Butternut squash bake

• 1/3 Cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 5oz can evaporated milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups mashed, cooked butternut squash

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 11X7 baking dish.
• Cream butter and granulated sugar. Beat in eggs, milk and vanilla.
• Stir in Squash, pour into pan. Bake 45 min or until almost set.
• Topping: combine either crushed Special K or Rice Krispies (1/2 cup), 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar, 1/4 chopped pecans and 2 tbsp melted butter
• Sprinkle on topping after 45 minutes and bake another 5-10 minutes or until bubbly

Sadly, it uses eggs, with which I can’t even cheat. Perhaps there’s some other way I could make this with Ener-G Egg Replacer or some other binding substitute. I probably wouldn’t be able to “beat in” such a substitute like you would eggs, but if you combined all the ingredients and included a binding substitute, perhaps it would still bake similarly. But I’m just guessing here. I’m also wondering if canned coconut milk would be a passable substitute for evaporated milk??? I have no idea.

Here’s the second recipe — it’s for a single serving of fudge cooked in a microwave-safe bowl:

• Cook a half square of Bakers unsweetened chocolate and a tablespoon of butter or margarine together in the microwave for a minute on high. It should come to a boil.
• Remove the bowl and add a half cup of confectioners sugar and stir in thoroughly. If you can be patient, it should turn into a nice consistency fudge with some stirring. If not, then a little more sugar is needed.

According to the sender, “This is a homemade recipe and there is no science behind it, but it is delicious.”

Even though this uses a little butter, it sounds super easy so I’ll probably try it sometime in the future. And I might try it with a butter substitute, like the soy-free Earth Balance, which is the most butter-like I’ve found.

On this first day of winter (can you believe it?) I’ve decided to post the recipe for my favorite black bean soup. This is a perfect vegan winter dish, and it’s so hearty that even my dad and brother love it. If you can eat sour cream or plain Greek yogurt, they are great toppings for this soup. Also, if you can eat bread, it’s nice to serve this with a nice crusty and/or chewy bread, like a baguette.

The original recipe came from the book “Okay, So Now You’re a Vegetarian,” which I bought when I was in ninth grade, and my mom and I have tinkered with it a bit.

This soup is really easy to make because you throw most of the ingredients in a food processor first, and then throw everything in a pot. So you don’t have to worry about the dangers of blending hot soup.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoon jerk seasoning
• 4 cans black beans, drained
• 2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 tablespoons lime juice (lemon juice works, too)
• 2 medium or large carrots, chopped
• Finely chopped cilantro, to taste (I usually end up using about half a store-bought bundle)
• Finely chopped green onions, to taste (I usually end up using at least four)

Directions:

1. Add the jerk seasoning to a large pot and heat for a couple minutes over medium heat until the seasoning just begins to turn dark. (Keep the seasoning moving while it browns, and don’t breathe in the heat coming off it!)
2. In a food processor or blender, combine the heated jerk seasoning, 2 cans of black beans, the vegetable broth and the olive oil. Puree until the mixture is almost smooth.
3. In the original pot, combine the puree and the remaining 2 cans of beans, chopped carrots, cilantro and green onions. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the lime juice. Serve with sour cream/Greek yogurt and/or bread, if desired.

To reiterate: Do NOT breathe in the heat that comes off the seasoning as it browns. I think this heating step improves the spice’s potency, but if you breathe in that heat, you won’t be able to stop coughing. And if you let the spice burn, you might as well go out to dinner and leave the windows open to get the smell out of the kitchen. So if I’ve scared you enough that you want to skip this step, I don’t think the soup will suffer, but you might want to let the soup simmer a little longer.

Also, McCormick’s Perfect Pinch Caribbean Jerk is the best jerk seasoning we’ve found, but jerk seasoning seems to be kind of hard to find in general. And the other day I found these Dorot frozen chopped cilantro cubes at Trader Joe’s. They are awesome because I love cilantro — but I hate chopping it. And I never have the patience to chop it as fine as I would like it, so I’d usually end up with large leaves in my soup. But I just needed four of these concentrated tiny cubes to flavor the soup, and they dissolved completely, as far as I could tell. If you can’t find Dorot’s, I’d try processing and freezing cilantro so you can have it on hand, anyway, because the fresh stuff doesn’t last long.

