I’ll quickly tell you about my dinner last night. After all, you need to have dinner before getting dessert…
I was inspired by the cookbook I got from the library, The Natural Gourmet, to make some sesame noodles. Happily, this recipe gave me a chance to use some of the tahini that had been sitting in the fridge for a long while. I’m not particularly fond of tahini, so I was hoping that this recipe would – disguise it a bit.
I forgot to add the apple cider vinegar, but otherwise, I mostly followed the recipe.
Buckwheat soba noodles along with a sauce that has a base of tahini, along with dollops of maple syrup, soy sauce, and tablespoons of fresh-made tea. Other additions included minced garlic and chopped scallions.
This came out okay, but I wasn’t going for seconds. Next time I would add some more soy sauce to balance out the bitterness of the tahini.
What I liked better was the cabbage, which I had steamed for 5 minutes and then dressed with EVOO, minced garlic, lemon juice, & salt & pepper. The cabbage had a nice tang from the lemon juice and was super tasty.
Okay – you guys ate your vegetables. Now – onto dessert!
As I mentioned, I was exceptionally sleepy the other night. During that time, an idea popped into my head. It went something like this: Everyone loves apple crisp. Everyone loves desserts made with pumpkin. What if I made pumpkin crisp?
The next morning I used google to try and find recipes. Every recipe seemed to include some form of boxed cake mix. I do not like to cook with prepackaged processed ingredients, so I decided that I should be brave and…make up my own recipe.
I believe that this is the first baked good recipe I’ve made up completely on my own. Sure, I’ve done substitutions and alterations to already-existing recipes… but this one was crafted totally on the fly. And it turned out to be one of the best desserts I’ve ever had.
(Don’t worry, I wrote down all of the ingredients I used, after I made it! So you can re-create it at home.)
Here’s the recipe:
Base:
One 15 ounce can pumpkin
1 cup milk
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs, mostly beaten
2 cups spelt flour
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon baking powder
Crumbly topping:
1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup Sucanat
1/4 cup walnuts
3/4 cup Earth balance spread
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Here’s the simple procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix together all of the base ingredients in a large mixing bowl until combined well.
3. Pour mixture into greased pan. (I used coconut oil as the ‘grease’.)
4. Mix together ingredients for crumbly topping, by using a fork and your hands to achieve a crumbly consistency.
5. Evenly coat the pumpkin mixture already in the pan with the crumbly topping.
6. Bake for 50-55 minutes.
7. Cook on a wire rack. You can try tasting at this point when it is hot, but it will be super crumbly and kind of fall apart as you slice it.
8. Put in refrigerator to completely cool. (I left mine to cool overnight.)
The aromas that this produced while baking were amazing. The final product was… the definition of scrumptious.
I’m looking forward to trying this out paired with some French vanilla frozen yogurt.
Happy Baking!
-Danielle
Crisp and Verdant 