Dawn's BEST EVER Pumpkin Bread

You would never know it's high protein and whole grain.  Let's just do this, right?

Dawn's BEST EVER Pumpkin Bread
Inspired by the Pumpkin Spice Bread in The Joy of Vegan Baking.

Yields 2 loaves.
*However, I could go for two bigger loaves, so I do want to work to increase this recipe by about 25%.
As usual, use as many organic ingredients as you like.  Notes are denoted with a *.

1/4 cup Ground Flaxseed
1/2 cup Water
2 cups Sugar 
*or natural sugars such as date sugar, coconut sugar, etc. but I haven't tried it with these, so let me know.
1/3 cup Sunflower, Safflower or Canola oil
2/3 cup Unsweetened Applesauce.
1 can Pumpkin Puree 
*I used Wegmans brand this time and it was great, though not organic!
1 cup Protein Powder (it's OK if it's vanilla flavored)
*I used TJ's soy powder because I had it, and it was great.
2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
*I only use King Arthur's brand here, it's the best by far.
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 to 1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp baking Soda
1/2 tsp baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
Optional: 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts or chocolate chips per loaf.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and lightly flour two standard loaf pans and set aside.

In a small bowl, whip together flaxseed and water with an electric hand mixer until creamy and "eggy" looking (it will appear a bit gelatinous). You can also do this by hand (vigorously with a small whisk or fork) or in your food processor.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix sguar, oil, applesauce, pumpkin, and add the flaxseed mixture (your "wet" ingredients).

In another bowl thoroughly mix your dry ingredients: protein powder, flours, spices, baking soda & powder and salt.  Add them to the wet ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon or strong spatula until combined.  Alternately, to save the additional bowl from this step, I use a large fine mesh sieve that I rest over the wet ingredients.  I then sift in my dry ingredients directly into the wet ones, sort of mixing in all the spices and baking powder & sodas into the flour right in the sieve so it blends evenly into the bread.

If you want a plain loaf, pour half the batter into one of the loaf pans now.  For a nut and/or chocolate chip loaf, add the walnuts to the remaining batter and pour into your second pan.  My son wanted a chocolate chip loaf, so I sort of tricked him by only putting some chips on top of the loaf (there were none inside it).

Bake at 350 for about 50-55 minutes.  Let cool at least 20 minutes before slicing (I cool them on a baking rack still in the loaf pans).

These also freeze beautifully. I just cut fairly large pieces once they are cool and wrap those pieces in foil, label, and freeze.  Just put in the fridge overnight to defrost for an amazing breakfast or dessert base anytime.

What pumpkin recipes have you guys been making? I LOVE fall.

P.S. Vegan MoFo is coming!!  You know, that month long event where hundreds of bloggers sign up and attempt to post 20 times about vegan food in October? And people have lots of fun themes and write tons of posts and complain all month about how hard all that work is, and then are super sad when it's over?  OH YEAH.  Well, it's almost here.  I'm still refining my theme and trying to get my head in the game, but I DID sign up!  It's not too late if you want to sign up, too, you have until Wednesday, September 26th.  You don't need a vegan blog to do it, any blog will do, but your posts need to be about vegan food in some fashion to count for MoFo.

Last year, as my first recipe for Vegan MoFo, I made my Pumpkin Biscotti!

Well, I'll be seeing you guys a LOT soon :-)  Prepare yourselves!

XOXO

Birthday Bonanza!

I know I am behind here, but I do have a lot of great stuff to post.  Let's just get going.

Today is my birthday.  To celebrate, my husband and I let my son go to play with his friends for the day and we went out to lunch and did a little shopping. Food shopping. At Wegmans.  Just for the good stuff since the big weekly shop was already completed, we were just there for an early lunch and fun items.  For lunch, we ate at the cold and hot bars, which have excellent vegan options. I got a beautiful hot tofu dish with hot & sour sauce, fresh brown rice, veggie lo mein, steamed Chinese veggies and an Italian bean salad, all were excellent.  My husband got vegan red lentil stew with a rosemary focaccia roll and roasted Brussels sprouts.  To drink, we both had Vita Coco, 100% coconut water.  A little strange if you ask us, but tolerable.