You can substitute chicken broth for the vegetable broth if you prefer. And you can use lemon juice instead of lime juice, but I like the lime flavor better. If you don’t want to add the carrots, you don’t have to — they just add a little extra bulk and heartiness. I’ve found that the time it takes to bring the soup to a boil (on my gas stove), plus the 10 minutes of simmering, cooks the bite-sized carrots perfectly: no longer crunchy but not quite soft.

This recipe makes a good amount of soup, so it’s perfect to save for leftovers. The flavors continue to improve as they continue to meld. Also, the soup will thicken up a good deal as it simmers and even after it stops cooking, so if it thickens up too much for your liking (I like a really thick black bean soup!), you can always add a little more hot water when you serve it — and then it goes even further!

This was the weekend of a friend’s holiday party. The ladies were asked to bring side dishes, and the gentlemen were asked to bring desserts. (I was kind of sad that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to bring the pumpkin pie I made over Thanksgiving — not only because that’s an awesome recipe, but also because I realized I probably wouldn’t be able to eat any of the desserts others would bring. Oh well, c’est la vie.)

For a few days, I struggled to think of the best side dish to bring. I considered my rice stuffing, but I wondered if that would be too weird or if someone else would bring stuffing — as turkey was being provided — and then no one would eat it. Then I remembered a recipe for sweet potato casserole that we used to make every Thanksgiving and Christmas for a number of years.

I got the recipe from the aforementioned cookbook, which I sold at a garage sale a few months ago. It was a “five ingredient” cookbook that I purchased through a fundraiser when I was in high school. Sometimes I really like five-ingredient-type meals because they use whole foods and are often pretty healthy. But this book had a lot of recipes that relied on things like “pick up some fried chicken on your way home from work.” So, yeah, that wasn’t my favorite cookbook of all time.

In the holiday section, however, there was a recipe for delicious corn casserole (which had eggs and creamed corn, so I can’t eat that anymore) and this recipe for sweet potato casserole (which I’m transcribing from memory):

Ingredients:

• 4 large sweet potatoes (or a couple of cans of prepared sweet potatoes)
• 1 large can of crushed pineapple
• 1 7-ounce bag of shredded sweetened coconut
• brown sugar (not much — maybe 1/4 or 1/3 cup)
• a few pats of butter

Directions:

• Bake and roughly mash peeled sweet potatoes. (They don’t have to be mashed silky-smooth like traditional mashed potatoes, but you want to work most of the chunks out and make it spreadable.) Spread sweet potatoes into the bottom of a prepared baking dish. (I’ve used glass and non-glass baking dishes for this, and 9×12 seems to be a good size.)
• Layer the can of pineapple over the sweet potato. Then sprinkle some brown sugar on top of of the pineapple (I can’t remember the amount of brown sugar but you can go pretty light), then place a few pats of butter around on top of the sugar. Finally, sprinkle the coconut on the top of the casserole.
• Cover with foil and bake for 15-20 minutes at 350˚. Then remove the foil and bake for another 5 minutes or so to toast the coconut.
• (Caveat: I can’t remember if the coconut goes on before the brown sugar and butter or after, as we usually made this dish without the brown sugar and butter — there’s enough sugar that you won’t miss it if you skip it. I did use some brown sugar and Olivio Coconut Spread this time around, but I put it on top of the coconut, which seemed to created a different texture from what I remember.)

This, I decided, would be a perfect dish to bring because it’s easy, it’s somewhat different from your traditional sweet-potato-and-marshmallow casserole, and I doubted that anyone else would bring the same thing! Also, as sweet potatoes were 79¢ a pound, I got four large ones for less than $4. The can of pineapple was 99¢, and the coconut was $1.07. I had brown sugar and “butter” on hand, so all together I made this for less than $6.

