Orange. Oats. Almond. Love

The book was renewed till I couldn't renew it yet again. At that point I decided to buy a copy for myself.
By now I have lost count of the vegan recipes I have tried from this book. When I'm not baking from it, I'm simply perusing the recipes. A good read.

The primary reason for diving into the vegan recipes is the need to cut cholesterol for everyday foods. The other and equally important reason is that I can now easily make these for breakfast. On a weekday!
The previous night I mix the dry ingredients and then the wet ingredients (separately). In the morning while the oven preheats, I mix the wet and dry ingredients, spoon the batter in the muffin pan. In under 30 mins, start to end, the muffins are ready to be devoured by the sleepyheads ambling out for breakfast. When they are awake enough to ask 'You made them in the morning?' and I get to nod and smile beatifically. Thanks Camilla Saulsbury.

While I have baked several vegan muffins from this book, the recipe here is my own but definitely inspired by this book. I either use a mixture of all purpose flour and whole wheat flour or just whole wheat flour. I did not like batch made with just all purpose flour. I know it is fashionable to favour whole wheat flour, but in case whole wheat flour does indeed produce a wonderful texture and hearty muffin.

I'm digressing but recently at a party when the topic of discussion moved to preferences in chocolate, a friend leaned over to whisper 'I know it is not fashionable to say this but I really like milk chocolate'. This was such a what-the-football moment. The thing is that I, too, like milk chocolate and am not afraid to say it. In fact, I like it a lot. (I digress while digressing; very Inception-like...a certain blogger has been been gunning down people who use 'alot' instead of 'a lot'. So hopefully she notices the space between 'a' and 'lot'.)

Orange Oat Almond Muffins
Ingredients

½ cup regular oats, give them a quick spin in the spice grinder
1 ½ cups flour (a mixture of all purpose and whole wheat flour)
¼ cup almonds, coarsely chopped
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup sugar (or more)
zest of one large orange (see notes below)
½ cup oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
juice of one large orange, add water to the juice to get one cup of liquid
1 ½ tbsp vinegar (cider vinegar is better but just plain vinegar is just fine)

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Grease a 12-cup muffin pan.
Mix the dry ingredients and set aside.
Mix the wet ingredients and set aside.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir just until combined.
(Go ahead and taste the batter to see if you need more sugar. Vegan batter, it is safe!)
Spoon the batter into the muffin pans and bake for about 15mins (oven times will vary) or till a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out nearly clean.
Cool in the pan for at least 10 mins before removing them; the muffins are crumbly.

Notes: to get more flavour out of the orange zest, rub the zest with the sugar.

If you have any questions or comments, please write to me the.best.cooker@gmail.com or tweet @cooker_baker. Thanks for stopping by.

Berry Good

Several months ago my friend A lent me her cast iron skillet; one which she hardly used at all. I'm seriously in love with this skillet. I've used it so often for so many things that unless A explicitly asks for the skillet it is mine.

The first thing I baked in the skillet was a whole wheat-semolina bread. It was to die for. The recipe needs some fine tuning before it is ready for prime time (on this blog).

Meanwhile here is a muffin-cake that I recently baked. This is Vaishali's recipe for blueberry muffins baked in a skillet instead of a muffin pan. They take longer to bake than regular muffins but I think the results are absolutely worth the extra time.

We loved this muffin-cake. The grainy raw sugar added a nice crunch and the oats provided the nuttiness.

I had to make some minor changes to the original recipe because I did not have some of the ingredients (milk) on hand.
Here is the recipe with my modifications.
The original recipe is here.

Berry Muffins
(makes one large or 11 medium muffins)
Ingredients
1½ cups flour (I used a mixture of whole wheat, oat, and quinoa flours)
½ cup all purpose flour
¾ cup raw sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
zest of 1 lemon
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup lemon juice
¾ cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 - 1½ cups berries

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Mix all the dry ingredients together and set aside.
Mix all the wet ingredients and add to the dry ingredients.
Combine well.
Add in the berries.
Pour the batter in the skillet and bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the skillet comes out clean.
Enjoy!