Most of the time I steer clear of these online cake blog cliques A) Because I’m already in a food gang, and it’s called BrutalSnack, and B) They’re usually an elaborate ploy by some conglomerate to post advertising on my webpage thereby tapping into my “alternative” readership. While I’m sure TLC is thrilled to finally have an audience that listens to grindcore and watches Married With Children re-runs, I was actually very impressed with their “you don’t have to write about the Little Chocolatiers” policy – and especially with the group they put together. (Hello, Cakespy and Bake It Pretty?) Plus, they do awesome stuff like send me a Flip Cam and challenge me to make a summertime treat on camera!

So for this particular challenge, I took one of my most popular cupcakes – the Vegan Elvis Comeback Special – and turned it into a tall, frosty milkshake. My fellow Cake Crew bloggers and I are all making videos in hopes that they’ll be posted on TLC.com and chosen the winner by a team of judges who will award one of us with a 15 minute phone conversation with Buddy Valastro – yeah, the Cake Boss. I hope you realize the level of awesome that a phone call between Buddy and myself would be. I worked in an Italian bakery for years – I can yell about zabaione with the best of them! Judges are looking for creativity, appearance and online feedback – so please leave me all your feedback, comments, criticisms, and jokes about my Elvis-meets-the Honky Tonk Man-impression because it all helps my chances!

Bake and Destroy: Cake Shake, Rattle & Roll from Natalie Slater on Vimeo.

Because the ice cream requires several hours from start to finish, I made mine one day ahead.

For the dairy-free peanut butter ice cream you’ll need:

• 2 cups coconut (or any other non-dairy) milk
• 3/4 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (or DIY it with this recipe)
• 1 Tbs pure vanilla extract

Then you:

Stir the milk, peanut butter and sugar together over medium heat in a medium-sized sauce pan. Everything should melt together as you stir – bring it to a boil and stir briskly to make sure all the sugar melts. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Refrigerate for 2 hours, or until chilled. Follow the directions on your ice cream maker to freeze. I use the KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment so it takes about 20 minutes to churn. Stick that in the freezer to firm up.

For the cupcakes you’ll need:

• 1 mashed ripe banana
• 1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup non-dairy milk
• 1 & 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 cup finely chopped dark chocolate or vegan chocolate chips, chopped

Then you:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line your pan with paper liners. (You don’t have to make cupcakes – you can also bake this batter in an 8″ square pan or 9″ round.)
Smash the banana with a fork – it just needs to be smooshed, but it doesn’t have to be liquid.
Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, vanilla, almond and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry, but don’t over mix or you’ll get tough cupcakes. Small lumps are fine. Finally, add the chocolate, folding gently. (You could also leave the chocolate out of the cake and add it to the shake at the end.)
Fill liners 2/3 full. Bake 20-22 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Finally you:

Throw one cupcake in the blender along with 2-3 scoops of ice cream and a splash of non-dairy milk. I went with coconut throughout because it adds a nice sweet flavor. I topped mine with Soyatoo Vegan Whipped Cream, although Melisser tells me that the mix is better because you can add sugar to taste. Topped with a cherry and poured into my Cake Boss pint glass this was a dessert fit for The King.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Win this shirt!

A few weeks ago I received an email from the peeps Threadless that literally made me squeal with joy on the El. To paraphrase, it said, “Hey Natalie, I see that you are awesome. We at Threadless are also awesome. Perhaps you’d like to be a Threadcakes judge this year?” After I got done making all the strangers on the train with me read the email I replied with an enthusiastic yes and made several dozen excited Twitter and Facebook updates.

A few weeks later they emailed me again to say they were releasing a shirt soon that they thought I’d be perfect to model. When I saw the mock up for Zombie at Tiffany’s I knew it was a match made in t-shirt heaven.

I’m incapable of new people without baking them something, and I wasn’t about to walk into the Threadless office with some weak ass cupcakes. So after verifying that there were some vegans in the office I decided to make some Vegan Pancake Cupcakes. I got home from work the night before photo day only to discover that my maple flavoring had leaked all over my spice drawer. Awesome! Now what?

