Breakfast - The Cake Merchant

Vegan Almond Biscotti

01.13.15

So I’ve just completed my first full week of being vegan, and even though I didn’t think it would be too much of a stretch from my usual pescetarian diet, it’s been a learning experience. I’ve learned that I have to read the labels on errrything and I can no longer spoon Nutella into my mouth and call it dinner. Eating out is tricky and Thai food is my new best friend. Basically, I just have to put a lot more thought into my food and I’m shocked at how many things contain animal products.

I’ve had a few mishaps as well, such as eating honey mustard potato chips because I totally forgot that honey wasn’t vegan. It also occurred to me after I had finished drinking my favorite beer that milk stout probably isn’t vegan either. But mishaps and all, I’m still plugging along with my month long vegan experiment.

I’ve always believed that vegan baked goods were not lacking in any way, but these biscotti have me convinced. Who says biscotti need eggs? I tested several recipes before coming upon this one, and I knew it was blog worthy when I couldn’t pass by the kitchen without grabbing one. They were also deemed acceptable currency to pay Aaron (who formerly turned up his nose at biscotti) for his hand modeling skillz.

This recipe makes a small batch, because clearly, I cannot be trusted around biscotti. However, it can easily be doubled. If you like (and why wouldn’t you?), you can drizzle the biscotti with bittersweet chocolate. Can I just say how happy I am that most of my favorite dark chocolate is vegan?

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Small Batch Whole Wheat Double Chocolate Banana Muffins

03.08.14

It’s Small Batch Saturday! This recipe, like so many others out there in the blogosphere, was inspired by an overly ripe banana (and a chocolate craving). I made this on a whim, dumped a few ingredients I had on hand in my mixer, and ended up with a delicious chocolaty muffin. This has to be some kind of miracle, because nine times out of ten when I experiment, I end up with a gloopy mess.

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Vegan Whole Wheat Pumpkin Coconut Bread

11.01.13

Happy day after Halloween! I made you some whole wheat vegan baked goods to celebrate. You’re welcome.

We had one trick-or-treater last night, and enough candy for at least 100. This is the first Halloween in a really long time that I’ve been in a house and not an apartment, and I was sure we’d get trick-or-treaters, so I wanted to be prepared. Now we have about 10 pounds of leftover candy, some of which I may or may not have already indulged in. I think my tolerance for sugar has gone down significantly since I was of trick-or-treating age, and I definitely feel a bit of a Halloween hangover. It’s time for some detox.

This version of pumpkin bread is actually pretty healthy. I replaced the vegetable oil in the original recipe with coconut oil, and replaced the all-purpose flour with whole wheat pastry flour. Whole wheat pastry flour is a great way to sneak in whole grains in cakes and breads, since the texture is more delicate than regular whole wheat flour. You could also try a half and half combo of the whole wheat and all-purpose flours.

I’ve made a few batches of this, and decided that I could do without the white sugar completely. It didn’t affect the texture negatively when I left it out, and it was plenty sweet. I did, however, add a sprinkling of crystal cinnamon sugar to the top, which is my new favorite thing. You can find the recipe for that here.

Oh, and the best part about this recipe? It’s easy, only requires one bowl, and no mixer is needed. A dump and stir recipe is pretty much all I can handle while I’m still recovering from sugar coma anyway. Serve this with a pat of vegan butter and a side of coffee. Or a green smoothie. Happy detox!

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