Cake for breakfast? Of course.

It’s a shame that so many cake recipes call for eggs, cream, and loads of sugar, when the same texture – fluffy, moist, flaky, and rich – can be matched sans the heavy ingredients and dangerous boost in blood sugar levels. Sure, there’s room for those kinds of desserts too, but if you’re anything like me and need dessert everyday – that is, require for basal human function –  then it helps to have an arsenal of silhouette-forgiving, vegan dessert recipes on hand.

This vanilla cake recipe is a simple, foundational recipe that can be altered according to your tastes. Like chocolate? Add cocoa powder. Like more texture? Add dried fruit and nuts. Like things bigger? Buy more pans for layering. But what I’ve written here is a mild, flaky cake that is a lot like a soft, light, and slightly sweet bread to be complemented with tea, coffee or almond milk.

I added a personal touch to the cake by baking it over pineapple slices, which add moisture and make for a great presentation. I chose pineapple for its taste, but the diamond-under-the-rough fruit is also packed with immune-boosting vitamin C, promotes healthy gums and teeth, sharpens vision, improves digestion, and alleviates arthritis symptoms.

Pineapple also contains the enzyme bromelain, which helps to break down protein. This knowledge comes in handy after you’ve eaten a hefty meal – chewing on a bit of pineapple can help to make room for dessert, because foregoing dessert is seldom an option. And lucky for you, this recipe cuts to the chase and adorns the top of a vanilla cake with brown-sugar glazed pineapple slices, so you make more room for dessert whilst eating dessert. Pure logic, my friends.

Note: If you want a caramelized effect, use a metal spring-form pan and the brown sugar is a must, since it helps to caramelize the pineapples. I personally like my pineapples to tenderize without becoming too sweet, since I treat this dish more as a “S’pose-I’ll –just-have-this-here-cake-for-breakfast-since-it’s-so-clean-and-healthy” item than a dessert item. For this reason, I use a glass pan and sometimes forego the brown sugar. When I do want the cake for dessert, I warm it up and drizzle with honey for that extra sweetness.

Pineapple Bread Cake

Serves 8-10

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon brown sugar (optional)
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons vegan butter + 1/2 tablespoon for coating baking dish
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup almond milk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Coat the bottom and sides of baking dish with 1/2 tablespoon of butter. Sprinkle brown sugar on top, evenly across the area of the dish. Skin a pineapple and cut along its width as thin as possible, making 4-6 discs. Place pineapple on the bottom of the baking dish.

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Using your hands, cut the vegan butter (I like to use Earth Balance) into the dry mixture, using your fingers to create a meal-like texture.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients, except for the almond milk. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until pasty. Add the almond milk a little at a time until the mixture reaches a thick, but easily spreadable texture.

Carefully spread batter over the pineapple slices in the glass baking dish.

Bake in the oven for approximately 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

After you remove the cake from the oven, loosen the edges with a knife and let cool down. When cool enough to handle with your bare hands, use a cutting board to help flip the dish over so that the pineapples are exposed.

The result is a light but comforting bread-like cake that has just the right touch of pineapple to keep things interesting. Cut a piece and serve warm with almond milk for dipping or enjoy aside a morning coffee.

Enjoy!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

The post Recipe: Vegan Pineapple Vanilla Bread Cake appeared first on EcoSalon.

Rethinking breakfast, one egg at a time.

Pizza for breakfast. We’ve all been there, but this time it doesn’t involve you shamelessly munching on the cold leftovers from last night’s dinner. Instead, it’s a fried egg, cheese and tomatoes served over a whole-grain toasted bagel.

The whole-grain bagel provides you with the fiber your body craves in the a.m. and the protein-packed egg and cheese are sure to keep you fuller for longer, all the while offering the comfort of a flavor combination you know all too well. Sometimes a savory breakfast fits the bill and this recipe takes pizza and gives it a morning makeover.

Egg Sandwich Pizza

Serves 1

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1/2 tablespoon butter
• Dash of salt and pepper
• 1 whole-grain/whole-wheat bagel, toasted
• 1 thin slice of parmesan cheese
• 1 slice tomato
• 3-4 sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon fresh oregano, pulled from stems

Directions:

In a saucepan over high heat, add the butter. When melted, crack open the egg into the saucepan and let cook. Pull in the edges of the egg white as it cooks and break open the yoke slightly with a spatula to help it cook through.