I assessed the ingredient situation – a little iffy since I’d just baked three dozen cupcakes for Teno’s Super Mario birthday party. I had cocoa powder, exactly 12 Trader Joe’s Joe Joe’s cookies,  a small amount of natural peanut butter, soy margarine and rice milk – basically everything I  needed to make chocolate cupcakes, peanut butter frosting and ganache. So I threw a Joe Joe’s cookie in the bottom of each cup and poured the batter on top. After the cakes cooled, I filled each one with peanut butter frosting and topped that with ganache. Then each one got a small swirl of more peanut butter frosting on top. I really wanted to throw a pretzel on there, but the only ones in the house were made with butter so I skipped it. I had Tony run a taste-test and they passed – thus, Madame Cocoa Cookiebottom was born, and a glorious vegan cupcake she was!

The next day I felt like Ricky on Silver Spoons. I’m pretty sure they have a mini train running through the Threadless office there and if you take a ride, unicorns feed you ice cream. Everyone I met was funny and cool and for once, I was wearing the least stupid t-shirt in the room. (And by stupid, I mean awesomely stupid.)

Threadless: wear cool shirts, eat your friends

Anyway, the photos went snap-snap, the cupcakes went munch-munch, and I walked away with one more thing to add to my resume – Threadless t-shirt model.

But it’s not all about me, kids. Because the f’n rad t-shirt that I filled out in a way only a girl who eats Cupcake Pebbles for dinner can do dropped on the Threadless homepage today and to celebrate – I’m giving two away.

To enter, head over to Threadless and peruse the goods. Come back here and leave a comment about your favorite Threadless shirt. Random.org and I will pick two winners – one of you will get this here awesome t-shirt and a $25 gift certificate for even more Threadless swag and the other will win the Zombie at Tiffany’s shirt. I’ll announce the winners one week from today – 4/21. Good luck!

The contest is now closed – thanks to everyone who played and congrats to Danielle and Jessica!

Most of the time, I get an idea in my head and spend the next several days scrambling around trying to find all the ingredients needed to make the idea a reality. And by “reality,” I mean “cupcake.” This time, Teno and I were pillaging Trader Joe’s for all their Peppermint Joe Joes when I happened to notice they had cans of organic sweet potato puree for sale. I bought one, thinking I might want it one of these days, and basically forgot about it.

Then I remembered that I also had a vegan marshmallow kit gifted to me by City the NZ Cupcake Queen and I realized this was the universe’s way of telling me to make a vegan candied yam cupcake. (Sweet potato casserole, whatever.)

Like all of my previous attempts at vegan marshmallow-making, this was a colossal failure. (Alice, the lady behind Angel Food Confectionery thinks I might not have let enough water boil off.) I was too lazy to make a vegan marshmallow frosting, so I ran out and grabbed pre-fab vegan mallows and tried not to feel like a failure. Before I finished, I did a lot of bragging to my co-workers that I was going to make these cupcakes. Then I under baked them and set several of them on fire with the kitchen torch. So I will be sending them the link to this post in addition to my apology for another cupcake-less week in the office.

For the cupcakes you’ll need:

• 1 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 & 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 Tbs ground flax seeds + 6 Tbs warm water (or your favorite replacement for 2 eggs)
• 1 cup canned sweet potato puree
• splash of soy milk (if batter looks thick)

Plus:

Your favorite vegan marshmallow recipe, or a pack of your favorite vegan marshmallows.

And for the candied walnuts:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups walnuts
• pinch of course salt

Then you:

Make candied walnuts. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lay walnuts on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake 5 minutes, then remove from oven and cool. Pour the sugar into a medium saucepan with a thick bottom. With the walnuts nearby, cook the sugar on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon as soon as the sugar begins to melt. Keep stirring and cooking until the sugar is an amber color – then quickly add the walnuts, coating them with the sugar mixture. Spread the coated walnuts on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat or waxed paper. Use two forks to separate the walnuts, working quickly. Sprinkle with salt and cool completely.

