Vegan Low-Fat Buttermilk Drop Scones with Dried Fruit

En español

I always thought I didn't like scones.  It turns out that I don't like stale scones.  Warm, fresh scones straight from the oven are a different story entirely.  They're fast, easy, delicious, and divine with a cup of coffee or Oaxacan hot chocolate.

I veganized this recipe from The New All Purpose Joy of Cooking.  It really is a great book, even for vegetarians and vegans.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 TB ground flax seeds (you can grind whole flax seeds in a dry blender)
• 3 TB water
• 1 TB white vinegar
• ~1 c. soy milk
• 3 TB oil
• 1/2 c. dried fruit such as raisins, currants, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, chopped apricots, or chopped pears
• cinnamon sugar

PREPARATION

1. Preheat oven to 400°F and grease a cookie sheet.
2.  In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.
3. In a smaller bowl, whisk the ground flax seeds and water until the mixture is viscous.
4. Put the vinegar in a measuring cup.  Add soy milk to equal one cup.
5. Whisk the oil into the flaxseed/water mixture until combined.  Whisk in vinegar/soy milk mixture and dried fruit.
6. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until the dry ingredients are just moistened (don't over mix!).  The batter will be very sticky.
7. Using a half-cup measuring cup, ice cream scoop, or a soup ladle, drop the scones onto the greased cookie sheet, leaving at least one inch between scones.  Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top.
8. Bake on the center rack at 400°F until the tops of the scones are golden, 12-15 minutes.  My oven maxes out at 350°F, so I baked my scones for 20-30 minutes. 
9. Make sure you eat at lease one scone straight out of the oven! 

Makes about 7 scones.

Homemade Onion-Herb White Bread

En español

This bread was a hit at a recent dinner party.  You don't find too many homemade savory breads here in  Mexico, so when you show up at a dinner with one of these loaves, folks will think you're a cooking god... and you are, aren't you?

My favorite part about this bread (aside from the rave reviews that were lavished upon me all night) is that it only cost me $30 pesos, or less than $3 dollars, to make FOUR loaves.

I made two loaves in bread pans and I braided the other two loaves Challah-style.  The braided loaves were beautiful, and the bread pan loaves have made some delicious sandwiches.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups soy or cows milk (I used soy)
• 5 TB sugar
• 2 TB salt
• 4 1/2 tsp bread yeast
• 2 cups water
• 12-13 cups white flour
• 5 TB melted butter or margerine, or olive oil
• 1/2 onion, minced
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 2 tsp crushed rosemary

PREPARATION

1. Combine milk, sugar, salt, and water in a pan and heat on the stove until lukewarm (it should feel warm, not hot, on your wrist).  Remove from heat and dissolve yeast in the mixture.  Set aside.
2. In a very large bowl (you might even want to use a Dutch oven if you don't have a very large bowl), combine half of the flour and all of the dried herbs.  Add the liquid-yeast mixture from step 1.  Mix until smooth, then add the melted butter or oil and the minced onion. Mix until smooth, then add the remaining flour.
3. Knead the dough for ten minutes, adding more flour if the dough is too sticky.  As you knead, your dough should be silky soft, elastic, and not sticky at all.  It should be easy to knead the dough, although you will certainly break a sweat as you knead, because the dough will weigh about five pounds!  To avoid making a huge mess on my table, I always knead my dough directly in my bowl or Dutch oven.  
4. Oil your bowl or Dutch oven, and place your dough ball inside.  Flip the dough ball over so that the whole ball gets covered in oil.  The oil will make sure the dough doesn't dry out as it rises.
5. Cover the bowl containing the dough with a towel and place in a warm, draft-free place.  If it's a cold or rainy day, you might need to fire up your oven for just a few minutes, then turn it off and put your dough inside to rise where it's nice and warm.  Let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 hours.
6. When the dough has doubled in size, punch it down and divide it into four equal peices (I cut mine into quarters with a knife).  Shape each peice into a loaf and place either in a greased bread pan or on a greased cookie sheet.  Cover the loaves again with a towell and let them rise until double in size, about one hour.
7. While the loaves are rising, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F.  
8. When the loaves have risen, place them in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, or until the loaves begin to get a golden color and they sound hollow when you knock on them.
9. Let the loaves cool for about ten minutes, then remove them from the pans and/or baking sheets and set them on a rack to cool.  IMPORTANT! You need to let them cool completely (about an hour) before you cut them.  This is very tricky if you don't live alone!

Makes 4 1-lb. loaves.

Vegan Soy Sloppy Joes

Photo: Learning Vegan

This recipe is for "Messy Mikes" from my favorite cookbook author Joanne Stepaniak's book Vegan Vittles.  She offers two versions: one made with tempeh and one with TVP (texturized vegetable protein).  I'm reprinting her TVP version here because while Mexico doesn't have tempeh, every corner store in the country seems to carry TVP (they call it "soya"), along with the rest of these everyday ingredients.  Make this recipe, and your Mexican friends will once again be so surprised at how you can use common Mexican ingredients to create such an exotic traditional gringo dish!

