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Almost Vegan Cornmeal Snack Cake

Madhuram — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:22:50 +0000

I was looking for some cornmeal recipes for the Corn event and remembered that I had bookmarked one healthy snack cake recipe from my friend Viji’s blog. Her blog has an amazing collection of traditional and innovative recipes. I have made a couple of changes to the original recipe keeping the measurement same. Since her blog is private, I’m reproducing her recipe (along with changes made by me) here with her permission.

To make it vegan friendly, I used brown rice milk instead of dairy milk, canola oil and unsweetened applesauce instead of butter in the original recipe. If you are able to find vegan chocolate chips or use carob chips this snack cake recipe will be 100% vegan. Even after all these changes the cake tasted very good.

Speaking of which, brown rice milk is a new addition in our diet. Earlier I have baked with regular rice milk and almond milk, but this is the first time I have used brown rice milk. I prefer rice milk to soy milk, especially while baking. I feel that some brands of soy milk leaves an unpleasant odor in baked goods. I have tried a couple of vegan cake recipes with soy milk and felt that the texture was not good too, very sticky. So I usually go with rice milk or almond milk. Now brown rice milk is my favorite too. It tastes good by itself too. My son has it with his cereal. So if a 4 year old likes it, then it should be definitely good, right?

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Almost Vegan Cornmeal Snack Cake Recipe

Dry Ingredients:

Whole Wheat Pastry Flour 1 cup

Whole Cornmeal (use only fine grind) 1 cup

Quick Cooking oats 1 cup

Almond Meal 1 cup

Walnut Meal 1 cup

Raisins 1 cup

Pistachios, coarsely chopped 1 cup

Dried Cranberries 1/2 cup

Flax Seed Meal 1/2 cup

Brown Sugar 1/2 cup

Mini Chocolate Chips 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon

Baking Powder 3/4 teaspoon

Baking Soda 1/2 teaspoon

Cardamom Powder 1/2 teaspoon

Wet Ingredients:

Canola Oil 1/3 cup

Unsweetened Applesauce 2/3 cup

Bananas, mashed/pureed with little water 1 and 1/4 cups

Brown Rice Milk 1 cup

Water/Milk as needed

Yield: 16 pieces (I used a 9×13 inch pan)

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 175C/350F. Grease a 9×13 inch baking pan with butter/non stick cooking spray. I lined it with parchment paper and then greased it also with cooking spray.

2. In a large bowl combine together all the dry ingredients reserving the 1 tablespoon of chocolate chips.

3. Mash 1 large ripe banana with a fork. I chopped the banana and used some of the milk to grind it into a creamy paste. Mix together all the wet ingredients together and stir it well.

4. Pour the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine it well without any lumps. I used another 1/4 cup of water to get the required consistency.

5. Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Smooth it out with a spatula dipped in hot water and top it with the reserved chocolate chips.

6. Bake it for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Mine was done in 22 minutes.

7. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let it cool completely before you can remove the cake from the pan. After it is completely cooled, invert the cake pan to remove the cake and cut it into pieces.

My Notes:

1. I have included a couple of healthy substitutes to the already healthy snack cake. Instead of 1 cup of regular size butterscotch chips, I have used 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips. Instead of 1 cup of melted butter I have used 1/3 cup of oil, 2/3 cup of unsweetened applesauce and increased the quantity of mashed bananas from 1 cup to 1 and 1/4 cups.

2. I have also used brown rice milk instead of dairy milk. The original recipe used whole wheat flour and regular cornmeal, which I have substituted with whole wheat pastry flour and whole cornmeal.

3. Where I live I was able to fine almond meal and walnut meal ready made. If you are not able to find it readily, process nuts of your choice in a food processor until its finely powdered.

4. The sweetness was just right for us. Viji had used 1 cup of dates, which I replaced with 1/2 cup of dried cranberries and also included 1 cup of chopped pistachios. Maybe that’s the reason my cake was not very sweet. I think if I had used the dates the cake would have been very sweet.

5. With so many ingredients in the cake, we couldn’t feel the presence of cardamom. So if you are a spice fan increase the quantity to 1 teaspoon instead of 1/2 teaspoon.

6. I was on a tight schedule on the day I was going to bake this cake. So I prepared the dry ingredients the previous night itself. So it was just mixing in the wet ingredients and baking the next day.

This cornmeal snack cake goes to my Whole Grain Baking Event – Corn.