Then, on to my present.  I wanted to make these home made, vegan protein power bars and needed the Amazing Greens drink powder I actually needed the Amazing Meal, but Wegmans didn't have it so I just got the drink powder.  I also got a container of Wegmans brand, Non-GMO, Organic Soy protein powder.  Yeah, baby!  Birthday present time. I also picked up some organic celery to make chickpea "mock tuna" salad for our late lunch (recipe to follow as well).  I had all the rest of the ingredients and a soaked (but still needing to be cooked) pot of organic chickpeas at home.

The recipe I used for the vegan protein bars belongs to Hannah Kaminsky, the BitterSweet blogger and she is a talent.  I highly recommend her blog and have her cookbooks on my amazon wish list!  I added about two tablespoons of roughly chopped freeze dried raspberries since I happened to have an open bag, and that worked as a nice, tart addition to the sweet flavors in the bar.  Here they are, they are a very dark green and appetizing (to me, anyway).  They were delicious! My toddler ate them as well.

I love the dark green color with the bits of raspberry showing through.  Totally a do-again.

Next up was the Chickpea "Mock Tuna" Salad.  I LOVE this salad and it is from one of the first blogs I checked out on advice from a friend (Thanks, Nancy, I remember!).  She is a little irreverent, but we know that is all in the good fun of making delish vegan vittles.  This is the mock tuna salad I always talk about.  I don't use the kelp powder (only because I don't have it) but I don't think it's necessary.  In addition to the chopped celery, I add one small chopped carrot and probably about 1/4 cup minced onion.  I don't put pickles IN it but I serve them on the side.  You know, you make it just however you like your regular tuna salad.  This is a GREAT recipe to try nutritional yeast because it calls for so little, but it works amazing magic along with the soy sauce (I use organic Tamari, as I prefer its taste to regular soy sauce) to make chickpeas taste like tuna.  It REALLY does.  I make mine in the food processor (all ingredients except the onion, celery and carrot) to get the chickpeas all shreddy and tuna-like.  Then I turn it out into a bowl and add the veggies and some extra mayo (if needed) and some extra salt and pepper, if needed.  I also like it with garlic powder (about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp).  This is what we ate for our late lunch.

Now if that don't look like deli tuna salad, I don't know what does.  Oh, deli tuna salad :-).  But this is so much healthier for you, cruelty free and tastes better, too.  SUPER yum.

And, unfortunately, spring has decided to give us a pass for this week.  I know I mentioned something about amazing hot chocolate a few weeks ago, then it got all springy and I forgot about it.  Winter has returned for the moment, so, I'll give it to you as you might need it!  Here it is, with permission from The Urban Vegan, (I would also recommend buying her book, it is a STEAL on amazon!).  Dynise also has an excellent blog.  Survived on these for the last few weeks while my son decided to try dropping his 2-3 hour afternoon nap :-).

Here is the recipe:

1 cup full fat soy milk (I used Original Silk in the refrigerated section)
3 tablespoons best quality chocolate chips or chopped chocolate (at least 60%)
1 tsp vanilla (I use Penzey's vanilla)
1/2 to 1 tsp agave syrup (I use light, organic agave)

Heat everything in a small stainless steel pan over gentle heat and stir until chocolate is melted and milk is hot, just starting to steam, but not boiling.  I use a little whisk to stir it well while it s melting.  It is really delish.  I also found I could use two tablespoons of chocolate and it was still really good (and about 70-80 fewer calories and 4-6 fewer grams of fat, depending on the brand of chocolate).  With three, though, it is stupendous.

Hoping we don't need too many more of these (though any excuse to drink them is a good excuse).  Common' spring, we're rootin' for ya'!

And for National Carrot Cake Day, I participated by making the Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Creme Cheese frosting by Annie Shannon.  Meet the Shannons is veganizing the Betty Crocker Cookbook, and they are right on target.  It was FANTASTIC.  Here is the link to the blog post containing the recipe

They were ASTOUNDING and their (vegan, of course) creme cheese icing will be my go-to recipe from now on (but I reduce the amount of sugar a bit).  Check out the comments to see which ingredient I balked at, but then, I became a believer.  Whoah.

Have a great week guys, stay warm, eat some great food.
Dawn