Just like eggless pancakes, eggless waffles recipe has also been long pending here. And just like how my husband kept me pushing to prepare eggless pancakes for the blog he has also been nagging me about preparing eggless waffles for the blog for such a long time now and we did it finally. The reason I was postponing the waffles recipe was, I did not want to buy a waffle iron. My kitchen is already flooded with too many small appliances and I’m running out of counter space. So I didn’t want to spend another $30 and add one more gadget which is actually not even remotely necessary. Each and every time I go to Walmart, my husband will remind me to get a waffle iron, which I will conveniently forget. I couldn’t postpone it any longer because he made it very clear that we have to post a vegan waffle recipe before Mother’s Day. So I got myself a waffle iron as wedding anniversary/Mother’s Day gift. They both come back to back this year.

I didn’t have to go looking for a vegan waffle recipe because I had borrowed Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz weeks back from the library. As the name implies, the book has an amazing collection of vegan recipes of classic American brunch dishes. Pancakes, waffles, omelets, frittatas, muffins! You name it, she has got it! I did not look for a recipe anywhere else because I knew that this one too will turn out perfect just like her vegan banana bread. I followed her recipe exactly but for substituting few ingredients to make use of what I had in my pantry. Next to try from the book is the chocolate waffles recipe. I think I will get it done before Father’s Day this year!

It has been a while since I baked anything.  I’m trying to cut back on baked and sweet stuff for health reasons.  I baked these cranberry scones because I had a big pack of cranberries from Costco and was looking for ways to finish it off.  I found this scone recipe on the pack itself but you can refer to the original here.  I incorporated some changes and veganized it.  So here it is, an easy vegan scone recipe. Don’t forget to check a similar cranberry scone recipe I have posted already using dried cranberries and white chocolate chips.

Hello friends, hope you are all eager and ready to go Easter egg hunting with your family. Here in Canada it’s a long weekend for kids. Schools are closed on Friday and Monday. I thought this is the right time to post a simple white bread recipe. With kids around what’s more fun than baking? Let’s create sweet childhood memories by getting our hands dirty.

I have always had yeast-o-phobia. Couple of years back, when I started baking, one of the first recipes I had tried was making Naan at home. I gathered all ingredients with so much excitement and prepared everything as listed in the recipe, put the naan inside the oven and was eagerly waiting to taste it and all my excitement shut down once I tasted it. It smelled “yeasty”, tasted “yeasty” and nothing like what I had expected. So my experiment with yeast stopped way back in 2006. Somehow I didn’t feel like baking with yeast again until Jan 2012. On 1st of January this year, I decided that I’m going to overcome this yeast fear and decided to bake a simple white bread. I Googled and picked this recipe because it looked pretty easy to follow and I had the Rapid Rise Yeast or Instant Yeast and not the Active Dry Yeast some of the other white bread recipes called for. I followed everything in the recipe with utmost reverence and I was so serious like I was doing some religious rites or something. I didn’t let my husband to photograph the steps involved because I didn’t want to jinx anything. All the craziness was well worth it because the bread turned out AWESOME!

When I posted the recipe for these eggless vanilla cupcakes, I never thought that any other cupcake recipe can even come closer to that one. I was so ecstatic that I have found the best eggless vanilla cupcake recipe. But the only drawback was that it used Ener-G egg replacer powder and it’s not easily available in all parts of the world and many of the readers were asking me for a substitute for Ener-G. Also there was mixed review from people who tried it with Ener-G. I have tried it a couple times now and I have got it right each and every time, but I understand that not everybody is able to get it perfect.

I was working on finding another recipe for vanilla cupcakes which uses easily available ingredients. I tried a couple of recipes but was not satisfied with any of those. Which is when I decided to try this eggless vanilla cake recipe itself. Another reason for deciding to use that recipe was, some of the readers wanted a substitute for condensed milk in that recipe. So I used the vanilla cake recipe as a base and made a couple of variations and baked it twice to get the right combination and I have to say that I’m completely satisfied with the results.

About a month and a half back I had borrowed the book Canada’s 150 Best Diabetes Desserts from the library. At that time I was contemplating going on a sugar free diet, so this book really intrigued me. The reason I chose to borrow this book was that artificial sweeteners were not used in the recipes. I already had cut way back on baking and it was just once or twice a month. So I thought it would be a good idea to cut back on the sugar even during those few occasions.

