Okay, I admit it… we were planning a bunch a while back and I had no idea what to make.  Looking for inspiration, I did a quick google search and came up with the most ridiculous thread.  Vegan brunch can be pretty hard, especially if you aren’t vegan yourself, and I tried to keep reminding myself of this while I scrolled through.    The original poster was looking for advice on vegan brunch items because s/he was hosting a brunch and one of the invited people was vegan (and I have to say it’s super thoughtful of this person to try to find a yummy vegan recipe for this lone vegan).  Here is a sampling of the most entertaining responses:

Wow! Everyone…thank you so very very much!
Just re-saw this thread. Looks like there are a wealth of options
for my vegan friend. Now I have to figure out how I’d keep
scrambled tofu warm for her. Maybe in the oven? Do ahead & leave w/
tortillas like mentioned for her to fill herself w/other fillings?
Thanks so very, very much!!

Anyway, enough of that.  If someone happens to search for vegan brunch items, I hope they find my blog because I have a few recommendations.  First, you totally have to check out the cookbook Carb Conscious Vegetarian because it’s awesome.  Tons of breakfast ideas.  And Robin Robertson is a genius– she markets this as a vegetarian cookbook when, in actuality, it’s mainly, if not totally, vegan.  A lot of people are totally turned off by the term “vegan” that they may not have even picked up this book.  But “vegetarian” is far less scary.  So smart!

Another recommendation I have for someone who may find themselves asking the all-knowing Google for vegan brunch dishes is to check out The Joy of Vegan Baking.  A bunch of muffin recipes, coffee cakes, bundt cakes, etc. You can’t go wrong.  To go with our frittata, I made the Jam-Filled Oat Muffins.  One word– yum!!!!  Since I’m sort of watching things right now, I figured if I was going to make a muffin, one that’s made primarily with oat bran would be the wisest choice.  These were great and the recipe was super easy.  Since I very easily found the recipe posted at RecipeZaar, I’ll go ahead and post it here until someone tells me to take it down.

The recipe for this is from another “cook”book that I got for Christmas, Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life.  As you can guess by the name, this is a book filled with raw recipes.  While some are pretty complicated, this berry porridge recipe couldn’t have been easier.  It’s a combination of oat groats (I found them in the bulk foods section at Whole Foods), berries and dates.  The oat groats are soaked for at least 30 minutes (I soaked mine overnight) and then everything gets pureed.  The recipe, which calls for 2 cups of oat groats, says that one recipe serves one.  Emma and I could barely eat half because it was so filling.  We had the other half for breakfast this morning, topped with some extra blueberries.  It’s sweet and filling– in fact, having this for breakfast this morning at 8 am kept me full until lunch at 1 pm.  Surprisingly, Emma really liked this stuff!

You’re asking yourself… did I read that right?!  Vegan quiche?  YES!  Courtesy of this blog (scroll down a bit to see the recipe).

First off, let’s talk about the crust.  I used the Flaky Crust recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking subbing whole wheat pastry for the all-purporse flour.  It turned out a little more dry than usual, but still tasted fine.  Since I don’t have a pie plate, I used a 10 inch springform pan (the only one I have left– the others fell apart and had to be retired).  I found that since the dough was on the dry side, rolling it out proved to be a little difficult.  It kept breaking, so I just resorted to pressing it into the bottom of the pan.

For the filling, all I had was super firm tofu in the vaccum sealed package (not the kind packed in water like the recipe calls for).  I also didn’t have any broccoli, so I used the rest of my frozen spinach and peas.  Neither bags had much left in them, but it turned out fine.  I also used green onions because I had some in the fridge that weren’t looking too happy.  When everything was all mixed together, it looked a little dry to me so I put in a few tablespoons of almond milk (just becuase I had some open that needed using up).

Put the filling on top of the crust and bake it!  Couldn’t be easier, really.  This reminded me very much of the hand held quiches I made a while backm during my freezer challenge.  I thought it was delicious and have been eating it every day for breakfast.  Matt throught it was “weird,” but he doesn’t even like non-vegan quiche, so I’m not sure that he’s a very good judge.  When I made the hand held quiches, I seem to remember him liking those a lot and I think I’ll try to combine the two recipes next time to see if he likes that better.

I’ve tweaked the recipe for Pumpkin French Toast enough to call it my own.  After trying it a few times with different kinds of bread, I’ve concluded that a french or white bread works best.  Multi-grain or whole wheat has too much flavor to it already and doesn’t allow the pumpkin to shine through.  This is the best french toast I’ve ever had.  Don’t let the idea of it being vegan (or the tofu) dissuade you from trying it.  Enjoy!

Vegan Pumpkin French Toast

(click here for a printer-friendly version)

1/2 cup silken tofu (soft)

1 cup almond or other non-dairy milk

1 cup pumpkin

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, or to taste

2 TB (packed) brown sugar

Combine everything in a food processor and transfer to a shallow dish.  Dip stale bread in and scrape off the excess batter.  Use a little canola oil to fry it up in a pan.

