Author: pumpkinhoney

Go-To Recipes

/ pumpkinhoney / 8 Comments

These are recipes from other bloggers that I absolutely LOVE to make & make often. They’re my go-tos, my arsenal, my standbys, my fallbacks, my favorites. I make them repeatedly because they’re just. so. good. Oh, and they’re all pretty easy. One pot or one bowl recipes.

So, without further ado, here are our “go-to”s.

This is a serious favorite for Stephen & me. I make the Rye Bread from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and we dip chunks into this wonderful broth. It’s the perfect combination of garlic, dill & lemon. This is probably one of my favorite recipes ever. And I love Peter’s blog – his photography is fresh & wonderful. Do be careful if you decide to make this incredible Greek dish… you may just eat the whole pot.

Arakas Me Patates from Souvlaki for the Soul

This one is our go-to veggie burger.They’re full of flavor & nutrition – packed with carrots, herbs, oats, flax & black beans – and have a great texture. I love to pan fry them in olive oil from a crispy crust. Hardly necessary to say, but Angela is a vegan blogging idol. Her recipes always use the best ingredients & everything I’ve made from her blog has turned out really delicious. Definitely, try these.

Perfect Veggie Burger from Oh She Glows

Stephen & I have made this next recipe so many times I don’t even need to think about measuring the ingredients. I found this recipe about 1.5 years ago when Stephen wanted to recreate is favorite Indian dish. Honey gives you step-by-step instructions that make it a great starter recipe for anyone who’s never made Indian food and it’s incredibly tasty. It’s definitely one of our staples. (Apparently we love peas & potatoes.)

Aloo Matar from Honey, What’s Cooking?

We also love lentils and make Mesir Wat allll the time. It’s one of the easiest recipes ever & tastes wonderful alone or with some Ethiopian collards or chickpeas. I have no idea where I found the recipe I use…. just like the Aloo Matar, I’ve made it so many times I don’t even think about measuring out the ingredients. After some browsing for examples, Michael’s recipe is definitely closest to the original I use. And I also absolutely adore his blog. He has so many recipes I have bookmarked, waiting to be sampled.

Mesir Wat from Herbivoracious

Of course, I have to include some dessert recipes. This was my first genuinely successful vegan cake and man did it set a precedent. I’ve made it a few times. The ganache is to-die-for. I was so excited when I made this recipe… it’s one of those cakes where no one would ever know the difference between vegan & non-vegan. And it’s supremely chocolate.

Vegan Chocolate Cake from What Would Cathy Eat?

 I’ve made these a dozen cookies a dozen times because they’re quick, easy, and so freaking tasty. Plus they’re versatile & Stephen loves them. They’re addictive but still seem healthy. They’re not greasy & they use wholesome ingredients. I’ve used rice flour & wheat flour, additional spices, and alternative nuts. They turn out great every single time.

Maple Walnut Jam Cookies from Feasting Freds

I must impress upon you the sheer awesomeness of all of the recipes above & implore you to try them all, immediately. They’re simply the best.

*Note: All of the pictures posted above are from the blogs from which the original recipe comes.

Smoky Poblano & Black Bean Pupusas

/ pumpkinhoney / 6 Comments

Stephen has been trying very very hard to avoid purchasing plastic in general but especially while grocery shopping. (We saw a guy put ONE apple in a plastic produce bag and tie it off!) This means a lot of things to be made from scratch… including tortillas & bread & powdered sugar. But especially tortillas. I don’t do well without, at the very least, one Mexican meal a week. If I had my way, I’d probably eat Latin American cuisine just about every single day. What is a world without salsa??? Not a world I want to live in. And black beans? Nope, I don’t want to live there either.

So we picked up a 5 pound bag of Maseca and Stephen put me to work. Okay, we worked together… 😉 I made the tortillas & he cooked them. Hint: the recipe is on the back of the bag. We don’t have a tortillas press so we used to pieces of parchment paper & one of the 8×8 pyrex pans to smush the living daylights out of a ball of a masa harina, water & salt. And it worked like a damn charm. And then I discovered the best news EVER. I could make more than just tortillas. I could make tamales, pupusas, sopes.

One of my pet names for Stephen is Pupusa… I don’t know how it came to be but it was one of the first things I called him. I thought it was only fitting I make him Pupusas for his birthday (okay, the day before).  The recipe is really simple & they are incredibly delicious. I must warn you though – you must have the patience of a freaking saint to form them. Okay, they’re not that bad… unless you’re a perfectionist.

Stephen was gracious enough to let me take these pictures of his food before I let him eat it.

Smoky Poblano & Black Bean Pupusas

Dough:

  • 2 Cups Masa Harina
  • 1 3/4 Cups Warm Water
  • 1/2 Tsp Salt
Combine the above ingredients in a large bowl. The dough should be very moist but not sticky – much moister than for tortillas. You want the dough to be moist enough that it doesn’t crack when you’re forming the pupusas. If the dough dries out a bit as it sits, just add a couple more teaspoons of water. I actually made mine as the filling was cooking. Form into about 8 balls, somewhere between the size of a golf ball & tennis ball.

Filling:

  • 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
  • 1 Med/Large Poblano Pepper, diced
  • 1 Jalapeno, finely diced
  • 1/2 Medium Onion, finely diced
  • 1 Clove Garlic, minced
  • 1 Can Black Beans, rinsed
  • 1 Tsp Chipotle Powder (this makes the filling smoky AND spicy, you can sub smoked paprika for smokiness without the heat)
  • 1/2 Tsp Cumin
  • 1 Tbsp Chili Powder
  • Juice of Half a Lime
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1/2 Cup Water

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a medium/large saute pan. Add poblano, jalapeno & onion. Saute until vegetables are tender and slightly browned. Add garlic and saute for another minute. Add black beans & salt & seasonings. Stir to combine. Add water and simmer gently over medium/low heat until much of the water has cooked down. Smash the black beans to a “refried bean” consistency. Squeeze lime juice into mix & stir to combine. You want the mixture to be thick for stuffing the pupusas.