The only problem was how to keep it warm after a 45-minute drive to my friend’s house. So my mom suggested putting it in a slow cooker, baking it in the oven in the removable stoneware pot, then using the cooker’s heating base to keep it warm at the party. This was a great idea, and as the slow cooker was much deeper but a smaller footprint than a 9×12 baking dish, I ended up making two layers — sweet potato, pineapple, coconut, sweet potato, pineapple, coconut (then a little brown sugar and “butter”). I lightly toasted some of the coconut before layering it, so the middle layer of coconut could have a similar texture as the top. I also strained the liquid out of the pineapple so I could use it for mashing the sweet potatoes, which gave the sweet potato layers a fresh flavor.

Not surprisingly, I wasn’t the only person using a slow cooker at the party. Whoever provided the turkey and ham brought them pre-shredded and pre-sliced (respectively) in slow cookers. Even if I wasn’t going to a potluck-style meal, I think this would be a great idea for serving meat at a gathering — you could get the messy carving and clean-up done right away and the main course would still be warm.

I had some of the turkey and the ham, some of my sweet potato casserole, some of my friend’s cranberry Jell-O salad, and some mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes probably had a little dairy or something that I shouldn’t eat — they were so tasty — but I figured this would be a safer place to cheat than the corn casserole, green bean casserole or other such dishes. I did end up skipping the desserts, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought. I keep finding that when you know you can’t have something for health reasons (i.e. you’re going to get a bad stomach ache), it’s a lot easier to avoid it than if you’re just trying to lose weight. (I did, however, have a couple handfuls of M&Ms that I probably shouldn’t have eaten!)

All in all, I found this casserole to be a great go-to recipe for holiday potluck.

What’s your favorite allergy-friendly recipe for such gatherings?

Over the past few years, I’ve made a number of rice-based “stuffing” alternatives, usually by following recipes. This year, I showed my mom two rice stuffing recipes from Cooking Light and asked her which she thought would be better or easier to make. Now, my mom isn’t really big on recipes. Or measuring. Or using ingredients she doesn’t buy regularly. So she suggested I combine both recipes and modify them slightly to make life easier.

Here are the recipes:

• Wild Rice Dressing with Roasted Chestnuts and Cranberries (2010)
• Wild Rice Stuffing with Dried Cherries and Toasted Pecans (2011)

My gluten-free rice stuffing

In the end, I went super lazy on this “recipe.” My mom was preparing her typical bread stuffing, so she asked me to start preparing mine. Because the 2011 recipe called for brown and wild rice, I decided to use Rice Select’s Royal Blend Texmati White, Brown, Wild & Red, which cooks in 15 minutes. I had made some a few days earlier, so I knew it didn’t even need the full 15 minutes, if prepared according to the directions. (The directions say to combine all ingredients in a saucepan, then bring to a boil. I think the rice was sitting in the water too long, as I have a gas stove that doesn’t boil things quickly.)

So for my stuffing, I used 2 cups of the rice mix and 3 cups of chicken broth. (You could use vegetable broth for a vegan option.) I brought the broth to a boil first, then added the rice and cooked for only 10 minutes — do not drain. (Both Cooking Light recipes call for under cooking the rice and retaining the remaining liquid.)

Meanwhile, my mom was chopping up celery, onions and carrots for her stuffing, so she chopped up a bunch for mine, as well. We also added walnuts, dried cranberries and fresh cranberries (roughly chopped in the food processor). I don’t know how much we used of each ingredient, but we ended up with more of the vegetable-fruit-nut combination than the rice mixture. (Two cups of the dry rice blend should yield 5 1/2 cups of cooked rice, so shoot for at least 6 cups total for the vegetable-fruit-nut mixture.)

We then combined the rice (and remaining liquid) with the vegetable-fruit-nut mixture and added a liberal amount of poultry seasoning (for the sage and thyme) and a little Mrs. Dash’s Table Blend. We baked it for about 20 minutes or so.

While not life-changing like the pumpkin pie I made, this stuffing was fantastic and required little effort or skill. The rice was done perfectly and did not stick to itself. The flavor was spiced just right, and the fresh cranberries added a nice freshness … for lack of a better word.

