And eggs? What of them?

In vegan cookbooks everywhere, and all across the Internetz, you’ll find recipes referencing “flax eggs”. Sometimes they’re actually even written as components, for example “1 tbsp flax meal + 3 tbsp water”. Which seems pretty self explanatory, right? You’d think!

But nope, if you want your flax to really approximate eggs – to really achieve that gelatinous, goopy goodness that works so very well as a binder (especially important in gluten-free recipes!) – then it helps to have a few tricks hidden in your pastry case. I’ve been baking exclusively vegan for a while now, and this is how I guarantee the perfect flax egg, every time:



1.
Begin with whole flax seeds. Buying pre-ground flax is a dangerous game, as the oil is very unstable, and once released (via grinding) it will turn rancid pretty quickly. So buy your flax seeds whole and grind them yourself, to spec. It’s easy enough; you can use a coffee grinder, a hand-crank spice grinder, a mortar and pestle, or a high-speed blender. Process into a very fine powder.

Store whole flax seeds in the refrigerator or freezer.



2.
Make egg/s. One egg equals [1 tablespoon flax meal plus 3 tablespoons water], and you do not need to make each one individually. In a small bowl, add flax meal followed by water (not water followed by flax), stirring as you go. I use a miniature whisk because it’s adorable, but a fork works just as well.



3.
Refrigerate. This is key! Place the bowl of eggs in the refrigerator for a minimum of 15 minutes, but up to an hour is best. This will allow your egg to “set up”. Don’t skip this important step!

I always make my eggs at the start of a recipe. That way, I can get them in the fridge, and then work through the other steps while the eggs set.



4.
When the eggs come out of the fridge they’ll have formed a thick sticky goo, just the consistency of egg whites. There’s your binder! Add it to the recipe and proceed as instructed.


Note: Flax has a nutty, somewhat distinctive flavor. It’s pretty well masked in recipes such as whole wheat breads, spice loafs, and other “full-bodied” treats. But for something like white cake or sugar cookies, you may notice the flavor. If this bothers you, try using chia seeds instead! They work just the same and don’t add any flavor (though admittedly, they cost about four times as much).

Happy vegan baking!

However.

We are currently at the peak of apple season, and if you’d have told me 5 years ago that apples were to become my favorite fruit, I’d have called you a crazy person. Yet . . . here I am with this unquenchable adoration. I blame the Pacific Northwest, and the exquisite apples that grow here!

My favorite variety, hands down, is the Honeycrisp. And this year’s crop, which I’ve been snatching up each weekend at the Farmer’s Market, well . . . hoo-boy! These are so juicy, so crispy, so explosively flavorful it makes me want to cry. Seriously, it’s a profound emotional experience to eat something so pleasing!





It would truly take a special treat to honor these autumn treasures. And apple crisp, warm and brown sugary and nostalgic of childhood, seemed just the ticket. Of course, it would need a twist to really do these apples justice. Enter Miss Rosemary!


Sayward’s Honey Rosemary Apple Crisp

Ingredients:
3 medium Honeycrisp apples (can sub another tart/sweet variety, like Braeburn or Pink Lady)
1/4 cup evaporated cane juice
1 heaping teaspoon whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon dried and crushed rosemary leaves
pinch of nutmeg

1/2 cup rolled oats (not instant!)
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 heaping tablespoons coconut oil, plus more for the pan (can sub vegan butter)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla


Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350º. Using your fingers, grease a small baking dish with coconut oil to. *Please note this recipe is on the small side and bakes best in a bread loaf pan. If you’re feeding more than 4 or if you want leftovers, you should double it.

Slice the apples ~1/4 inch thick. In a mixing bowl, combine the apples with the next six ingredients (through nutmeg). Toss thoroughly and then transfer this mixture to the baking dish.

In another bowl add the final five ingredients and mix until it forms a small crumble. Spoon this on top of the apple mixture.

Bake at 350º for 30-40 minutes, until the top is a bit browned. Serve warm with vegan ice cream (I used hemp of course).

Try not to cry, ha!

Big Ass Salad (BAS). I’ve been eating *lots* of these! This one featured [organic] crispy crunchy romaine, cucumbers, radishes, red onions, red bells, avocados, carrots, chia seeds, and hemp hearts – tossed in lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil.

