EgglessCooking.com | Eggless Recipes | Eggless Baking » almond butter

No Bake Almond Butter and Oats Cookies

Madhuram — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:28:52 +0000

Thanks a lot everybody for the anniversary wishes. We went to a temple in the evening, had dinner in a very famous South Indian vegetarian restaurant. The food was okay and I was definitely missing the restaurant we used to go regularly in US. I miss a couple of other things too here. Phone companies here don’t have the free calls to US plan (we had free calls to Canada back in US). The other day I wanted chocolate flavored graham crackers to bake something and couldn’t find it in 4 stores. Really! Finding graham crackers should not be this difficult! They had the honey flavored ones. And what’s with the mosquitoes? But I have to agree that we have access to other cool things/facilities which was not available in US. For example, doctor visits and couple other medical expenses are covered by the government itself. So no co-pay each time you visit a doctor. (But the income tax rate is very high, especially if you are single. Once you are married and have dependents the rate goes down.) Very good public transit system. People here feel that it’s not good enough but for me it’s excellent because we didn’t have that facility back in US. The most important thing I feel that people here are very warm and friendly. So I guess we can’t have it all!

I’m still not in the mood to bake/blog but my DH is constantly nagging me to start blogging regularly. So I once again went back to the Eagle brand book for a simple “no-bake” recipe. Found a recipe for peanut butter drops made with peanut butter, chopped peanuts, condensed milk and quick cooking oats. I made something similar a year back and remembered that my son did not like it. So I substituted peanuts with almonds and peanut butter and almond butter. And guess what? my son can’t stop eating them. It takes only 10-15 minutes to prepare this but it is unbelievably delicious.

Ingredients

Butter or Margarine 1/2 cup (1 stick)

Unsweetened Cocoa 1/3 cup

Quick Cooking Oats 2 and 1/2 cups

Sweetened Condensed Milk 1 can (14 oz/300 ml)

Chopped Almonds 1 cup

Almond Butter 1/2 cup

Yield: Approximately 5 dozen

Step-by-Step Procedure

1. From left: Almonds, oats, condensed milk, almond butter, cocoa and butter

2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter.

3. Stir in cocoa powder to the melted butter.

4. Mix both cocoa powder and butter using a whisk. Bring mixture to a boil.

5. Remove from heat. Add oats.

6. Add the can of condensed milk.

7. Add the chopped almonds.

8. Add the almond butter.

9. Line 2 baking sheets with a wax paper. I sprayed a half tablespoon with non stick cooking spray, scooped out the mixture and dropped onto the baking sheets. Chill 2 hours or until set. Store loosely covered in refrigerator.

10. You can either leave it as it is or shape them into balls. After about 30 minutes in the fridge, the mixture will be in the right texture to shape it. Put it back in the refrigerator for another 2 hours or until it firms up.

My Notes Add your choice of nut butter and chopped nuts. You can also go for fat free condensed milk.

Crispy Vegan Breakfast Bars using Almond Butter

Madhuram — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:52:19 +0000

I’m a mother of a preschooler and like many others of his age he is also picky when it comes to food. Earlier I didn’t have any problem at all with him during mealtime. He used to eat a lot of veggies, rice, chapathis and fruits etc. But not anymore. So these days I’m hunting for healthy and tasty recipes which appeal kids. While browsing the “Vegetarian Times – Fast and Easy” book I found many such recipes.

The crispy breakfast bar recipe, especially caught my attention because these were “no bake” bars which can be prepared in a jiffy and are healthy too. These are crunchy chewy bars. They get fiber and iron from whole-grain puffed cereal and protein from almond butter and almonds. The original recipe does not have almonds, but I added it to give the extra crunchiness and protein boost.

Following the basic method, one can come up with a couple of variations, like using peanut butter and peanuts, chocolate chips, etc to mention a few. A variety of whole-grain puffed cereals are available in the grocery stores these days. I saw puffed millet and other puffed cereals too.

The prep time is only 15 minutes, which includes the time to take out the stuff you need from your pantry and you have to freeze the mixture for 30 minutes. So in 45 minutes you have a healthy treat ready, without any elbow grease.

So how does it taste? As I have mentioned earlier, my son “the picky eater” loved it so much, he ate 2 pieces as soon as he got home from school. We adults also liked it very much. Actually it’s a fancy “Pori Urundai” (puffed rice balls) with almond butter, raisins and honey instead of the jaggery syrup we Indians use.

Ingredients

Whole Grain Puffed Cereal – 7 cups(I used the store brand Puffed Wheat Cereal)

Dried Cranberries – 3/4 cup

Raisins or Dried Blueberries – 3/4 cup (I used raisins)

Sliced Almonds, toasted – 3/4 cup (Not mentioned in the recipe, but I added it)

Ground Cinnamon – 1 teaspoon (I omitted it)

Brown Rice Syrup or Honey – 3/4 cup (I used honey)

Almond Butter – 3/4 cup

Soy Margarine/Unsalted Butter – 2 tablespoons (I used Earth Balance Vegan Butter)

Yield: 15 big size bars or 30 smaller bars.