Then, make the cupcakes. Preheat your oven to 350 (or leave it heated, if it’s still on from the walnuts) and line your pan with paper liners. Mix together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, allspice, nutmeg and salt in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, oil and flax goo until well combined. Add sweet potato and soy milk beating well. Add flour mixture and beat until smooth.

Scoop batter into pan (you’ll probably get 15 or so cupcakes) and bake 22-27 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. (Not usually the way I test for doneness but these are goopy.)

While the cupcakes are hot, top each one with a few marshmallows. (This will help the marshmallows stick to the top.) Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Using a small kitchen torch, toast the marshmallows – sprinkle with walnuts, pressing them into the sticky marshmallow.

Like I said, I under baked my cupcakes by about 4 minutes, resulting in what we re-named a pudding cake. The bonus to baking vegan is that even when your cake is underdone you can still eat it without worrying about weird things growing in your intestines.

Pumpkin ice cream pie - in Time Out Chicago (soon!)

Be sure to check out my easily veganizable Stuffin’ Muffins over at BrutalAsHell.com and my soon-to-be-published vegetarian Thanksgiving menu in Time Out Chicago! (I’ll post the link as soon as it’s posted!)

PS If you’ve made vegan marshmallows successfully:

1) You are a liar.

2) Tell me how.

Win this apron from Cupcake Provocateur!

Wondering why I didn’t start this recipe post with a photo of the finished product? Um, because I made these with a three-year-old and seven-year-old and they decorated them with Scooby Doo fruit snacks so… gross. Yeah.

Anyway, it’s not a big deal – I was home with Teno and Milo on Wednesday because the Remnants release party was that night. We tried baking some ice cream cone cupcakes but some kind of freaky magic happened and they turned into soup. So, on our second try we did a hybrid of two of my favorite recipes – Julie Hasson’s French toast cupcakes and maple cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

What we ended up with were some of the moistest, fluffiest maple and cinnamon cupcakes I’ve ever had – and a couple of very entertained little boys.

To make the cupcakes you’ll need:

• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 & 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 2 Tbs brown sugar
• 1 & 1/4 tsp maple extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

And for the vegan maple buttercream you’ll need:

• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 6 Tbs Earth Balance margarine
• 6 Tbs non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
• 2 Tbs maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp maple extract
• Pinch salt

Then you:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees; line a cupcake pan with paper liners. Whisk the soy milk and vinegar together in a large measuring cup, set aside to curdle. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into a large bowl. Whisk the maple syrup, oil, brown sugar, maple and vanilla extracts into the soy milk mixture. Form a well in the fry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients – stir until the large lumps are gone. Fill the cups 2/3 full and bake 20-22 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and cool completely.

To make the frosting, beat all of the ingredients together until they’re pale and fluffy.

Like I said – not a big deal. It’s one of my favorite recipes from one book mixed with a favorite from another. Whatevs. People asked for it and there it is. Oh! And I also have a neat apron from Cupcake Provocateur to give away! Of course, if you see another one that strikes your fancy you can always use the code to your right to save 10% on it!

I asked this question on Twitter today, so I’m going to ask it again – leave me a comment with your answer between today and the end of the week (8/14) and one of you will win this apron – if you were an mma fighter what would your intro music be?

It’s a basic recipe, and you can substitute whatever you have lying around for the ingredients I used here. We went vegan on these because I like to sneak flax into his food whenever possible. I’ll include non-vegan substitutes at the end of the recipe.

For the muffins we used:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (1/2 of this measurement could be subt. with whole wheat flour)
• 1 cup sugar (I was tempted to use up some honey powder here, but wanted to keep these totally vegan)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 2 1/2 Tbs flax seed meal + 3 Tbs water
• 1/4 cup + 2Tbs soy milk
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup mashed bananas (one large banana)
• 1/2 cup diced bananas
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup granola (or granola-like cereal)
• 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
• Additional granola or coconut for top, optional

Then you:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease one muffin pan. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the canola oil and blend.

