Vegan Triple Chocolate Banana Bread

Banana bread. Who doesn't love it? It's the perfect thing for using up bananas a little past the fresh eating stage, and it's perfectly satisfactory for dessert or breakfast. 

I wanted to spin it up a little so I added chocolate, chocolate milk and chocolate chips. It turned out perfect: fluffy-yet-fudgy, and oh, so delicious. 

Have a slice with a cup of almond milk and your eyes will roll in your head. Yum.

Vegan Triple Chocolate Banana bread

2 tbs ground flax seed
¼ cup plus 2 tbs cold water

½ cup Earth Balance, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 medium)
¼ cup Silk Pure Almond Dark chocolate milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup baking cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
¼ cup mini chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

In a small bowl, combine the ground flax and water. Mix - I use my immersion blender - until it’s all gooey. If you don't have an immersion blender, you'll want to let this mixture sit for a few minutes before you start mixing.

In a large bowl, cream Earth Balance and sugar. Add the flax mixture, bananas, milk and vanilla.

In a smaller bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; add to the banana mixture and mix just until combined. Add the chocolate chips and stir them through.

Transfer to a greased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pan.

Bake for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean of batter. It will probably have melted chocolate on it, but that’s to be expected. Cool for 10 minutes in pan before cooling on a wire rack. Makes one loaf.

I want to believe

I'm a fan of the X-Files from way back when it was airing. 

I want to believe that if people know the truth, they'll respond in the only way a compassionate person could. I want to believe that the horror that goes on in the lives of the animals only does so because people don't know.

But people work for these places, don't they? People see the hens in battery cages slowly dehydrating to death, people see the cows forcibly impregnated only to have their young taken from them, people see the calves chained to become veal. People see the sows confined to an area so small they can't turn around, and people see the agony of the slaughterhouses.

Granted, those workers are perhaps not in a position to refuse to do the work, but there is a massive industry out there assuming that people are not compassionate, that they can do whatever they want regardless of torture as long as they keep prices down and production high. 

Are they right?

Is the flavor of an egg on your tongue worth even one hen's brutal, agonizing death?

Is the shot of cream in your coffee worth ripping a mother apart from her child?

Is the taste of bacon worth confining even one living being to a space so small she cannot turn around?

All of these things are easily replaceable using plants, and there is no longer any need for us to use animals the way we do except for entrenched habit. I want to believe that people are better than that, that their compassion can easily overcome their habits. 

I want to believe that we live in the future, where torture is not an integral part of people's daily lives.

I want to believe.

Grocery Outlet vegan bargains, #1

We love Grocery Outlet. There are several stores in San Jose, and one is thankfully quite near our residence. At one point, we spent enough time in there that our little boy was singing along to their jingle. "Grocery Outlet, Bargain Market!"

Yeah. Being vegan, it's especially awesome, because the vegan stuff is just priced like all the other stuff. It's just stuff.

One of our recent favorite finds was So Delicious' Turtle Trails Coconut Milk ice cream. For $1.99. These guys are not kidding when they talk about bargains.

This week, we found So Delicious Cultured Coconut Milk Strawberry Banana YOGURT for 50 cents.

Before this starts to sound like a So Delicious ad, which it isn't meant to be at all - we also found Galaxy Nutritional Foods' Vegan Cream Cheese. For $1.50.

I never buy vegan cream cheese. It's very processed, of course, and it's so expensive. But sometimes I want to make vegan cheesecake, because cheesecake is something I miss. For $1.50, I think I can go with it. But, of course, as always, these bargains only last while they're there.

If you're vegan, and there's a Grocery Outlet in your area you haven't checked out, I highly, highly recommend it.

Perfect, garlic vegan naan

I have a stand mixer, and it rocks my world.

So when I decided to make a veganized version of Dal Makhani, I thought I should probably put the gorgeous machine to work and make some delicious naan to go with it.

My naan attempts up to this point have been rather hit or miss. But this was a definite WIN. I am only sorry that the bread was eaten so quickly that there was none left to photograph. You'll have to envision it: perfect, puffy oblongs glistening with buttery spread and dotted with garlic. Oh, and the fragrance. My husband said he wanted to capture it with some sort of aroma-photograph so he could experience it again at will.

