True to my word (or is it my sweet tooth?) I experimented with pumpkin spice muffins this week. But, as you may have guessed, these were not just any pumpkin spice muffins. These were vegan, gluten free and sugarless pumpkin spice muffins! Who needs sugar when you have moist pumpkin puree? No one, I say. No one. Or at least, not today.

The great thing about this recipe, compliments of the Babycakes NYCcookbook, is that there are no scary ingredients that risk sending you into a frenzy of worry over where the heck you are going to find them! You can find all of these ingredients at your local grocery store in the baking section. Even easier, you can order the ingredients you don’t normally have in house from Amazon!

Yes, you will see xanthan gum on the list. Please don’t be scared. It’s just another powder that will make your vegan and gluten free baking stick together. Just because you can’t pronounce it doesn’t mean you have to be scared of it (no – I still can’t pronounce it properly. Don’t laugh).

Final product? DElectable!

Up next: I’m baking 40 4-inch red velvet cakes for a 50th birthday party on Sunday. In my tiny kitchen. I start today – 6-8 cakes at a time! I see a week of laughing, crying, crying some more, and being so in my glory that I cannot even believe this is my life. Today also happens to be day one of my P90X challenge – 6 days a week of workouts, and a healthy diet that certainly doesn’t include red velvet cake, not to mention donuts. I smell a challenge. Perfect!

Sending all my love,

Lauren
xxx

Babycakes Pumpkin-spice muffins with Vanilla icing from Babycakes NYC

2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All purpose baking flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 cup coconut oil (melted)
2/3 cup agave nectar
2/3 cup rice milk
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups canned unsweetened pumpkin puree
1/2 cup hot

Preheat over to 325F and prepare your silicon muffin cups or line muffin tin with papers.

Whisk all the dry ingredients together. Add all the wet ingredients except fro the pumpkin and water. Once mixed, fold in the pumpkin puree and water with a rubber spatula until just combined.

Fill each muffin cup with batter just over 3/4 full. Bake for 12 minutes, then rotate and bake for another 12 minutes, or until done. Let them cool in the pan until easy to handle. Then cool them on a wire rack until completely cold.

Vanilla Icing

I must warn you – my vanilla icing is still a work in progress. I’ll give you the original Babycakes recipe here, but I added more agave and coconut oil until I got the consistency I wanted. So use this as your base, but play around… a lot.

1 1/2 cups unsweetened soy milk
3/4 cup dry soy milk powder
1 tablespoon coconut flour
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups coconut oil (melted)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Blend everything except the oil and lemon juice together in a food processor or blender for 2 minutes. Slowly add the oil and juice with the blender/processor on low speed. Once fully blended, pour into a container, seal tightly, and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. Now, the coconut oil should solidify and give you a nice creamy icing. This didn’t happen for me. So I added another 1/2 cup of coconut oil. I got a stiffer icing, but as you can see, it still wasn’t the stiff buttercream consistency I wanted. So stay tuned, but do try this one and experiment as you see fit!