Anyone else have any good gluten-free stuffing recipes?

Gluten-free, vegan, soy-free pumpkin pie!

My biggest success this year by far was my pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is definitely one of my favorite things — if not my top favorite thing — about Thanksgiving. I knew I could make baked apples or something for an allergy-friendly dessert, but I was determined to find a recipe for pumpkin pie that I could eat.

A quick Google search turned up numerous gluten-free pumpkin pie recipes or vegan pumpkin pie recipes. Many that I could eat looked quite complicated or involved a super long list of ingredients. A couple used a prepared gluten-free crust, which I find often have ingredients I can’t or don’t want to eat.

After a moderate amount of recipe analyzing, I settled on the Gluten-Free Goddess’ gluten-free pumpkin pie recipe from 2008. I recognized all the ingredients, it was vegan and soy-free, and I liked the fact that it was a crust-less pie, which just made things simpler. Also, I was encouraged by the throw-everything-in-the-food-processor mentality, as I’ve never made a pumpkin pie in my life.

I thoroughly read every single comment and Karina’s replies. I knew I wanted to follow the recipe without making any substitutions to ingredients, but I was unclear about a couple of things, so I wanted to see if they would be addressed in the comments. Here are some tips that I came away with, which I truly believe helped me:

• The ingredients list “1 1/2 cups full fat coconut milk (or vanilla soy/almond milk)” and I wanted to make sure this was canned coconut milk for cooking, not coconut milk from a carton meant for drinking. The only reason I questioned this was because it says you can sub almond milk (or soy milk), which I believe are going to be thinner than canned coconut milk, and I wanted to get the consistency right. After reading through almost all the comments, Karina does indicate she uses canned coconut milk.

• Also, I was a little nervous to cook with buckwheat. I’d never used buckwheat flour before, but I had made Bob’s Red Mill creamy buckwheat cereal, which has a gummy texture, a weird purplish color and not the greatest taste. After reading through all the comments, I noticed a number of buckwheat-related questions or comments about an unpleasant color to the pie, to which Karina responded that she uses Arrowhead Mills buckwheat flour (certified gluten-free) and the brand of buckwheat might make a difference in color, for instance. When I went to Whole Foods to buy my pie ingredients, I checked their bulk foods buckwheat flour. It said “dark” on it, so I promptly hunted down the Arrowhead Mills bag!

• I was a little bit worried the ingredients wouldn’t all fit in my food processor at the same time, so I combined all the dry ingredients in a bowl first and whisked them together, in case I needed to process things a little at a time. But it turned out my processor could take the whole recipe at once! I use a Black & Decker FP1000M, which I believe is a 10-cup model, but I wouldn’t want to fill it any further than what this recipe calls for. (Karina uses a 7-cup model, but it would worry me to use anything smaller.)

• Finally, it helped to know that you have to use a glass pie plate for this recipe. And this part helped me a lot: “The pie should be firm — but still give a little when lightly touched. The center should not be wet. It will fall a bit as it cools.” After half an hour, the pie puffed up much higher in the center than I expected! So I checked it with my finger at the 45-minute, 55-minute, 60-minute and 65-minute marks. Up until the 60-minute or 65-minute mark, there was a dry top to the pie, but I could tell there was a gooey-liquid feel just underneath. My fingerprint stayed for a number of seconds after I touched it. After about 60 or 65 minutes, it felt more solidified and my fingerprint disappeared quickly. I left it in for 65 minutes because Karina mentioned she’s at a higher altitude, so I didn’t know how her experiences would compare to mine.

The center of the pie falls, leaving a crust-like ridge

After letting the pie cool to room temperature, and then sticking it in the fridge overnight, I was almost certain the pie had turned out correctly. The center had fallen, leaving a crust-like effect around the edge. It felt like a pumpkin pie when I touched it.

Cutting into the pie, the piece came away from the dish and the rest of the pie with ease. It held its shape — and it was without a doubt the best pumpkin pie ever! Just as Karina says, you could serve this to pumpkin pie fans with no dietary restrictions and they’d love it, too!

