witches and scarecrows and ghosts and bats and monsters, which captures every student’s attention. We even read a book about a witch who baked her grumpy day into a cake! It went right along with my lesson plan theme, which was to cook pumpkin pancakes! I’ve been teaching small groups of four, five, and six year olds how to make these delicious pancakes all week, and finally the cinnamon smells got the best of me.

The Fall weather, the Halloween spirit, and the pumpkin pancake cooking ingredients all came together to form these cute little cupcake critters. As soon as I saw Lindsay’s post about her creations, I knew I had to decorate some cupcakes just like she did! I used her recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes, and added a ton of cinnamon to a basic vanilla buttercream frosting to top mine off. Aren’t they perfect?

Orange Chocolate Cake

My dad’s birthday was last week…or more like two weeks ago…or some time awhile ago (oops) and since I’m a graduate student now I literally have no time to bake or post new blog posts, so really I’m just very behind in posting this recipe. But I hadn’t realized it had been that long. I guess I owe a big apology to my dad and all his friends who I’m sure were checking my blog obsessively (yeah, yeah, I have about 2 readers, who am I kidding?) to see the pictures and get the recipe for this fantastically rich chocolate cake that was dense, delectable, and delicious. And very difficult to stop eating! But that was okay, because it was healthy. Healthy? Cake? Well, it had extra special ingredients that added lots of vitamins and nutrients, so it was healthy, as healthy as a chocolate birthday cake really can be.

The first fruit in the recipe was orange juice, because I wanted a citrus-blast in this chocolate confection. That taste was obvious after the first bite. However, the secret “healthy” ingredient was avocado. Yes, you read that right: Avocado. Before I added the cocoa powder, guess what color the batter was? A lovely bright green! I almost didn’t want to add the cocoa and just savor the neon color, but I knew my dad would appreciate the chocolate cake A LOT so I went for that.

I used a recipe for a chocolate cake that just happened to have avocado in it, and I found the recipe here. I simply substituted fresh orange juice instead of the water that the original recipe called for, and I got an Orange Chocolate Cake! I made an easy Dark Chocolate Ganache to go on the outside of the cake (1 pound of vegan dark chocolate, melted, then blended with plain unsweetened almond milk, then refridgerated for 4 hours till hard enough to spread) and made a quick Orange Buttercream to use as a filling between the three layers of cake and as decoration on the top. The Orange Buttercream was a variation of the Orange Buttercream recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, based on what I had on hand at home. I used orange extract and fresh orange juice and it was delicious.

Orange Buttercream Ingredients:
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegan shortening
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegan margarine (I used Earth Balance)
3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 tsp. orange extract
2-5 Tblsp. fresh orange juice

For the frosting, cream together the shortening and margarine until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the orange extract, and continue creaming. Slowly add the orange juice until the frosting reaches your desired consistency, and beat for another 5-7 minutes until fluffy. Spread or pipe onto the tops of your cupcakes in whatever design you choose.

Here’s a shot of the cake, after cutting into it:

Trying-to-Be-Sonja’s Chewy Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of my friends (and now classmates!), Sasha, had a birthday yesterday! Since we had a long day of student teaching and then classes of our own, I knew she was going to need some treats to keep the day fun. One of her favorite cookie recipes is the Post Punk Kitchen’s Chewy Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, and one of my favorite kinds of cookies is my friend Sonja’s Mint Chocolate Cookies, so I decided to meld the two together and create Chewy Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies. I used the PPK’s recipe (which is simple and quick!), and instead of 2 teaspoons of vanilla I used only 1 teaspoon vanilla and added 1 1/2 teaspoons of mint extract to the batter. The cookies are dark and chewy just as promised, with a strong hit of mint. They are not quite as thick as Sonja’s cookies but to my memory, they taste just as good. Mmm. They were eaten with gusto by many of our classmates and professors, and I got a big grin and hug from Sasha – which was definitely the biggest incentive for making them!

Mango Cupcakes

For many many months, my friend Julie has been making different requests for her birthday dessert. Last year I made her Apple-Cinnamon Muffins with Mead Frosting and a Honey-Swirl on top, and at one point she told me she wanted to have the exact same thing this year. And then she wanted a variety of other desserts – a list of which I honestly can’t remember at the moment (oops. Bad friend…). But that’s not important, because when she came up with the idea of Mango Cupcakes, she changed her mind completely and settled on that as her most favorite choice. Mango is her favorite fruit, and perhaps one of her favorite foods. Since then, I did a lot of research about making mango cupcakes, and never found much interesting material to work with; there are lots of recipes for mango muffins and cupcakes with chunks of mango in them, but neither of those sounded appealing. This felt like a great challenge that I was totally up for, so I was pretty thrilled that Julie selected mango as her birthday dessert wish flavor.