Step-by-Step Procedure 1. Stir together cereal, dried fruit, nuts and cinnamon (if using) in large bowl.

2. Put syrup, almond butter and soy margarine (whichever you are using) in large, microwave-safe measuring cup.

3. Microwave 1 and 1/2 minutes on high, or until hot and margarine has melted.

4. Stir well, then pour over cereal mixture.

5. Stir to coat.

6. Dampen hands with cold water.

7. Press cereal mixture firmly into 9×9 inch baking pan (I didn’t have this, so I used 13×9 inch nonstick baking pan), re-wetting hands if necessary to keep mixture from sticking.

8. Freeze 30 minutes. I covered the pan with plastic wrap before putting it in the freezer.

9. Cut into 15 bars, and store in refrigerator up to 5 days.

My Notes 1. For toasting almonds, heat a frying pan on the stove and add the sliced almonds, toss it for a couple of seconds. Be careful not to burn the almonds.

2. If you are not into organic stuff, you can find almond butter very cheap in Trader Joe’s. The organic brand is also cheaper there when compared to the price in the regular grocery store. The grocery store near my house carries only Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter which is $12, but the organic butter in Trader Joe’s is only $8 and if you choose to buy the inorganic it’s only $4.59. That’s a considerable amount of savings for me. You can also make your own almond butter.

This is my entry for:
1. Suganya’s Vegan Ventures.
2. DK’s AWED – Amercian.
3. Pallavi’s Sunday Snacks – Fix It.

Almond Butter Laddus

Madhuram — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:43:46 +0000

Earlier last week, I stumbled upon Rachna’s blog and found a an interesting recipe for preparing laddus using peanut butter. It’s such an easy recipe, with no cooking at all. Surprisingly I had all the ingredients at home and moreover it was my friend’s daughter’s birthday, so I went ahead and made it immediately.

First I tried it with peanut butter. One thing I forgot to notice was, the peanut butter had sodium in it, so the laddus were both sweet and salty. But we did like the taste.

Later I remembered about the almond butter which was lying in my pantry after using it for the almond butter bread. Immediately I checked the nutrition label and I saw 0gm Sodium. So I made the ladoos again with almond butter and it was absolutely delicious.

For my laddoos I used 1/2 a cup of almond butter, 1/4 a cup of regular icing sugar, 1/4 cup of khoya and a pinch of cardamom powder. Simply combine all the ingredients and shape it into balls. I got 13 small ladoos for this measurement.

This is my entry for Nupur’s Less is More MBP event. MBP was originally started by Coffee to give credit to fellow food blogger’s efforts.

Eggless Almond Butter Bread

Madhuram — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:39:59 +0000

In a recent episode of Paula Deen’s show in Food TV, I saw her preparing a very easy peanut butter bread. Since I’m not a big fan of peanut butter I thought of making the bread with almond butter instead. The taste was amazing and you won’t believe how easy it is to prepare.

Ingredients:
All purpose flour – 2 cups
Baking powder – 4 teaspoons
Salt – 1 teaspoon
Sugar – 1/3 cup
Toasted slivered almonds – 1/4 cup (optional)
Milk – 1.5 cups (I used 2% milk)
Almond Butter – 1/2 cup (I used Nature’s Promise Organic Almond Butter)

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Combine the dry ingredients and nuts. Add milk to the mix and stir well to avoid lumps.

3. Now add the almond butter.

4. Mix well and continuously stir them.

5. Pour into a 8×4x3 inch loaf pan.

6. Top the batter with some toasted almond slices.

7. Bake for approximately 50 minutes.

8. Have this for breadfast with or without jam. Enjoy!

My Notes:
1. I happened to check the reviews in the food network site after baking the bread while writing this post. The recipe was given only 3 stars and most of them had written that the bread was too dry and did not have enough peanut butter taste. So they had suggested reducing the amount of baking powder, increasing the quantity of peanut butter, reducing the baking time, or using organic peanut butter because it has more oil content. But I did not have any problem with my bread. The only change I made was using almond butter and added a couple of toasted almonds. The bread was very moist and sweet enough by itself. Jam was also not necessary. The almond butter did have a lot of oil in it, maybe that gave the moistness to the bread.

2. Adding toasted nuts in the batter gave a very nice crunch. But I wouldn’t top the bread with nuts the next time because they get toasted once again and some of the nuts became little bitter. Not topping the bread with almonds will also facilitate easy slicing of the bread.

3. Cool completely before slicing the bread, so that it does not crumble. I would even recommend to 2 to 3 hours of cooling.

4. Also check out the health benefits of almonds here.

Update: My friend Roma from Bangalore, India has tried another cool version of the Almond Bread. Since almond butter is not available in India she has used regular unsalted butter and has included powdered almonds and has got a very moist bread.

It’s award time again:

Dear Uma of Essence of Andhra has passed me the Nice Matters Award. Thank you very much for thinking of me Uma.

I would like to pass this to:

The Pritya duo
Shubha
Kumudha

“Nice Matters Award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world.”

Another friend Rupa of Random Musings has passed me the Good Chat Blog Award. Thank you very much Rupa.

I would like to pass this to:

DK
Mansi
Siri