Baked Pumpkin Fusilli
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
If you haven’t noticed, Halloween is my favorite. I had to get one pumpkin recipe in for VeganMoFo, but of course, I waited for the last minute and didn’t have any ideas that wouldn’t take all day. I turned to my trusted cookbook collection and found the Baked Pumpkin Ziti recipe in Veganomicon. Of course I didn’t actually follow the recipe, but it’s nearly the same. It was a hearty dish for lunch on Halloween, with a bit of spiciness. I didn’t have a chance to make the seasoned breadcrumbs for the top, and instead substituted some seasoned flax meal. This is perhaps where my version was seriously lacking. I enjoyed the dish but it wasn’t terribly exciting. I find that often pumpkin can turn a generally tasty meal into something rather bland. Next time maybe I’ll add in some tomato or just more spices.
And that brings us to the end of VeganMoFo 2009. It’s been a blast and I’m a bit sad it’s going to be over. I’m also a little relieved. This month has definitely been a strain on my psyche, trying to blog every day while filling every other free moment with projects and fun to celebrate fall and Halloween. I loved it, but I won’t pretend there weren’t times when the lack of sleep really did get to me. I’m so glad I found so many other really amazing blogs out there to read though and some great inspiration.
death by guillotine and the elephant man
Now I’m off to prepare for more Halloween festivities. I still haven’t finished my costume. And I’m already running late! Yikes. Hope everyone has a frightful and delicious holiday!
Donut Fever or mini donut disaster
This all too common ailment afflicts nearly as many as the flu, but it can be even more devastating to vegans who cannot easily satisfy their donut craving. Recently a friend of mine fell victim to this affliction, and a very rare strain known as mini-donut fever. As you may know, the only cure is to eat donuts, in this case mini-donuts. So we set out on a mission to make our own vegan mini donuts using the recipe from Vegan Yum Yum as a starting place.
It should have been an an easy enough task, with a clear recipe to follow, but things did not go as planned. Plain baked donuts are good, but blueberry sounded even better so we threw in a handful of wild blueberries to the batter of our first batch, but the batter was already looking awfully wet. We carried on, hoping for the best. The best was not so good. Despite the recipe saying that you should not grease the pan (it was non-stick anyway) the donuts stuck horribly, and because the added berries, fell apart when you tried to remove them. They still tasted rather good though, so we ate a few of the ugly bits.
Round two, we added more flour and greased the pan. This batch came out better than the last but as they sat out, became rather crunchy. I would still consider these fairly successful. We glazed them with a blueberry juice glaze which was fantastic and so pretty.
Next we decided to go for some pumpkin spice donuts. This time we abandoned the recipe completely. Bad idea. While these donuts had the correct consistency, fluffy and light, the flavor was just off completely. There was neither enough pumpkin nor spice. Three out of three taste testers agreed, these donuts tasted like…hay. Yep, you got that right. They tasted like dried grass. I’m sure you could pass them off to some unsuspecting health-food type, but that is not what we were interested in. We had already frosted them before we realized that they tasted so bad, so at least they looked pretty.
The unfortunate side effect of this endeavor is that I’ve now come down with donut fever myself. Look out for some more (hopefully more successful) donut making in the near future.
Also get ready because it’s almost time for Veganmofo 2009. I can’t wait to get cookin’. Last year’s veganmofo really inspired me to work harder on this blog and get it going from something that I did only for myself to something I shared with people.
More autumn flavors
I made some pumpkin bread last week that was absolutely delicious. Super moist with some subtle spice. This is only half the loaf since it all got eaten so quickly. Pumpkin is seriously awesome. I’m going to have to come up with some more pumpkin dishes before the end of November. There is still time yet!Wonderful news though….I’m getting a big baking treat tomorrow! A special present to myself. I’m sure a lot of people out there could guess what it is. So excited. 🙂
Happy Halloween!
pumpkin cheesecake
As I’m sure I’ll be out gallivanting tomorrow evening, I thought I’d do my Halloween post tonight. I honestly can’t get enough of Halloween. I’m going to dress up as a bat tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get some good photos to show you all since I made my costume, well some of it at least. I swear I do other things besides bake.
Above is the pumpkin cheesecake I made this week. It was good but it didn’t blow me away. Perhaps it was that I kept wanting it to be pumpkin pie and not cheesecake. I still have yet to find vegan graham crackers anywhere so I used a store bought crust. I guess it could have been more like cheesecake and that would have been better as well. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, I just wanted it to be even better.
Shawn and I carved pumpkins tonight. Since we bought them so late, they were only $5 for three good sized pumpkins. It’s been quite awhile since either of us carved any. I decided to go for something cute and carved a sugar glider in my pumpkin. Shawn made a traditional jack-o-lantern with big eyes that I love.
“bon bon” and “little ricky”
