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Vegan Orange-Cranberry Muffins

Madhuram — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:49:58 +0000

I have used a lot of dried cranberries while baking but am picky about the fresh ones. So far I have tried only one recipe using fresh cranberries. It is this cranberry bars recipe from the Joy of Baking website. Although it did come out well and tasted good, somehow I did not develop a liking for this beautiful red fruit. I think part of the reason is my quirky food likings. I usually don’t like sweet and sour or sweet and spicy together. A dish has to be either fully sweet or fully spicy. So its obvious that I do not like the combination of tart cranberries and sweet in baked goods. Anyhow I decided to give it a shot once again this cranberry season.

Lately I have been seeing a lot of Indianized cranberry recipes. Cranberry rice, cranberry pickle, cranberry dal, etc. just to mention a few. So I decided to try at least that if at all not baking with cranberries. Recently I also got hooked to the Taste of Home website. I have got a baking book published by that magazine and am a fan for those recipes. I have had a 100% success rate with those recipes. I don’t know what stopped me from visiting their website all these days. A couple of days back I borrowed a Taste of Home Cookies book from the library. It has 623 recipes and I was so tempted to get one for myself. That’s when I decided to check out their website to see if they have free recipes online and I was overjoyed to find the same. I looked for some cranberry recipes in there and bookmarked this cranberry muffins recipe. It was a simple straight forward recipe and the egg substitution was easy too. I decided to use flax seed meal as the egg substitute like I used for the vegan cranberry quick bread recipe and it turned out great.

For the past couple of months I have been incorporating a lot of whole grains and whole grain flours while baking. So I decided to used plain all purpose flour this time. Partly the reason being, my phobia for cranberries. Since I was not sure if I would like cranberries I didn’t want to use whole wheat flour and mess it up further. Surprisingly these cranberry muffins did not fail me. It tasted pretty good with mild sweetness, occasional tartness from the cranberries here and there and a nice crunch from the pecans. I would definitely try this recipe again but would increase the quantity of sugar a little bit.

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Vegan Cranberry Muffins

Dry Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour 2 cups

Brown Sugar 3/4th to 1 cup

Baking Powder 2 teaspoons

Pecans, chopped 1 cup

Wet Ingredients:

Canola Oil 1/3 cup

Orange Juice, freshly squeezed 2/3 cup

Flax Seed Powder 2 teaspoons

Water 1/2 cup

Orange Zest from 1 orange

Fresh Cranberries, coarsely chopped 1 cup

Yield: A dozen cranberry muffins.

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven at 375F/190C. Grease or line a muffin tin with paper liners.

2. In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients and keep it aside.

3. In a blender/food processor blend together the flax seed powder and water until its nice and frothy.

4. Measure orange juice in a liquid measuring mug, add water until you reach 1 cup measure in the mug. To this also add the flax seed mixture, orange zest and stir together well.

5. Pour the liquid ingredients to the flour mixture and mix until just moistened. Fold in the cranberries too. Do not overmix.

6. Spoon in the batter in the greased muffin tins. Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

7. Move the muffin tin to a cooling rack and let it cool for just 5 minutes. Then remove the muffins from the pan and cool it completely on a wire rack.

My Notes:

1. The quantity of sugar mentioned in the original recipe was 3/4th cup and I used the same, but felt that the muffins could have been a little more sweet. So you can increase the quantity to 1 cup.

2. I always prefer freshly squeezed orange juice in baking recipes. I have found out in my experience that the store bought orange juice is slightly bitter and the bitterness reflects in the baked goods too.

3. If you wish to use frozen cranberries, do not thaw it. Use it directly from the freezer otherwise the berries will start bleeding turning the batter red.

Low-Fat Oat Flour Cranberry Muffins

Madhuram — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:16:34 +0000

Oat flour is a new addition to my pantry and I’m using it quite often these days. It’s nothing but finely powdered oats. You can prepare it yourself using quick cooking oats and a food processor. I also noticed that cookies baked with oat flour is not as dense as the ones baked with whole wheat flour. I recently baked fat free chocolate chip cookies using part all purpose flour and part oat flour and I didn’t feel any difference at all taste-wise. Though the cookies were not the exact replica texture-wise because I had used unsweetened applesauce instead of butter. It felt more like a muffin/cake than a cookie. I’m still working to perfect a low fat chocolate chip cookie recipe. Until then here’s a recipe for cranberry muffins using oat flour. The original recipe is from Better Homes and Gardens’ Off the Shelf Baking. I have made a couple of changes to make it egg free and healthy.

Ingredients

White Whole Wheat Flour 1 cup

Oat Flour 3/4 cup

Sugar 1/2 cup

Baking Powder 1 teaspoons

Salt 1/4 teaspoon

Dried cherries/cranberries 1/2 cup

Walnut, chopped 1/4 cup

Yogurt, non fat, plain 2 tablespoons

Milk, fat free 3/4 cup

Oil (any flavorless oil) 3 tablespoons

Orange peel, shredded (I used 2 tablespoons orange juice instead) 1 teaspoon

Water/milk 2 to 4 tablespoons

Quick cooking oats (optional) to sprinkle on top

Yield: 9 regular size muffins.

Procedure1 Preheat oven to 400F. Line muffin pans with paper liners.

2 In a medium bowl sift together the flours, salt, baking powder. Add sugar, dried fruit and the nuts. Combine well. Make a well in the center and set aside.

3 In a liquid measuring mug measure the milk, add the yogurt, orange juice (or peel) and whisk well.

4 Add the wet ingredients to the flour all at once and stir just until combined. Do not over mix. At this point I felt that the batter was very thick, so I added another 2 tablespoons of milk. The consistency felt right after adding the milk.