You won't regret trying this recipe.

If you don't have one - buy a baking stone. This recipe won't be the only time you'll be glad you did.

Vegan garlic naan



I am including the brands I used so if you want to replicate my recipe exactly, you can. I am sure other ingredients will work just as well.

1 1/2 cups Silk PureAlmond original, slightly warmed
1 tsp quick yeast
1 tsp sugar
3 1/2 cups King Arthur bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp garlic powder
4 tsp minced garlic

Earth balance for brushing the bread

I used my stand mixer, since, as mentioned, it rocks my world. But if you don't have one you can still make this.

In a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the warm milk, yeast, and sugar, and let sit until foamy. Add the flour, then the salt, garlic powder, and garlic, and stir until it all comes together. I turned on my mixer with the dough hook and let it go for several minutes until the dough was smooth.

In the absence of a mixer, once the dough comes together, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes until it's smooth and elastic.

Cover the dough with a damp towel - I tossed one over the bowl of my mixer - and let sit in a warm place for an hour or so, until doubled in size.

Put a baking stone in your oven and turn it on to its highest setting while your dough is rising - it should be hot by the time you're ready.

Punch the dough down, knead briefly, and then cut into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into flat oblongs, dust with flour, and stack. Let rest for 5-10 minutes.

If the oven is hot, open it and lay as many breads as you can fit on your stone without overlapping. Close the oven, wait two minutes, flip each naan gently with tongs, close the oven, and wait two more minutes. Take them out and brush with Earth Balance while you're waiting for the next batch, and repeat.

Try not to eat it all before you serve the meal.

Yum!

Vegan Dal Makhani

I love Indian food. Sometimes the spice level is a little more than I can stand, but I love it.

When I went from vegetarian to vegan, Dal Makhani was suddenly on my no-go list in restaurants, and I mourned. But then I thought, hey. I can make this myself. Honest.

Given the fact that there's an Indian market just a mile or two down the road, I figured why the heck not? And oh, it's so, so cheap. The ingredients require a little initial investment but should last me for a long, long time. It was $2 for a bag of cumin seeds that fills up two of my spice containers with leftovers, the same price for garam masala in an equal amount.

I spent all day fiddling with the lentils and the rice and the naan, but honestly if you don't have that kind of time it's not a big deal either.

YUM.

1 1/2 cups urad dal (black beluga lentils)
3 tsp fresh grated ginger (I used a microplane grater which made ginger mush, perfect)
4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped
Salt to taste

For the tadka:
5 Tbsp earth balance
1.5 tsp cumin seed
4-5 garlic cloves, minced
pinch asafoetida powder
1 small can tomato paste

To finish:
1/3 cup coconut cream
5 tbsp earth balance
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp garam masala

Soak the lentils overnight, rinsing and changing the water several times.

Boil the lentils with the ginger, garlic, and salt, simmering until well cooked. Drain any excess water - I scooped it out with a mug and poured it into my huge sieve to catch the lentils. Mash the lentils lightly with the mug or the back of a ladle.

To make the tadka, heat the earth balance in a separate pan until hot, add the cumin seeds and stir until they crackle. Add the garlic and fry until it starts to brown. Sprinkle in the asafoetida powder, add the tomato puree and stir for a minute. Add to the cooked dal, mixing well. Let the dal boil again, then add the chili powder, earth balance and coconut cream. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Add the garam masala last, stir through, and salt to taste.

As written, it's mildly spicy - a nice blend with just a little bit of heat.

Serve with basmati rice & fresh naan.

Vegan banana cream pie with toasted coconutty crust

Being away from my family during Thanksgiving was particularly hard. I decided, in order to make it a little more bearable for all of us, to embark on a recipe hunt that I thought would be impossibly simple to find, maybe a little harder to make. I was wrong. I have a cashew allergy, so the wonder that apparently is cashew cream will not be mine, and most of the recipes I found involved cashews in some way or another.

Mine doesn't.

I tried adapting a couple of recipes for banana pudding, but it just wasn't doing it. The resulting creations were edible but not really the essence of banana cream pie. I hit on one that was almost there, but the filling was just a little too tart, and the whole pie was the absolute wrong color for banana cream. I wanted something almost white, evocative of fresh bananas - not brown. Brown pie and the word banana just start everything off on the wrong foot.

