Applesauce Oatmeal Bread

King Arthur Flour is my go-to site to buy quality baking ingredients and fool-proof baking recipes. I splurge about 2~3 times a year and buy specialty ingredients for baking and cooking. My absolute favorite is their Vermont cheese powder that I use at least once a week to make mac & cheese for my kids. Another one of my favorite pantry ingredient from KAF is their pizza seasoning blend. It gives the homemade pizza that extra oomph and flavor.

I get KAF catalog every month and that is one magazine that I almost read from cover-to-cover, but all it has is their products and recipes. I make note of all the new additions to the product line-up, just so that I don't miss out on them :-)

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Potato Latkes (Eggless vegan recipe) with Chunky Applesauce

Blogging Marathon# 38: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: One Dish, Different Countries
Dish: Iranian/ Jewish -- Potato Latkes

When I signed up for this theme I actually wanted to make dumplings from 3 different countries. I even narrowed my dishes to Chinese dumplings, Italian gnocchi and Indian samosas. But with the impending month long mega marathon these dishes seemed too much work and had to change my choice.

Then one day my son came back home and asked me if I had ever made latkes. He said they read a book in school that mentioned about latkes and he wanted me to make them for him. Then I realized I could make pancakes for this week's marathon -- 2 birds at 1 shot.

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Halloween Whoopie Pies (Eggless Recipe)

For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, our host of the month Nalini Suresh @ Nalini's Kitchen chose 5 spooky & yummy Halloween treats. When I saw the challenge the beginning of the month I felt like I should make all of them. But of course time slipped through my hands and in the end I was scrambling to find time to make at least 1 of the treats. After much deliberation, I ended up making these Halloween Whoopie Pies.

I've never made whoopie pies and this challenge gave me a chance to make these cakey cookies. I didn't have orange nonpareil, so used yellow glittering sugar which doesn't make the whoopie pies look too Halloween(y). In any case whoopie pies turned out great and we all loved them. 

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Vaishali's Applesauce Cake

I wanted to make this cake as soon as I saw it on Vaishali’s blog. I had all the ingredients on hand and as Vaishali points out applesauce turns bad pretty quick even in the fridge. I usually buy a big bottle of applesauce for my son, but he being a 2 year old, has his mood swings and would not touch it for days together. I was in that rut and this cake was a savior; AND it tastes so good. It is the different spices that Vaishali adds makes it very special.

I made it non-vegan with the addition of egg instead of egg-replacer. You can find the original recipe here.

The changes I made are: Added 1 extra large egg instead of egg-replacer. Used pecans instead of walnuts.

Vegan Chocolate Brownies

I have never baked brownies from scratch before. When I saw this recipe in Vegetarian Times, I just had to give it a try. This recipe uses soft tofu & unsweetened applesauce instead of butter and eggs and this is the first time I have used tofu to bake a dessert. One mistake I made was to buy soft tofu that was crumbly and not the silken type soft tofu which made the mixture look curdled before baking, but was fine after mixing all the ingredients together. Also I thought there was a very faint taste of tofu in the first brownie I tasted, but I didn’t taste it afterwards (may be I got used to the taste??) But all in all it’s a great recipe with 124 calories, 3gms of protein, 1gm total fat and 0g cholesterol.

Recipe adapted from Vegetarian Times magazine.

Ingredients:

Natural Cane Sugar - 2¼ cups (I used regular white sugar)

All-purpose flour – 1¼ cups

Unsweetened Cocoa powder – 1¼ cups

Baking powder – 1½ tsp

Baking Soda – 1½tsp

Salt – 1/8tsp

Soft Tofu – 1cup

Unsweetened Applesauce – 1 cup

Chocolate Soymilk – ¾ cup

Vanilla essence – 2tsp

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 9”x13” pan with cooking spray.
  
• Combine sugar, flour, baking pd, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl.
  
• Combine applesauce, tofu, chocolate milk & vanilla in a food processor; process until well blended.
  
• Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix well.
  
• Pour into prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until batter is set and the top is dry. Cool in the pan; cut into bars and enjoy.
  

These brownies can be frozen for later use, but I bet there won't be too many left for freezing.

This is my entry to Poornima’s (@ Tasty Treats) “For the Love of Chocolate” event.