Baked Goods Galore

Having a guest at our apartment for a week has compelled me to bake. A lot. Which, granted, doesn't make a lot of sense when our kitchen is about 90 degrees these days without the oven turned on. But I wanted to bake some cookies for our friend Dan, and chose the Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies from 500 Vegan Recipes. The recipe clearly mentions that they are not too sweet, but I was still surprised when they turned out less of a cookie and more of a healthful snack (at least, it tastes like one).

Which ain't bad, right? And I have a deep love for oatmeal cookies anyway, so I'll make these again. No doubt about it.

A month or so ago I made a ginger quick bread and really liked how it turned out, so I went back to 500 Vegan Recipes and browsed through their chapter on Sweet and Savory Quick Breads. It's a very comprehensive cookbook! Anyway, I chose to bake a loaf of Lemon Thyme Quick Bread and was so glad that I did! This was amazing!

It was moist, sweet and lemon-y, and the thyme didn't taste obtrusive at all. Everything melded together quite nicely. Wow!! And the best thing about quick breads is that they're so easy to make. Just mix everything together and spoon it into a loaf pan. The only real "work" (if you can call it that) I had to do was zesting the lemon. That's it.

The lemon thyme quick bread went really fast, so I pulled out my recipes and looked for something else to bake. I was aiming for another quick bread, preferably a sweet one, but it turned out that the only thing I had all the ingredients for was the Country Corn Muffins in How it All Vegan.

I guess what makes this 'country' is the addition of corn kernels. Anyway, I have a pretty big bag of cornmeal that I never to seem to find a use for, so this muffin worked nicely. Sweet, but not too sweet. Yes, it would have been great to have with a nice bowl of chili on a cold winter day, but it's a good summer breakfast food too.