Seems like all my best ideas are last minute ones. I always lose track of the date… But just barely in time for Easter we have rich and yummy chocolate cherry cups! The filling is an amazingly rich blend of nuts and fruit surrounded by a rich chocolate almond butter cup. These may even be more decadent than the peanut butter cups!
Cherry-almond filled chocolate cups
Order by Wednesday March 31 and we will have it to you in time for Easter!
Six of these divine morsels are $25 with $5.00 for shipping.
Chocolate cherry cups are now available on the Gone Pie website right here!
For Easter only we are doing a mix of three of each – three peanut butter and three cherry. That mix is available here only!
________________________________________________________ OOPS! The special offer is GONE! Happy Easter to all!
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Further update: Peanut butter cups are now available on the Gone Pie website right here! (2010.02.22)
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Update: We got such an overwhelmingly positive response to these that they will soon be available on our website. For now, they continue to be available here! (2010.02.13)
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I was taken by a last-minute thought for a totally awesome Valentine’s Day treat. PEANUT BUTTER cups. These are some bodacious cups, weighing in at over 2 ounces each!
Peanut butter heaven
Order by Wednesday February 10th and we will have it to you in time for Valentine’s Day!S
Six of these divine morsels are $20 with $5.00 for shipping.
Flours: I am using a lot of different flours here. I think doing this really does make a more interesting final product. But if you don’t keep all these flours around, substitute more buckwheat or sorghum for the quinoa and amaranth. I think the blend of flours and the coconut flour are musts to include.*
*A simplified version I might try would be 1/2 gluten-free flour mix #2, 1/2 cup plus 2T sorghum flour, 2T coconut flour
Other dry ingredients:
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp cinnamon
dash allspice
1 T tapioca flour
1/2 cup vegan sugar
Wet ingredients:
3T coconut oil
1T coconut milk
1T lemon juice
1 tsp lemon rind
1/4 c applesauce
pinch fresh ginger
1/8t vanilla
6T ginger syrup
2 ounces of chopped crystallized ginger
Sift and combine all dry ingredients EXCEPT tapioca flour and sugar.
Combine all wet ingredients EXCEPT coconut oil. The ginger syrup is an amazing residual of making the crystallized ginger. It is so deliciously spiced and sweet at the same time. If you don’t have any, agave would be a fine substitution. I think you might want to add a little more ginger in this case.
Put coconut oil, sugar and tapioca flour in mixer and whip until very well combined.
It is a little tricky to get the coconut oil well combined with the sugar. The tapioca helps a lot. You need to scrape the bowl a lot and be careful the coconut oil is fully incorporated into the mix before moving on with the preparation.
Alternately add remaining wet and dry ingredients, making sure to scrape bowl often. When the mixutre is uniformly mixed , quickly mix in the crystallized ginger.
I made 24 of the most lovely and rich little cookies. I rolled them in cinnamon sugar and baked them for 11 minutes at 350 degrees.
They were amazing! One friend said they melted in her mouth!
I was so excited to deliver these muffins that I forgot to take a picture of them. Lovely apple isn't it?
This is probably the simplest recipe I have ever made. These were a special order for a client that can only eat fruit sweetened baked goods. She hadn’t had a muffin in 3 years and was excited to finally be able to indulge. The ingredients were based upon the restrictions in her diet that were prescribed by her Tibetan doctor. She is living with Rheumatoid Arthritis. She requested no added sweetener and extra spices. I had some apple/peach/plum sauce I had made and I used that. A simple organic store bought apple sauce would be fine too.
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oat bran
1 cup oats
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 T flax seed
2 cups applesauce
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk (any non-dairy milk is fine here)
1 cup ginger tea
4 oz dates
2 T coconut oil
4 T sunflower oil
Before you do anything else, pour hot ginger tea (water is fine if you prefer) over the dates to soften them. Let this sit at least 10 minutes.
Then, sift and combine all the dry ingredients except the oats.
Next pour the slightly cooled dates, soaking liquid and coconut oil into a food processor and process until smooth. Add the remaining liquid ingredients and applesauce and process briefly – just enough to combine them fully.
Pour the liquid ingredients over the oats and let this mixture sit about 10 minutes. This is a great way to get moisture into the oats, making the final muffin lighter and incorporating the oats more fully into the recipe.
Finally, combine this with the dry ingredients and mix very briefly.
Scoop into muffin cups and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. I got 16 lovely little muffins.
For a slightly sweeter muffin, you can replace some of the liquid with your favorite vegan sweetener. I think I would like these a bit better with about 1/2 cup of maple syrup replacing 1/2 cup of the coconut milk.