Choconut Muffins (in Ice Cream Cones)

Madhuram — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:00:03 +0000

I wanted to bake something very quick and simple to satisfy my chocolate cravings. (The truth is I wanted to bake to post in my blog). So I was going through my recipe collection and found this recipe for Chocolate and Nuts Muffins by Mandira of Ahaar. The first things I look in a recipe are its ingredients. I at least should have the main ingredients to proceed with the recipe, nuts and other decorating stuff are optional. I try to modify the original recipe if I’m short of any of the additional stuff. In this case, I added mini chocolate chips instead of raisins, Dutch processed cocoa instead of bittersweet chocolate and omitted almonds. I also check the comments section to get an idea what other people are telling about the recipe. If there is a lot of positive feedback I proceed with the recipe. The comments for this showed that 5 of them had tried this one and it had come out very well. So I knew this was the one and followed the recipe as it is. Click here.

As usual I wanted to give a twist to this recipe. It flashed, why not use ice cream cones to fill the batter instead of regular muffin tins. I remember seeing such a recipe on the of Keebler cones’ box. I had the fudge dipped ice cream cones, where the top has a covering of chocolate. I didn’t have the plain ones. I prepared the muffin batter, it was a breeze. Filled 2 cones and rest of the batter in regular size muffin pan. This is where I learnt a lesson. “DON’T BE OVER CONFIDENT”. I should have tried with one cone and one muffin to see the outcome and baked the rest. But no, I was thinking, “I have baked muffins twice and both the times the result was good, let me not waste time and electricity, so I will bake everything right away”. I was eagerly seeing how the muffins were baking. The kitchen was filled with a very good aroma of chocolate and vanilla, the muffins were puffing up (even the cones, it looked like a perfect scoop of chocolate ice cream) as they should. See, baking is very easy. I told ya earlier! Wait, no, no, no!!!. My screaming couldn’t stop the muffins from becoming flat with a dent in the center. I was restless and watching the timer. It beeped and immediately took out the pan and inserted a skewer, none of them were done. Moreover the cones slided while removing the tin out and the batter poured out a little bit. Then only I realized that I had overfilled the cones and the muffin tins. So I put back the tin in the oven for another 3 minutes. This time the muffins were done, but it did not look like muffins, the classic tomb shape was missing. And as for the cones, because it was chocolate dipped, that chocolate burnt because of excess heat and so was having a weird smell. So another lesson, use plain ones for baking. The muffins had become dry due to excessive baking and the tops became very hard and it just came off. But the bottom was very very moist and tasty. Wow! eggless and so moist, unbelievable. So I separated the tops and the bottoms. The heavy cream added in the recipe gives it the moist texture. That’s what Mandira has mentioned. One thing I want to tell is, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE RECIPE. THE TASTE WAS VERY VERY GOOD. It was my wrong calculation.

I learnt the following from this experience:
1. Unless and otherwise you are very sure what you are doing, don’t do bake everything in one go, test one muffin first. See how it bakes and do the alterations accordingly for the rest. I think with experience I’ll be able to bake muffins perfectly in the first attempt itself.
2. Fill the batter covering half the tin. Don’t scrape the mixing bowl and add them to the muffin tins. This is how I overfilled, thinking that I should not waste the batter. It’s ok if there is little batter sticking to the bowl. You can eat it just like that, because it does not have eggs.
3. Use only plain cones. If using cones to fill the batter, place the cones in a mini muffin tin, instead of the regular ones. This fits right.

I did take pictures of the muffins, but I don’t want to post it because it will give a bad opinion about the recipe. I don’t want people to skip this recipe just by seeing the picture without reading my above ramblings.

I was feeling very bad about how this turned out. I was thinking maybe I will try it sometime later and post it. But I couldn’t wait until I can try it again. The “new baker’s excitement” was catching me. I wanted to bake the muffins again immediately, but I didn’t know what do with the ones which I have already baked. Then I got an idea to use every bit of it, both the moist bottoms and dry tops. I will write about it later. Suspense!!!

Now ready to bake again. I asked my husband to get the plain cones. The instructions called for wrapping the bottom of the cones with aluminum foil, that’s what I did in my first try, but that was making it to wobble. So this time I lined the mini muffin pan with liners and placed the cone. Tried one cone first. Filled it less then half and baked for 20 minutes. It did not puff up perfectly. But I got an idea how much to fill for the remaining. So filled 5 more cones and kept them all in lined mini muffin tin and baked for 20 minutes. And wow! this time I got the perfect scoop like tops on my cones. Now you can ice it like cupcakes and decorate with sprinkles or top a scoop of your favorite ice cream. We did the latter. It was very delicious. Be sure to check if it’s baked through the bottom inserting a bamboo skewer. I feel that these should be consumed on the same day itself. We have some remaining, I stored it in the fridge and it has become a little hard. I’m thinking of keeping it in the microwave for few seconds before eating. That should soften it. I’ve tried this with my carrot cake also. I store it in the fridge and before eating I microwave it for 5-10 seconds it becomes soft again like fresh out of the oven.