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Cranberry Pumpkin Walnut Rolls

We’ve got another pumpkin recipe for you! I served these rolls as part of our Thanksgiving dinner, and they were a nice complement to the Vegetable Wellingtons that we posted last week.  If you are like me and can’t seem to get enough pumpkin—whether in savory or sweet dishes—give these rolls a try!

 

Cranberry Pumpkin Walnut Rolls

This recipe is a no-knead recipe that I got from the Kitchn.  I’ve made the dough into a single loaf before, but had some trouble with the loaf being too well done on the outside and doughy in the center.  To remedy this issue, I decided to try making the dough into rolls.  I followed these directions pretty closely, except I substituted spelt flour for half of the all-purpose flour that is called for in the recipe.  I also divided the dough into about 12-15 equal sized pieces and formed mini-loaves (or rolls) from them.  I baked the rolls on a parchment lined baking sheet at 450° for about 20 minutes or so.  The rolls should be golden brown and sound hollow when you tap on the bottom. 

 

Tasty Easy Healthy Green Recipe Ratings:

Recipe Report Card Notes About Recipe Ratings

Tasty Rating

Chefs--4.1

Four Chefs (Delicious!)

I love the combination of pumpkin and cranberries, and these rolls were delicious when toasted and spread with a little butter.

Easy Rating

easy--3

Three Easy Chairs (Average Difficulty)

This is a no-knead bread recipe, which takes some of the work out of breadmaking, but it still takes some time to put together the dough and to form it into rolls.

Healthy Rating

healthy--4

Four Apples (Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise)

I used half whole wheat flour for these rolls, and they do not contain any oil and only have a little bit of sugar

Green Rating

green--4

Four Leaves (Mother Earth Approved)

All of the ingredients were organic, but not local.
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Vegetable Wellingtons with Port Sauce

We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving!  We’ve really been enjoying the long weekend, and have actually had a chance to relax a bit from all of the craziness of the semester, before the final push.  I also had some time do some serious cooking, and am hoping to share some of my creations over the next few weeks. First up are these Vegetable Wellingtons…!

When we were in the UK last summer I had a Vegetable Wellington at one of the pubs that we went to, and knew I had to try and recreate it at home.  These Wellingtons are packed with all sorts of good stuff, and made for a perfect main dish for our vegetarian Thanksgiving.  The filling is made up of sautéed spinach, mushrooms, shallots, toasted hazelnuts, and dried cherries.  This mixture is topped with a few slices of brie cheese and then all wrapped up in a puff pastry shell.  The Wellington that I had in England was also served with a tasty port sauce, so I tried recreating that as well.

These Wellingtons would also be great for Christmas dinner or some other festive occasion, so give them a try and let us know what you think!

Vegetable Wellingtons

These Wellingtons were pretty substantial when served with some roasted Brussels sprouts and pumpkin rolls (recipe coming soon).  I made 6 Wellingtons with 3 sheets of puff pastry, but there was a good amount of filling left, so you might be able to make at least 8 Wellingtons with 4 sheets of puff pastry.   

  • 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 large shallots, diced
  • 2 large cloves of garlic, diced
  • 6 button mushrooms, diced (optional)
  • 16 ounces frozen spinach, defrosted and drained
  • ¼ cup dried tart cherries or cranberries, roughly chopped
  • ½ cup toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 small to medium wedge of brie cheese
  • 3 sheets frozen puff pastry (roughly 26 ounces), thawed
  • 1 egg, beaten (optional)

Heat the olive oil in a large pan.  Add the diced shallots and cook until translucent.  Add the garlic and cook another minute.  Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes and then season with salt and pepper.  Stir in the spinach, cherries, and hazelnuts and cook until heated through.  Season with salt and pepper, stir in the sherry vinegar, and set aside off of the heat.

To prepare the puff pastry, flatten the sheets on a surface dusted with a little flour and roll them out slightly with a rolling pin.  You want enough surface area to cut out four rounds (about 4-5 inches across) from each sheet (I used a small bowl with a 4.5 inch diameter to cut the dough into rounds). 

To assemble the Wellingtons, place one round of dough on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Place about ¼ cup to ½ cup filling in the middle of the round, leaving at least a half-inch border between the filling and the edge of the round.  Place a few thin slices of brie on top of the filling and then place another dough round on top of the brie.  Seal in the filling by crimping the edges of the dough together with your fingers or using the tines of a fork.   Repeat for the remaining rounds of dough.  Arrange all of the Wellingtons on a baking sheet and lightly brush the tops of each one with a little of the beaten egg.   Bake the Wellingtons for about 25-30 minutes or until they are golden.

Port Sauce

I read through several different port sauce recipes and finally ended up creating my own based on what I had read.  To thicken the sauce a bit, I added two tablespoons of cornstarch.  This made the sauce a little too thick though, so I would recommend only adding 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.  This sauce can be made ahead and reheated before serving.

