Cranberry Fun!

Friday I scored several free bags of slightly mushy Wisconsin cranberries from the co-op.  I initially had cranberry jam/jelly in mind, but I still have way too much jam to make any more.  Yet.

So instead I threw together an improvised cranberry ginger soda and a batch of gluten free cranberry-ginger-walnut muffins.  I LOVE how pretty the cranberry soda looks and after a few days, I'll let you know how it tastes.  You'll notice that we re-used a Fentiman's bottle this time- It's because we got a bottle capper!  We always thought the bottle cappers would be really expensive or complicated, but it means that we can bottle smaller sized bottles to give away and that we can re-use bottles instead of ever buying new ones.  So it will definitely save us money in the long run.

The muffins turned out pretty tasty.  They're not strongly flavored with any one thing, but a combo of citrus, nuts, cranberries and ginger.  Oh, and they're as sweet as cupcakes because I pretty much just swapped a few ingredients from my stand-by GF cupcake recipe!


Cranberry Muffins
1 cup millet flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1.5 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. powdered ginger
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup nondairy milk
Zest of 1 orange
1/2 cup cranberries, roughly chopped
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.  Whisk together the millet flour, rice flour, starch, xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, salt and ginger.  In a separate bowl whisk together the oil, sugars, vanilla, OJ, milk and zest. Add the liquid/sugar mixture to the flour and stir until thoroughly combined.  Fold in cranberries and walnuts.  Spoon batter into liners until about 3/4 full. Bake about 20 minutes or until the cakes are solid and golden colored.  Allow to cool a couple minutes in the pan, then remove from muffin tin to cool completely.  Store in an air-tight container once they are fully cooled.

Chocolate Chestnut Pumpkin Cake

When I saw Kathy's recipe for Chestnut Chocolate Cake with Cinna Pumpkin Cream Frosting, I knew I had to have it. I've had a can of peeled, roasted chestnuts in my pantry for about 11 months. And chocolate chips and pumpkin are on sale at the Co-op. Oh, and it sounds freakin' amazing.

I did change the recipe to make it gluten-free, though, because it's so sad to see the look on my sweetie's face when he learns that he can't eat something I've just baked.

You should go to Kathy's site "Healthy. Happy. Life" to get the original recipe and the recipe for the frosting. I messed up the frosting recipe, but I thought the cake was so darn good it didn't even need it!

Chestnut Choco Cake

dry:
1 1/2 cup millet flour

1/2 cup tapioca starch/flour

1 tsp. xanthan gum
3/4 cup evaporated cane juice
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
wet:
1/2 cup melted vegan buttery spread
1/2 cup canned organic pumpkin
1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup vanilla soy creamer
1 cup vanilla soy or hemp milk
Batter Fold in:
1 cup vegan chocolate chips
1 cup roughly chopped chestnuts

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Grease with spray oil, a casserole dish.
3. Add all dry tea cake ingredients to a large mixing bowl. Mix well.
4. Add in the wet ingredients. Stir until well blended. You should have a fluffy dense batter. It will not be of liquid consistency.
5. Fold in the chopped chestnuts and chocolate chips.
6. Pour batter into casserole dish. Smooth out batter to edges with a knife or back end of a spoon. Drizzle better with a bit of maple or agave syrup and a sprinkle of sea salt. (Or pour into mini muffin tins!)
7. Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until a light brown crust forms on the edges and the cake begins to pull away from dish. (Mini muffins only bake for 15 minutes).
8. Pull cooked cake from oven and allow to cool.
9. When both the cake and frosting have cooled, you can frost the cake. Sprinkle with leftover chopped raw pecans. Slice into squares.
10. Serve cool. Store in fridge.

Do the Almond Mash

Tonight's baking extravaganza all started when Mike wanted some chai tea.  We had just finished our gluten free spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce and homemade bean/tofu balls.

"I wish we had some milk to go with our chai", he said.

So I got to work on making some almond milk for the chai (I must admit I was doing this mostly because I really wanted some almond milk chai, too!)

I just use my food processor to blend up the almonds and water to make almond milk (no fancy Vita-Mix for me...yet), so I have a good amount of almond pulp leftover when I strain the milk.

In the past I've usually used this pulp in cookies, but tonight I decided that muffins were in order.

Hence, the Banana Chocolate Almond muffins!

Banana Chocolate Almond Muffins 

2 medium bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)

1/2 cup packed almond puree*

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 cup water

2 tsp. vanilla

 

1 1/3 cups brown rice flour

2/3 cups tapioca starch

2 tsp. xanthan gum

1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. baking powder

 

1/2 cup chocolate chips

 

*This is the almond mash leftover after making and straining almond milk. 

 

Preheat oven to 350F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.  Mix together the banana mash, almond puree, oil, water, brown sugar, and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, starch, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder.  Carefully stir about 1/3 of the flour mixture into the banana mixture.  Then add another 1/3 of the flour and stir.  Finally add the last of the flour and stir.  Fold in the chocolate chips. 

 

Spoon the batter into muffin tin liners- I like to fill these pretty full for 12 big muffins.  But if you like little muffins, you'd probably get about 16 of them.  Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.  Remove from pan to cool.