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fall

Creamy Cheesy Vegan Pumpkin Pasta

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Holy cow it’s fall! Welcome fall and all things pumpkin! Including this dreamy Creamy Cheesy Vegan Pumpkin Pasta. I couldn’t deicide if I should name this “creamy vegan pumpkin pasta” or “vegan pumpkin mac’n’cheese,” and since the dish falls somewhere in the middle, I just went with Creamy Cheesy Vegan Pumpkin Pasta. I hope you’re okay with the title. I am. According to James ‘It’s not about the pasta’ anyways (…Vanderpump Rules reference anyone?)

Now let’s talk about this pasta. This Creamy Cheesy Vegan Pumpkin Pasta is lucious, healthful, dish bursting with warm flavors and nooshy goodness.

The deep umami flavor of the pumpkin puree is embellished a bit with aromatics like shallots and garlic, and punched up a notch with a bit of mustard, as well as some spices, like cayenne, cinnamon and paprika. If you’re feeling ambitious, feel free to steam or roast pumpkin or butternut squash, then cool it and puree. If using canned pumpkin is easier for you, that will work just fine.

Either way, you’ll be adding some beta-carotene and fiber-rich vegetable goodness to the base of your pasta, building a healthful, nourishing, and satiating plant-based meal.

If you don’t like any of the above mentioned spices, feel free to omit them. This pasta is fairly forgiving; as long as you have a good amount of salt, the pasta will taste delicious.

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Midterm Season Vegan Eats + Cherry Bombe University Recap

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Hello once again to my fine internet friends! I hope you are having the warmest coziest fall filled with mugs of tea, hearty soups, scrumptious baked goods, and warm blankies. I’m back in the blogging game after a fatiguing few weeks of midterms and application work.

Midterms really did not bring out the best in me this year, and after crying in public from lack of sleep and overloads of stress, I decided it was a healthful idea to take a step back from the internet and putting pressure on myself to blog for a few days and focus on learning how to chill and sleep and and socialize and eat like a normal homeostatic human being again.

But! I’m feeling quite restored after this weekend of naps and friends and oodles of baking and wanted to share some meals and snacks from the past few weeks. Hope you enjoy! Leave me your favorite snacks and cozy meals in the comments below, or pop over to my Instagram and slide into my DMs.

I’ll also be recapping my experience at Cherry Bombe University, so keep on reading for that!

Avocado Toast with Za’atar:

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This was a new-to-me-combo that I’d wanted to try out for a while. I also added some hemp hearts and nutritional yeast for extra flavor/texture/satiety. It was pretty good, but not my favorite avo toast flavor combo. Still fun to try though!

Oatmeal with frozen blueberries and almond butter

I cannot get enough of this combo lately. I basically make this cinnamon banana-blurberry-oatmeal thing by cooking a 1/2 cup oats with 1/2 a mashed banana and about 1/4 cup frozen blueberries stirred in towards the end of cooking. I then pour my oats into a bowl and top with almond butter while the oats are still warm so the almond butter gets melty, and pour almond milk on top to cool it off, and enjoy.

Dumplings and the Sweet Soy Bowl from Luanne’s Wild Ginger

I visited one of my BFFs Raag in Brookyln last weekend for an early bday celebration. We grabbed lunch at Luanne’s Wild Ginger and it was excellent.

We started with dumplings (<3) and tempura. I’m not a huge fried-foods person, but I love me some doughy doughy dumplings.

For my entree, I got a sweet soy something bowl (can’t remember the actual name), with chewy brown rice, tangy-sweet-sour-spicy gluttonous soy medallions, steamed Japanese pumpkin, house-madee pickled veggies, and kale, and some yummy sauces. This was incredible. I’d eat it every day. Yum.

Happy birthday Raag!

Cinnamon Rolls

Made from scratch with Raag. We used this minimalist baker recipe. Delish! Cinnamon rolls are life.

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{Healthier, Vegan} Pumpkin Muffies

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I love Panera. “Meet me at Panera Bread” is one of my favorite phrases to hear. Perhaps it’s a nostoglia thing (I ate a lot of Panera growing up) but p-bread forever has a soft spot in my heart. Those sourdough rolls. The baguettes. Their Strawberry Poppyseed Salad. Dat soup. The bread bowls. The bagels. The Med Veg sandwich with the cilantro-jalepeño hummus. The fact that my bestie Sarah Cath worked there. The unlimited in-house coffee refills. I could go on forever.