Raw Wraps! Stuffed with sunflower seed paté, cucumber, carrot, leeks, and avocados, served with a turmeric tahini dip.

Cinnamon Rolls. I made these for Damian’s first father’s day, and they were very much enjoyed by both him and my father-in-law. I didn’t actually have any, but I’ve made the recipe before and can attest that they are maybe the most delicious, and most naughtiest, breakfast food on the planet. =)

Strawberries! I growed these myself, ain’t they cute? I think this handful went straight into my blender (before I realized Waits reacts to them).

Wakame seaweed salad. This puppy packs something like 50% of my RDA for iron, and about 25% for calcium. I like it with sesame oil, lemon juice, sesame seeds, crispy cucumber, slivered onion, and a side of avocado slices. Mmm delicious!

Black bean and quinoa salad, with onion, tomato, avocado, black olives, and plenty of homegrown cilantro. This is a summer staple, and SO GOOD. Damian scoops it up on organic corn chips; I use it as filling for raw cabbage leaf ‘tacos’.

Remember when I showed you all the cherries that Damian harvested from our tree? Well, this is what I did with them!

For Damian I baked miniature cherry pies. How friggin’ cute is that??!

For myself I made raw chocolate cherry tartlets. Oh. My. God.

Plant Blood! For this veg*n vampire, muahaha. Cucumber-cilantro-celery-watermelon, plus the watermelon rinds (which are really good for you!) My first homemade green juice! Also, can you find my family hiding in this pic? ;-)

Damian bought me a raspberry bush for my first mother’s day. Isn’t that so sweet? This is the first teeny harvest. Harley was very interested . . .

My first batch of kimchi fermenting on the counter. Success! I’ll post a tutorial soon, this stuff is so amazing and crazy good for you!

Raw sushi! With chunky almond paté in place of rice, filled with cucumber, avocado, and red bell pepper. Served with kimchee (store bought).

‘Peanut Butter & Jelly’ green (pink?) smoothie. Such a treat!

This was an amazing farmer’s market stir fry, sublimely simple with sesame, tamari, garlic, and ginger. Featuring snap peas, sweet onions, tempeh, and shiitaki mushrooms. We eat this weekly these days – just had a variation tonight!

I honored the first peaches of the season in this raw tart. The peaches sit on a bed of vanilla cashew cream and are garnished with fresh berries and a generous dollop of raspberry cashew cream. Um, yeah. AMAZING

I’ve been so inspired around food lately, just loving this delicious, health-giving, high-raw fare. I’m coming up on my 2 year Veganniversary, and I’m really feeling so grateful and so delighted to be veg*n! To explore and enjoy such diverse plant-based cuisine, it’s so powerful! Such a positive force in a mindful life.

So what about you? What foods have you been enjoying lately?

You know, it’s really hard to attractively photograph homemade muffins. Without that perfect little muffin-top overhang, it’s just a sort of shapeless blob. My apologies for the pictures here. I’m a big ‘ol fan of muffins though, so I’ll work on it, I promise!

Now, you may think I’m crazy for baking in August, but I believe muffins are a perfect summer breakfast. Unlike oatmeal they’re great served room temp, but unlike fruit they’ll keep you going strong right up until lunch. Totally hearty, and – when they’re my recipes – very healthy.

I like to bake a tray on Sunday nights, for worry-free breakfasts to last all week. These are delicious all on their own, but you can also dress them up! They’re great with a smear of jam or peanut butter, or even a drizzle of agave. They’re also nice when heated up with a pat of ‘butter’, although that’s more ‘autumn’ and less healthy. I like my banana with walnuts, but feel free to leave those out, or play around with other dried fruits and nuts. You know what I say – have fun with it!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raisins

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup bran (for this recipe oat is best)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons flax seed

6 tablespoons water

2 medium bananas, mashed

1 tablespoon molasses

1/4 cup alternative milk

1/4 cup agave syrup

2 tablespoons canola oil

1/4-1/2 cup walnut pieces (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400º F.

In a small bowl, cover the cup raisins with plenty of water. Set aside to soak (this will keep them from burning while cooking).

In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and bran.

In another bowl, mash the bananas and then add the molasses, milk, agave syrup, and canola oil.