  •  2 tablespoons of butter
  • 1 large shallot, diced
  • 1 cup ruby or tawny port
  • 1½ cups of vegetable broth
  • ¼ cut of dried cranberries, roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch

Melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan.  When the butter has melted add in the diced shallot and cook until translucent.  Stir in the port and vegetable broth and allow the mixture to come to a boil and reduce by half.  In a small bowl stir together the cornstarch and a small amount of water.  Stir the liquid into the port sauce and cook for a few more minutes.

Tasty Easy Healthy Green Recipe Ratings:

Recipe Report Card Notes About Recipe Ratings

Tasty Rating

Chefs--4.1

Four Chefs (Delicious!)

Buttery puff pastry, gooey brie, and a delicious vegetable, fruit and nut filling make for one yummy dish.  Add the port sauce to take it to the next level.

Easy Rating

easy--2

Two Easy Chairs (A Long March…)

There are several steps involved with making the Wellingtons and port sauce. If you don’t want to mess with the puff pastry and sauce, the filling is also very good on its own, and would not take that long to make.

Healthy Rating

healthy--3

Three Apples (Average Nutritional Quality)

Sadly the buttery puff pastry and brie lower the health score for this dish.

Green Rating

green--3

Three Leaves (Average Environmental Friendliness)

Some of the ingredients were organic and some were not.  Anyone know of a good organic puff pastry or port?
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Special Guest Post: Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting

What a week!! I had two big midterms last week and I am still recovering from all the studying and test-related stress!  Luckily, our friend Suzanne offered to prepare a post for us.  Suzanne is one of our good friends from UC Berkeley (where I got my masters—I guess I just love being a student!), and has written a guest post for us before.   I am a big fan of her previous recipe, and can’t wait to try out these yummy (and relatively healthy) fall treats below…!  

FROM OUR FRIEND SUZANNE:

The return of fall always signals a return to the kitchen, and to so many warm, comforting recipes I’ve missed over the recent months. When rainy fall weather made its fashionably late appearance this week, baking with pumpkin couldn’t be far behind.

I found these pumpkin bars at Mel’s Kitchen Cafe.  Mel had made an admirable effort to nudge this Paula Deen recipe in the “healthy” direction by substituting half of the oil with applesauce.  I took it to the next level by further cutting the fat and sugar, and swapping in whole wheat pastry flour. Given the indulgence level of the original, my altered version is still decadent, but a whole lot healthier.

My son had begged for apple-banana applesauce – which he promptly rejected upon realizing it actually tasted like banana – so I used that for my applesauce here.  It had no added sugar, but was sweetened with extra fruit juice, making it very sweet.  I reduced the sugar from 1 2/3 cups to 1 cup; If you use a regular unsweetened applesauce, you might kick the sugar up another 1/4 cup. I was a bit concerned about the banana flavor, but it disappeared into the pumpkin and spices. The result was a moist, flavorful, and slightly sweet cake.

For the frosting, I used only 1/4 the butter and 3/8 the sugar, with low-fat Neufchatel instead of regular cream cheese.  This meant a slightly smaller batch of frosting, but still plenty for a nice thick layer, with a delightful tangy flavor that paired perfectly with the subtly spiced cake. The whole family loved it!

Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting

Adapted from Paula Deen via Mel’s Kitchen Cafe

Bars (more of a cake, in my opinion):

  • 4 eggs
  • 1 to 1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup applesauce
  • 1/2 cup oil
  • 15-ounce can pumpkin
  • 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

Frosting:

  • 8-ounce package Neufchatel cream cheese, softened
  • 2 tablespoons butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup sifted confectioners’ (powdered) sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Milk if needed to thin frosting

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin until light and fluffy. Stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13 by 10-inch baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting: Combine the cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and mix at low speed until combined. If the frosting is too thick, add milk a teaspoon at a time. Stir in the vanilla and mix again. Spread on cooled cake and cut into bars.

Tasty Easy Healthy Green Recipe Ratings:

Recipe Report Card Notes About Recipe Ratings

Tasty Rating

Chefs--4.1

Four Chefs (Delicious!)

Destined to become a fall classic.

Easy Rating

easy--4

Four Easy Chairs (“ABC, Easy as 123…”)

The cake is simpler than most cakes I’ve made, and the frosting is pretty quick too.

Healthy Rating

healthy--3

Three Apples (Average Nutritional Quality)

It’s much healthier than the original version, but still plenty of sugar and calories.

Green Rating

green--4

Four Leaves (Mother Earth Approved)

Except for the butter, all of the ingredients were organic.
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Apple Crisp and Brown Sugar-Bourbon Ice Cream

The leaves have started to turn and there is a chill in the air that signals we are deep into fall and most important—deep into honey crisp apple season!  I’ve talked about my love of honey crisp apples before, and of course couldn’t resist buying a huge bag of them when I saw them at the market the other day.

