I want to share with you these great cranberry orange muffins I made last night.  I’ve had a lousy couple of days and these totally made me happy.

Sometimes you have to stress eat, okay?

These are on the healthier side, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.  They are also super festive with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow.  The color is outstanding.  They are quick to make, so these would be great as a last minute addition to your vegan thanksgiving menu.  Or be weird and plan ahead to make them for Christmas.  They would also be yummy as a brunch option while you’re cooking up a storm of veggie goodness.  I hope you give them a try.

Vegan Cranberry Orange Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tbsp Earth Balance
• 1 navel orange
• 1 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries

Preheat oven at 400 degrees.

Grease a 12-cup muffin pan (or two 6-cup muffin pans).

In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients dry ingredients.

Zest the entire orange.  Reserve 1 tbsp for the muffins, and save the remainder in the freezer closed tightly in a freezer bag for another purpose.

Melt the Earth Balance and pour into another mixing bowl.

Juice the orange into a measuring cup.  Add water until you have 1 full cup of liquid.  Add the orange juice mixture to the mixing bowl with the Earth Balance.  Add the orange zest and flax seeds to the mixing bowl.

In a small bowl, combine the cranberries and add 2 tbsp or so of the dry mixture, just enough to lightly coat the cranberries.

Combine the wet and dry mixtures, and stir just until they are mixed.  A few dry spots of batter are fine.

Fold in the cranberries.  Divide the batter evenly between 12 muffin cups.  The muffin cups should be generously filled so that you get that yummy muffin top!

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are lightly golden brown.  Cool on a wire rack in the tins until the muffins are room temperature.

For my contribution to our Christmas dinner, I wanted to try something new.  Everyone says this is a bad idea when cooking for guests, but I say it’s only a bad idea if you’re wimp.  I wanted to try a savory bread pudding.

It took some explaining to my family, because everyone kept thinking of sweet bread pudding, and thought my idea sounded gross.  How wrong they are!  Basically, savory bread pudding is like making stuffing.  Bread, vegetables, spices.  The additions that make it a “pudding” are the milk and egg “custard.”

I used this recipe from Cooking Light  for Mushroom, Roasted Red Pepper, and Goat Cheese Savory Bread Pudding.  as a guide, basically because other recipes I found were loaded with cream and butter and tons of eggs, which probably taste amazing, but I wanted to keep this light.   I kept the main ingredients the same, but changed the method a tiny bit.

I see no need to use jarred roasted red peppers.  They take no time to make either on the stove or in the oven, and are way cheaper.  So I used 2 red bell peppers that I roasted myself in this recipe.  I used a mixture of different mushrooms, left out the leeks in favor of sweet onions, used egg whites instead of egg substitute, and used this amazingly salty and pungent goat feta in place of the regular crumbled goat cheese.  Delicious.

I also made homemade peppermint patties while I was home.  Really, I had nothing to do during the day, can you tell??

The recipe I used is here and it was really simple and really delicious.  Here are the main ingredients:

Pretty straight forward, eh?

Here are my tips for making these: after you make the inside filling, refrigerate it for a few minutes.  Then form them into  ”pucks” by rolling into small balls and flattening, and then put them on a tray and place in the freezer to firm up for a bit.  Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and allow it to cool quite a bit before you dip the pucks in it.  Otherwise, the filling tends to melt.

My only complaint with these is that they need to be refrigerated to stay together.  I wanted to give them as gifts but once left out they were way too soft.

I used the same method as the peppermint patties to make homemade mounds bars and almond joys.  Just leave out the peppermint extract, and add in some flaked coconut to the filling.  Just eyeball it until the dough comes together.  Use the exact same method for refrigerating and forming the pucks, but make them more like little logs to mimic the real thing.  For the almond joy-ish treats, I simply pressed a whole almond into the top of the chocolate.

Really fun to make, simple ingredients that you probably already have in your cupboard.  If you have a spare hour to kill, I recommend giving these a try.

I’m in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida for the holiday!

Since I threw together my suitcase at the last minute, I left my camera cord back in New York  I will have plenty of recipes (including my mom’s famous apple pie!) to share when I get back home, I promise.  For the time being, I thought I’d share what I’m planning for Christmas dinner.

My mom is making a ham and my grandmother’s raisin sauce for the omnivore’s, so I’m going to make some sides for everyone to enjoy.

• Savory bread pudding with roasted red bell peppers, mushrooms, and goat cheese
• Provencal Tomatoes ala Julia Child
• Roasted Carrots
• Seitan Bourguignon (this one is just for me!)

I will recap our holiday dinner, mom’s apple pie, and maybe even have a product review or two for you come the new year.  In the mean time, enjoy your holiday!