Muffins, Cupcakes and Purple Cauliflower

One night for dinner I made black bean and quinoa-filled cornbread muffins. They were excellent! I made the recipe up myself, but based the filling on VwaV's stuffed pepper filling. I used my cornbread recipe (1/3 of it) and reduced the oil, sugar, and baking time. I was only cooking for myself that night, so this recipe doesn't make a lot, so feel free to double or triple (I had leftover filling). Here's my original cornbread recipe for reference. You'll also need some tortilla chips to put on top.

Black Bean-Quinoa Filling
1/2 can black beans
3 TB quinoa
1/2 chopped onion
3-5 cloves garlic (I love garlic!)
1 tsp maple syrup
Some jarred salsa
Water
Chili powder
Pepper
Salt

Saute the onions in some olive oil for a minute or so, then add the garlic and cook for a few minutes. Add the beans, quinoa, spices to taste, several spoonfuls of salsa, and some water so the quinoa doesn't stick. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Cover and cook the mixture according to the quinoa package directions, or until the quinoa is not hard anymore. When done, add the maple syrup and set aside.

Cornbread Muffins
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1/3 cup flour (I use mostly white whole wheat and a smidge of white)
1/3 cup plus 2 tsp non-dairy milk
1-3 TB sugar (slightly less for savory, more for sweet, I use a mix of sugar and maple syrup)
1 TB vegetable or corn oil
1 TB applesauce (egg replacer)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 scant tsp baking soda
dash salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix dry ingredients in a medium to large mixing bowl.
Mix in soymilk, oil, then applesauce. Stir, but not too much. Grease or spray a muffin tin and fill the cups about 1/4 full, top with a spoonful of black bean quinoa filling, then top with more cornbread batter and some crushed tortilla chips. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

This is just some tofu scramble I made one morning. I thought it was so pretty and colorful, so I took a picture. It has broccoli, red onion, purple cauliflower and shredded carrot. Topped with salsa, that's how I like my tofu scramble.
Fettucini Alfreda from Vegan with a Vengeance with PURPLE cauliflower. This dish looked so neon and galactical. I got the purple caulflower from the farmer's market. It was very different that white cauliflower-more bitter and had a more crunchy, hard texture. I prefer white cauliflower, but the purple was such a pretty color. See the tofu scramble above-turmeric and nutritional yeast make it so colorful!

This weekend we went to a forest preserve and went biking and kayaking. I packed a chickpea salad sammich for lunch and brought along some freshly baked Mocha Chip Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. I used decaf. Scrumptious.

This morning I made Coconut Heaven Cupcakes from VwaV. They were amazing!! I'm usually not a fan of white/vanilla cupcakes, they usually seem spongy and boring, but these coconut-ty cuppers were fantastic. Yum. I used sweetened preservative-filled coconut because I haven't been able to find unsweetened coconut anywhere, so I just reduced the sugar by a couple tablespoons.

It's already August, the summer really flew by. There's only two weeks until I go back to school, which means a lot of my time will be consumed by being at school and studying. I won't be able to blog as much as of August 22nd. I'm not going to be spending a lot of the remainder of summer on the internet because just like these three months went by so fast, 15-20 minutes on the computer mysteriously turns into 2 hours. I've got plans to do some sewing, go places, and spend time with my family and my dog before I have to be gone most of the day (I'm going to miss him so much!). So this is just a heads up of why I won't be blogging as frequently, but I'll be sure to stop by sometimes to say hi (I'll have to do a lot of homework on the computer and I tend to get distracted!). Before summer is over, I want to make a bag/purse out of some fabric I bought a few nights ago, draw a few pictures of Drake, sew some new clothes and do anything creative that I wanted to do. See you later!