I. Chai Spice Crumb Cake (a shameless modification of this)
1.5 cups sugar
2 cups white flour
1/2 cup Earth Balance (or other vegan buttery thing)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp Ener-G (or other powdered egg replacer)
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup soy milk
1 black tea bag
cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, powdered ginger
Heat soymilk until steaming (a mug in the microwave works fine), and stick tea bag into it. Add a generous shake of cinnamon (~1/2 tsp), a biggish pinch of cloves, a smallish pinch of nutmeg, and a smallish pinch of ginger. Stir up with a fork and let sit for 5-10 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix flour, sugar, and baking powder in a large bowl or Cuisinart, and cut in Earth Balance to make little crumbs. Scoop out 1 cup of crumb mixture, toss a small pinch of each spice into it, and set aside for topping.
Mix Ener-G and water in a small cup and fork vigorously until lumps are gone. Add it to the tea-y soymilk (first take out the teabag and squeeze to get all the tasty tea flavor), add vanilla, and stir. Pour entire liquid mixture into main crumb mixture, fork until evenly mixed, and pour into a greased 8x8 baking pan. Sprinkle remaining crumbs over top, and bake for 45 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test. Snarf.
I realized while typing this that where I went wrong last night was in completely forgetting the baking powder. So, for the record, if you completely leave out the baking powder, what you get is an extremely dense and kind of doughy but still very delicious cake.
II. Peanut Butter Granola Muesli Breakfast Whatever
You can make this a bowlful at a time, but you can also make a huge batch in a mixer/Hobart/Cuisinart/Robocoupe/whatever. If you use a thing with blades, you should probably start with the big chunky oats because otherwise they'll get ground into powder.
1 cup quick oats (no, don't cook them. what are you thinking?)
1-2 heaping tablespoons peanut butter
1-2 teaspoons honey, or slightly more maple syrup
small heap of chopped or smashed walnuts
small heap of dried cranberries
1 tbsp flax seeds
1/2 tsp (or more!) cinnamon
Dump oats into a bowl and squish in peanut butter and honey-or-maple-syrup with a spoon, knives, pastry blender, mixer, or whatever you please. When you have smallish crumbly tasty-looking gooey oat clustery things, add walnuts, cranberries, flax seeds, and cinnamon, and mix. Then pour soymilk over it and enjoy with a nice cup of tea.
For a huge batch I use something like: a medium canister o' oats, 1/3 cup peanut butter, 2-3 tbsp honey, 3/4 cup walnuts, 3/4 cup cranberries, 3 tbsp flax seeds, and I just stand around shaking the little cinnamon shaker until I'm sick of it. It all goes in the stand mixer and then I eat half of it at once.
Posted by dianna at December 30, 2007 02:56 PM