Recipe

Shelter-in-Place Recipe: Egg-Free Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cupcakes

Posted on by Charity

A couple of weeks before the COVID-19 stuff became disruptive locally, a friend gave me some sourdough starter. I read up and bought flour (just in the nick of time) and messed around with it and managed to keep it alive, but I had no idea when I’d have enough time to babysit dough long enough to bake bread.

Then came shelter-in-place, and suddenly there was that time I was looking for. (Silver lining?)

I used the Beginner’s Sourdough Bread recipe from The Perfect Loaf but because I can’t not mess with things, I made it 75% whole grain (whole wheat and spelt). The crust was a little darker and more assertive than was optimal, but my family loved the flavor of the bread and ate it happily.

All was going along swimmingly until I realized that I was very quickly using up flour and that I had a major sourdough discard problem. My family loved the pancake recipe from The Perfect Loaf, but it calls for 1 1/2 cups additional flour and two eggs per batch, and flour and eggs have become very dear in these pandemic times. Plus, the sourdough discard was adding up faster than my family wanted to eat pancakes, so I needed another solution.

First, I decreased the size of my starter (named Jameson by my ten-year-old). Instead of 20g starter/100g flour/100g water each feeding, I’m doing 15g starter/20g flour/20g water, which gives me enough for a new levain when I want to bake bread and enough left over to replenish my starter.

Next, I created an offshoot test starter (Jameson, Jr.) to keep in the fridge. I’m new enough at this that I’m not entirely certain about my ability to remember to feed it once a week, so I didn’t want to commit my whole starter to fridge fermenting. Jameson, Jr., is the same size as its parent.

Now instead of using 100g of flour and producing 200g of discard per feeding, I’m only using 20g flour and producing 40g of discard, and one only needs fed once a week. This rate of increase is more easily managed, but I still had a quart container of discard in the fridge.

(This photo was taken after I made the cupcakes.)

There are lots of ideas online for using sourdough discard, but none used enough and all wanted additional flour and/or eggs. With the empty grocery shelves in mind, I wanted a recipe that used only the discard (just flour and water, after all) and that didn’t use any eggs.

So I made up my own.

Using “Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake” from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero) as my starting point, I devised a recipe that uses 2 cups of discard, no additional flour, no eggs, and any type of milk, so it’s easily vegan. And I make my starter with whole wheat flour, so they’re whole grain, too.

My three family members tested the results and gave the cupcakes six enthusiastic thumbs up. (I can’t eat gluten or dairy, so I rely on my family for reviews of my glutenous recipes. They don’t mind criticizing me, so I trust their opinions.)

The cupcakes didn’t crown as much as I’d have hoped, but it’s pretty typical, for vegan cupcakes in my experience. My spouse and both children agreed that the sweetness was just right, the texture was good (my daughter said it was a little firmer than a standard cupcake, but that wasn’t a negative), and the sourdough taste was subtle. My son said, “It tastes like a chocolate cupcake with just a hint of sourdough fruitiness.” Kid needs to start a food blog.

Having declared the experiment a success and noting the dearth of online recipes calling for a whole bunch of discard and no eggs, I decided to share the recipe here.

The amount of liquid you will need to add will vary based on the consistency of your discard. I needed about 1/4 cup of added liquid to get to the right cake-batter consistency. I used cow’s milk, but you could use any milk.

If you try it in your kitchen, let me know how it goes and any modifications that work better for you!

Egg-Free (Vegan-Optional) Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cupcakes

makes 12

Ingredients:

3/4 c granulated sugar

1/3 c oil (olive, canola, etc.)

1 t vanilla extract

1/3 c cocoa powder

3/4 t baking soda

3/4 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

2 c sourdough starter discard (mine was 50/50 flour/water)

up to 1/2 c milk of your choice

-Preheat oven to 350°F.

-Line muffin tin.

-Combine all ingredients except discard and milk and stir well.

-Add discard and stir well.

-If mixture is too thick, add milk of your choice a little at a time, stirring well after each addition, until the batter is the consistency of thick cake batter.

-Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full or more (whatever it takes to distribute the batter evenly among all 12 wells).

