Muffins, Waffles and Raw Cookies

To celebrate my grandmother’s birthday, we had a nice family brunch here today. My mother and aunt did most of the cooking, but I made two things as well: muffins and waffles.

I bookmarked this recipe as soon as I saw it because it sounded so good: VeggieGirl’s Apple-Cinnamon-Oat Muffins. It’s just perfect! It combines [edit: haha, I said "combinates"] lots of lovely flavours in one muffin, resulting in a delicious treat, that’s not even unhealthy. I added a small change: I didn’t have dried apple, so I used raisins instead. This recipe reminds me of the apple pie my mother always makes – it also has apple, cinnamon, oats and raisins. I think I’ll be making these muffins again and again an again, as they’re not hard to make and I’d like to have some on hand whenever I need a quick snack.

The other thing I made was entirely different, but also a nice addition to the brunch, the waffles! These are the Chocolate Chip Brownie Waffles from Veganomicon. When I first read the recipe I thought brownie part made it a bit too, well, unhealthy, I guess, for a breakfast, but this morning I decided I just had to try it. So I did. Recipes always end up yielding more waffles than I expected, but this one really made a huge load. I probably still have half of the batch left, so I put them in the freezer for future indulgence.

Anyway, the brunch was pretty nice, I think everyone enjoyed the food and was very full afterwards.

Lately I’ve been seeing more and more pictures of raw dishes, and I’ve been reading about raw recipes on various blogs. This got me interested and made me want to try one of the recipes myself. When Paulina mentioned that Kristen sends out the recipe for her ‘Heavenly Cookies’ in her newsletter this month, I immediately subscribed and made the recipe as soon as I received it. The first time I used peanut butter (which isn’t raw, so not as the recipe was intended, but still good!), as that was the only nut butter I had. I let my mother try one of the cookies and she was really enthusiastic about it – I don’t think she expected a raw treat to be that simple but still delicious. This made me want to make the recipe again.

So the next day, I went and bought some raw almond butter and made the cookies again, this time a bit smaller than the recipe suggests, as my parents and I agreed that they are very filling. I’d like to try some more raw recipes soon, as I love that they’re so quick and easy to prepare without the cooking. Maybe I’ll buy a book with good raw recipes the next time I need a coobook, but I haven’t looked into that yet.

I should stop neglecting this blog the way I am… sigh.