This oatmeal raisin muffin is the first recipe I tried from that book. The original recipe did have eggs and honey, which I have replaced with vinegar and maple syrup to make it vegan and the muffins came out very tasty. The sweetness was perfect for us. This made me thinking that I should be able to cut back at least 25%-35% of sugar in any recipe for that matter without affecting the taste of the baked goodies. I have bookmarked a couple of other interesting recipes to try from that book. So do take a look at that book when you are at the library the next time.

Hope you folks had a lovely Valentine’s Day! I tried 2 muffin recipes early in the first week of February and was vowing not to bake anything until March because you guys know that I’m trying to eat healthy and lose weight. But Valentine’s Day sort of made me weak. How can I not bake something? That’s when I remembered the gluten-free chocolate cake recipe I came across in Reader’s Digest magazine. What was unusual about the recipe was that it used just chickpeas and eggs. “How weird is that?”, I thought initially. But if you know me very well, you would have guessed by now that I love all these type of recipes. I get my high by sneaking unusual ingredients in the everyday recipe.

As much as I was excited about trying the recipe, I had my doubts too, if it will really work. So I Googled to see if anybody else has tried the recipe and found this one. So Reader’s Digest had pulled out the recipe from AllRecipes. The recipe had about 400 reviews, most of them claiming it to be excellent. But we have a different challenge though, trying to make it eggless. So I started reading each and every review and saw that some of them had tried a vegan version with flax seed meal and I was not sure about that. That’s when I had a light bulb moment and I decided to use pureed beets for some of the eggs and use some organic, refined coconut oil to replace some of the fat from the eggs. Actually I had pressure cooked some beets to prepare the beets version of red velvet cupcakes, but I decided to use it in this recipe instead to see if I can pull off a gluten-free and red velvet chocolate cake. I guess I was greedy! The cake didn’t turn red or even purplish but just brown like any other chocolate cake. Or maybe I will notice a difference in color if I compare this one to another cake baked using some other pureed fruit. Maybe the other cake would not be as bright as this one. I don’t know, it’s just a guess. Anyhow I’m not complaining at all because the taste makes it up for all the other ifs and buts.

Avocados have become as common as onions and tomatoes in our home and I don’t see why it shouldn’t become a staple in yours too. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. In my opinion, avocado should also join the list. You too will agree with me once you know how nutrient dense avocados are.

Long time back I had bookmarked a chocolate cupcake recipe using avocado and I have been wanting to try it forever and finally got to it. So the next time you have a very ripe and mushy avocado, you know what to do! But a note though, cooked avocado is not as healthy as raw avocado. So I’m not calling this a healthy cupcake recipe but just a recipe which uses avocado. The pureed avocado replaces the eggs and some of the fat in this recipe, which is the specialty of pureed fruit. It plays a dual role; as an egg substitute in baking and as well as a fat replacer.

This chocolate cupcake recipe does call for oil and I have used organic, expeller pressed, refined coconut oil from Spectrum instead of canola oil or vegetable oil I normally use. Those of you who are following my posts regularly, would by now know that I’m trying to incorporate some healthy changes in our kitchen. I had shared my concern about oil and fats in the vegan banana bread post. Since then I have been using only coconut oil, butter and ghee for medium to high heat cooking; extra virgin olive oil and sesame oil for raw and very mild heat cooking. All other vegetable and seed oils are out of sight now but for the very rare deep frying occasions.

I was still having a problem when it came to vegan baking. I didn’t know which oil to use. Some people are all praises for Grapeseed oil, which is supposed to be very stable at high temperature. But what I learned from my research did not prove that Grapeseed oil was any better. Then I heard from Bee that organically refined coconut oil is a good option for baking, because it is refined, it doesn’t smell coconutty. Also since it is solid, it can replace butter or margarine too. Unlike non-organic oils, where extracting the oil and refining is done at very high temperatures and using a lot of chemicals, altering the chemical structure of the original oil, organically refined oils are not subject to such high temperatures or those harsh chemicals making it the best option. For those who have been led to believe that coconut oil is not healthy, my simple statement is “don’t believe that”. I have been reading about this extensively and truly believe that it is perfectly fine to consume coconut oil everyday. Yes it has saturated fats and again we have been led to believe that saturated fats are bad by effective lobbying of the manufacturers of the other oils. Another good option is avocado oil. It also has a very high smoking point. I’ll write more about avocado oil once I start using it.