I thought waffles would be a special, fun thing to have for Saturday morning breakfast.  For Emma, I made Carrie’s Chocolate Chip Waffles (left).  For us, I made these banana waffles (right)subbing white whole wheat flour for the all purpose, Ener-G for the eggs, soy milk for the milk, and canola oil for the shortening.  I didn’t think I would like the chocolate chip waffles because I’m not really a fan of chocolate chips in anything except cookies, but they were awesome!  They turned out crispy and light and the chocolate wasn’t too overwhelming.  The banana ones were just okay.  I don’t think I would make them again, but it was fun to try it once.

Vegan french toast?  Yes!  It can be done!!

There’s just something about the fall that makes me want pumpkin all the time and in everything!  So for breakfast this morning, I made some pumpkin french toast!

I combined the recipes for Pumpkin Pie Pancakes and Apple Cinnamon French Toast from Vegan Planet to make this Pumpkin French Toast!  Combining two of someone else’s recipes hardly consistences creating my own, so I can’t post it here.  If you happen to have this book at home and would like to recreate this, use the tofu and non-dairy milk  measurements from the Apple Cinnamon French toast recipe and add to it (in a food processor), 1/2 cup of canned pumpkin, 2 (packed) TB brown sugar and 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice.  Whirl in a food processor until combined.  When coating the bread with the batter, be sure to scrape off the excess with your finger before putting it into the frying pan.  You really just want a thin coating or else you’ll end up with a soggy mess that never cooks up.  Stale bread works best for any french toast recipe.  If you didn’t remember to leave yours out overnight, you can do what I did which  is put the slices in a low oven (250 degrees) just until they are dry.

This is a really delicious recipe.  I had my doubts when I saw that the recipe called for silken tofu, but it was worth the risk.  Yummy!  Even my Emma liked it.

We had this for dinner the other night– a variation of my tofu scramble, but made with some soy-rizo.  It was very, very, very good.  Even my Emma liked it!

I’m on a rampage with the muffin making this week.  After cooking up one of our pumpkin patch pumpkins, I realized that I needed to use it quick or else freeze it before it went bad.  I found a fat free pumpkin spice bread recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking that sounded good, so I went with that and made it into mini-muffins.  The recipe uses all applesauce in place of oil and has a spice mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.  An optional add-in was chocolate chips and I decided to throw some in just because.  They turned out good, but I’m not sure if I’m wild about the spice and chocolate combo.  I’m fighting a cold at the moment, so perhaps my tastebuds are just off.  My Emma likes ‘em, so that’s a huge accomplishment.

I know, I know.  Beets… in a muffin?  If you consider that beet juice is used as a natural coloring to many, many things, it doesn’t seem so weird to put it in a muffin.  And, you may not know that there are two different kinds of sugar available here in the U.S.– one kind is cane sugar, the other is beet sugar.  Beet sugar is always vegan, while cane sugar may or may not be vegan.  That’s another topic for another post.

So, you see, even though it’s technically a veggie, it is one of those kinds of veggies (like carrots and zucchini) that can go in sweet dishes and/or baked goods and come out okay.  In these muffins, you can’t even pick up on the beet flavor at all.  The only give away is the fact that it stained the apples red.  Try it!  It’s a great way to sneak some veggies into the kiddos.  Emma really liked these and ate one whole mini-muffin for breakfast!  I think she liked it because I used a combo of all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flours.  Usually, I stick to all whole wheat and I think that is a strange texture for her.  You could use all whole wheat pastry here or all all-purpose.  Either would produce a killer muffin.

Cranberry-Apple-Beet Muffins

(click here for a printer-friendly version)

1 1/2 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer (equivalent to 1 egg)

2 TB water

1/4 cup applesauce

1/4 cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 TB white vinegar

1 cup sugar

1 cup beets, finely grated

1 cup apples, finely chopped (if making regular muffins, the apples don’t have to be so finely chopped)

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or more all-purpose)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare muffin tin (or mini-muffin tin) by lining it with paper liners or by spraying with oil.

In a large bowl, whisk the Ener-G and water together until frothy.  Add in the applesauce, oil, vanilla, vinegar, sugar, beets, apples and cranberries and stir to combine.  In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir to combine, but don’t overmix.  Fill the muffin cups to the top.  For mini-muffins, bake 12-15 minutes.  For regular muffins, bake 18-20 minutes.

Halloween is my favorite “holiday” of the year!  I love the costumes and the creativity– especially because the more creative and crazy you get, the better the costume is.  This year, my Emma is a ladybug and I am a mom. 

For our very special Halloween breakfast, I made Pumpkin Pie Pancakes from Vegan Planet. These pancakes were light and fluffy, while not overly pumpkiny or spicy.  I followed the recipe exactly, except I used whole wheat pastry flour in place of the all purpose.  While I thought these were very good, the recipe could use a little more pumpkin and a little more spice.  Of course, Emma didn’t eat more than one bite.  *sigh*

After our pumpkin pancake feast, we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas.  What a perfect start to our Halloween!  Now, we just need to rain to go away so that we can trick-or-treat tonight.