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When it comes to the baked goods Panera has to offer, Pumpkin Muffies also have a special place in my heart. To me, pumpkin muffies represent surprises my dad would bring me if he had grabbed lunch there during work, a (welcomed) treat on rare school mornings, or special weekend breakfast noms. I remember the excitement I’d feel every time I’d get that signature brown paper bag with that Panera criss-cross pattern and could see the bottom had a slight greasy oil circle at the bottom. At that moment, I knew: it was a Pumpkin Muffie, just waiting to give me a powder sugar mustache.

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Fluffy, sweet, pumpkin-y, and with those strange powder sugar balls, these babies are incredible and I love them unconditionally. I don’t quite know why I’ve never tried to make them at home before, but yesterday morning for whatever reason I just needed to do so. And that’s just what I did.

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I made mine with oat flour because it results in super soft baked goods, which is exactly what I was aiming for, and they’re whole grain, so they feel less junk-y than the original ones. The muffins themselves are super fluffy, almost bouncy, cinnamon-y, and are a bit less sweet than the Panera version.

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I used chia seeds + water as an egg substitute/nutritional booster, but you can also use flax, applesauce, or an egg if that’s more your style. The topping? That’s still pure sugary goodness. And that is totally fine.

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How do you make them muffies you ask? I placed a biscuit cutter on my baking sheet, put two generous spoonfuls of batter into it, allowed to batter to kind of adhere to its shape for a hot second, then lifted the biscuit cutter and repeated this 12 times until I had 12 muffies. You could also use a circular cookie cutter, pipe in a circle using a wide-tipped pastry bag or plastic bag with a large corner end snipped off, or do your best and try to spoon the batter into circular shapes. It’s up to you. Even if you bake them in a muffin tin as regular muffins, they will still taste delicious, don’t you worry. 😉

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{Healthier, Vegan} Pumpkin Muffies

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15-20 minutes

Level: Easy

Ingredients – Muffies:

  • 2 1/4 cups oat flour (all purpose would also work)
  • 1/2 cup almond or soy milk
  • 1 teaspoon vinegar (any kind will do)
  • 1 tablespoon chia seeds or flax seed + 2 tablespoons water (can also use 3 tablespoons apple sauce)
  • 1 cup canned pumpkin
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • dash of salt

Ingredients – Topping:

  • 1/3 cup powdered sugar
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a small bowl, combine almond or soy milk and vinegar. Set aside and allow to curdle for at least 10 minutes. In another small bowl, combine chia seeds + flax seeds and water and set that aside too.

3. In a large bowl, combine oat flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk until well combined.

4. Add canned pumpkin, sugar, almond milk + vinegar mixture, and chia seeds + water into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Use a spatula or spoon to fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

5. Place a silicone baking pad or sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet. Place a biscuit cutter or circular cookie cutter down on the sheet. Place two generous spoonfuls of batter into the biscuit cutter. Allow the batter to form to the shape of the circle. Lift the biscuit cutter, and repeat 12 times until you’ve made 12 circular muffies.

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6. Place muffies in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until puffy, fragrant, bouncy upon touch, and a toothpick placed in the center of the muffies comes out clean.

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7. Place muffies on a cooling rack and allow to cool. Meanwhile, combine powder sugar and brown sugar in a small bowl and mix together.

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8. Once muffies have cooled, sprinkle topping all over them. I recommend doing this right once muffies are COMPLETELY cool, and/or preferably right before eating, otherwise the powder sugar may absorb into the muffies and they’ll look shiny and weird. Store in plastic baggies or an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. These also freeze and reheat well. Especially in the toaster. Yummies = when you have toaster muffies. Hooray! Muffies all week long. Happy Monday everyone :)!