In a small bowl, beat together the flax seed meal and water- it will get thick and gooey. Mix this with the soy milk, vanilla and mashed bananas and add it to the flour mixture. Mix, scraping down the sides of the bowl – do not over mix.

Fold in the diced bananas, pecans, granola and coconut into the batter. Spoon batter into pan, filling each cup to the top. Sprinkle tops with additional granola or coconut if desired. Bake 20-25 minuted or until tops are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool slightly and remove from pan.

Teno and I ate these the next day (today) toasted with raspberry preserves and they were even better than they were yesterday. Yesterday Tony ate five of them for lunch.

*To make these un-vegan, use 1 stick unsalted butter instead of canola oil, use one egg instead of flax seed and water and use regular milk instead of soy milk.

*This link has been updated.

Later, after we got home and put our pants in the drier (stupid melting ice maze) we headed out to Oak Park, home of the Frank Lloyd Wright home tour and the closest Penzeys Spices to my house. We loaded up on shallot salt, cardamom, pure almond extract and off we went. (Only one of those ingredients found its way into my muffins.)

After we ate some veggie tacos (I got in trouble for using all the sour cream in some cupcakes I made last week) Teno and I made these muffins. I measured, Teno stirred. I think they’re about as close to the tea infusion as a muffin can get – Tony thinks they have too much clove.

To make the muffins you will need:

• 2 bags unflavored black tea
• 3/4 cup soy or rice milk
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• pinch white pepper
• 1/3 cup canola or veggie oil
• 2 1/2 Tbs ground flax seeds
• 3 Tbs water
• 1 cup berries, frozen*

*I used raspberries, blueberries and blackberries

Then you:

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Grease one muffin pan. Heat soy or rice milk on stove top or in microwave (until almost boiling) add tea bags, steep 3-4 minutes. Remove tea bags and cool. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, spices, pepper and salt. Stir in frozen berries. In a small bowl, whisk the ground flax seed and water. Add this, the milk tea mixture and oil to the dry ingredients.  Stir just until mixed, the batter will be lumpy. Scoop batter into muffin pan and bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool 1 minute before removing from pan.

Anyway, for these reasons and many more I have been a neglectful baker and blogger. I’m happy you were all pleased with my cake rap last post, but to be honest with you that’s something I wrote almost a year ago and had tucked away in a Word .doc just in case I ever went a few weeks without baking something new to share. Shameful, I know, but at least it wasn’t a clip show. I’ve been around for almost two years now, and a clip show is just around the corner.

Now that it’s November we’ve moved into pumpkin pie and spice cake season – my favorite time of year. (I judge seasons by the correlating foods. So basically, I hate winter and everything else is bitchin’.) In honor of this cozy Fall, and in honor of Tony – who loves cookies and accidentally married a cupcake fiend – I made these chewy, yummy vegan pumkin cookies. This baking session also reminded me what I love about vegan baking – the flexibility. In a way, vegan baking is even more of a chemistry experiment than conventional baking. There are replacement formulas galore and even when you think you figured it out, there’s an even better option just around the corner. (Thus vegan’s never-ending quests for “the perfect vegan” this and “the ultimate vega that.) I remember back in my BMX-biking, Earth Crisis-show-going vegan days I thought I had a pretty great vegan brownie recipe. Then a roommate of mine showed me an even better one, sans bananas, and I realized this was going to be the rest of my life. Finding something I thought was perfect and then discovering, if I just changed one thing it’s even better.

I suppose that’s true for all baking, just when you think Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla is the be-all, end all vanilla cupcake you discover Ina Garten’s and your mind is blown once more. The major difference is people don’t expect much from vegan baking – which is ridiculous because I think we’ve proven over the years that most of the time the vegan recipe is more thought-out and thus, more delicious. But having that in the back of your mind – “if this is weird it won’t matter because everyone expects it to suck anyway” – really gives you a lot of creative freedom as a baker. And the extra-scientific aspect of a vegan recipe inevitably makes it fail safe – once you figure out a good formula to begin with you can kind of do whatever you want.

