HaPpY BeLaTeD BiRtHdAy

To Me!!

(My bday cake from a bakery in Pennsylvania vanilla cake, pumpkin filling, and cinnamon frosting!)
Yay! Well getting older use to be way more fun, but I am not allowed to complain yet, I only entered my mid-twenties. I am just not where I thought I would be at this age but actually who really ends up where they think they will be. (Did that sentence make any sense?) But anyway, it was indeed my birthday, I celebrated, and had a great time! I love my birthday, the time of the year it is at, being able to have a preset themed party (Halloween), and snow?? Ha yes it is snowing outside right at this moment. I was working this morning, but I came home early due to all of the down trees. Craziness in October!!

Let us get to some food talking now.

I made apple cider spiced mini cupcakes with pumpkin frosting! A mouthful to say and a tasty mouthful to eat. I decided to use apple cider instead of soy milk in the recipe because I didn't have any soy milk and the cider was calling out to me to be used. I based my recipe off of one in the Vegan Cupcakes are Invading the World cookbook.

Apple Cider Spiced Cupcakes with Pumpkin Frosting

3/4 cup apple cider
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup coconut palm sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/3 cup oil
1 1/4 cups whole wheat white flour
2 tablespoons arrowroot starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Mix the cider, water, vinegar, sugar, oil, and extracts.

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Add the liquid mixture in two amounts to the dry.

Combine until you have a well mixed batter.

Spoon batter into a paper lined mini muffin/cupcake pan.

Bake for 25 minutes turning the pan halfway during the baking. Place pan on a cooling rack and let them cool for 15 minutes, then take the cupcakes out of the pan and place on the rack until completely cool.

Pumpkin Frosting
1 cup TrueWhip
1/4 cup 100% pumpkin
1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Fold the pumpkin and nutmeg into the TrueWhip.

Frost cooled cupcakes. I piped the frosting on with a large star tip.

Not too spicy, you can taste the apple cider and pumpkin. It all works so well together.

I got donut pans for my birthday...Oh so can not wait to play with them!

Take One

In my attempt at making overnight oats!

If you do not know what overnight oats are then you don't really read many blogs. They are a big thing in the food bloggers world. Some of the blogs I follow eat them a lot- Kath Eats Real Food, Oh She Glows, and many others in my list. So here is what overnight oats are: uncooked oats that soak in the fridge overnight and then eaten with little prep in the morning. I was a bit weary with eating uncooked oats, but they soak up the liquid that is added and in a weird way "cook." They absorb a lot of the liquid you add to them. You also need to add another binder type of ingredient like chia seeds or flaxseeds.

So most recipes I found called for milk or a milk substitute as the main liquid source. Me being good old me doesn't really enjoy milk in the morning. Don't ask why, I am just like that. So I choose to use apple cider that I bought when I went apple picking and water. My idea was to make apple pie overnight oats and that is exactly what I did!

Apple Pie Overnight Oats

1/2 cup apple cider
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons flaxmeal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 large apple
sprinkle of flaxseeds and extra cinnamon

The night before mix the water, apple cider, cinnamon, salt, flaxmeal, and the oats.

Place in a container and put in fridge.

Morning of, chop up the apple. To assemble start with some oats, top with a dash of cinnamon and some apples, then repeat and top with flaxseeds at the end.

Eat!

I was unsure if the oats were going to be sweet enough, but the cider did add enough sweetness. Also I had used 1/2 cup cider and 1/2 cup oats, but this was too much liquid, so I decreased in the recipe for all of you. If you want hot oats, add some boiling water once you are ready to eat. I also took my oats out of the fridge a half hour or so before I was ready to eat them. They smelled and tasted like a prepackaged, quick oats apple cinnamon flavored.

I am most definitely making some overnight oats again!

Oh an I forget what blog I was looking at but I saw the cutest chocolate covered strawberries! I made some of my own:

Owls!! Adorable! And yummy. The original used almonds for the wings and feet, but I did not have any on hand so pecans to the rescue! Love! I dipped the tips of the white chocolate chips into the melted chocolate and used a peanut butter chip for the beaks. I loved them! And my mom was very jealous, and yes I was mean and kept them all for myself <3 =]

Green Matos...

What to do at the end of the summer, when the last of the tomatoes haven't turned yet, so they are still green, but you don't want to waste them?

Well, I would pick them and make some fried green tomatoes with them! But I don't do the fried food thing so bake-fried green tomatoes anyone? Or even better (in my book at least) roasted green tomatoes! I will eventually make bake-fried green tomatoes, but I just haven't had the chance to yet.

Instead for my recipe I created for dinner today I decided that roasted green tomatoes would be just fine. My mom bought a lot of mushrooms this week, so those went into my dinner too. What was for dinner? A galette with a roasted red pepper sauce.

Roasted Green Tomatoes Galette

2 medium sized green tomatoes
3 large white button mushrooms
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon oil
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon each coriander and oregano

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon canola oil
3 tablespoon water
extra flour

1 teaspoon nutritional yeast

For the filling: Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Chop the mushrooms and tomatoes, toss with the seasonings,

place on a pan and roast for 30 minutes.

For the crust:

Mix the flour and salt together.

Start to stir in the oil until crumbly.

Add in small amounts of water until a nice dough forms.

Cover in plastic wrap and place in the fridge.

Once the veggies are done roasting, take out of the oven and mix in the nutritional yeast.

Flour a board and roll out the dough into a circle.

Move the dough onto a parchment paper lined baking pan.

Place the filling in the center of the dough.

Brush a little bit of water onto the remaining uncovered dough. Start to fold the dough over the filling in sections,

brushing with more water where the top dough and the premoistened dough meet.

Drizzle a lit bit of oil over the crust and bake for 20 minutes in the 400 degree oven or until the crust is a nice golden brown.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

1 large red pepper
1 teaspoon fresh parsley, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped into large pieces
salt and pepper

Roast the red pepper over the open flame of the burner on the stove (or you can do this in the oven).

Once the skin is blackened, place in a glass or metal bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let it steam so the skin becomes easier to remove.

Place the garlic on a small amount of foil along with a little bit of salt and pepper and a drizzle of oil. Roast for 10 to 15 minutes.

Once the pepper is cooled, remove the skin and chop into large chunks.

Place the pepper along with the roasted garlic into a food processor or blender along with a little more salt and pepper.

Blend, once smoothish, add in the parsley and pulse to incorporate.

That is the easiest sauce I could ever come up with!

To put the meal together, top the galette with some of the sauce and some extra chopped parsley.

Yum! And I was shocked how tasty the roasted green tomatoes were! Most definitely making that again.

Soon to come recipes using these...

And I am going to try making some overnight oats! Yum...