To form: the pupusas, start with one of the masa balls. Form a small bowl by sinking your thumb in the middle & pinching the sides of the dough… much like when you were little and would make little clay bowls. The dough should be less than a centimeter thick. Fill the “bowl” with a couple of spoonfuls of filling. Fold together edges to close. Then flatten into a disk. The edges may crack a little, just muster all your patience to pinch the masa back together. If the filling comes out a bit, don’t worry! It happens. We had leftover filling that I served next to the pupusas. I wish I had some right now.

To cook: the pupusas, heat a splash of olive oil over medium heat in a large pan. Cook pupusas for about 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown on each side.

To serve: the pupusas, top with pico de gallo (as pictured), sour cream, guacamole, lime juice, hot sauce or any of your favorite accompaniments.

These babys were sooo good. They were a bit of a challenge to form but I think with practice I could one day become a professional pupusa maker. They’re certainly worth it. Hot out of the pan with some fresh pico de gallo, they’re a bit crunchy on the outside from the pan fry and gooey with a huge punch of flavor on the inside.

Two sites that I consulted with pictures on how to form the Pupusas:

Dandy Sugar

Better With Butter

Banana Bread Cake

/ pumpkinhoney / 4 Comments

It’s Stephen’s birthday today! Happy Birthday, Tater Tot!

This is not his birthday cake.

He didn’t want me to make his birthday cake until his actual birthday so I’ll be making a Chocolate Guinness Bundt Cake inspired by Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body’s recipe. I’ll post that cake later!

Anyway, we bought a few organic bananas from Wegman’s and I really really wanted to make banana bread. But in the spirit of birthdays I decided to make a cake! (I swear it had nothing to do with the fact that Stephen’s college apartment is not equipped with a loaf pan… but somehow manages to have two 8×8 pyrex pans.) And since I was making a cake I figured I had to add icing! I thought about banana icing and I was like yeck, too much banana. I thought about vanilla icing and I was like meh, boring. I also thought about chocolate icing but I was like hmmm, overpowering. Then I thought about recipes I’ve seen in the past that used peanut butter icing and I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I am going to be totally honest here – I think the banana bread cake would have been BETTER without the icing. I mean, the icing is good icing. It’s just overpowering.. like I thought the chocolate would be. Banana bread itself is moist and delicious and needs NOTHING to make it better. And this recipe is no exception. It’s going to be my new banana bread (cake) recipe. Sure, you could toast it, add a little butter but that’s not really changing the flavor profile. I ate one piece of this cake… Stephen ate the rest. I think he may disagree about the icing.

Oh, and I also removed it from the pan like it had to cool or something… like I’d never made a sheet cake in my life or something THEN I tried to flip it over with a long spatula because I thought… well this is a rather small cake… it’ll work. And it landed on it’s side on the table and started to smush and I panicked and oh lord. And then Stephen told me he had just cleaned the table and I thought he was yelling at me but he was really saying “at least I’ve just cleaned the table,” as in, the cake is still perfectly good and not compromised by dirty table. But then I ate a piece of the broken cake without icing… pre-icing… and I was like DAMN THIS SHIT IS GOOOOD.

Banana Bread Cake

  • 3/4 Cup Banana Mash (About 1.5 bananas)
  • 1/4 Cup White Sugar
  • 1/3 Cup Brown Sugar
  • 1 Ener-G Egg (or flax egg, or real egg)
  • 1/2 Cup Oil
  • 1/3 Cup Oat Milk
  • 1/4 Cup Almond Milk (I actually added this at the end because I thought the batter seemed a bit thick… and I had run out of oat milk)
  • 1 Tsp Vanilla
  • 1 1/2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
  • 1/4 Tsp Salt
  • 2 Tsp Baking Powder
  • 1 Tsp Baking Soda

Peanut Butter Frosting

  • 1/4 Cup Vegetable Shortening
  • 1/3 Cup Peanut Butter
  • 1 1/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
  • 3 Tbsp Almond Milk

Preheat your oven to 350F. Grease an 8×8 glass pan.

Notes: *Stephen’s oven is small (it’s portable). I’d say at least a half foot smaller than most ovens in height & width. I don’t know how this affects temperature/cooking time. So keep an eye on your cake! *The cooking will also be affected if you use a metal pan instead. I find, in a glass pan, cake takes longer to cook. *I used the granulated sugar in the frosting recipe to make homemade powdered sugar, which I then incorporated into the icing. If you already have powdered sugar and want to skip this step the measurements may be slightly different.

To make the cake, in a large bowl, mash 1.5 avg sized bananas. It should make about 2/3 cup of banana mash. Mash it real good 😉

Add the sugar, egg, oil, milk & vanilla. Combine with whisk or fork until everything is fully incorporated.

Add flour, salt, baking powder & baking soda. I always just use my fork and kind of mix the dry ingredients together while they float on the wet before mixing it all together. Why dirty another bowl? Stir it all together until thoroughly combined.

Pour the batter into the already greased baking pan. Cook in oven for 30 – 35 minutes or until top of cake springs back or knife inserted in center comes out clean.

While the cake is cooking, begin making the frosting.

Add sugar to blender and whirl on high speed until sugar is broken down into powdered sugar.

Thoroughly combine shortening & peanut butter in a large bowl (I actually quick rinsed out the first and re-used it).

Add powdered sugar & combine until fully incorporated. Add milk one tablespoon at a time until the frosting is the consistency you prefer.

Wait until the cake has, at least, mostly cooled before icing!