Memorial Day Dessert

Here's an healthy, easy, and best of all delicious dessert to serve or bring to your Memorial Day BBQ. This recipes if from Lick It! Creamy Dreamy Vegan Ice Creams Your Mouth Will Love. It can be made vegan or with dairy yogurt, if you prefer.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt Pie

Cookie Crust:

18 crème-filled sandwich cookies, finely crushed (1 1/2 cups) -- (Newman's cookies are vegan and organic)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil or nonhydrogenated margarine, melted

Combine the cookies and oil in a small bowl or food processor and mix until well blended. Press evenly into an unoiled 9-inch pie pan or springform pan. Freeze for 15 minutes before filling.

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt (Makes 1 quart)

2 1/2 cups strawberry or vanilla yogurt (can be dairy or nondairy)
2 cups halved strawberries
2 tablespoons granulated sugar or agave syrup, if needed

Combine the yogurt and strawberries in a blender and process until smooth. Sweeten with the sugar to taste, if needed. If the mixture is cold, it may be frozen immediately; otherwise, chill it in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Note: If the strawberries are very sweet, omit the sweetener. With fresh ripe strawberries, I usually don’t need it; but sometimes with frozen strawberries, or those at the start of the season, I do.

Assembly:

Spread the frozen yogurt in the frozen pie crust. Top with strawberry halves--or chopped nuts, chocolate chips, or whatever sounds good to you. Cover the pie with parchment paper, plastic wrap, or aluminum foil and freeze for at least 3 hours, or until firm. Serve with the sauce or whipped topping of your choice, if desired. This is a great dessert to make ahead, but once it's frozen solid, you will need to let it sit at room temperatore about 20 minutes or in refrigerator about 1 hour to soften enough to slice.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Celebrate Pregnancy Awareness Month

May is Pregnancy Awareness Month! Check out these cool flags and decals for your car from Sign of Labor! You can publicly celebrate your pregnancy, while raising awareness of your precious cargo. Five percent of all sales go to Pregnancy Awareness Month.

What better way to celebrate by cooking up some healthy food for mommy and baby with recipes from The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook. How about some:

Sunflower-Sesame Molasses Cookies
These are packed with iron, calcium, and whole wheat goodness. Great with a cup of mint tea.

1 cup sunflower seeds, toasted
1/2 cup sesame seeds, toasted
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup oil
1/3 cup maple syrup, brown rice syrup, agave nectar, or honey
1/3 cup blackstrap molasses
1 egg or egg replacer
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk or yogurt (dairy or nondairy)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Oil cookie sheet(s). Coarsely chop sunflower and sesame seeds in food processor, blender, or by hand. Place in large mixing bowl with flour, spice, salt, and baking soda and whisk together. In separate bowl, beat together oil, sweetener, molasses, egg, vanilla, and milk or yogurt. Add liquid ingredients to flour mixture. Stir until combined. Scoop by tablespoonfuls onto prepared cookie sheet. Bake 12 minutes, or until bottoms are golden. Cool on wire rack.

Makes 4 1/2 dozen

Note: If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice, use 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon cardamom, and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg.

Got a kindle????

I just found out that you can get the e-book version of Lick It! Creamy Dreamy Vegan Ice Creams Your Mouth Will Love for the Amazon Kindle. It costs $9.99 -- of course, they sell the print version for 10.17 so it's not much cheaper but you do get it instantly and of course there is no charge for shipping. Either way . . . now that the weather is warming up, it's time to start thinking ice cream.

Since it's strawberry season here in CA . . . I'll share this yummy recipe for Strawberry Sorbet.

Strawberry Sorbet
Makes 1 generous quart
This sorbet just bursts with sweet strawberry flavor. Best of all, it’s quick and easy to make.

5 cups halved strawberries
1/2 cup agave syrup
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. If the mixture is cold, it may be frozen immediately; otherwise, chill it in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Then freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Strawberry Daiquiri Sorbet: Replace the lemon juice with the juice of 1 whole lime and add 2 tablespoons of light rum. Serve it soft, like a slushy, or harden the sorbet in the freezer for a few hours.

Whole Grain Sourdough Bread

A friend gave me some sourdough starter about a month ago and I've been dying to use it, but I've been so busy that I hadn't been able to coordinate refreshing the starter and baking when it was refreshed (you are supposed to use it with 24 hours of refreshing). Anyway, I was finally able to get it together this weekend and I am so glad I did. The loaves rose wonderfully and my family is absolutely raving about this bread.