The client was quite pleased and wrote a lovely thank you note. Here is my favorite part of the note:
“PERFECT!!!! The muffins were perfect. I can’t get too piggy and eat them all up right away, but after these are done I would like to order more. They are just perfect. Not sweet/sugary but tasty which is just what I ordered. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed having a muffin after nearly 3 years. I didn’t even wait to have my cup of tea with it, I was so eager to have a muffin I could safely eat with the dietary restriction due to the arthritis.”
I am now a very happy baker with a very happy client!
Video of Patti Smith at Barnes and Noble in Union Square on January 20, 2010 (Wendy Hopkins)
Tis true that Gone Pie is the name of a Patti Smith song and that I am a rather devoted fan. Every now and then it all comes together.
At the Patti show on New Years this year, I met a woman named Jody who asked if I could make her some muffins. She mentioned a series of dietary restriction she had been given by her Tibetan doctor to help her control her Rheumatoid Arthritis. This is exactly what I love to do, work with people to create something that suits there diet.
The night ended and I kind of forgot about the entire thing until receiving an email from Jody. With a little back and forth we decided on a batch of apple muffins. The main limitation for her was that she could not eat any sugar. A fruit sweetened muffin is not hard to make, so she and I decided to meet up at the next Patti event and do a muffin exchange.
With a little confusion about actually finding each other, the exchange occurred. She was quite excited and I hoped to hear from her again. She went back in to have her book signed and I went off to meet up with my nephew.
As I drove home I got a phone message from the muffin lady:
“Its Jody. Your muffins are saving people that are on the line. Patti Smith is signing stuff. And she has one of your muffins in her hand. Bye.”
OK. That made me laugh really really hard. Happy end to a great night. All that was left was to tweet my little story. So I tweeted away and by the time I finished I had the sweetest email from Jody. Here is an excerpt from it:
“PERFECT!!!! THE MUFFINS ARE PERFECT. I CAN’T GET TOO PIGGY AND EAT THEM ALL UP RIGHT AWAY, BUT AFTER THESE ARE DONE, I WOULD LIKE TO ORDER MORE. THEY ARE JUST PERFECT. NOT SWEET/SUGARY BUT TASTY WHICH IS JUST WHAT I ORDERED. I GAVE AWAY A TOTAL OF 6. I AM SURE PATTI SMITH GOT TO EAT AND LIKED YOUR MUFFIN …. I TOLD HER THE MUFFINS WERE FROM YOU AT GONEPIE. I TOLD HER THEY WERE VEGAN BUT FORGOT TO TELL HER AND ONE OF THE OTHER PEOPLE I SHARED WITH THAT THEY WERE SPECIALLY MADE WITH LOW SUGAR. ANYWAY, THEY ARE YUMMY. I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW I ENJOYED HAVING A MUFFIN AFTER NEARLY 3 YEARS. I DIDN’T EVEN WAIT TO HAVE MY CUP OF TEA WITH IT. I WAS SO EAGER TO HAVE A MUFFIN I COULD SAFELY EAT WITH THE DIETARY RESTRICTION DUE TO THE ARTHRITIS. “
With wonderful people like this as my clients, is it any wonder I love what I do!
Thanks so much Jody. I look forward to working with you again soon.
I received a phone call last week from a client looking for some cakes for a television program. She explained she was looking for three identical cakes. They needed to be vegan and gluten-free. Additionally, they had to look messy and unappealing. Why? Because they were vegan and that is nasty. I got a little offended and started reeling off websites, including ours, where she could see the beauty of vegan baking. She further explained it was a first cake made by a teenager. Once I was assured it could taste good, it just had to look a little unappealing, we agreed to work together and away I went.
I decided on using a pan of brownies as the base of the cake. This would be an easy recipe to make look unappealing. Brownies have a slightly unrisen look, so as a cake they look like a little flat failure. I added a little extra flour so they would be a bit tough.
Finally, I had to write on all three cakes the same way so they could be used interchangeably in different shots. I figured my little hippie vegan would not be using frosting with food coloring nor would she be accomplished enough to make a more natural one. I decided to write in almonds. That was a good choice because they were easy to make messy. I just had to smudge the almonds with frosting and they looked messy!
Icing the cake was an exercise in discipline or, perhaps I should say, lack of discipline. I love to ice cakes. It is satisfying to smooth and spread icing over the cake and dress it up all nice and proper. But I couldn’t do that. I kept finding myself making the cakes perfect, and having to go back and mess them up. Finally, because I was not certain I had been messy enough, I sent along plenty of extra frosting for them to make the cake messier when they put it out.
In the end I had a lot of fun. It was a triumph over my nature. Here is one of the messy little cakes.
This is one of the cakes. More childish than messy. I tried.....