A note on some of the ingredients: this recipe calls for ketchup and apple cider vinegar.  If you're in Mexico, I highly suggest you work hard to find Heinz ketchup.  I found it in Sam's Club.  US-style ketchup is far superior to Mexican-style ketchup, which is so watered down that it hardly tastes like tomato at all and the color looks like orange soda syrup.  Since Heinz has more tomatoes, it's also more prostate-healthy than its Mexican counterpart.  So splurge.  You won't regret it.

This recipe also calls for apple cider vinegar.  Stay away from the grocery store, because most of those vinegars are white vinegar (you know, the kind made from wood chips) with food coloring.  I kid you not, check out the ingredients.  Traditional Mexican markets (the mercaditos) have fabulous homemade apple cider vinegar!  You'll find them at a lot of vegetable stands.  They'll be in plastic water bottles with the labels peeled off.  They'll look a lot like honey, and maybe you always thought they were honey, but they're not!  If you haven't seen what I'm talking about, go to your local mercadito and ask any vendor where they sell vinagre de manzana casero.  Store-bought vinegar will do in a pinch, but, again, the real thing is really worth the effort.  And it's just better for you.

So, without further ado, here is Joanne Stepaniak's Messy Mikes:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 TB olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 c. TVP rehydrated with 7/8 c. water
• 2 TB soy sauce
• 1/2 c. ketchup
• 1 tsp sweetener of your choice (I use sugar)
• 1 tsp prepared yellow mustard
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• Bread rolls (try bolillos or hamburger buns)

PREPARTION

1. Soak the TVP in the water while you dice the onions (it should soak at least 5 minutes).
2. Place the oil in a 2-quart saucepan, and heat it over medium-high.  When the oil is hot, add the diced onion, TVP, and soy sauce, and sauté them until the onion is tender and lightly browned, about ten minutes.
3. Add the remaining ingredients except the bread, and mix well.  Reduce heat to medium, and simmer the mixture, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring often and making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan.  
4. Open the rolls as if you were to make a sandwich and stuff them with the TVP mixture.  Serve and enjoy!

Vegan Shoo Fly Cake

This recipe is from the Vegetarian Resource Group's Vegan Handbook, an old but classic book full of delicious recipes, including homemade gluten and vegan baked goods, like this cake.

I'm Pennsylvania Dutch, and I can attest that this cake really does taste like Shoo Fly Pie.  Since it omits the crust, it takes less than ten minutes to put together.  Fast and delicious.

The key ingredient here is molasses.  It's tough to find in Mexican grocery stores, but they sell it very cheap in cane sugar refineries (ingenios azucareros).  So if you live in Veracruz, Chiapas, Oaxaca, or any other sugar-producing state, this cake is for you.  Since I've never seen anyone cook with molasses in Mexico, Vegan Shoo Fly Cake will impress all of your friends.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (in a pinch you can use white flour)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, azucar mascabado, or other granulated sweetener
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup soft margarine (or butter for non-vegan version)
• 1 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup molasses

PREPARATION

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.
2. Cut in margarine until mixture resembles a fine crumb.  If you don't have a french pastry cutter, cut the margarine into several pieces, toss the pieces into the dry ingredients, and start mixing the margarine into the dry ingredients with your hands until it resembles a fine crumb.
3. Set aside 1/3 cup of the crumb mixture.
4. Add molasses and hot water to the crumb mixture that's in the bowl (not the part you set aside), and stir until just mixed.
5. Pour batter into a greased 9-inch round cake pan or a greased 8-inch cast iron pan.
6. Top with the reserved crumb mixture.
7. Bake at 350 degrees fahrenheit for 25-30 min.  When it's done, the cake should have risen to double its original size, and the middle should be just slightly lower than the edges.  A toothpick inserted in the center won't come out clean, but the crumbs that stick to it should be moist but done. 

Carrot-Granola Quick Bread

I just got a new oven after going without one for about six months.  I'm on a baking binge now, and nothing's easier to make than quick breads.  They're called panques in Mexico, though your traditional gringo quick bread has more fat, more sugar, and more spices than its Mexican counterpart.  The difference between a quick bread and regular bread is that quick breads don't have yeast.  Instead, eggs and baking soda or baking powder are used to leaven the bread, making preparation a lot faster, easier, and with a lot less mess.

This recipe calls for ground nutmeg.  I've never seen nutmeg in Mexico.  If you're making this bread in Mexico, you'll have to tuck a jar into your checked luggage or ask that someone bring you some.  I've made carrot bread without nutmeg with success, but the flavor loses some of its complexity.

The recipe also calls for granola.  I use a delightful mix I found in the organic farmers market near my house.  It has toasted coconut, toasted pecans, raisins, puffed amaranth, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, and toasted oats, and it is sweetened with piloncillo, a by-product of the sugar-making process which is Mexico's version of brown sugar.

