Category: Food

So I came up with two ideas for desserts the other day, and this was one of them. I’m happy to report that it worked out!

Vegan Lemon Pies Inside of Apples

This makes four lemon pies.

Ingredients (Original Recipe)

• 4 Apples (I used Fuji)
• 2 Lemons
• 3/4 Cup Water
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 3 Tbsp Corn Starch
• 1 Tbsp Flour
• 1 Tbsp Vegan Butter (eg. Earth Balance)
• Pinch Salt
• Icing Sugar to Drizzle

Directions

1. Juice one of the lemons.
2. Cut the top off of the apples, and carve out their insides to create a hollow shell. Each time you finish with one of the apples, coat its insides with lemon juice. This will prevent it from browning.
3. Optional: I put the apple carvings in a separate container, to use for a later day. When I was done preparing all the apples, I dumped the rest of the lemon juice in the container with those carvings and shook it up before placing it in the fridge.
4. Juice the second lemon.
5. In a small sauce pan, mix the sugar, corn starch, flour and salt. Stir in the water and lemon juice. Make sure there are no clumps.
6. Bring the sauce pan to a boil. Stir frequently.
7. Add the butter.
8. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens.
9. Take the sauce pan off the heat, and pour the contents into the four apples.
10. Drizzle with icing sugar.

My Thoughts

This dessert took no time at all to put together, and in terms of calories you’re looking at quite a reasonable amount – definitively below the 200 calories per apple mark. It tasted fine, but I felt like it needed something else beyond the apple and lemon filling. Perhaps it would have been better served by a crumb topping or whipped cream rather than the icing sugar drizzle.

I once saw a really cool recipe for baking apple pies inside of apples. I thought it was really cool, but the recipes called for baking the whole apple which made them soggy. I didn’t much care for that, or lining the whole thing with a calorie-rich crust, so I came up with a variant. There was three of us in the kitchen making this, and it worked out!

Vegan Apple Pies Inside of Apples

This makes four apple pies.

Crumb Topping (Original Recipe)

• 1/3 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/3 Cup Flour
• 2 Tbsp + 2 Tsp Vegan Butter (eg. Earth Balance)

Apple Pies (Original Recipe)

• 4 Large Apples (we used Fuji)
• 1/2 Lemon
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 3 Tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 Cup Vegan Butter

Maple Cream Cheese Glaze (Original Recipe)

• 1/2 Cup Icing Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Vegan Butter
• 1 Tbsp Vegan Cream Cheese (eg. Tofutti)
• 1 Tbsp Maple Syrup

1. Set the oven to 350 F.
2. Mix the crumb topping ingredients in a bowl until it becomes crumb-like.
3. Spread mixture on a baking sheet with a silicone lining or parchment paper.
4. Bake for 10-15 minutes.
5. While the crumb topping bakes, you can prepare the apples. Squeeze the juice from the lemon in a glass.
6. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and cinnamon for the apple pies.
7. Cut the top off of the apples, and scoop out the insides into that bowl with the sugar. Using a melon baller is handy for this.
8. When you’re done scooping out the insides of the apple, rim its insides with the lemon juice. This will prevent the apple from browning while it sits.
9. Mix the apples with the sugar in the bowl.
10. Pour into a pan on the stove top. Add the vegan butter. Set the heat to medium.
11. Use a fork to gauge whether the apple pie filling is ready. When tender, turn off the heat. This may take 40 minutes.
12. While the apple pie filling cools, prepare the maple glaze. Mix all of those ingredients in a small bowl.
13. Pour the apple pie filling inside the apples. Cover with the crumb topping, and then spoon the glaze on top.
14. Enjoy!

Remarks

This was tasty! The crumb topping kind of became a gigantic cookie upon pulling out of the oven. After employing different strategies to break it up, it turned out that using our fingers was best.

Going forward, I think I might try a different pre-baked crumb topping recipe. Perhaps one that has oats?

What I really like about this recipe is how the crisp uncooked apples make for a really good crust substitute. This thing was borderline healthy!

So today marks a month since I moved into my new place and the work in fixing it up is almost done. Last weekend’s project was to give all the windows and screens the wash it looks like they were never subject to since being installed.

I’ve also been particularly social as of late, and that means much baking. First, there was the queer picnic for which I volunteered. Everything was vegan and gluten-free. I made cinnamon roll doughnuts, maple doughnuts, and Scottish shortbread.

For the last one I substituted butter for Earth Balance (vegan butter) and the flour was Red Mill’s All Purpose gluten-free flour. I also made brown sugar via my usual approach of combining molasses with white sugar.

Then for the day of the Pride parade, I had a group of friends congregating at my place. So I put together cupcakes with balls of chocolate cookie dough in their centre. This was also vegan and gluten-free, substituting ingredients from the original recipe accordingly. Half the portions of the original recipe were used.

I ran into two doughnut recipes that I wanted to try for myself. So I baked miniature chocolate glazed doughnuts and large whole wheat cinnamon sugar doughnuts. Both were good but the latter was especially tasty – I’ll keep that one in mind when I want to make doughnuts using the larger size mold. I used sour cream instead of the greek yoghurt called for by the recipe.

When a friend came over from the coast guard, we made carrot cake balls. They happened to also be vegan and gluten-free, and were quite yummy! The ingredients were simple too – an apple, a carrot, currents, honey, coconut flakes, cinnamon and nutmeg.

The chocolate dip didn’t quite work – I think in retrospect it might have been better to apply it immediately rather than let it sit for some minutes. So the presentation looks pretty bad, but the taste means I won’t hesitate to make these again one day.

Hanging out with another friend, we made gouda and garlic butter pull-apart bread as well as blueberry pies with an apple “crust.”

With yet another pair of friends – yes, baking is a great activity – we made margarita sandwich cookies. We veganized the recipe, using 1/4 cup apple sauce instead of an egg, vegan margarine instead of butter for the cookies, and vegan cream cheese instead of butter for the frosting.

On my end, I’ve also been doing a bit of cooking exploration.

A coworker friend gave me a Magic Bullet, and I used it to make my first creamy soup of the butternut squash variety. It was so simple, yet easily among the top three things I’ve ever prepared. I had a grilled vegetable wrap at a restaurant the other day, it was delicious, so I decided to attempt my own. That kind of stuff.

Disappointed with my previous experiment of the sweet potato rolls, I decided to take a different path.

This time it would be rice paper (I wanted nori but couldn’t find any) filled with quinoa. There would be a cucumber slice for a base and it would be topped with toffuti [vegan] cream cheese, half a baby tomato, and a dash of basil & pepper.

This second trial was better. The cucumber base provided a nice crunch, contrasted by the creamy cream cheese. The pepper and tomato complimented that combination well. The quinoa/rice paper was more iffy. Maybe if it was nori this time? Or perhaps substitute the quinoa for julienne carrots intermixed with pepper and avocado?

So I had this idea to make sweet potato spring rolls. I rolled up mashed sweet potatoes in rice paper. I then topped it off with a maple-soy sauce, and a bit of decoration.

It was unspectacular taste wise. The sauce was good though, which I had stolen that one from a recipe in the Metro.

The sauce was 3 tbsp soy sauce, 3 tbsp maple syrup, and 2 tbsp corn starch. You whisked them together and boiled it in a small sauce pan, continuing to whisk 2 minutes afterwards as it thickened.

I liked the idea of these rolls, and perhaps if I introduced another layer on top of the mashed potatoes – something creamy perhaps – it could have worked.