In a separate small bowl, place the 2 tablespoons of flax meal. In the bowl the raisins are soaking in, give a good stir. Then take 6 tablespoons of the raisin water and mix it in with the flax meal. Add this to the wet mixture and combine.

Add the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring until it just comes together (don’t overmix!). Fold in the raisins and optional walnuts. Spoon batter into a large 6-cup or standard 12-cup muffin tin.

Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes, or until tops are golden and a knife comes out clean.

You’ll want to store these out of the fridge, but in an airtight place, like under a pastry display or in a tupperware container. They’ll be good for 4-6 days, depending on location.

Enjoy!

I don’t even love almond that much, but I was out of vanilla extract at 11 o’clock at night, with sandwich cookies on the brain. Something had to be done.

And thus, I stumbled upon these babies in a fit of culinary creativity. Simple, exquisite, and still my favorite cookie almost a year after their inception.

My non-vegan neighbors just had a baby (yay!), and I whipped up a batch of these for the homecoming. A few days after dropping them off, I got this Facebook message from brand-new-Dad, “— has a baby asleep in her lap, otherwise she says about your cookies: nom nom nom, best cookies, nom nom nom . . . ”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Cookie Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup evaporated cane juice

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup Earthbalance™ or margarine

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/4 cup alternative milk

handful vegan chocolate chips

Frosting Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup Earthbalance

2 teaspoon plain alternative milk

1 teaspoon almond extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, cream the Earthbalance™ and sugars. Combine with the almond and soy milk, mixing well.

Pour the wet into the dry and add the chocolate chips, stirring until it just comes together.  Spoon the dough onto a lined sheet, and bake for 10-15 minutes, depending on how big you’re making them. Pull them out still a bit soft – they’ll harden up as they cool off.

Cool the cookies on a mesh rack. When they are completely cooled (at least an hour), match them up in pairs by size and shape. For each pair, frost the bottom of one and then smoosh the other on top. SMOOSH!

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons cold Earthbalance™ or margarine

3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

2 tablespoons whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon sugar

dash of salt

2 tablespoons cold alternative milk of choice

Instructions:

In a large mixing bowl, combine everything but the alt milk. Use a pastry blender or two knives to cut in the Earthbalance™. This should produce a coarse meal.

Then, add the alt milk a little at a time. Mix only until the dough forms up. Wrap this in saran wrap and form into a pancake. Chill for at least an hour before use. Makes one pie crust.

I’ve used this recipe for miniature cherry tarts, traditional cherry pies, and a pumpkin apple crostata last fall. Now peach season is cresting, and I can’t wait to get my hands on some giant, fresh farmers market beauties!

Enjoy!

The Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale is an intercontinental grassroots awareness campaign and participant-fueled fundraiser, all in celebration of delicious cruelty-free living! Anyone can play, by organizing your own sale, or by finding and feasting at one of the others. The fun begins on Saturday, June 20th and continues through Sunday, June 28th. For more information including how to get involved, check out the Intro and Info page. To find a sale (or a few) near you, check The Location Page, and get thee to the sweet treats!

The first vegan cupcake I ever made – lemon.  Awwwwww.

Along with citrus, one of my favorite winter fruits is the coy, almost coquettish, Anjou pear.  Demure, capricious, and ever so subtle, this fickle fruit slips from rock-hard bitter to grainy bruises in just the blink of a wandering eye.  You must be attentive with this one, coaxing even, waiting patiently for the tell-tale blush.  And if you can catch that window of edible opportunity . . . pure joy.

The foundation of this recipe comes from the William-Sonoma Bride & Groom Cookbook, which was – you guessed it – a wedding gift.  Of course, the book is heavy with white flour, eggs and dairy, but no worries – baked goods are easy enough to tidy up and veganize.  A little tinkering here and there, and a much healthier, yet equally delicious muffin is born.

Winter is wrapping up and that means the Anjous are on their way out.  If you’ve been looking for the perfect recipe to cap your kitchen’s annual affair with this sumptuous pear, I strongly suggest these delightful morning goodies.  They sure passed the husband test here at HQ!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons finely ground flax meal

6 tablespoons water

1 cup soy milk

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup bran

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup agave

1/2 cup canola oil

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4-5 firm but ripe pears, cored and coarsely chopped

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Mix together the ground flax and the water in a small bowl, and refrigerate.  Mix the soy milk with vinegar in another small bowl, and set aside to curdle. 

