Thanksgiving Practice

I love Thanksgiving. That might be a little weird as a vegetarian since it's a holiday that is centered a lot around eating a turkey, but I still love it. I actually love pretty much every holiday, so I guess that isn't too surprising. But Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that makes me feel warm and fuzzy - you get to reflect on your year and remember all that you are thankful for, spend time with friends and family, and eat lots of delicious autumn inspired foods!

This weekend I had a lot of cooking that I wanted to do  - including several new recipes I wanted to try out. We started off the weekend with Gingerbread Doughnuts (I finally got that doughnut pan - SO much better than trying to fry them!) - I used this recipe and mostly followed it with the exception of using a flax seed egg in place of the real egg and almond milk instead of regular milk, plus I didn't buy the mini-doughnut pan so this recipe made 6 regular sized doughnuts for me.

I'm so excited about the baked doughnuts - they were really easy and, at least compared to fried doughnuts, fairly healthy. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself!

I actually jumped ahead a little bit here, because my cooking actually started the night before with pumpkin pies. It's been years since I've made a pumpkin pie and the last vegan recipe I used was one that called for tofu. I only had a pretty junky blender at that time and the tofu never quite blended into the rest of the batter which made for some interesting textures. Since then I've just kind of steered clear of any pumpkin pies.

This year though I was thinking about how a lot of other food bloggers often make multiple versions of the same thing to determine the best recipe. I usually have too many different things I want to make to try multiple versions of the same thing, but I thought maybe this pumpkin pie endeavor would benefit from trying different variations.

It turns out I only own one actual pie dish, so I used my springform pan for Pie #1 and made a graham cracker crust with a little ginger added. For this pie I used this recipe which was designed to be vegan and gluten free (I guess not so much though with my crust now, but I'm not gluten free so I don't particularly care). This recipe used coconut milk to add creaminess and tapioca flour and agar-agar to make the pie set up firm. The pie is also not baked - you cook the filling on the stove after you've cooked the agar-agar for a bit, which I found sort of interesting.

Pie #2 was your more traditional pumpkin pie - in fact, I used the Libby's Pumpkin Pie recipe and just substituted the eggs with flax seed eggs. For the crust I just halved the crust recipe I've posted here before.

Both pies turned out decent - I'm not certain I was in love with either one entirely, but then again maybe I just don't love pumpkin pie in general - it has to have been at least 10 years since I've had a regular pumpkin pie so I don't really remember. Overall the verdict was that the filling from Pie #1 with the crust from Pie #2 would have made the best pie.

I also tried out this recipe for a roasted pumpkin (I used butternut squash instead) salad - I failed on taking on pictures of it since we were caught up chatting with our friends once they arrived for dinner, but it was actually a rather pretty salad. I was worried that it was going to be awful because when I tasted the dressing by itself I really didn't care for it, but once all of the flavors were together I think it worked a lot better. There are a few things I would change if I decide to make this to bring to Thanksgiving though - cooking the rice differently (it was a little mushy and I think a drier rice would have been better), and cutting the onions in half to roast even though they were small - I think the salad would have been better with more onions evenly distributed throughout.

I may still have to try a few more recipes before I decide on what to bring back to Washington with me this year, but I guarantee you something will have squash in it!

-C

Apple Cider Doughnuts

I'd been dying to make apple cider doughnuts for at least the past month. I'd seen dozens of different recipes fly by on foodgawker and last weekend I finally felt like I had the time to try it out. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to eat some delicious, fresh, apple cider doughnuts.

Let me tell you - I think I am giving up on my frying attempts. For starters, I hate frying things because pouring an entire bottle of vegetable oil into a pan makes me feel kind of gross and also sad, and secondly hot oil scares me. A lot. But the real reason I think I am giving up on frying things is I just don't think the results are worth the effort (and calories).

Now I'm not faulting the recipe I used - I think my biggest problem is I don't have a great thermometer and the oil may not have been quite hot enough. I also read that most doughnut shops fry in hydrogenated oil (not that I really want to do that either though) - but supposedly it actually keeps less of the oil from seeping into your food. I wonder what using coconut oil would be like - I did a little bit of reading and it sounds like you can use it for frying, but I suppose that would also be expensive!

Anyway, I think I am going to buy myself a doughnut pan so that next time I feel like trying to make doughnuts I can just make the baked kind! The good news was, the dough by itself was pretty delicious! If you're interested here is the recipe I used: Apple Cider Doughnuts.

The only changes I made were to use 1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour instead of the graham flour and I used flax seed eggs instead of the real eggs (1 Tbs. ground flax seeds mixed with 3 Tbs. warm water = 1 egg). Perhaps you will have better luck than I did!  (Side note: I think if I had made only doughnut holes they might have turned out ok, the grease seemed to seep into those less).

-C

Saturday Morning Doughnuts

Way back when I first started following The Pioneer Woman's website her recipe for homemade glazed doughnuts caught my eye. I bookmarked it and then moved on since I didn't own a metal slotted spoon and had zero experience making anything that required yeast. Then for the past couple of weeks the recipe has been featured on the front page of her website and it has been taunting me. Seriously. I thought about doughnuts all week long. I haven't had a doughnut in ages, not since Stephanie and I went to that vegan doughnut shop in Las Vegas back in September.

I decided this would be one of my projects for the weekend. I made the dough last night - all looked well. I took it out of the refrigerator this morning and rolled it out and still - all looked well. Even after I cut the doughnuts out using a biscuit cutter and a shot glass (side note: I used a Corona shot glass that my sister got me for my 21st birthday - why does Corona make shot glasses? Anyone?) they still looked like they were supposed to.

Then I went to let them rise using my standard bread trick of heating the oven up to the lowest possible temperature and then turning it off. I have to do this because we keep the house at basically a freezing temperature. Ok maybe it's more like 63 degrees. It's still pretty cold though if you ask me, and too cold to let things rise properly. Unfortunately this is where things went terribly wrong. Here are my doughnuts after an hour of "rising":

Sad, sad flat doughnuts. Luckily I had left a few doughnut holes in a pan on top of the oven that seemed to rise correctly.

 I did try to fry a couple of the sad flat ones just to see if maybe they were salvageable. They weren't really. But the doughnut holes worked out alright! Here are the glazed results:

And here is the difference between the flattened greasy doughnut, and the doughnut hole that actually rose properly:

You want to know the worst part? Doughnuts aren't even as good as I had built them up to be in my head. The only reason I kind of want to make them again is because I'm mad that I messed them up. I'm considering it - I suppose I could bring them in to work on Monday, but I don't know. It's kind of a lot of work to prove to myself I really can make them correctly. Maybe I should just go back to baking.

Hopefully I have better results to share with you from tomorrow's Sunday Dinner!

-C