When the egg is cooked through, but still soft on top, season with salt and pepper and remove the saucepan from the stove and set aside.

Over a toasted sliced bagel half, begin to add the fillings – the fried egg, then the cheese, tomato slice, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh oregano.

Cover the sandwich with the other half of the bagel and slice along the middle before serving.

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

The post Sunday Recipe: Egg Sandwich Pizza appeared first on EcoSalon.

A childhood favorite revamped.

There’s something incredibly nostalgic about macaroni and cheese. Even if you rarely ate the meal as a kid, you most certainly recognized the commercials for the box brands and knew what it was. For me, mac & cheese was an after-school staple, a weekend lunch, a quick dinner that never fell short of filling the carb and cheese quota I necessitated as a youngster.

But it’s no nutritional powerhouse. Sure, advertisements can skirt the overall lack of nutrition with a “high in calcium!” banner, but last time I checked, just because something includes dairy ( e.g. ice cream, crème brûlée, pizza) doesn’t mean it’s a nourishing and balanced meal. Across the board – in both store-bought and homemade versions of it– macaroni and cheese has a lot of room for improvement in terms of nutritional benefit.

Using Kraft Macaroni & Cheese as an example, box brands include the likes of whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, sodium tripolyphosphate, citric acid, sodium phosphate, lactic acid, milk, calcium phosphate, yellow 5, yellow 6, cheese culture, and enzymes. Artificial coloring and preservatives prevent the assimilation of nutrients and with often over 500 milligrams of sodium, box brands are blood pressure’s natural nemesis.

And while homemade macaroni and cheese both is better for you and can cut the sodium, enzymes and preservatives from the mix, the classic recipe made from scratch will include the following: white pasta, butter, plain white flour, milk, and grated cheese. White flour is essentially the result of having stripped everything useful from wheat, adding synthetic vitamins, and bleaching it. The vitamins in white flour are toxic, and because the flour is devoid of fiber, it passes slowly through the intestine, giving more time for the body to absorb the toxicities. The bleaching process also increases the flour’s gluten content. Additionally, the butter and cheese are by no means used scantily in homemade macaroni and cheese, so you can be sure the result is high in artery-clogging saturated fat, sodium, and the hard-to-digest animal milk protein, casein. To say the least, homemade macaroni and cheese is also no poster child for health.

Today, it’s hard to justify eating macaroni and cheese when little is to be gained (except for taste, of course). I’m all about eating what gives you pleasure, and if you are craving little white flour noodles flavored with powdered cheese every now and then, don’t hesitate to dig in! But there are times when the conscience outweighs the desire and when part of me wishes there were a healthier alternative. So, I created one.

This recipe is a vegan version of macaroni and cheese. The cheese has a sweet potato base. Skeptical? I was too until I tried it. The sweet potato is baked and mixed with mustard and nutritional yeast to give it the “cheesy” taste. Nutritional yeast is one of those ingredients that has changed my life. It’s the only plant-based source of vitamin B12, which is music to vegans’ ears. It is super versatile and one of the few ways to match the taste of cheese without using dairy. Combining the “cheese” with whole-grain or whole-wheat pasta, the result is a rich, satisfying macaroni and cheese experience, without the food baby to show for it.

Whole-Wheat Macaroni & Sweet Potato Cheese

Serves 1

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of cooked noodles (according to package instructions)
• 1/2 baked sweet potato
• 1/4 tsp mustard
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• Dash of salt
• Dash of freshly ground pepper
• 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast and 1/2 tbsp of olive oil for crust

In a medium-sized bowl combine the sweet potato half, juice of half a lemon, mustard, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix until thoroughly combined.

Fold 1 cup of cooked noodles into the sweet potato “cheese”.

Place the mixture into a serving-size baking dish.

Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast over the dish and drizzle with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil. This will allow the top to crisp while cooking.

Bake in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, or until the top begins to brown. Serve and enjoy!

The result is super soft and creamy. Its flavors satisfy the sweet, salty, sour and bitter taste buds, making it a decidedly complete dish without you craving anything else, except for maybe more of what you just ate!

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

Image: Pink Sherbert Photography

The post Nutritional Breakdown: Macaroni and Cheese Gets A Sweet Potato Revamp appeared first on EcoSalon.