Well to be honest, I did not make this challenge happen yesterday but for good reason. There was a lot of running about town yesterday and we ended up stopping by one of our favorite more health inclined restaurants for lunch fairly late. So when it came to dinner time, we simply weren't hungry. I wasn't going to cook just to see the food sit - so no dinner.
Instead while trying to decide what to eat for breakfast this morning we came across a slight conundrum. Logician really wanted muffins. None of the places we have previously explored around us sell Gluten and Dairy Free muffins, and we are trying to save money by cooking at home. So we started thinking about what we could do, and I turned to Google for help.
Alas we only had limited baking supplies on hand. We only had one full stick and just under half of another of EarthBalance Butter, we only had two eggs... We have brown rice flour and xanthan gum but weren't sure how to use them together.... So I looked and looked until it occurred to me that really I should look for a Vegan Muffin recipe. I found a list of several recipes and chose the one here.
I was quite happy to find it because suddenly we had a recipe that fit what we had in the house, though the recipe only says to use flour -Which now that I am thinking about it, is likely regular flour - and does not specify type we decided to use it. We did make some alterations/adjustments as follows:
Flour: We combined the remaining bits of Bisquick Gluten Free (also Dairy Free) Pancake mix with what we had left of Bob's Red Mill Gluten and Dairy Free Pancake mix. This was just enough flour to meet the recipes requirements (ideas for next time - add some applesauce or change the flour mixture).
Sugar: We are trying to do away with white and refined sugars and to switch to more natural and organic sweeteners. This is especially important as we're trying to avoid family history of diabetes. So instead of white refined or other misleading sugars we used a new find, Madhava Oranic Coconut Sugar (Blonde). It tastes like evaporated molasses and looks a bit like rough crystals or finely shredded coconut. In the final product we didn't even know the difference.
Eggs: We didn't have any egg replacer on hand, and honestly we are not trying to become an egg free household. Instead we're trying to be more conscious about the eggs we buy. So we used cage free, antibiotic free, vegetarian fed organic brown eggs (store bought as our Farmer's Market eggs didn't last long).
Other than that we stuck to the recipe using Almond milk and the other ingredients stated. Here's the result:
They were delicious, especially with a little bit of Earth Balance whipped buttery spread on top. Logician even decided to be nice and take a few to his coworkers.
My thoughts - change the flour. Both of the flours we used were based solely on brown rice flour and so these had a drier, grainy texture that I want to experiment with. Next time I will either try to make and use our own all purpose flour mix, or I will add some applesauce (unsweetened) to see if that will give them a bit more moisture. They came out of the pain really well, thanks to a nice spritz of baking spray and held together fairly well so I don't want to up the moisture content too much or else that will negate the result.
They also needed to bake only about 12 minutes not the full 20-25. I put them on a timer for 25 with the light on so we could keep an eye on them as they cooked. I'm glad I did!
All in all these were a tasty breakfast, that was indulgent but also made from more wholesome and healthy ingredients without setting off our allergies. I would definitely make them again just as we did and it was fun to stretch our pantry to see what we could bake with!
My Reboot/Juicing Post #2 should be up in the next day or two! Tomorrow is the Farmer's Market, I can't wait to see what's fresh!
Instead while trying to decide what to eat for breakfast this morning we came across a slight conundrum. Logician really wanted muffins. None of the places we have previously explored around us sell Gluten and Dairy Free muffins, and we are trying to save money by cooking at home. So we started thinking about what we could do, and I turned to Google for help.
Alas we only had limited baking supplies on hand. We only had one full stick and just under half of another of EarthBalance Butter, we only had two eggs... We have brown rice flour and xanthan gum but weren't sure how to use them together.... So I looked and looked until it occurred to me that really I should look for a Vegan Muffin recipe. I found a list of several recipes and chose the one here.
I was quite happy to find it because suddenly we had a recipe that fit what we had in the house, though the recipe only says to use flour -Which now that I am thinking about it, is likely regular flour - and does not specify type we decided to use it. We did make some alterations/adjustments as follows:
Flour: We combined the remaining bits of Bisquick Gluten Free (also Dairy Free) Pancake mix with what we had left of Bob's Red Mill Gluten and Dairy Free Pancake mix. This was just enough flour to meet the recipes requirements (ideas for next time - add some applesauce or change the flour mixture).
Sugar: We are trying to do away with white and refined sugars and to switch to more natural and organic sweeteners. This is especially important as we're trying to avoid family history of diabetes. So instead of white refined or other misleading sugars we used a new find, Madhava Oranic Coconut Sugar (Blonde). It tastes like evaporated molasses and looks a bit like rough crystals or finely shredded coconut. In the final product we didn't even know the difference.
Eggs: We didn't have any egg replacer on hand, and honestly we are not trying to become an egg free household. Instead we're trying to be more conscious about the eggs we buy. So we used cage free, antibiotic free, vegetarian fed organic brown eggs (store bought as our Farmer's Market eggs didn't last long).
Other than that we stuck to the recipe using Almond milk and the other ingredients stated. Here's the result:
They were delicious, especially with a little bit of Earth Balance whipped buttery spread on top. Logician even decided to be nice and take a few to his coworkers.
My thoughts - change the flour. Both of the flours we used were based solely on brown rice flour and so these had a drier, grainy texture that I want to experiment with. Next time I will either try to make and use our own all purpose flour mix, or I will add some applesauce (unsweetened) to see if that will give them a bit more moisture. They came out of the pain really well, thanks to a nice spritz of baking spray and held together fairly well so I don't want to up the moisture content too much or else that will negate the result.
They also needed to bake only about 12 minutes not the full 20-25. I put them on a timer for 25 with the light on so we could keep an eye on them as they cooked. I'm glad I did!
All in all these were a tasty breakfast, that was indulgent but also made from more wholesome and healthy ingredients without setting off our allergies. I would definitely make them again just as we did and it was fun to stretch our pantry to see what we could bake with!
My Reboot/Juicing Post #2 should be up in the next day or two! Tomorrow is the Farmer's Market, I can't wait to see what's fresh!
