(vegan) Pumpkin white chocolate chips cookies

As you can see I had enough pumpkin to make a few recipes! I've done the pie, cupcakes for the World Vegan Day and cookies (made them twice and still have pumpkin to one more batch!). I was inspired by this recipe from the blog have cake, will travel - one of my favourite blogs ever. I hadn't regular chocolate chips and decided to try the white ones, even not being sure if they would suit with pumpkin. And I really enjoyed the combination and also Matteo, who has eating most of the cookies!

I didn't follow the recipe and decided to try something new, so here's my recipe:

Pumpkin white chocolate chips cookie

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 cup white flour

1 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup vegan margarine

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup pumpkin purée

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Cook the pumpkin and when it's cold, dry the water and mash it. Using your stand mixer, cream together margarine and sugar. Stir in pumpkin and vanilla until combined. Add flour, nutmeg, salt and baking powder and mix. Stir in chips. Divide the dough into 12 equal portions, place on parchment pape and flatten your cookies. Preheat oven to 180°C and bake the cookies for 15 minutes or until golden on top and around the edges. Wait 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Pumpkin and chocolate cupcakes for the 

World Vegan Day event in Dublin

Pumpkin pie

Most of my friends (mainly the vegan ones) love to cook and this is great. From time to time we exchange recipes, tips and even products (I enjoy sending food gifts). Cinthia is one of these friends. She lives in Brazil and I sent her a while ago a box that had, between other stuff, nutritional yeast (we can't find it in Brazil). She made a recipe called "Escondidinho de abobora e PVT" (it's really hard to translate this cause "esconder" means "hide" but "escondidinho" has nothing close to it in English as far as I know... but "abobora" means pumpkin and "PVT" is  "TVP", texturized vegetable protein). A few weeks ago Matteo got me a huge pumpking and I really wanted to try some new recipe and I went for this one. It looks like a pie but it also sounds like a potato/pumpkin pure.


Well, let's get down to the recipe so you can figure it out what it is! And thank you Cinthia for it ;)

"Escondidinho de abobora e PVT"

Ingredients:

 

- 1 kg pumpkin

- 2 medium potatoes

- 1 tablespoon vegetal margarine

- water

- 180g of fine texturized vegetable protein (TVP)

- 2 tablespoon olive oil

- 1 small onion

- 1 teaspoon minced garlic

- 340g ready tomato sauce

- Salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, fresh basil, fresh oregano to taste.

 Preparation:
 Peel the potatoes and pumpkin and cut into cubes. Cook them separately in water, because they have different cooking times. When they are really soft, remove from heat. Squeeze the potatoes with a masher (or a fork). Try to dry the pumpkin first with your fingers to squeeze out excess water. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes and pumpkin,  add the margarine and salt to taste (and if necessary water). The puree can not be too much soft (got to have a firmer consistency). Keep stirring it constantly until the desired point. Remove from heat and set aside. Meanwhile, soak the soy protein (with warm water). In a heated pan add the olive voil and fry the onion and garlic. Add the TVP. Lower the heat and add the tomato sauce and a cup of water. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, fresh basil, fresh oregano, and with the pot half-covered, let the sauce ascertain. Once you are done, remove from heat. Take a rectangular bowl. Place a first layer of puree, then the protein with the sauce and, finally, another layer of puree. Sprinkle nutritional yeast on top and bake in the oven temperature to 200 ° C from 20 to 30 minutes.
 PS. I've added a layer of spinach leaves between the sauce and the second puree and it tasted delicious.

Vegan Mofo III - Days 17, 18 and 19 - Pumpkin cupcakes!

I know I lost some days of the Vegan MoFo but I was blogging a lot, so I think it's totally fine! Since my last post everything in my house is about pumpkin!

Yesterday I baked my first vegan pumpkin cupcakes! They are so good! I used the recipe of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World with two differences: I used fresh pumpkin instead of the canned one and I used the handheld mixer (they say there to do not use it!).

I also did the small pumpkins with icing sugar :)

And here there are the final cupcakes, with chocolate frosting:


And I still have one more post for today!

Vegan Mofo III - Days 15 and 16 - Trick or (vegan) treats

There are many things that are not so popular in Brazil that we have now in Ireland: Halloween is one of those things. Last year I didn't have time to enjoy the arriving of the fall and all the pumping-treats-stuff-around-october, so this year I decided to get involved. So, guess "who" is in the house?!

Hello, Irish pumpkin!

I already did an easy and fast meal with a piece of it (nothing special, just rice and cooked pumpkin with beans), but I am planning to bake my first pumpkin cupcakes next Sunday!

For the Halloween night I'm not sure if we'll do something, but I really like the "trick or treats" thing. I read that "In Ireland and Scotland guising is traditional, and the American jocular threat is not practiced, just "treats" (in the form of "apples or nuts for the Halloween party") given out to the children dressed up as ghosts and witches." I would be happy to have some treats, even not being a child. Better, a vegan treat! Or, maybe because I am not traditional with the celebration, some chocolates and cupcakes like these:

I love Organica chocolates and the Hazelnut bar
now comes with the label "gluten free" too!

What do you want for your Halloween?

PS. Today I am really happy 'cause I just started a new column in a big website in Brazil. It's a column about what we can do for a better planet (showing products, companies, places and people). It's in Portuguese, of course, but it's one of my good news and I want to share with you.

PS 2. Em português: Estou muito feliz pois estou começando uma coluna nova no portal mineiro Uai, no Mundo Ela. O primeiro texto foi publicado hoje! A coluna é sobre como podemos cuidar melhor do planeta (irei mostrar produtos, empresas, lugares e pessoas). O link da primeira matéria está aqui! Em breve terei o meu espacinho, que se chamará Chá Verde, depois publico o link definitivo.

PS 3. I'd like to thank my Russian readers for the visits! I didn't have any visits from Russia before and this is really cool ;)