In the same context, butter is better than the array of so called healthy spreads available in the market these days. I agree that I too was using all types of soft tub margarine thinking that it was good but now I know much better than that. The more you read about it, the more you come to know about the extreme processing (including mechanical, heat and chemical) a product undergoes and it’s really a nightmare. For those who are not aware of all this, I once again say that ignorance is bliss. I think I will have to do a detailed post about this subject to make it even clear.

For starters, read the product labels to see if you are able to identify the ingredients. The key is to keep it simple to keep it safe. I’m slowly trying to eliminate all (store-bought) processed food, by preparing everything at home or buying organic products when time is a constraint and convenience becomes more important.

Hello friends, hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, happy New Year and a lovely Pongal! I know that I went missing again! As I have mentioned before I’m trying to cut back on baking to get back on a healthy lifestyle. I have to do this because I completely lack self control when it comes to sweets. So I have decided to cut it at the source itself! But don’t worry guys, I will keep updating here at least once a week and more often at VegCorner.com.

During Christmastime I got an order to bake some cupcakes. Initially I was requested to make egg free red velvet cupcakes but I told them that I haven’t tried it so far and will stick to vanilla and chocolate itself. Actually I have been avoiding the red velvet cupcakes all these days because I’m not comfortable using food colors and that too this particular recipe uses so much of it. Also it is quite difficult to find a vegetarian red food color. But being the baking enthusiast that I am, I did not want to miss the opportunity to try something new. So I started searching the web for a vegan red velvet cupcake recipe and found this in Food.com. This recipe is all over the internet and supposedly has featured in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World too. This recipe is quite similar to the vegan chocolate cake recipe I have posted earlier, except that it does not use as much cocoa powder. The cupcakes were crimson in color instead of bright red more like beet cupcakes. When I try this recipe the next time for my family I’m going to use pureed beets instead of the food color.

It’s Christmastime, that part of the year I’m eagerly waiting for, because now I have a reason to bake a lot. Over the year I keep bookmarking recipes under the category “Christmas”, usually big batch cookies, so that I can bake it and share with friends, neighbors and others in the community. This year I’m a bit late though. So far I have baked only this big batch oatmeal raisin cookies and I don’t know if I have enough time to make a cookie assortment platter. I have been getting requests for gingerbread man cookies and other things. I really wish I can get to it.

This cookie recipe is a mix of two recipes; my earlier recipe for big batch chocolate chip cookies and this big batch oatmeal raisin cookies. My son’s Hindi class friends were having a “end of the year” party and his school “winter break” party was also coming up, so I wanted to bake a big batch. These two parties were a week apart, so I decided to freeze about 2 dozen cookies for the latter one. See my notes to know how you can freeze the dough and bake fresh cookies just when you want it. I made it nut free (and of course egg-free too) because of the nut allergies, but would definitely suggest adding nuts if you can. At first I wanted to make it just oatmeal-raisin, but you can’t go wrong with chocolate chips with the kids, so decided to go for it. This cookie recipe has room for a lot of changes. If I had M&M’s (Smarties/Gems) with me, I would have added that instead of the chocolate chips. You could also get just the red and green M&M’s and make it all Christmassy!

A couple of days back I stumbled upon Vegetarian Times and I have been bookmarking their recipes like crazy. They have so many interesting baking and cooking recipes. I baked these vegan chocolate cookies following their recipe but making some slight changes. The cookies turned out very good and got me a lot of compliments from everybody who tasted it including my son’s school principal and vice principal.

This recipe is close to my heart for another reason too. My little one spoke a new word when he saw the cookies. He said he wanted it (kaavala in Telugu which means ‘want‘). It was so cute. He kept repeating it again and again. I don’t know how he picked up that word and now he is telling the same whenever he sees us eating something or when he wants something.