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flours, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  In a separate bowl whisk together the sugar, agave, oil, vanilla, flax mixture, and soy milk mixture.  Combine wet with dry and stir until just moistened – do not over mix.  Fold in the pears (and walnuts), taking care not to break up the fruit.

Lightly grease a large 6-cup or a regular 12-cup muffin tin and spoon in the batter, evenly distributed.  Top with brown sugar and cinnamon, if you wish.  Bake until golden, 20-25 minutes, or when a knife comes out clean.  Let cool for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. 

Serve warm with Earthbalance™ for maximum yumminess!

Check It Out!

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us, and that means that Susan over at the FatFree Vegan Kitchen is holding her annual ‘Vegetable Love’ contest.  This playful competition calls on culinary bloggers to get creative with incorporating one or more vegetables into their vegan Valentine dinner.  Be it appetizer, entrée, or dessert, it’s valid as long as it’s innovative and vegetal.  Game on.

Immediately, I began remodeling Red Velvet Cake.  My husband and I both adore Red Velvet Cake; it’s kind of our signature dessert.  We devoured many a slice whilst falling in love, we served a tower of Red Velvet Cupcakes at our wedding, and now as newlyweds and new veg*ns, we needed an updated version.  And this challenge gave me just the chance to put my own Sayward style into this old Southern standby.  Firstly, to abide by the rules (veggie inclusion), and in the spirit of ‘fatfree’ (or less fat, at least), I decided to compose a cake recipe with two major substitutions.  I replaced both the food coloring and some of the oil, with a beet juice reduction and beet pulp, respectively.  Secondly, because I wanted to put my own touch of love on this special dessert ‘o mine,  I decided to get funky with the final  form.  

These sweet little bites of delicious look like truffles and taste like cake, so other than ‘AWESOME’, I had no idea what to call them.  I went the ribald route – it is, after all, our one and only hot-sexy-fun holiday.  And so, I proudly give you: Bonzai Balls!

Ingredients

1 cup  soymilk

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

2 1/2 cups unbleached white whole wheat flour

2 cups evaporated cane juice (natural sugar)

4 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup Earthbalance™ or margarine (room temperature)

1/2 cup beets, cooked and mashed

3/4 cup crimson beet broth

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Wash and trim 3 medium beets, and boil them in 4-5 cups of water, until very tender (about 45 minutes). Remove the cooked beets from the water, but keep the water boiling until it has reduced to about 1 cup. Set aside to cool. While the beet broth is reducing, remove the skins from the beets and mash enough for 1/2 cup. You will need about one beet for the pulp require in recipe. The rest, you can snack on while you bake (or set aside for more civilized use later, if you insist).

Preheat the oven to 350º.  Whisk together the soymilk and vinegar in a small bowl, and set aside to curdle.  In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  In another bowl, mix the Earthbalance™, mashed beet pulp, beet broth, and vanilla.  Stir in the soymilk mixture and whisk thoroughly.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and gently process until no lumps remain.  Pour batter into a lightly oiled baking dish and bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.  While the cake is in the oven, prepare the frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients

1/2 cup Earthbalance™ butter or margarine

1/2 cup vegan cream cheese

2 teaspoons  vanilla extract

3 cups vegan powdered sugar

1 tablespoon crimson beet broth

Instructions

Beat together the Earthbalance™, cream cheese, and vanilla, until nicely whipped. Add in the sugar about a cup at a time, while continually mixing.  Once frosting is completely mixed, remove about 1/2 cup and set aside.  Now, add the red food coloring to the main batch of frosting and process until uniform in color.

Once the cake has cooled completely, use your hands to crumble it into a large bowl.  Fold in the scarlet frosting, and mix thoroughly.  Form this mixture into truffle-sized balls by rolling them between your palms.  Place balls on wax paper and refrigerate for a few hours.  Before serving, warm the reserved white cream cheese frosting for a few seconds in the microwave (not too hot!) and drizzle over the cake balls.

Eat.  Enjoy.  And have a positively scrumptious Valentine’s Day!