I high school, my preferred breakfast was very similar: peanut butter and banana smoothies. Adding peanut butter to the simple banana-and-milk smoothie not only kicked up the flavor (seriously, bananas and milk are pretty boring), it also thickened up the smoothie to a true milkshake-like consistency. Delicious.

Directions: Simply put your frozen banana(s) in the blender, and almost cover them with milk. Blend them up and add a Tablespoon or two of peanut butter. If the blender stops making process, the mixture probably froze, so then adding some peanut butter or some more milk will help loosen things up. Add and blend ingredients until you reach your desired consistency — each smoothie is different!

Tips: I like to use at least one banana per person enjoying the smoothie. If you don’t have any frozen bananas, fresh (ripe!) bananas work, too, but you’ll probably have to add some ice cubes. In that case, make sure you don’t add too much milk, or the smoothie will be too thin. A mix of frozen and fresh bananas is great. Also, adding some chocolate — unsweetened cocoa powder, low-cal chocolate milk or Ovaltine — makes for a fun twist.

If you can have dairy and peanuts, you can stop reading there.

One of the things I loved about this smoothie was that it provided healthy protein (about 16 grams with the skim milk and peanut butter) and fiber in the morning. But after eliminating dairy and peanuts, I went looking for ways to add protein back into this go-to breakfast.

I generally use almond milk (for the banana smoothie, I like to use a combination of the plain unsweetened variety and the chocolate variety). Sadly, almond milk has basically no protein. (See “The Dairy Dilemma.”) And as I can’t have soy, that eliminates a lot of widely available protein powders. A few months ago, however, I found a variety of protein powders made from rice, peas, hemp and more at the Natural Health Center in Kalamazoo.

The rice protein powder I ended up purchasing does not have the best flavor or texture (both are chalky), but it offers 16 grams of protein per scoop. I use one scoop per smoothie, but I make a two-banana smoothie to help disguise the protein powder texture. It’s not the best-tasting thing ever, but it is filling and satisfying. (Also, I sometimes like a fruitier smoothie — banana and mango, banana and strawberry, etc. — so having this rice protein powder available means I can try those combinations that don’t call for nut butter, yet still get some protein. If you can have dairy but not nut butter, try one of these combos and add Greek yogurt. Yum.)

For most smoothies, I’ll add either cashew butter or almond butter (or a combination of both). It seems like you have to add more of these butters to get the same taste and texture effect as adding peanut butter, and almond butter seems to work a little better in this recipe than cashew butter. Almond butter is usually the more-expensive of the two, but Target’s Archer Farms almond butter is usually slightly cheaper than its cashew butter.

With the 16 grams of protein in the rice powder and the 5 or 7 grams in the nut butters, I can enjoy a nearly identical allergy-friendly version of my favorite breakfast!

Because I have never cared for eating a lot of meat and I’ve known about my egg allergy since 2005, dairy products seemed like a good place to get protein. I favored skim milk and Greek yogurt — often touted as two good, low-cal sources of protein — and although I had a weakness for cheese, I could justify cottage cheese and cheddar-and-fruit or cheddar-and-crackers snacks because of the protein.

So cutting out dairy has been one of the harder adjustments I’ve made for my allergy-friendly diet. I still eat a little cheese now and then (though not Swiss or cottage, as I’ve tested more sensitive to those dairy products, along with yogurt). The main reason for this particular bit of cheating is so I can have some of my mom’s pesto — the best in the world — which she doesn’t make that often, so I don’t feel too bad about that.

Milk substitutes

In order to eat cereal and make smoothies, I tested out a variety of milk substitutes. But on top of cutting out dairy, I’ve also cut out soy. This has caused a bit of a dilemma, as soy milk is pretty much the only milk substitute out there with any protein. And after soy milk, other milk substitutes are slightly harder to find.

Most grocery stores these days do carry both rice milk and almond milk, thankfully. And most brands have about 30-45 percent of the daily recommended calcium per serving. Personally, I prefer almond milk (plain, unsweetened) because of its thicker, creamier consistency. (Which is kind of odd, considering I could only stand skim or 0.5% dairy milk because I didn’t like the thicker 1% and 2% varieties.)