So, here's what I've got! This banana-rich concoction elicited cries of "Yum!" from all three family members who were allowed to taste the filling.

Totally vegan, and NO cashews!

Ingredients:

Crust
2 cups sweetened coconut flakes
1 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
Dash salt
5 tablespoons coconut oil, melted.

Filling
5 bananas
1 package (12.3 oz, 439 grams) firm silken tofu, preferably chilled
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup safflower oil

Instructions for the crust:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray or otherwise oil a 9-inch pie plate.
Mix all dry ingredients together well, pour the coconut oil over and mix with fork until thoroughly moistened.
Press coconut mixture into pie plate, using the back of a fork to get it up on the sides. This is the most time-consuming part of the entire recipe, but it's still not much.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned, then let cool completely. The crust will become crispier when it is cool.

For filling:

Slice 1 1/2 of the bananas into thin slices and then spread them over the completely cooled crust, propping some along the sides. You do not want your crust warm at all. Cooked bananas = bleh.

Like this.

Put the remainder of the bananas and all the other ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the filling over the bananas in the crust, then give the blender and a spatula to someone you like a lot to clean.

Chill several hours until time to serve. If you're really feeling festive, some vegan whip would make a nice topping.

Awesome bread of deliciousness

I love this bread. It is beyond fabulous. I make 2 loaves a little more than once a week, for the four of us to enjoy as toast or sandwiches. I finally seem to have perfectly perfected it. It's only a little bit fussy and it rises to be huge and fluffy.

If you have a bread machine, you can make the dough in that, but it completely fills up the pan in mine and I have to stand there and prod at it with a spatula the entire time to get it to mix properly. It's worth it for me though as hand-kneading hurts me quite a bit.

A stand mixer would take care of it too of course, but I don't have one. And naturally, if you want to go ahead and do it by hand, by all means do it.


Ingredients:
3 cups warm water
3 tablespoons active dry yeast
1-2 tablespoons molasses
3 tablespoons sugar

3 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups bread flour +more for dusting/adding
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup flax meal
3 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup cooked corn grits, or polenta if you're in a place that doesn't have grits
1/2 cup safflower oil
3 tablespoons sunflower seeds (optional)

2 9x5 loaf pans - you DO NOT WANT smaller pans. If that's all you have, you may need to make 3..maybe 4 loaves.
Spray oil

I've already noted that I use my bread machine to mix the dough, but I will assume a large mixing bowl with parenthetical notations for the bread machine.

Pour the water and the sugar and molasses into a large mixing bowl, stir until dissolved. Sprinkle the yeast over the liquid, and stir. Let this sit in a warm place until the yeast begins to look like a monster (in the bread machine it has completely covered the paddle).

While the yeast is multiplying, mix all the dry ingredients (not the sunflower seeds, not the grits) together in another bowl and mix thoroughly. Once the yeast has grown to horrific proportions - probably 5-10 minutes - toss in the grits and stir until well mixed. (I run the bread machine for just a moment).

Now scoop 4 cups of your dry mix into the wet, stir until moistened, (I just start the bread machine's dough cycle now and then keep adding) and then add the safflower oil, stir, and then add the rest of the dry ingredients. It will be sticky at this point. Sprinkle flour on the counter and turn your dough out onto it. You'll need to add more flour until the dough is just-almost sticky. Knead this for 10 minutes or so. (I let the bread machine run while I help it along with a spatula and add the needed extra flour once I pull the dough out for it to rise) Put the dough back in the bowl, cover with a cloth, and leave it to rise in a warm place until doubled, about 45-60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Prepare 2 loaf pans by spraying them with spray oil. Turn the risen dough onto the counter and divide it in two. I like to toss one half in the bread machine and knead the other half by hand at this point. Knead each half for about 3 minutes, working toward shaping a loaf by turning the ends under over and over. I also like to knead some sunflower seeds in at this point. Drop shaped loaves into oiled pans, and cover with a cloth. Leave to rise until doubled, about 20-30 minutes.

Pop those beautiful things into the oven and bake for 32 minutes.

When they come out, butter the tops with earth balance while they're still in the pans, then transfer to a rack for cooling.