Actually this cake is 100% vegan if I had used vegan chocolate chips. I had 2 big zucchinis in my fridge and was wondering what to do with it. Coincidentally I saw a recipe for chocolate zucchini cake in one of the cookbooks I have. I was not surprised because I’ve baked a chocolate chip zucchini bread earlier and I know that you cannot taste the zucchini at all. But I didn’t want to proceed with that zucchini cake recipe because it was a 4 layered birthday cake with frosting and all. I wanted something very simple, like a snack cake. Googled and found a couple of zucchini cake recipes. I decided to go with this chocolate zucchini cake recipe because it was very simple and it also gave me room to make some healthy changes.

I used Ener-G egg replacer powder instead of eggs. This is my 4th attempt with Ener-G. My first experiment was not that good but the remaining 3 came out very well. I will post the other 2 recipes shortly. For this zucchini cake I kept the original measurements same but changed the ingredients to make it as healthy as possible. Like using whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose flour, oil and applesauce instead of butter, 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips instead of 1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips. You can take my word that this cake is absolutely delicious in spite of all these healthy substitutions. My son (most of you know that he is a very picky eater) enjoyed this cake very much, not only on the first day but until it got over. This cake is not light and fluffy but dense and moist. This zucchini cake is also not overly sweet. Unlike the cakes made with all purpose flour and rich frosting which increases your sugar craving and makes you grab another slice of the cake, this cake is very filling and satisfying. We were not able to locate even one strand of the shredded zucchini.

My Notes 1 The key in using Ener-G is processing it with the water in a blender until it’s nice and fluffy. Simply whisking it with a fork does not give desirable results. If you pour this immediately in a liquid measuring cup, you will see that it measures exactly 3/4 th of a cup, which is perfect because we usually replace every egg with 1/4 cup of any egg substitute. But by the time I was ready to add this mixture to the rest of the wet ingredients, I saw that it had reduced to 1/2 a cup. So to replace the 1/4 cup of liquid missing I used unsweetened soy milk. You could use any milk or even some fruit juice which you think would go with the flavors you are baking.

2 You can also use an 8 inch or 9 inch round cake pan instead of a spring form pan. But I think you cannot do the topping because, while inverting the pan to unmould the cake the toppings may fall down.

3 Zucchini can be grated without peeling. After grating I felt that the strands were very big, so I chopped them coarsely.

This goes to the Egg Replacement Event – Egg Replacer Powder hosted by me.

Another change I made was using a 13X9 inch baking pan instead of a loaf pan and also increased the oven temperature. The time mentioned to bake the bread was 60-75 minutes. Yesterday I found time to bake only at 10pm and I didn’t want to spend 1 hour for a single fruitcake, when I had plans to bake cranberry shortbread bars also, both to be gifted to the firefighters and others before christmas. So I decided to use a 13X9 inch pan, which definitely was wise because the fruitcake was done around 35 minutes itself. This was also very convenient to cut them into small pieces.

I also flavored the fruitcake with Supreme Spice’s Tea Masala Extract. For long time now I have wanted to try spice extracts, finally ordered it last week and got my shipment of Tea Masala Extract, Kesar Milk Extract and Tulsi Extract. The tea masala extract is my absolute favorite now. You have to try it to believe it. It transforms your ordinary tea into something exotic and it’s especially refreshing in this gloomy weather these days.

Tea masala extract is a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, clove and pepper, which I thought would be perfect to pair with this fruitcake. At first I added 5 drops of the extract to the dough, but felt that it was not enough and so added another 5 drops and mixed the dough well. While the cake was baking the kitchen was filled with so much aroma of the spices, which made me think If I had gone overboard my adding 10 drops. I couldn’t wait until it was cool enough to cut it and have a bite. Anyway I let it cool on a wire rack overnight and cut them today. But by then the pungency of the spices had reduced and the cake tasted very good with the flavor of the spice extract in the background.