While you can’t beat a fresh honey crisp apple, I decided to see if they would work in one of my favorite desserts—apple crisp (really though, what dessert isn’t one of my favorites!).   These sweet tart apples were a perfect complement to the buttery crisp topping, and the whole thing was heavenly with some homemade brown sugar-bourbon ice cream.  I hope you are enjoying the bounties of fall as much as we are!

Apple Crisp

I cut my regular apple crisp recipe down to serve just the two of us.  Double or triple this recipe if you are serving a crowd.  Or if you are serving someone like Graham who can’t get enough of this kind of dessert – he was a little upset there wasn’t more for seconds and thirds. :)

  • 2 small honey crisp apples, peeled and diced
  • juice from half a medium-sized lemon
  • juice from 1/4 of a large orange
  • ¼ cup flour
  • ¼ cup old fashion oats
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • a dash of ground cinnamon
  • ¼ to ½ teaspoons salt
  • 3 tablespoons butter, softened

Mix the apples with the lemon and orange juice and put into a small baking dish. 

In a medium sized bowl, stir together the flour, oats, sugar, cinnamon and salt.  Mix in the butter (I often use my hands), until crumbly.  Sprinkle the flour and oat mixture over the apples.

Bake at 375° for 25 minutes or until topping is golden and filling is bubbly.  

Brown Sugar-Bourbon Ice Cream

I couldn’t resist the brown sugar-bourbon ice cream recipe in the October issue of Bon Appétit.  The only change I made was to add 2 tablespoons of bourbon instead of 1 tablespoon—YUM!

Tasty Easy Healthy Green Recipe Ratings:

Recipe Report Card Notes About Recipe Ratings

Tasty Rating

Chefs--4.1

Four Chefs (Delicious!)

Apple crisp and homemade brown sugar-bourbon ice cream—enough said!

Easy Rating

easy--3

Three Easy Chairs (Average Difficulty)

Apple crisp is very easy to make, but the homemade ice cream takes a little more time and effort.

Healthy Rating

healthy--1.1

One Apples (This Might Take A Year Off Your Life)

I promise we don’t eat this way all the time!  But it was my fall break, and I thought we needed something sweet for the occasion. :)

Green Rating

green--3

Three Leaves (Average Environmental Friendliness)

Some organic ingredients, but not all.
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Pumpkin-Apple Bread

I took a quick study break this weekend to do a little baking.  It has been a while since I’ve had even the time to think about cooking, between studying for my five different classes in biochemistry, bio-statistics, nutrition policy, research methods, and doctoral research – they are definitely keeping me busy!  I’m learning a lot for sure, and I think its solidifying my understanding of the many nutrition issues we are facing as a society.  It’s nice to have a firm understanding of diabetes at the biomolecular level, for example.

But it is also nice to get back to some cooking, and understand the value of food at the level of my taste buds!  So I decided to whip up a loaf of some pumpkin-apple bread from a recipe in Vegetarian Times.  It is really tasty, but unfortunately it completely fell apart as soon as I took it out of the pan.  I think it is because we didn’t have any eggs so I did some experimenting with adding more pumpkin puree – but that didn’t work so well.  In any case, I bet it would hold together if you follow the recipe – let me know if you try it out!

Pumpkin-Apple Bread

Adapted from Vegetarian Times, October 2012

The original recipe in VT was for pumpkin-pear bread.  I didn’t have any canned pears, and thought some tart apples would be a nice contrast to the sweet bread, so I replaced the pears with a fresh apple.  I also made a few other changes, but wouldn’t recommend leaving out the egg, so it is included in the recipe below.

  • 1¼ cups sugar
  • 1 cup AP flour
  • 1 cup spelt flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup vegetable oil
  • 1 large egg
  • ½ cup almond milk
  • ½ 15-ounce can of unsweetened pumpkin puree
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 large granny smith apple, peeled and diced

Preheat the oven to 350°.  In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. 

In a different bowl, mix together the oil and egg until well combined.  Whisk in the almond milk, pumpkin puree, and vanilla.  Slowly stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture.  Once combined, fold in the diced apples. 

Spray an 8 or 9-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.  Spread the batter in the loaf pan, and bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.

Tasty Easy Healthy Green Recipe Ratings:

Recipe Report Card Notes About Recipe Ratings

Tasty Rating

Chefs--4.1

Four Chefs (Delicious!)

Even though the bread fell apart, it was still very tasty!

Easy Rating

easy--4

Four Easy Chairs (ABC, Easy as 123…)

There is a reason this kind of bread is called “quick bread”—it didn’t take me away from my studies for too long.

Healthy Rating

healthy--2

Two Apples (Surgeon General’s Warning!)

Although the bread does have apples and pumpkin, it also has a good amount of oil and added sugar.

Green Rating

green--4

Four Leaves (Mother Earth Approved)

Mostly organic ingredients, but not local.
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