-Bake for 18-20 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

-Transfer to cooling rack and cool completely.

-Top with frosting, whipped cream, jelly/jam, or just eat straight-up.

Spicy Chicken, Tomato, and Rice in the Slow Cooker

Posted on by Charity

It’s been a long time (like, four years) since I published a recipe post. I used to publish them a lot, testing out new recipes and variations on old recipes and scarfing down the failures and successes alike, until I noticed a correlation between recipe blogging and the upward progression of the numbers on my bathroom scale, especially once we moved to the suburbs and my incidental physical activity decreased dramatically. So, I cooled my jets on food-related posts for a while.

Then when I was in Utah recently (yes, I’m mentioning Utah again, but it’s just a passing mention this time), I stumbled upon a simple skillet-to-oven way to cook chicken. When I got home, I modified it for the slow cooker and decided to share the results with the Internet. Read More

Four Meals, One Way

Posted on by Charity

When I was a kid, my mom started cooking all of our meals either by browning ground beef and onions or by making a white sauce (and in the case of hamburger stroganoff, she did one and then the other in the same pan). As a result, four of our mainstays—eggs a la goldenrod, creamed chipped beef over toast, creamed salmon over biscuits, and cheddar chowder—all started the exact same way.

This week, I decided I’d make one of these (creamed salmon over biscuits) and post the recipe, complete with photos and variations so you, too, could make all four meals. It was going to be in the spirit of Amy Sedaris’s I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence—funny, but kind of serious at the same time in the sense that it’s a real recipe that you could (theoretically) eat. We doubted anyone in our family would eat it (except maybe my spouse who prides himself on being a true omnivore in that he eats anything except American cheese), but, “All for the sake of the blog!” my spouse and I joked as we surveyed the resulting salmon sauce.

Except then he and our kids loved it. Read More

Rhubarb. Yes, Rhubarb.

Posted on by Charity

A couple of weeks ago, I acquired some rhubarb.

Rheum rhabarbarum - Rhubarb

Rheum rhabarbarum – Rhubarb (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’d never cooked with rhubarb, and the only experience I’d had with it (aside from a vague memory of a song some high school friends used to sing that involved repeating “rhubarb” over and over) was when my mom would pick a stalk from my grandpa’s Ohio backyard and then eat it raw dipped in salt. One quick taste convinced me that this was not the way I wanted to enjoy my rhubarb, but neither did I care for the high sugar content of most rhubarb recipes I encountered. So, I kept looking while hoping the rhubarb would stay fresh-ish in my fridge until I found a recipe I wanted to use. Read More

An Afternoon Snack in Four to Five Simple Steps

Posted on by Charity

This post was written as part of this week’s Weekly Writing Challenge from The Daily Post.

Step One: Slice a banana into a bowl.

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Step Two: Stir in a spoonful of almond butter.

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Step Three: Drizzle on a hint of honey (some people need a bigger hint than others).

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Step Four: Let your toddler hold the camera while you take a taste; consider taking credit for his photo on your blog but eventually decide against it.

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Step Five (optional): Thank me for the idea.

Thank You

Vegetable Rolls

Posted on by Charity

I bought the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics cookbook more than a decade ago. It was our primary cookbook for a number of years, then it slowly fell out of favor when I stopped eating gluten and dairy. Recently, however, I was thumbing through my cookbooks, looking for inspiration.

I seem to have fallen into a vegan, gluten-free way of eating over the past year. If you’ve tried eating vegan and gluten-free and were raised eating pasteurized processed cheese food and bacon sandwiches on white bread with butter and mayonnaise as I was, you know it requires a lot of inspiration.

What I discovered in my aimless thumbing was the “vegan list” in the back of the cookbook. I spent a morning looking up each recipe, checking it for gluten and for likely acceptance by my family, and making a nice, long list of new recipes to try.

One of these was very simply named “Vegetable Rolls.”

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I’ve tried making spring rolls before using raw vegetable fillings, and they were kind of ho-hum. These Vegetable Rolls are not ho-hum. The vegetables are lightly sauteed, dressed in a basic sauce, and mixed with fresh tarragon and basil before they’re rolled in the rice papers. The result is a tasty, fresh, satisfying meal that’s well worth the time it takes to prepare.