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Mini Pumpkin Donuts with Chocolate Drizzle [vegan]

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Once upon a time I published a recipe for Mini Shortcut Vegan Banana Muffins with Coconut-Almond Glaze. I was surprised at how much responded to like it. Turns out, people like shortcuts. Like using a mix to make something quickly, but jazzing it up to make it more special. I could go on and on about how I’m typically opposed to mixes, but truth is they come in handy, and recipes that incorporate mixes to save time are just as important as a from-scratch Cronut recipes which take 16 hours from start to completion. All baked goods have a time, place and life situation, and sometimes ya need a shortcut!

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So fastforward form summer (when I wrote that recipe) into fall. It’s pumpkin season! [In case you forgot]. I certainly have not forgotten this fact. I’m practically orange from all the extra beta-carotene I’ve been consuming. I feel like people are going to start intervening and telling me to lay off the tanning beds. But really, peoples, I just love my sweet potatoes and carrots and pumpkin. #besties #beta-c

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So yes, I used a plain cake mix to make these [I used Cherrybrook Kitchens] and instead of using oil and eggs and whathave you the way one would typically make a cake, I used canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, and pseudo-buttermilk, put them in mini-doughnut pans, and made baked cake doughnuts. I then drizzled melted chocolate chips on some. On others, I used leftover cinnamon-sugar from my Apple Cinnamon Duffins. Both are good options.

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Pumpkin-Apple Spice Fruit Roll-Ups !

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Another beautiful fall day = another reason to put fall flavors in EVERYTHING. Fall is my favorite flavor season. I practically live for squashes and sweet potatoes and root vegetables of all sorts so when they are at their peak of bounty and freshness I am basically a full-grown kid in a vegetable-candy store.

Do you know what else I love almost as much as fall veggies? Apples. Which also happen to gracefully be at their freshness peak in fall. C’mon now – one bite of any fresh fall apple and you know exactly what I’m talking about. Fall apples just taste different. Aka fresher. More like the orchard. Juicier. Tangier. Sweeter. More magical. Fresher. All at once. They are perfect.

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So let’s hear it for fall produce. #gofiber. But you know what else is wonderful about fall? PIE SEASON. To quote my sister, “pie fixes everything,” and in our family we believe that all life moments are pie-appropriate.

However, in the fall, they seem to pop up more on menus and in homes, particularly those that follow the fall-flavor theme. Pumpkin and apple are regular Thanksgiving favs, and all-year-round favorites for me.

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So why not – when presented with a dehydrator theme for September for The Recipe Redux – combine all the flavors of apple and pumpkin into a yummy, portable snack that’s junk free and nutritious? And thus, Pumpkin-Apple Spice Fruit Roll Ups were born.

Inspired by pie, made healthy and delicious by nature/you and your oven. These are easy as, well, pie, but a great way to give you a glucose boost in the afternoon without making you feel sluggish and icky. They’re perfect study or hiking snacks and make magnificent adorable additions to lunchboxes. What they lack in flourescent color, they make up for in flavor. You won’t regret making these, I promise.

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{A side note about The Recipe Redux – the Recipe Redux is a super cool network of bloggers who make healthier, delicious recipes and submit them into contests every month based on a theme chosen by the group. It is the only recipe contest founded by registered dietitians !…

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Pumpkin Spice Chia Seed Pudding

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Now that it’s mid-September, it’s officially time to put pumpkin and pumpkin spice in everything you eat. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – pumpkin is practically the best thing that’s every happened to the culinary world. I’m obsessed with it. I honestly will eat canned pumpkin with cinnamon and a spoon. People think this is weird. I know it’s delicious.

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But canned pumpkin – besides providing a delicious fall-like umami flavor – is also a great way to bump up the veggie content, fiber, potassium and beta-carotene of basically everything. I use it a lot for both sweet and savory dishes and can’t wait to share many of them right here on kbaked.com.

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But first – let’s talk breakfast. I love chia seed pudding. I also love pumpkin. Genius idea: put them together! Add pumpkin pie spice! Eat what tastes like pumpkin pie filling in a bowl for breakfast! Bonus: it’s healthy! Chia seeds are known power foods filled with healthy-fats, fiber and omega-3s, and make an excellent pudding if allowed to plump up in the presence of a little liquid. This works with almond or any other milk, and the pumpkin only makes it thicker, creamier, and more scrumptious. Add as much or as little sweetener as you like. Maple syrup keeps the fall flavor profile on point, but anything will do! Heck, I’d even eat it without any sweetener. I.love.pumpkin.

