Thursday 1 May 2008

unmuffins


These are not muffins. Or cupcakes. I'm not that kind of vegan. They are tiny breads, as you can see by my helpful universal sign for "tiny" as I hold the microbread up to my spycam. A muffin tin is simply a convenient way to make tiny breads, because having actual tiny bread pans is just way too chichi for me. The tiny breads aren't sweet. Just yummy. You see, I love gingerbread in theory, but in practice I usually find it too sweet and not gingery or spicy enough. Plus, I think ginger goes well with black pepper and the kind of heat you get from mustard. Just to put this in perspective, I'm one of those people who thinks that salmiakki (salt licorice) is the best candy EVER. In fact, it is the only world I can remember and pronounce reliably in Finnish, and also the only thing that I remember fondly from the week I spent in Helsinki on a population genetics course. In fact, if somebody in Finland sends me a vegan package of salt licorice, I will send them a batch of these tiny breads. Leave a comment (not in finnish....yes in english or french or german...extra credit for irish gaelic or latin) if you are a Finnish vegan reading my blog (hell, I think that there might just be a prize if you're a Finnish vegan reading my blog....).

Getting back to the tiny breads: Spelt flour (3 cups), baking powder (1tbs), a tiny bitof cornstarch (2tbs), cardamom (1/2 tsp), nutmeg (1/2 tsp), lots of ginger powder (1-2 tbs), salt flakes (1 tsp), coarsely ground black pepper (1 tbs), applesauce (3 small apples worth), blackstrap molasses (1/2-2/3c), dijon mustard (1 tsp), okara (1 c, sub soy yogurt if you don't have a constant okara infestation in your fridge because of soy milk making), fresh grated ginger (1tbs, but I would have used more if I had more), candied ginger (5 chunks). I sprinkled these with salt flakes before cooking them at 180C for about 25 mins. Depending on how dry your okara is/if you use soy yogurt, you might have to add water or soymilk. The consistency of the uncooked batter is very thick, but not dry at all.

M and I scaled the big hill (Arthur's seat) this morning. We had a 5 am rendezvous. It was beautiful and made me wonder why I don't go climb a big hill for the sunrise every morning.

unmuffin unmusic: the angry hippy podcast

6 comments:

medici said...

these small loaves sound fantastic, and i wish that i had one or three right now. plus an extra one in a small paper bag to serve as a vegan pomander. it stinks of death in here today.

i'll make these soon. except that i'll bake mine in my cast iron baking skillet. i don't have muffin tins. not yet, anyway.

and for those readers and galactic entities who might have an opportunity to scale A's Seat at sunrise sometime in the future - it was gorgeous and so worth the early rise. highly recommended! because this scotland, we saw all four seasons just by pivoting around 360 degrees! i can understand the small bread motivation. really, the rolling fog was splendid and shivery.

medici said...

three of these microbreads appeared on my desk at work this morning! i have devoured one of them and can report that they are YUM!!! they feel good in the mouth - springy beneath the teeth - and they are spicy hot and gingery. and OMG they make tiny salt explosions onto the tongue at random intervals!

they couldn't be better. and they would be so miscast as megabreads or (shudder) gigabreads. keep them small. nanobreads would be cute but would interfere with the candied ginger chunks and random salt explosions, i fear.

no. these are good. finnish vegans take note! these are worth working for.

Anonymous said...

i wish i was finnish to be eligible. i'm an anglophone american vegan living in germany. does that count? no, it doesn't? that's what i thought.

sinead said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
sinead said...

hmmmm... i was a canadian vegan living in germany. i feel a certain sympathy, even though i *did* meet many americans with maple leaves sewn to their backpacks. if you can find vegan salt licorice and a picture of your backpack (maple leaf free), you're instantly eligible.

Jake said...

I'm learning all kinds of things today! Kimchi isn't vegan, salt comes in flakes, there's such a thing as okara...

Also learned that transmembrane sections of integral proteins orient themselves so that their positive ends point towards the cytosol.


Also, baby guppies are about the same size as baby needlefish and therefore make a poor baby needlefish foodsource. I put them in a tank together, but I don't think it's gonna work out for the needlefish.