My husband loved these, I loved these, my 7.5-year-old daughter opened hers up and ate the filling, and my 3.5-year-old refused to even taste them. That’s about the best we’re able to do these days. I’ll take it. I made them again later on in the week to use the rest of the mushrooms we’d bought.

The recipe includes a hoisin dipping sauce, but I couldn’t find any gluten-free, sugar-free hoisin sauce, so I made up my own little sauce out of tamari, water, rice vinegar, garlic, hot pepper sesame oil, and a little ginger. I can’t tell you the ratios because I really didn’t pay close attention, but if you play around with those, you should be able to come up with a yummy sauce. If you make your own sauce, you also might want to add a little sweetener (agave, sugar, honey).

Vegetable Rolls

Reprinted with permission from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2001.

Serves 4 to 6; Total time: 1 1/2 hours

Ingredients:

1 1/2 to 2 ounces bean thread noodles

1 T peanut or other vegetable oil (I used sesame)

2 c grated green cabbage

2 c sliced mushrooms

4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed

1 T grated fresh ginger root

1 c peeled and grated carrots

1 c thinly sliced red bell peppers

1/2 c finely chopped scallions

2 T soy sauce (I used wheat-free tamari)

1 T rice vinegar

1 T chopped fresh tarragon

2 T chopped fresh basil

12 rice paper discs (8 inches across)

1/4 c chopped peanuts (I didn’t use these)

Directions:

Soak the bean threads in warm water until softened, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet and saute the cabbage for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms, garlic, and ginger and continue to saute on medium heat for another 4 minutes, until the mushrooms are soft. Add the carrots and bell peppers and cook for about 5 minutes more, until hot but still slightly crunchy. Remove from the heat.

When the bean threads are soft, drain them and cut into 3- to 4-inch lengths with scissors or a knife. Add them to the sauteed vegetables with the scallions, soy sauce, vinegar, tarragon, and basil. Stir to combine and set aside.

Moisten the rice-paper discs a few at a time at a time by immersing each one in a large shallow bowl (I used a pie plate) of warm water, transferring it to a clean towel, and laying it flat (I just laid them one at a time on a clean cutting board. It was pretty wet, but I just didn’t let them get completely soft before taking them out of the bath). Let them soften for a few minutes. Soften more as needed and as space permits.

Place about 1/3 cup of filling on the bottom half of a softened disc, fold over the sides, nd then roll up from the bottom, as tightly and gently as possible. Place seam side down on a platter and repeat with the rest of the filling and discs.

Serve with Hoisin Dipping Sauce (see below—or your own improvisational dipping sauce) and a sprinkling of peanuts.

Hoisin Dipping Sauce

(which I did not make)

1/4 c hoisin sauce

1 T water

2 T rice vinegar or lemon juice

1 t dark sesame oil

1/2 t Chinese chili paste (optional)

In a small bowl, whisk together all ingredients.

Miracle Pecan Smoothie, or Making Lettuce Into Liqueur

Posted on by Charity

A very weird thing happened today.

I was making a Vegan Maple Pecan Pie Smoothie from Healthy Blender Recipes, and I made a few modifications. I added some romaine lettuce (no, this isn’t the weird part) and subbed a little stevia for part of the maple syrup and accidentally forgot the cinnamon entirely. The result tastes like a creamy coffee-flavored liqueur drink even though there’s neither coffee nor alcohol in it. Nor cream, actually.

And it’s not just my weird alcohol-and-coffee-starved taste buds that taste Kahlúa where there is no Kahlúa. My spouse tasted it, too, and he consumes way less kale than I do.

It’s possible it’s some kind of miracle. Or perhaps there’s some logical, scientific explanation that I’ve simply not discerned yet, some kind of chemical reaction between the pecans and the lettuce and the maple syrup. Or maybe my bananas were so ripe they’d begun to ferment.

Whatever it is, here’s the recipe. You give it a try and let me know what you think.