Many grocery stores also carry coconut milk. I’m not talking about the cooking type in the can, obviously, but the drinking type in a carton, available with the rice and almond milks. Coconut milk is creamy, smooth and yummy, but you have to buy the right brand to make sure it’s fortified with enough calcium. Also, it does have a more specific taste than other milk substitutes, so I generally use it for treats like tropical smoothies.

I’ve never tried hemp milk, as that’s usually only available at specialty stores and it just doesn’t sound appealing.

Another problem with these milk substitutes is I drink less of them than I drank of dairy milk, so I’m not getting the same amount of calcium as I used to when I was eating dairy products.

Cheese substitutes

And when it comes to cheese substitutes, I haven’t found much luck. Any time I used to read the ingredients for “vegan” cheese, it would contain soy. Then I heard of Daiya brand vegan cheese, which I hunted down. It is vegan AND soy-free, which is pretty awesome. But the taste is still odd — it’s somewhat better melted and cooked than eaten straight out of the bag, but it’s not satisfying in the way that normal cheddar, mozzarella or pepperjack cheese is. And again, there’s no protein. The list of ingredients is long, and the list of nutrients is zilch. So I wondered why I would bother putting that in my body. Sometimes it’s easier just to prepare dishes that don’t call for cheese.

Desserts

I also had resigned myself to eating sorbet while my friends had ice cream — until a couple of friends told me about coconut milk ice cream. (Turtle Mountain/So Delicious makes great coconut ice cream.) This has been one of my favorite non-dairy finds! It’s definitely not low-cal, but it’s absolutely delicious, and most coconut ice creams contain fewer ingredients than rice milk ice creams. I’d definitely recommend a small portion of coconut milk ice cream as a special occasion treat!

The other day, however, I was browsing through Whole Foods — the first time I’ve lived near one since 2007 — and came across rice yogurt and coconut yogurt. These will be the next dairy-free products I try!

A few days ago, I decided to give in and try a pancake recipe I’ve been wanting to make for a while. It’s the first recipe in “BabyCakes Covers the Classics,” the second cookbook from gluten-free and vegan bakery BabyCakes NYC. (The bakery’s website says “refined sugar-free, gluten-free, wheat-free, soy-free, casein-free, egg-free, vegan, kosher,” and overall the recipes in its two books seem to stick to that with a few exceptions.)

I bought “BabyCakes Covers the Classics” earlier this year during a browsing trip at Barnes & Noble (always a risky move for the bank account!). I was immediately drawn to the pretty pink doughnut on the cover of the book, which B&N had prominently displayed on the new releases stand. I was familiar with the BabyCakes name, as I’d flipped through its first cookbook in the past. I’d resisted the urge to buy the first book because it was mostly desserts, muffins, sweet breads and the like, which I usually try to avoid. I find it easier to avoid rich desserts and baked goods all together — that way I don’t come to expect them.

But “Covers the Classics” was different. It started with “breakfast stuff” — pancakes and waffles, then savory crepes and a vegetable tart — and I was immediately hooked. (Ever since starting my allergy diet, I have struggled to find options for satisfying breakfasts.) Then came cookies — a Mrs. Fields cookie cake! — and snack bar items — Whoopie Pies, are you kidding me?!?! — followed by “old country” favorites, cakes and doughnuts. And I could eat everything in these recipes — they were even yeast-free!

It seemed too good to be true, and perhaps it is. Recently, I was browsing Amazon.com and read some reviews for “Covers the Classics.” Many of them were not so kind. They complained about things like the texture or taste of the finished product; many of the reviewers claimed to be experienced bakers and felt cheated by these recipes that, to them, were intentionally fraudulent. Some of them complained about the taste of Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour, which has bean flour in it.

