Jumbo Apple Oatmeal Muffins

These jumbo Apple Oatmeal Muffins are vegan and full of roasted apple chunks and apple compote. A bit of extra flavour and nutrition from @nakednutrition Pumpkin Spice #NakedShake up the ante, making these a great option for a lazy Sunday morning as well as a grab and go breakfast mid week.

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Muffins are such a perfect anytime food. I remember having them as breakfasts or snacks when I was in school, or for a quick energy boost after swimming lessons. They're also a great way to incorporate all those bits and bobs of baking pantry items into a portable snack. Knowing I have work on Sunday mornings, I wanted to make something for the team to enjoy after we wrapped things up and we went on our day. I had a few lonely apples in the fridge and a handful of oats and oat milk which I used as my starting point, and thought adding some of the Pumpkin Spice Naked Shake would be a great idea as well - after all, why wouldn't I add some functional nutrition and extra flavour when I can? 

The best apple muffins I had contained chunks of tender apple inside them, but weren't soggy or dense. To try and recreate that, I opted for a dual approach: a cheater apple compote for moisture and roasted apples for texture. The result was exactly what I wanted - lightly sweet and spiced, a perfect smattering of apple chunks and a hint of nuttiness and texture from the oats. This will be staying on my rotation, especially during the fall when bags of apples appear in our cellar!

Red Velvet Shortbread

I can never say no to red velvet anything - and these cut out cookies have all the flavour of the cake in a portable form! The vibrant colour and burst of flavour comes from Lorann Oils Red Velvet Emulsion, coupled with the tang from vegan cream cheese and a dash of red wine vinegar.

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In the four weeks spanning between my mom's birthday and my sister's birthday, we do a lot of red velvet. And by we, I (of course) mean me! It's really hard to beat the complex flavour that goes into a well made red velvet cake, but I've had success with cookies in the past and decided to try my hand at a type of shortbread. These cookies are tender but not chewy, and have the perfect amount of tang which is something that can be hard to find with these bakes. The colour (and some of the flavour) comes from my favourite "cheat" product, an emulsion-style flavouring for baking from Lorann Oils. It's dark red and smells like red velvet cake batter (and stains everything, so be warned).

I was actually pleasantly surprised with the texture of these cookies, given that I used a mix of fats, including a melted fat, melted chocolate and no eggs. I'm used to shortbread as a 4 ingredient, butter forward kind of cookie, but I (and my family) enjoyed these just as much. I was feeling fancy this week, so I decided to keep these cookies red carpet worthy with gold sanding sugar, nonpareils and silver stars. I'm not a fan of royal icing (and who has that kind of time these days?) so the sprinkles were a quick and easy fix that even my finicky niece liked.

That said - if you don't like sprinkles, they're great as is, with royal icing, or made into decadent sandwiches with cream cheese frosting! Hear me out - cream cheese frosting sandwiches with these, frozen, are the ice cream sandwich you didn't know you needed. Yes, it's decadent, but who needs an excuse to indulge now and then?

 

Note: I have made these with vegan butter (Earth Balance and Becel sticks) and vegan cream cheese (Follow Your Heart) and it worked beautifully!

Caramelized Onion Lentil Soup

The cold and damp weather here practically demands comfort food, and what better than a bowl of Caramelized Onion Soup? Simple and wholesome with a bit of an unexpected kick from Aleppo Pepper, it's nutritious, tasty and a perfect work from home (or not) lunch.

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 March is such an in-between month. On one hand, we've had temperatures up to 18C and lots of sun some days, and then there's days like today when it's cold and rainy. Add in the inevitable "last month of class" stress, March Break (with the littles visiting daily), birthdays and appointments, and it seems like we never get a chance to sit down, much less relax. Comfort food has definitely been on the table more often than not, especially big bowls of soup like this one. While not exactly a 90 second microwaveable meal, the time spent to caramelize the onions so that they're sticky and sweet followed by the hour of lazy cooking is quite cathartic, and you're rewarded with many meals that you can pack for lunches or heat up if you (like me) work from home.

Sourdough Irish Soda Bread #BreadBakers

This soda bread gets an added dose of tang from sourdough starter, texture from oats and a hint of spice. Raisins or none, it's up to you!

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I keep forgetting about how delicious and easy soda bread is - I'm usually embroiled in making slow rising sourdoughs, boules filled with a bunch of grains, seeds and fruit, or a batch of sandwich loaves when my creativity is running low. That said, for some reason in March I get a bit of an injection of Irish inspiration and I dig back into our bread books to see what I can do!

I always feel a touch of guilt tossing some of my sourdough starter every time I feed it, so I went on the lookout for recipes to use it this time around. The Gingered Whisk has a great simple recipe for soda bread that used sourdough discard, so I used that as a base and added flavour, fruit and fibre to it while making it vegan (dairy and eggs are getting expensive here). The result was a slightly sweet, deeply flavoured loaf studded with juicy raisins and just enough texture from the oats to be interesting. 

While tradition would be to tear into this while it is still warm and top with copious amounts of butter, my sources say this was still excellent the next morning for breakfast topped with some grape jam (we are still working through the 30 jars we canned last year!), and for tea with butter and honey.

I am hosting this month and asked the others to join me in sharing Irish Breads in honor of St. Patricks Day which is right around the corner.  Let's see what everyone baked up for us today......

• Barmbrack by Magical Ingredients
• Boxty by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Belfast Baps by Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Flakey Cheddar Guinness Scones by Food Lust People Love
• Irish Bread Rolls by Sneha’s Recipe
• Irish Soda Farls by Palatable Pastime
• Waterford Blaas by A Messy Kitchen
• Irish Oat Flapjacks by Cook with Renu
• Sourdough Irish Soda Bread by What Smells So Good?

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Condensed Milk Cookie Bars

These Condensed Milk Cookie Bars are rich, tender and full of vanilla flavour from @nakednutrition #nakedshake Vanilla. Condensed milk creates almost a caramel note during baking (yes please!) and adds to the chew, while a combination of low gluten flours keeps everything melt in your mouth.

They also get a dose of fibre from #nakedfiber along with all the butter and chocolate!

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Well, school is back in full swing (as if you couldn't tell - I know my posts have been spotty!) and with midterms coming up, let's just say the amount of comfort food needed around here has increased. I've been spending a lot of my free time in the kitchen stress-baking, but since I share my creations with people who have other health and fitness goals I have been trying to be cognizant of that fact, making treats that are both delicious and functional. After making countless batches of these brownies and these cookies (with added protein powder) for my sister, I figured it was time to switch things up a bit and use up some pantry staples that were kicking around. Luckily, the lovely folks at Naked Nutrition had just sent me their vanilla flavour to sample (can you tell that I love these shakes?) and I couldn't wait to add it for some extra oomph.

 

Like the other Naked Shake products I've reviewed (and baked with) on here, the vegan Vanilla Naked Shake starts with a great tasting pea protein, with the addition of MCT oil, coconut sugar, and natural  flavors. A serving (2 scoops) contains 120 calories, 1.5g of fat, 20g of protein and only 5g of sugar. My sister was actually the one to try this first, mixing it into orange juice for a creamsicle shake. I'm a coffee fiend so this blended with iced coffee would be a perfect pick me up too - when I'm not baking it into cookies and bars that is!