Take Isa Chandra Moskawitz’ recipe for vegan pumpkin oatmeal cookies, for example. The basic recipe calls for:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 2/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup canola oil
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbs ground flaxseeds
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup raisins

From there it’s just a regular cookie recipe. Pre-heat the oven to 250 and grease two cookie sheets. Mix together the dry stuff (flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices) Then mix together the wet stuff (sugar oil, molasses, pumpkin, vanilla and flaxseeds – I don’t know why I consider sugar and flaxseeds “wet stuff” shut up. Mix it up and fold in the walnuts and raisins. Drop it by the tablespoon onto the cookie sheets, flattening the cookies out just a little so they’re cookie-shaped. Bake 16 minutes and cool. (Unlike most cookies these are actually not as good warm and fresh as they are the next day, but the flaxseeds make them nice and chewy.)

Anyway, this is a great recipe, right? Simple, not a lot of weirdo hippy stuff in it (in fact, you can skip the flax if you want to.) It makes like 4 dozen cookies and they’re just sweet and just salty enough that even Tony didn’t notice they were vegan. So the genius of a great vegan recipe is that once you have it down, like Isa so obviously has this one down, you can get in there and start doing what you want, making it your own.

Say you love pumpkin but you aren’t so into raisins – fine, try some chopped dark chocolate. Not into walnuts? Almonds, hazelnuts or even baked pumpkin seeds will do just fine. Or skip the nuts and seeds and add something else for texture. Try candied ginger and chocolate chips – that’s a grown up pumpkin cookie if I ever heard of one.

Add some orange or lemon zest and some chopped white chocolate. (There is a great recipe for a vegan version here.) Try some chopped apples with cinnamon or some diced pears with a bit of ginger powder.

Jump on the savory desserts bandwagon and use maple in place of vanilla and some finely chopped Smart Bacon.

The bottom line is that vegan baking is just like Satanism – do what thou wilt. And with that, my friends, I believe we’ve solved the mystery of why I love vegan baking. Hail seitan.

Oh, The Urban Housewife and I had fun alright – discussing blogs we love and hate, shopping at Renegade in the rain and making ourselves sick at The Bleeding Heart Bakery, Sweet Cakes, Blind Faith Cafe and more…

But our attempt to team up on some delicious vegan cinnamon rolls failed miserably not once, but twice. The end result of two days of planning, meticulously hand-written directions from Melisser, a late-night search for ground flax seeds, 9 cups of flour and more Teno-shooing than has ever occurred in my kitchen before was 24 of the weirdest, doughiest cinnamon rolls this fair city has ever seen. Sure, they tasted alright, we loaded them up with expensive Chinese cinnamon and vegan chocolate chips. But they were unleaven, virtually raw – and over all, a little creepy.

Melisser tends to keep her blog positive – reviews of good cake, pictures of beautiful things, notices to donate to worthy causes and I… well, I write about recipes that made me cry and 80′s wrestling. So it should surprise no one when Melisser references our failed experiment but doesn’t elaborate on its horrifying results and I dwell on every last, chewy detail.

So, here’s our bad recipe, which I post in hopes that one of you will see the problem right away, fix it and thus, create the most delicious vegan cinnamon rolls ever conceived.

To start the mess you will need:

• 1 pkg dry yeast
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup soymilk, warmed up
• 2 Tbs ground flax + 6 Tbs hot water
• 1/3 cup Earth Balanace, melted
• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt

And for the filling, the only part that tastes good, you’ll need:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbs cinnamon
• 1/3 cup Earth Balance, melted

Then you:

Get everyone’s hopes up about cinnamon rolls, especially your own. Make sure you start this when you’re already kind of hungry because it takes forever. Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, mix the yeast, warm soymilk and sugar. Let stand until foamy. Or whisk it like we did, who cares?

Mix the flax and water to make “flax eggs”, add this to the melted Earth Balance, flour and salt and knead 5-10 minutes. It shouldn’t be sticky, but it will be.