5 Now spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each two thirds full. I have a ladle which holds 3 tablespoons of batter and it’s the perfect amount to bake the perfect sized muffins. Sprinkle oats on top, if using.

6 Bake in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes or until golden and a wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Mine was done by 19 minutes.

7 Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove from muffin cups; serve warm (See Taste).

Taste The tartness of the dried cranberries and the orange flavor is a winning combination. But don’t try tasting it warm if you are using whole wheat flour. The original recipe used all purpose flour but I have used a combination of whole wheat flour and oat flour, so it did not taste good when the muffins were still warm. It was a sticky and bitter mass of dough inside, which really freaked me out. Thank God I was patient enough to come to a conclusion the next day morning and was relieved that it tasted good. Actually good enough that my son had it for breakfast everyday.

My Notes1 The original recipe used 1 and 3/4th cup of all purpose flour. You can go with it if you are not a fan of whole wheat flour or don’t have it. Baked goods with whole wheat flour definitely don’t taste exactly like it’s white counterpart. Like tofu, whole wheat pasta, it’s an acquired taste. We have got used to it now. So you may want to start slowly, maybe 1 cup of all purpose flour and 3/4th cup of whole wheat flour/oat flour.

2 Oat flour is readily available in some of the grocery stores. You can make it at home too by finely processing quick cooking oats in a food processor/mixer. Since oat flour does not contain gluten, it cannot substitute 100% of all purpose flour/whole wheat flour. Baked goods will not rise if it is only used. So it has to be used in combination with either all purpose flour or whole wheat flour.

3 I didn’t have fresh oranges to make the zest, so I went with 2 tablespoons of store bought orange juice. This does not give that fresh orange flavor, but be careful not to go overboard with the juice because sometimes the store bought juice has a bitter after-taste and it spoils the taste of the baked goods.

4 I have used 2 tablespoons of yogurt in place of one egg white mentioned in the recipe. Even after using 2 tablespoons of orange juice I found that the batter was very thick, so I had to use another 2 tablespoons of milk. I think the whole wheat flour and the oat flour absorbed more moisture. So consider what type of flour you are using and add water as required.

5 The original recipe is supposed to yield 12 muffins but I got only 9.

These Oat Flour Cranberry Muffins go to my low-fat baking event and

Mansi’s Sugar High Friday.

Vegan Cranberry Nut Quick Bread using Flax Seed Meal

Madhuram — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:26:08 +0000

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.

Ingredients

All Purpose Flour – 2 cups (I used 1 cup all purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour)

Fresh Cranberries, coarsely chopped – 1 cup (I used dried cranberries)

Sugar – 3/4 cup

Pecans or Walnuts, coarsely chopped – 1/2 cup (I used pecans)

Baking Powder – 2 teaspoons

Salt – 1/4 teaspoon

Flax Seed Meal – 1 teaspoon and Water – 1/4 cup (Substitute for 1 egg)

Orange zest, grated – 1 teaspoon (I omitted)

Orange Juice – 1/2 cup (I used freshly squeezed orange juice)

Vegetable Oil – 1/2 cup (I used 1/4 cup canola oil and 1/4 unsweetened applesauce)

Yield: 1 Loaf

Procedure 1. Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Grease and flour a 9×5 inch loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Also add the cranberries, sugar and nuts and combine it thoroughly. If using dried cranberries, add a tablespoon of flour to the dried berries and stir it well before adding it to the flour mixture. Otherwise all the berries will stick to
each other and settle at the bottom of the bread.

3. Whisk/blend together the flax seed meal and water until white and foamy. I used Magic Bullet to blend it.

4. In a small bowl, mix together the flax seed mixture, orange zest, orange juice, oil and applesauce (if using).

5. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. I felt that the batter was thick, so I added another 2 tablespoons of orange juice. You can also dilute it with water or any type of milk. Do not over-mix. Few lumps should be fine, it would dissolve while baking.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. I checked mine for doneness around 48 minutes and the toothpick came out clean. I removed the pan out of the oven after 50 minutes.

7. Cool the loaf for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan.

8. Finish cooling the loaf on a wire rack.

My Notes 1. I’m not a patient person when it comes to tasting something I have baked. Also I did not notice the tip about slicing banana/zucchini and cranberry breads the day after baking it, so I sliced it anyway and it did crumble. So be patient because they slice and taste better the next day.

2. Everybody liked the taste of the bread, the sweetness was right but it did have a mild raw smell. I’m not sure whether the culprit was the whole wheat pastry flour or the baking time. Even though the time given in the original recipe was 60 minutes, the toothpick came out clean after 48 minutes itself. Maybe I should try using only all purpose flour the next time.

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.

Fruit Cocktail for A Taste of Yellow Event

Madhuram — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:56:50 +0000

I came across a recipe for mixed fruit juice in my grocery store’s magazine. The original recipe called for fresh/frozen mangoes, fresh/canned pineapples and freshly squeezed orange juice. Since I had mango pulp which I got from the Indian store and orange juice in hand I thought I could use them instead and get canned pineapples alone.

Ingredients:
Mango pulp – 1 cup
Canned pineapple chunks in juice – 1 can (20 ounce)
Orange Juice – 1 cup

The measurements really don’t matter, you can change the ratio as you wish.

Procedure:
Empty the canned pineapple with its juice in a blender and blend it smooth. Then add the mango pulp and orange juice and blend it once again. That’s it. The fruit cocktail is ready! The juice tasted very good but the flavor of mango was dominant. I personally like mango juice very much, but if you don’t like it you can decrease the quantity of mango pulp.

This is my entry for Barbara’s A Taste of Yellow Event.