Here is my recipe . . . however I varied it slightly because to use the flour I had from my grain CSA box. My starter was rye starter which made the dough slightly stickier to knead. Then I used 2 cups of wheat flour and 2+ cups of spelt flour. It doesn't really matter which kind of flour you use, just make sure it is glutenous (wheat, spelt, rye are the best, barley has some gluten but is best in combination with wheat or spelt).

Whole Wheat or Spelt Sourdough Bread
I prefer to work with a slightly dry dough and knead with wet hands on a wet board. I find this helps to keep bread tender.

2 cups Sourdough Starter (at room temperature)
1 cup warm distilled or purified water
2 1/2 teaspoons unrefined sea salt
4+ cups whole wheat or spelt flour

Place starter in large mixing bowl and stir in water. Stir in salt. Stir in flour, one cup at a time. If it becomes too thick, mix with wet hands. Place a bowl of water at work station. Wet a large bread board or work surface. Place dough on wet surface. Keeping hands wet, knead for 5 minutes. (Sourdough does not need as vigorous a kneading as yeasted bread.) Wet the board as necessary to keep dough from sticking. If dough becomes too wet, knead in a little more flour. When dough is smooth and elastic, shape into a ball and place in mixing bowl. Cover with damp towel and place in warm, draft-free place. (If it's a cold day, I place my oven on warm while I am kneading and then turn off the heat and let my dough rise in the warmed oven.) Let dough rise for about 2 hours, until doubled in size. Press your finger into the dough. If it does not spring back, it is ready.

Oil two loaf pans. If dough is sticky, flour work surface and hands. If dry, use water as before. Knead dough about 10 times. Divide dough in half and form two loaves. Place one in each pan. Cover with damp towel and place in warm draft-free place to rise. (I rewarm the oven again during this second kneading.) If rising in oven, you may want to set a bowl of boiling water on the bottom.) Let dough rise about 1 hour. The dough should have risen noticeably. Do not overproof or the bread will not rise in the oven. Preheat the oven to 425º. Make sure it is at this temperature before putting bread in. Bake at 425º for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350º and bake for 40 to 45 more minutes. You should hear a hollow sound when tapping on top and bottom of bread.

Remove immediately from pans and cool on wire rack. (Tip: If bread doesn’t drop out of the pan, it is probably not done so put it back in the oven and bake it a little longer.)

Makes 2 loaves

Very Berry Frozen Yogurt

I was planning to make a batch of Strawberry Frozen Yogurt from Lick It! Creamy Dreamy Vegan Ice Creams Your Mouth Will Love . . . but didn't have enough strawberries, so I came up with this one and it was GOOD!

Very Berry Frozen Yogurt
The berries can be fresh or frozen.
Makes 1 quart

1 (32-ounce) tub of vanilla yogurt (2 1/2 cups) -- can be dairy or nondairy yogurt
1 cups halved strawberries
1/2 cup blueberries
2/3 cup raspberries
2 tablespoons granulated sugar or agave syrup, if needed

Combine the yogurt and berries in a blender and process until smooth. Sweeten with the sugar to taste, if needed. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Orange Cranberry Rye Scones

Got more rye flour in my CSA box this week and came up with these scones which were a huge hit at breakfast Sunday.







Orange-Cranberry-Rye Scones
These dense, flavorful scones are great for breakfast or tea but would also be great with soup or salad.

1 1/3 cups whole wheat pastry or unbleached white flour
2/3 cup rye flour
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
grated zest of 1 orange
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Oil a medium baking sheet. Stir together flours, sugar, baking soda, salt, and orange zest. Cut in the butter until mixture looks like course crumbs. Make a well in the center and add the yogurt and juice. Stir until the batter holds together. Stir in the cranberries. Knead the mixture until it forms a ball. Place the ball on the prepared baking sheet and press into a 9-inch disc about 3/4-inch thick. Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into 8 wedges, but do not separate the wedges. Bake 20 minutes. Serve warm.

Hulls in rolled oats

I finally figured out how to get rid of all the hulls that were in my local rolled oats. I put the oats and water into the pot and stirred them up so the oats would absorb the water. Then I let it all settle. The hulls rose to the top and I skimmed them off. Then cook as usual. Voila! Perfect oatmeal without any hulls.