My Notes 1 Any combination of nuts and dried fruits can be used in this fruitcake. The only thing to be followed is that it should be 3 cups of nuts and 3 cups of dried fruits. I used 1 cup each of walnuts, pecans and sliced almonds. For dried fruits, I used 1/2 cup each of raisins, dried cranberries, dates, apricots and 1 cup of dried and sliced figs.

2 Let the fruitcake cool completely in the pan before inverting it. I was not patient enough and turned it over and the cake broke into 2 pieces. Fortunately I was able to patch it up. So I would suggest cooling it overnight.

This christmas fruitcake goes to
1. Egg Replacement Event – Pureed Fruit hosted by me.
2. Baking for Beginners hosted by Vandana.
3. Homemade Christmas Gift hosted by Happy Cook &
4. Santa’s Holiday Challenge hosted by JZ.

I’m back with another healthy breakfast recipe from The Sneaky Chef. Kids love cookies and won’t they be thrilled if we serve it for breakfast? Then bake these breakfast cookies, made with fiber one cereal, a brilliant flour blend, dried cranberries and walnuts. Sometimes healthy stuff is not tasty, like whole wheat bread, bagel or pita for example. Even though these cookies are made of whole wheat pastry flour and wheat germ, they tasted very good to my surprise.

I was skeptical about using wheat flour because I have baked with it earlier and sometimes the baked goodies does not smell/taste right. This is the first time I have had success using whole wheat pastry flour. I did not get the raw smell of wheat. I did not miss white flour at all in the cookies. You can
take my word on that. The cereal gave a nice crunch to the otherwise chewy cookies. I would suggest adding dried cranberries and walnuts (this was not mentioned in the original recipe) because it enhances the taste, gives a very good texture to the cookies, also it has nutritional benefits. We adults can also munch on these healthy cookies without any guilt.

My son ate the first cookie so fast, telling me that it was very nice, etc, but then as usual he stopped liking it from the next day. Try your luck with your kids! But touch wood, the blueberry milk, strawberry milk and cherry chocolate milk are still his favorites.

These breakfast cookies go to Egg Replacement Event – Pureed Fruit hosted by me.

It’s long time since I have baked a quick bread. The last time I baked this for my friends and it was a hit. I had used bananas instead of eggs, so the bread tasted more like bananas. That’s the only reason I don’t like using bananas as an egg substitute because it’s flavor/smell will dominate the baked dish. Whether it’s a carrot cake or chocolate cake, it’s going to taste like a banana only. So this time I decided to use flax seed meal as the egg substitute.

What is a Quick Bread? As the name suggests, “Quick Breads” can be baked quickly, when compared to the traditional yeast breads. Quick breads are leavened with baking powder and/or baking soda, not yeast. So you can mix, bake and enjoy these baked goods in less time. Quick breads can be sweet or savory. One important thing to be noted while baking quick breads is, mixing the wet and dry ingredients only until moistened. Few lumps in the batter is fine, because over-mixing causes the gluten in the flour to develop and the result would be a coarse and tough bread.

Quick breads such as banana, zucchini and cranberry slice and taste best when served a day after baking. Wrap the cooled bread in foil or plastic wrap; leave at room temperature overnight. Use a serrated knife for breads that have fruits and/or nuts. Corn bread and coffee cakes are best served warm. (Source: The Taste of Home Baking Book)

I had some dried cranberries left after preparing these “no-bake” bars, so I wanted to use it before I could forget all about it and find it out after 3 months while cleaning the pantry. I also had 2 cranberry bread recipes in hand. One was the traditional yeast bread and another one a cranberry orange quick bread (from the book Baking for Dummies). Hands down my choice is the latter, because I’m not yet ready to bake with yeast. I have this preconceived notion that I cannot handle yeast, it’s difficult. But the quick bread required fresh cranberries which I didn’t have. So I came up with a recipe combining those 2 recipes, making few changes here and there. The bread came out quite decently.