I’m used to taking reviews with a grain of salt — Do you ever notice how reviewers are usually either passionately for something or passionately against it? — but I started to notice a recurring theme with a number of the negative reviews. Many of them complained about the cost of the ingredients, which isn’t unexpected with such specialized baking, but they specifically were annoyed with how much vanilla extract the recipes use. I’m not a regular baker, so I didn’t notice the large quantities of vanilla right away, but I do know that vanilla extract is pricey and just a little goes a long way.

I was a little more skeptical about the recipes, but I still really, really wanted pancakes. I thought they would be a safe place to start because they’re rated a 1 out of 4 on the book’s piece-of-cake scale. So I made them, following the recipe almost exactly.

The recipe calls for rice milk, which I didn’t have, so I subbed almond milk. Author and BC owner Erin McKenna notes that she’s never experimented with nut milks, which I found strange, since I think almond milk has the best milk-like consistency and would likely be better in baking than super thin rice milk. And I think that substitute made for a thicker pancake. McKenna notes “I like my pancakes extremely thin,” yet my pancakes were very dense, which was fine with me.

Another thing I noticed: These pancakes burned super easily. Admittedly, my pancake-flipping skills leave something to be desired, but every single pancake went from batter to burnt before I had a chance to flip them. And I have to guess that had something to do with the sugar content in them. In addition to the 1/3 cup agave nectar, the recipe also calls for applesauce that, while “unsweetened,” is going to add sugar to the recipe. The pancakes turned out noticeably sweeter than any pancakes I’ve ever made before. I like my pancakes to be fairly neutral on the savory-to-sweet spectrum, with a nice cinnamon/nutmeg kind of spiciness. The next time I try these, I’m going to try cutting down on the sugar.

Finally, yes, there is way to much vanilla extract in this recipe. It calls for 2 Tablespoons, and I could taste the vanilla in the initial flavor and in the aftertaste. I’m thinking 2 teaspoons would do, or maybe a Tablespoon at most. Some of the Amazon reviewers guessed that the large amounts of vanilla were used to disguise the (in some people’s opinions) unpleasant taste of the bean flours in the Bob’s Red Mill mix. And I think I could detect that bean flavor they were referring to, but I don’t think the overpowering vanilla on top helps.

Overall, I would try these pancakes again with less sugar and less vanilla. (McKenna recommends following the recipes exactly, but I suspect pancakes would be the easiest things with which to experiment.) The best thing about these pancakes was how well they worked as leftovers — they firmed up to a nice whole-wheat type of consistency after sitting in the fridge for a little bit and even microwaved well after two days.

I’ll continue to try recipes from “Covers the Classics,” but I can’t rate the book just yet. If you’re unsure, do as one Amazon reviewer suggested and borrow the book from the library.

I first heard of Alicia’s recipe when she was promoting her book, The Kind Diet. I saw her on TV making this recipe, and then found it in a copy of Parade magazine. I figured I could tweak it a bit and make it work for me.

Instead of the 3/4 cup of crunchy peanut butter, I used a mix of almond butter and cashew butter (Target’s Archer Farms brand is currently my favorite for both) to make 3/4 cups. I also used gluten-free graham crackers. Those were my only substitutions! (Full disclosure: I did use a butter substitute that has soy in it, so that was my only non-allergy-friendly ingredient.) Just in case you’re curious, I used almond milk (my preferred milk substitute), crushed cashews on top (I think they’re closest to peanuts, but I plan to use a mix of nuts next time) and Enjoy Life chocolate chips — the best chocolate chips in the world.

This recipe was so easy and turned out amazing! The almond-and-cashew-butter combo, with the addition of the graham cracker crumbs and butter substitute, really tastes like a peanut butter cup. Alicia says:

“This is the first recipe you have to try! If you think that vegan recipes can’t be amazing, this will prove you wrong.”

It was richer (and tasted better) than Reese’s cups — like Alicia, I am a huge Reese’s fan. Even my mom (who doesn’t like Reese’s) liked these. They are definitely a special-occasion-type of treat, as they’re not low-cal. However, next time I make these, I might reduce the butter substitute (using just enough to get by). And I plan to use at least two mini-muffin tins instead of one regular muffin tin, to make the treats go farther and to help with portion control.