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Miracle Pecan Smoothie

(modified from Healthy Blender Recipe’s Vegan Maple Pecan Pie Smoothie)

Yield: 4 cups

1 cup romaine lettuce (3-4 leaves)

1 cup pecans

2 cups water

2 frozen ripe bananas

1 T maple syrup (I use grade B)

1 scant dropperful of liquid stevia

2 tsp vanilla extract

pinch sea salt

Toss everything into your high-powered blender and blend on high until smooth and creamy (this takes ~50 seconds in my Vitamix).

So? What do you think?

Writing, no. Muffins, yes.

Posted on by Charity

So, my ROW80 goals have gone by the wayside this week. And last week. I’m kind of writing, definitely blogging, but mostly just thinking (although I think my husband would call it, “sulking”).

And baking.

Today I made Pumpkin Pie Muffins from Elana’s Pantry. Read More

Mocktails: Not Just for Mommies-to-Be

Posted on by Charity

You may recall my “50 Shades of Green” post in which I sang the praises of The Blender Girl and her incredible green smoothie recipes. Well, I’m not done yet. This weekend I tried two of the mocktail recipes on her site, and now I will commence talking her up again.

I know that some of you are thinking, “Mocktail? What the heck is the point of a mocktail? I didn’t make it to age 21 just to drink virgin margaritas. And I hate using portmanteaux. ‘Mocktail’ is just like ‘ginormous’: It sounds clever at first and by the time you realize it’s actually irritating, you’re using it so much you can’t stop saying it.”

Semantics aside, there are several reasons why you might choose a mocktail over the “real thing.” Maybe you want a fancy, fun drink for a baby shower. Maybe you’re hosting a party and want to offer designated drivers something a little niftier than club soda or ginger ale. Maybe you’re out of tequila and have already had too much to go out for more. Maybe you just have a yen for drinking colorful beverages from fancy glasses without getting bleary-eyed and nauseated.

If the mocktail is also raw, vegan, and low-sugar, then it’s practically health food, and there you have three more reasons for going “virgin.”

The two ginormous mocktails I tried this weekend:

The Nojito

I’ll admit, I’ve never had a mojito, so I’m not really sure how valuable my endorsement is. The Blender Girl’s recipe has you make a puree of lime, ginger, agave, and mint, then pour that over muddled lime wedges and more mint, add ice, and top up with sparkling water. I kind of didn’t like the crushed mint leaves always getting in my mouth while I was trying to drink it, but other than that, this was a really pleasant beverage. I drank it while crocheting on a Saturday afternoon, and even though I drank the whole batch, I didn’t need to worry about ripping out drunken stitches on Sunday.

The Raw Vegan “Better-than-Tequila” Margarita Mocktail

I got this recipe from Health Blender Recipes, and she got it from Uncooking 101, which is a really neat site with all kinds of recipes and information about a raw diet. I’m not interested in going all raw, but I do enjoy incorporating raw recipes into my meal rotation; I have a feeling I’ll be “cooking” from that blog a bit, too.

This mocktail was at a bit of a disadvantage with me. Not only do I know what a margarita tastes like, I like my margaritas on the rocks, and this one is necessarily blended. The solution: I just chose not to think of this as a margarita. As a tangy, fancy, fruit smoothie with a little cayenne kick, this is tops. And really, I like any excuse to put salt on the rim of a glass. (Note: I couldn’t find nectarines, so I used peaches instead. Turned out fine. My husband liked it, too, and didn’t even add any vodka to his. Yes, I know margaritas aren’t made with vodka, but we don’t have any tequila, just one kind of vodka and four kinds of gin. Don’t even ask why we have four kinds of gin because I just don’t know.)

Now if only The Blender Girl could come up with a virgin martini. The closest I’ve gotten is a glass of iced water poured over a couple of olives, and that’s not really close at all, even if I put it in a martini glass.

50 Shades of Green: Savory (and Sweet) Smoothie Roundup

Posted on by Charity

I’ve been cautiously venturing into the world of savory smoothies the past week or so.

The first several I tried were…suboptimal. So suboptimal that I found them nearly undrinkable. I was discouraged and nearly gave up.