This is my entry to the following events:
1. Suganya’s Vegan Ventures.
2. Mansi’s Vegetarian Thanksgiving Recipe Carnival. What is Thanksgiving without cranberries!
3. Egg Replacement Event – Flax Seed Meal hosted by me.

I had mentioned about eggless brownie cupcakes in my previous post and here I’m with the recipe. Actually 2 weeks back it was my son’s turn to provide snacks for his classmates in preschool and I was wondering what to bake from the humungous collection of eggless recipes I have now. Since I’m hosting this event, I decided to bake something using flax seed meal. I wanted to bake something simple, which appeals children and that can be easily packed. I had borrowed “The Joy of Vegan Baking” book from the library and this brownie recipe (the author has actually adapted the recipe from Sinfully Vegan) caught my eye. Do you know the reason? It does not have any added fat like butter/oil etc. Applesauce is replaced for fat in the recipe. I’m aware of the fact that unsweetened applesauce can be used as an egg substitute as well as a fat substitute, but I have tried neither. So I was determined to try this recipe because I will be baking something healthy and who doesn’t like brownies, leave alone preschoolers.

If you have baked brownies before you would know that it takes a long time to cool and then you have to cut it. I wanted to bake 35 brownies and the recipe mentioned that it would yield 8-9 brownies, so I would have to bake 4-5 batches, take into account the cooling time, packing etc, which would consume a considerable amount of time. Then only I remembered what I had read a long time back in a magazine. One of the readers had mentioned that she baked brownies in a muffin tin and they came out very well. I decided to try it and I’m so glad that I tried it because it’s such a wonderful/neat idea. I think I’ll be baking brownies only in a muffin tin henceforth. Moreover the serving size is also increased to 12 from 8, using a muffin pan instead of a regular baking dish. So I had to bake only 3 batches.

As for the taste, it was AWESOME. You can never guess that these are healthy brownies. They were so moist. I was not able to get the feedback from the children, but one of the teachers told me that it tasted very good and the children really enjoyed it.

This is my entry for the following events:
1. Aparna’s Sweet Celebrations.
2. DK’s AWED – American.

When I first started this blog I knew that there were people searching for eggless baking recipes just like me, but I did not even imagine how big that community can be. Now after seeing the statistics and comments especially from parents of kids with egg allergy, I have come to understand that “we” are a big group indeed, whatever the reasons might be for baking eggless. For some it’s cultural, for some it’s allergies, for vegans it’s a principle and so on.

I think everybody would agree that baking eggless is more challenging than regular baking. For eggless baking, we have to find a recipe which is originally eggless or substitute something else for the eggs in the recipe. In case of the former you would have to get books on baking and go page by page, hunting for eggless recipes, which I’m actually doing. I go to the library, borrow books and pour over pages finding eggless recipes, copy them and try them out one by one.

Another possibility is baking with egg substitutes. To get favorable results while replacing eggs in a baking recipe we have to clearly understand it’s role in the recipe. Eggs either act as binders, moisturizers or leavening agents.

To know more about egg substitutions you can refer to “Cooking Free” by Carol Fenster. It has loads of information about do’s and don’ts of egg replacements.

With growing request for more eggless recipes, I thought why not create an event for eggless baking using each of the above substitutions. I have used a couple of egg substitutes myself and would love to hear others’ take on it too. All these recipes and information would be very helpful for many bakers.

The rules of the event are:

I would like to start this event with “Silken Tofu”. As far as I know, tofu is the most sought out egg substitute. Recently I used it for the first time while baking a chocolate cake for my son’s birthday and the result was unbelievably good. Nobody could guess that it was an eggless chocolate cake made with silken tofu.

The general rule of thumb while baking with tofu is using 1/4 cup for each egg replaced and it has to be blended until very smooth. I read that it can be used in cakes, cookies and breads. Baked goods won’t brown as they do while baking with eggs and the end product will be very moist and heavy.

Hope all of you would make this event a grand success by sending as many entries as possible.

Check HERE for the recipes using silken tofu as an egg substitute.