As for the dried fruit called for in the recipe, feel free to get creative.  I cleaned out my pantry and tossed in a mix of the many tiny bags full of the last pieces of dried fruit I had.  I used a mix of dried sweetened cranberries, prunes, chopped candied figs, and raisins.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 eggs
• 1 c sugar
• 2/3 c oil (preferably canola oil)
• 1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 c grated carrots
• 1 c granola
• 1/2 c dried fruit

PREPARATION:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F or 176 degrees C.*
2. Combine eggs, sugar, and oil in a small bowl.
3. Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients.  Stir with a wooden spoon until mixed, but don't over-mix the batter.  Add carrots, granola and dried fruit.
5. Pour the batter into a greased bread loaf pan and bake for about one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Makes 1 loaf.  This recipe is easily doubled.

* A lot of Mexican ovens either have the numbers 1-5 on their dials instead of temperatures, or the dial controls the size of the flame instead of the actual temperature of the oven, because the oven doesn't have a thermostat (despite the fact that it might actually have temperatures on the dial).  Do yourself a favor and buy an oven thermometer.  It'll save you a lot of heartbreak and burnt breads.

Oaxacan Cinnamon-Almond Brownies

Rich chocolate brownies with a distinctly Oaxacan taste... what could be better?

Oaxacan chocolate is pure cocoa ground with almonds and cinnamon.  It is pre-sweetened and almost always turned into hot chocolate.  But I've been testing chocolate recipes with Oaxacan chocolate, and with delicious results.  So delicious, in fact, that you'll notice that the picture only features two tiny brownies and a pile of Oaxacan chocolate.  That's because they were gobbled up before I could grab the camera.

This recipe is loosely based on a Hershey's brownie recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup Oaxacan Hot Fudge Sauce, at room temperature
• 1 cup chopped Oaxacan chocolate
• 1 cup coarsely chopped almonds

PREPARATION:

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease 13x9x2-inch baking pan. 
2. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla in large bowl. Add eggs; beat well. Add fudge sauce and stir. 
3. Stir together flour and baking soda; add to butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and almonds. Pour batter into prepared pan. 
4. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into squares. 

Makes about 24 bars.

Banana Bread with Oaxacan Chocolate Chips

Mexicans often ask me what dishes are "traditional gringo food."  I'm always hard-pressed to come up with a gringo main dish, because one of the beauties of the United States is its culinary diversity.  So many dishes that we grew up with are borrowed from other countries and cultures.  However, one thing that is uniquely "gringo" is our desserts.  When I think of the US, I think of the pies, cakes, and sweet quick breads my grandmother used to make.

I snagged this banana bread recipe from The Joy of Baking, but I added a Mexican twist: my mother-in-law's Oaxacan chocolate.  Oaxacan choclate is less refined than the chocolate you find in grocery stores.  It's grittier, and it generally has almonds and cinnamon ground up with the chocolate.  It comes pre-sweetened, and Oaxacans drink it with water or milk as a hot chocolate.  It's delicious.   It's wonderful in this recipe because the cinnamon and almond flavors compliment the banana beautifully.

You can find Mexican chocolate in Mexican grocery stores.  They generally sell the Abuelita brand.  Amazon.com has some from Ibarra that is an excellent price.  It's not the same as my mother-in-law's chocolate (she grinds the sugar, cocoa, almonds, and cinnamon herself), but it'll do.  Oaxacan chocolate generally comes in tablets.  You'll have to coarsely chop them in this recipe.

If worse comes to worse, use regular old chocolate chips (which, ironically, are difficult to find in Mexico).

I've used both regular bananas and "macho" bananas (the bigger, starchier ones that are similar to plantains) in this recipe.  The end result is the same, but it's more difficult to mash the macho bananas.

This recipe makes two loafs of banana bread.  You can easily half the recipe, but it's just as easy to make two loaves as it is to make one.  And this bread freezes great.  Just wrap it up well in tin foil or wax paper and stick it in a thick freezer bag to protect from freezer burn.  When you're ready to eat it, put it in the fridge to thaw a day or two ahead of time.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups coarsely chopped Oaxacan chocolate
  OR
  1 cup coarsely chopped Oaxacan chocolate and 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup (two sticks) butter, melted
• 6 large bananas, mashed
• 2 tsp vanilla

PREPARATION

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Grease and flour two 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pans.
3. Combine all of the dry ingredients except chocolate and nuts, if using.
4. In a separate bowl, combine all wet ingredients.
5. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients.  Stir as little as possible so your bread doesn't come out tough.  
6. Add chocolate and nuts, if using.
7. Divide the batter evenly between the two greased loaf pans.
8. Bake 350 degrees Fahrenheit for an 1 - 1 1/2 hours, until a toothpick or wooden chopstick comes out almost clean.
9. Let the bread cool in the loaf pans.  Once cool, run a spatula or butter knife between the bread and the walls of the pan to loosen the bread.  Turn the loaf pans upside down to remove the bread.