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Anyways, make this the night before. Prepping takes like 46 seconds, and when you wake up all you have to do is take it out of the fridge and eat it. It could not be easier. In fact, it may be the easiest recipe on kbaked.com to date. Enjoy this delicious, healthy treat as breakfast, dessert, or a snack. It will keep you full and happy for at least a few hours, as would pair nicely with a pumpkin spice beverage if you’re into excess like I am. Happy fall and happy eats! xoxo, kbakes.

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Whole-Wheat Rosemary Tomato Focaccia

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Happy September AND happy Labor Day friends! Today marks the end of the summer and the end of tomato growing season – which means that you may, like me, be overwhelmed by the amount of tomatoes you have at your disposal for consumption.

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There is nothing more August-y or wonderful than legit homegrown tomatoes. They taste 190% different than the big crappy ones you get from the grocery store in the middle of winter. You know what I mean – the sweet baby ones that you can literally pop like candy. OoooOooo baby are they a treat. I can literally eat an entire bowl of them and think nothing of it.

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Today not only marks the end of August, it apparently “officially” marks the end of summer. Sigh. And today, it was as if mother nature wanted to make sure we really knew this, so we had some morning thunder storms and cool, fall breezes to remind us of what lies ahead. Although I am sad to bid farewell to berries by the bucket-load and oodles of sunshine, I’m not totally opposed to fall. It’s my favorite flavor season (FALL VEGETABLES FTW!) and I am comfortable with the idea of big sweaters, racking leaves, apple pickin’ and pumpin’ cravin’. As the weather cools, I am only further enticed to warm up by the oven. Meaning more reasons to bake! #party.

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So on this awkward summer-meets-fall day, I decided to make a summer-meets-fall dish: focaccia with late summery tomatoes and fresh rosemary. I love fresh baked bread, especially on a windy cool day. And I’ve had a hankerin’ to make focaccia for a while now. I love its springy bouncy texture. Also today I learned it’s incredibly difficult to spell. So that initially make me like it slightly less, but also made more determined to master not only its spelling but also its taste. And then I forgave its difficulty to spell and accepted that I’m a terrible speller and moved on with life. With a pan of freshly baked focaccia to guide me to more important things.

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So give this stuff a whirl. It’s yummy plain, with soup, or for as an extra tasty addition to a sandwich. It’s highly customizable to your personal tastes, but the rosemary truly adds wonderful notes of pine and spice and the fresh tomatoes ended up as a gooey sweet caramelized topping. Ugh. Yum. #carbs5ever. So happy late-summer and happy early fall. See you in squash and apple season, babay.

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Whole-Wheat Rosemary Tomato Focaccia

Prep Time: 4-8 hours

Bake Time: 20-30 minutes

Level: Easy

Ingredients:

  • one packet (1/4 oz) dry active yeast
  • one cup warm water (about 120 degrees F)
  • 2 tablespoons maple syrup or molasses (food for the yeast to eat and grow!)
  • 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1 cup all purpose or bread flour
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • one large sprig rosemary, or 2 tablespoons dried rosemary
  • 5-10 cherry tomatoes

Directions:

1. Warm the water and pour into a large bowl or stand mixer and sprinkle yeast on top. Add maple syrup and mix gently. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes until the yeast looks foamy at the top of the water.

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2. In a separate bowl, combine flours and salt. Slowly add flour mixture to water mixture, and olive oil, about 2 tablespoons of rosemary, and using the dough hook, mix dough well until a large dough ball forms, roughly 7 minutes.

3. Transfer dough to an oiled bowl, cover, and store in a cool, dry, dark place for 2-8 hours until it has doubled in size. Punch down the dough, knead for a few minutes, and transfer to a small, oiled baking pan. I used a random 6×10 inch pan.

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4. Poke holes all over the dough and allow it to do a second proof (rising) for about an hour. This proof is more important than the first rising. Don’t skip it!

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5. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. If desired, brush a little more olive oil on the bread surface, and slice tomatoes thinly and gently press them into dough surface. Sprinkle a little more rosemary and sea salt on top. Bake for 20-30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean upon removal.

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6. Cool. Eat. Make a sandwich. Dip in bread. Eat more. Enjoy.

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