But while posting about savory smoothies last week, I found a link to Tess Masters’ blog, Healthy Blender Recipes. There I found savory smoothies that were not only palatable but delightful. I liked them so much that at the end of the week when I started adding fruit back into my diet, I tried out some of her sweet smoothies (and continued to drink the savory smoothies). I’ve been sending links to her blog left and right, and I figured I ought to just cut to the chase and blog my praises.

But first, a couple of general notes about green smoothies:

1) Tess recommends—and I agree—that if you’re a green smoothie neophyte, you start with the fruity green smoothies made with friendly, mild greens like romaine lettuce and spinach instead of moving on to more challenging greens and fruit-free smoothies. I’d been drinking fruity green smoothies for four years before I worked up the courage to try a savory one.

2) Savory smoothies are best very, very cold and fresh out of the blender. I also prefer to drink mine through a straw. I’m sensitive to textures and this helps me get past the sometimes off-putting thickness of a smoothie with avocado in it.

And now on with my Healthy Blender Recipes smoothie love-fest! These are a few of my favorites with links to her recipes accompanied by my notes and photos.

Savory Smoothies

Salty Alkaline Kale Green Smoothie

The only change I made to this recipe was to omit the sprouts because I didn’t have them handy. I really loved the salty, garlicky flavor when it was first blended. Two problems, though:

First, my daughter didn’t like my garlic breath after I drank it. I just made a point not to breathe/burp on her and that solved that.

Second, this recipe made a ton of smoothie…EIGHT CUPS! It almost overflowed my Vitamix. I could only drink about half of it at breakfast. I put the rest in the fridge, but when I came back to it at lunch, it had grown unpleasantly bitter. When I make this again—and I will make it again—I will halve the recipe unless I have two or three other friends over to share with me.

Raw Vegan Spicy Tomato Parsley Green Smoothie

This one is the first of Tess’s smoothies I tried. I’ve had it twice this week. It’s spicy and tangy and thick. Drinking it is kind of like drinking a spicy guacamole. I didn’t use roma tomatoes; instead I used the cherry tomatoes and “Garden Peach” tomatoes from my garden.

“Garden Peach” tomato

Tomato Tangent: The Garden Peach tomatoes have coloring similar to a peach and even have fuzz on the skin. I think they’re cute, and they’re very tasty, although it’s possible that their yellowish color contributed to my smoothie’s not-so-appetizing hue. (It might belong better on a “50 Shades of Ochre” post.)

Sweet Smoothies

Raw Vegan Creamy “Pistachio Ice Cream” Kale Shake

The recipe calls for agave syrup or dates, but instead I used stevia to sweeten this smoothie so as not to add any more sugar. Maybe that’s why it tasted more like bubble gum to me than pistachio. It was still very, very good. So good, in fact, that I’ve made it twice and both times I’ve finished the whole thing before my husband has been able to try it. The second time I even accidentally put in double the kale and it was still delicious. I’ve made it both with almond milk and with the water and cashews, as called for in the recipe, and both are fabulous.

Raw Vegan Banana Coconut Cream Pie Smoothie

This, friends and neighbors, is the best of the four smoothies I’m featuring from Healthy Blender Recipes today.

It is so good that my husband—the man who merely tolerates my green smoothie obsession and the resulting greens overflow from our refrigerator—loved it. “Wow!” he exclaimed when he tasted it after his run the other day. “This is really good!” Then, cautiously, “What makes it green?” And he kept drinking it even after I told him what made it green! (Romaine lettuce in this one.)

It is so good, in fact, that we drank it down before I had a chance to photograph it. I’m planning to make it again this weekend when the bananas are riper, and I promise to do a smoothie photo shoot and update this post with an image.

UPDATE: I took a picture when I made this smoothie again tonight! It turned out greener this time than it did last time. I used local romaine this time; maybe it was greener than the lettuce I used last week.

This concludes my post praising Tess Masters and Healthy Blender Recipes.

I admit, the title of this post is a bit misleading since I’m only featuring four green smoothies rather than fifty, but these are so good, they’re sure to keep you busy for a while. (And “50 Shades of Green” just sounds better than “4 Shades of Green.”)

If you get through these and want more, be sure to try out Tess’s other blender recipes. I plan to treat myself to a mocktail from one of her recipes this weekend. Or…maybe before the weekend.