I wanted the cupcakes to taste fresh and tropical, and to let the mango flavor really shine. I wanted to try to replicate the silky smooth, juicy texture of fresh mangoes, and I thought very hard about how to accomplish this. I decided on a mango-flavored cupcake (without chunks of mango mixed in), and to fill the cupcakes with a homemade Mango Jam that would give the effect of juicy mangoes when you bit into the cupcake. The jam would also serve as a super fresh mango blast with each bite. It took me a long time to settle on frosting flavor. I debated between a brown sugar glaze, a cream cheese frosting, or just slathering the top with more Mango Jam…I couldn’t figure it out though. None of those ideas really fit. But then I remembered the perfect ingredient that I happened to have sitting in my cupboard, waiting for just the right use! Fresh Vanilla Beans that I had found in the bulk section of my local health food store. A vanilla bean buttercream would be perfectly paired with the mango cupcakes, and not overpower the mango flavor. And then I remembered that Julie’s favorite type of frosting is cream cheese…What to do? How could I decide? Well, I decided to brave it and mix the two together – and suddenly, I had the *perfect* frosting. It would be delicious on ANY cake, anywhere, anytime. It may just become my fall-back frosting recipe (especially since I’ve found vanilla beans in bulk and they surprisingly aren’t that expensive). Here is the final product of The Mango Cupcake Experiment, which was received with screams – yes, literally screams of joy!

Mango Cupcake Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tblsp. cornstarch
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup canola oil (or any lightly flavored vegetable oil)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup pureed mango
1/2 cup unsweetened plain almond milk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
Whisk the almond milk and vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside a few minutes to get good and curdled.
Beat together the almond milk mixture, oil, sugar, and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Add in the pureed mango and combine thoroughly. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and mix only until no large lumps remain.
Fill cupcake liners 2/3 of the way full, and bake for 20-24 minutes till done (you can stick a toothpick in the center and it should come out clean). Leave in muffin tins for 3-5 minutes after taking out of the oven, so the cakes can set, and then take out of the tins and place on a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting. While you are waiting for them to cool, you can prepare your Cream Cheese Vanilla Bean Frosting (recipe below). When cupcakes are completely cool, cut a cone out of the center of each cake, and remove tops. This is where you will spoon in your Mango Jam, or if you choose not to make the Jam then you can also use this method and add extra Cream Cheese Vanilla Bean Frosting into the center of the cupcake, replace the cake top, and pipe more frosting on top. Both methods are beautiful and extremely tasty.

Cream Cheese Vanilla Bean Frosting Ingredients:
Vanilla Bean Frosting:
1/8 cup Earth Balance margarine, room temperature
1/8 cup Earth Balance vegan shortening, room temperature
1/4 cup tofutti cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped out
1 tsp. vanilla extract

To make the frosting, cream together the margarine, shortening, and cream cheese until just combined. Add the powdered sugar half a cup at a time, mixing in each addition until smooth and creamy. Add vanilla extract and vanilla bean seeds, and whip until fluffy and smooth. It is a thick frosting. Keep tightly covered and refrigerated until ready to use, then pipe onto fully cooled cupcakes.

Check out the beautiful vanilla bean flecks in the frosting:

Mango Jam

My friend Julie’s birthday celebration dinner is tonight. To prep, I made this fabulous fresh and sweet Mango Jam, which was easy to whip up and will be perfect paired with the rest of the dessert that I am making. It is also great on a slice of toast or a rice cake, and (as I discovered this morning) delicious when combined with almond butter! The best thing about it is that if you are making jam yourself, you can adjust the amount of sugar to your liking, as opposed to store bought jam. Because I am using this mainly to add to a dessert, I made it a little sweeter than I would normally want it for eating as a spread. Next time, I will put a little less sugar in and the mango’s natural sweetness will shine!

This recipe makes about 2 cups of jam.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen cubed mango
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. arrowroot powder
2 1/2 Tblsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice*

*You can use lime juice for this if you want…Lemon was all I had on hand.

Put all the ingredients into your blender. Blend until the mango is fairly smooth (small lumps are okay, it just depends on what consistency you want your jam to have). Pour this smoothie-mixture into a pot, and cook on medium heat, stirring intermittently. The sugar will dissolve and the mango should break down a bit more. After 15-20 minutes, it should thicken considerably, due to the natural pectin content in the mango and the help from the arrowroot. Turn off the heat, and let the jam cool completely. Store in a clean airtight container or jar.