Week 11 Dish 2: Vegan pumpkin muffins (ghosts and pumpkins)

Happy Halloween!!!! Yes, I know I'm a day late but I just completely forgot yesterday.... I blame the excitement of going clay pigeon shooting!!! That's right, the GP took me clay pigeon shooting - it was so much fun (even though I was pretty rubbish haha). I definitely want to go again - who wants to take me next time? :p

The recipe for today is pumpkin muffins! 'More pumpkin?! Why!?' I hear you say....trust me, these are too good not to make (and I still have enough pumpkin left for one more recipe - I know you're excited :p). I made them for the GPs that I'm staying with on Tuesday and thought I would post them on Halloween (I'm sure you can understand why from the picture below) but it's a bit late now, oh well! I hope you appreciate the ghosts and pumpkin shapes, I bought the silicone moulds from aldi (cheap but fantastic).

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
3/4 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp mixed spice
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup soya milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup apple sauce
2 tbsp treacle
Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C and prepare a muffin tray with muffin cups.
2. Mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt and spices.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, soya milk, oil and treacle. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until well combined.
4. Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Original recipe: The best pumpkin muffins

This weekend is Diwali, so I hope to make some vegan Indian sweets - I'm quite excited!

Week 11 Dish 1: Vegan pumpkin pie

My surgery attachment is finally over! Not that I didn't enjoy it, on the contrary I feel like I learned a lot. Though watching surgeries got a bit boring, the medicine was very interesting! I think gastro medicine is definitely something to keep in mind (I was doing lower GI surgery). I've now moved onto my GP attachment which is in Somerset! A bit of an adventure for me since I've never experienced medicine out of London. I'm really enjoying it so far and hopefully will learn a lot too. 

Unfortunately this is making it quite difficult to do my baking but I baked a bit before I left home and I'm going to try and do a few bakes over this coming weekend since I'm back in London...for my final year dinner!!!! So so excited and really can't wait :D

The first bake for this week (which I did on Sunday and just haven't had time to put up) is a delicious spiced pumpkin pie! Really easy (like most of my recipes) and a huge hit with my family! 

Ingredients

For the crust

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 cup oil

2 tbsp soya milk

For the filling

3 cups pumpkin puree

1/2 cup maple syrup/ honey

1/2 cup soya milk

4 tsp canola oil

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp corn flour

1 tsp agar powder (aka faluda powder, which you can buy from VB or other Indian food shop. This really is essential otherwise it won't set)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C and grease a 9 inch pie dish with vegan margarine.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients for the crust in a bowl.
3. Add the soya milk and oil, and combine with a fork until dough-like (but quite crumbly).
4. Press into the pie dish until the base and sides are evenly covered (it's too crumbly to roll out).
5. For the filling, use a blender to pulse together all the ingredients.
6. Pour into the pie crust and bake for 60-65 minutes until the centre looks semi-firm not liquidy.
7. Remove from the oven and cool on a cooling rack for 30 minutes, then chill for at least 4 hours before slicing and serving - simply divine!! Keep refrigerated until eaten (though I doubt it will last long...)

Original recipe: Voluptuous Pumpkin Pie