Let the dough double in size. Or, wait an hour and notice that the dough hasn’t risen at all and start all over with a new batch like we did.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and allow to rest 10 minutes. Decide that you want to see what happens when you bake the other dough since neither one has risen, and end up with twice as many gross cinnamon rolls.

In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon and melted Earth Balance. Remark that this is entirely too much filling because it is.

Roll dough to 16×21″, go get Tony and ask him if that looks about right. When he says “yeah,” brush it with Earth Balance and sprinkle with the filling, taking care to add more where the middle will be (the edge closest to you) even though you won’t want to eat enough to actually get to the middle.

Roll tightly and cut into 12 even rolls. Go back and forth with your baking partner about which way to roll it, then decide on “the long way.” Cut the ends off because they’re ugly and then bake them anyway in case the rolls are delicious, which they will not be.

Place rolls on a cookie sheet and let rise 30 more minutes because these things haven’t already taken you two hours to make. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown or just take them out after 20 minutes and eat them even though they’re totally not cooked at all.

Be sure to waste your time making frosting. Go to Pasta Fresh and then to the mall, come home three hours later and throw all the cinnamon rolls away.

The end.

Ah well, can’t win ‘em all. I’m interested to see Melisser’s impression of vegan Chicago. The Midwest isn’t exactly known for it’s vegan cuisine. We’re not exactly known for much outside of Ditka and Al Capone and that’s the way we like it. But we do make occasional lame attempts at veganism, like these Vegan Chai-cago Cupcakes I made to impress Melisser. I think she was pretty blown away, at least that’s the way her text message came across. I am amazing.

One last note on Melisser- sure she’s a reknown vegan baker, an internationally-read blogger and the only person to ever look good in skinny jeans- but did you also know that she’s a champion sleeper? I warned her that Teno would be up and ready to party at 7am every morning- and he was- but that bitch just slept on through it! Man, San Fransisco must be the noisiest place on Earth. Either that or Melisser is as good at ignoring as she is at stealth photos of vegan baked goods.

Ah well, it was a pleasure to share my week end with my favorite blogger and it was even more of a pleasure to have people at Renegeade act like we were Paris and Nicole or some shit.

strawberry banana muffin

Originally uploaded by Bake & Destroy!

I’d planned on posting this recipe sooner than now (how soon is now?) but after all the lovin’ I got from Cakespy’s loyal readers my head swelled up so big I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Tony and Teno have been nursing me back to health, bringing me lattes and pancakes whenever I ring the bell on the nightstand and I’m happy to say the girth of my ass can now support the size of my noggin.
Perhaps that was all a lie, but this isn’t- these are muffins that will convert muffin-haters all over the world. I was one of you. I saw no reason to eat a bad cupcake without frosting. I tried and tried to make muffins for breakfast to avoid my usual bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios but always found myself bored back to sleep by their plainess. Add all the chocolate chips you want, muffins are still generally quite dull.
And then there’s Maude. I think it’s the brown sugar. No, I know it’s the brown sugar that makes all the difference in these muffins. Even the occasional bite sans berries or banana is sweet and cakey. I think you’ll like them, and if you don’t, try frosting them. (^_-)

For the muffins you will need:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp vanill aextract
1 cup mashed ripe banana
1 cup strawberries*, chopped
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup granola**
* or blueberries, you could also use frozen
** I used Bear Naked with dried berries in it, I like the crunch on top, but you can omit this

Then you:
Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease your muffin pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and banana. Add the melted butter and combine.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Gently stir in berries to prevent them from sinking in your muffins. Add the wet ingredients and stir just until combined. Fill the cups 2/3 full and top with granola. Bake 20-25 minutes, cool on wire rack.

For vegan muffins, use your favorite butter substitute, I like Earth Balance and use 1/2 cup soy yogurt in place of the eggs. These will be very moist, but bake them enough and let them cool all the way before you handle them and you’re straight.

Check back later tonight for details on how to enter my super sweet Rasslin’ Bake Off!